The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has decided to deny the renewal of an operating permit for the controversial BS Ranch and Farm composting plant near Lakeland.
The plant, located in an industrial park east of Reynolds Road near Saddle Creek, began operating in late 2015 without either a zoning permit from Polk County or an operating permit from FDEP.
The reaction by both jurisdictions was to give the business and after-the-fact permit based on assurances that they were planning to offer a really great recycling service that produces composted soil.
As anyone who has been following this saga knows, things didn’t quite work out that way. The plant’s operations chronically generated foul odors that enraged some of their neighboring business owners and area residents and there were regular questions about groundwater and surface water pollution.
After Polk officials belatedly recognized their folly in rolling over for these guys based on not much more than a public relations tour, they worked for years to somehow overturn or limit the permit that BS Ranch had legally obtained from them. They didn’t get very far.
FDEP, meanwhile, had issued a series of notices about the plant’s problems and finally filed suit against plant’s owners in 2019.
FDEP’s permit denial, which was issued Tuesday, contends that the agency has not received adequate assurances from the plant’s operators that it can comply with regulations involving odor, surface water quality or even the quality of the product the plant is producing for sale.
BS Ranch officials, of course, have a right to appeal. That means this case is likely to drag on for a while longer.
Maybe someone somewhere has learned their lesson about the downside of the permissive zoning and permitting policies that have plagued Polk for years.
It didn’t have to be this way.