If you want to contribute to our understanding of the diversity of wild plants and animals in Polk County, the City Nature Challenge is the place to be this weekend.
The effort involves taking photos of flora and fauna in the Polk landscape and posting them on iNaturalist.
If you are new to this iNaturalist is a phone app as well as a website where people can post their photos.
The data-gathering part of the City Nature Challenge runs from Friday through Monday. Participants have until May 4 to post their photos.
Results will be announced May 5
Polk County’s City Nature Challenge is one of only a handful around the state. There are a couple in south Florida, one in Orange County, one in Alachua County, another in northeast Florida and a Florida-Georgia effort that covers a good portion of the Florida Panhandle.

Here are some tips.
The goal is to map biodiversity of wild plants and animals. That means avoiding photos of domestic pets, farm animals, and plants in, your yard unless they are native.
Try to take clear photos and try to crop the photos enough so that the image is identifiable.
If you are not sure what kind of plant or animal you are photographing that’s okay. Make your best guess and post it. There are many helpful people out there who will suggest more accurate IDs, so it is a great chance to learn.
Finally, just get outdoors and have fun.

Tuesday the County Commission approved a contract to build a facility at the North Central Landfill to properly take care of the waste generated by septic tanks.
The $21.4 million contract with C & T Contracting Services is expected to provide a long sought after solution to the disposal problem for Polk’s septic tank businesses.
Traditionally the waste has been dumped in pastures in rural areas of the county, but it had become harder to find locations that did not generate odor and pollution complaints from adjacent landowners as Polk County allowed more development in formerly rural agricultural areas. Polk County officials had been discussing the construction of one or more treatment facilities since at least 2020.
According to the contract approved Tuesday, the new plant should be completed by sometime late in 2026.
Funds from the Polk County Utilities capital fund and President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan will be used to pay for the project.
The lack of a local disposal area has forced haulers to use a plant in Hillsborough County, which has increased the amount they have to charge customers. The opening of a plant in Polk County should make the service more affordable.
The disposal of septic tank waste and sewer plant sludge, which the industry has tried to use the more harmless-sounding term biosolids to describe, has been an environmental issue for decades.
That’s because the waste contains nutrients and traces of other chemicals including toxic metals and medical waste that. affect water quality and human health.
The opening of the BS Ranch & Farm facility on the outskirts of Lakeland in 2016 was initially thought to be a solution to the disposal problem, but the facility’s operation never lived up to its billing and has since been shut down after years of controversy regarding odor complaints and other problems.
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There has been some discussion in Tallahassee this year about a “rural renaissance” intended to bring prosperity and change to Florida’s rural counties if they are interested.
Bu there are always competing visions between the boomtown crowd and the traditionalists about what is really an improvement to rural life.
That drama plays out in a recently published book titled Sand River Reckoning by Bruce Kistler, a Winter Haven author.
It is set in a fictional Harken County somewhere in southwest Florida, where dark special interests are pushing to build a major highway across the rural landscape that would forever convert the county from pastoral paradise to more soulless sprawl.
The tale evokes memories of the fight over the toll roads proposed by the road-building and development lobbies several years ago or the current battle over a toll road through eastern Polk County based on the same kind of dubious rationalizations.
As characters in the narrative develop, we meet business leaders who only see easy money coming, ranchers who are either eager to sell out or resistant to losing their way of life, environmental activists trying to rally people they hardly know to oppose the project, local politicians who are split on the idea and a powerful development lobbyist who secretly hatched this plot, only to have a canoe trip change her perspective.
Without giving away too much of the plot, things change unexpectedly, and Harken County still thrives as a result.
But as the tale ends, new threats loom, demonstrating that the fights are never really over. That brings the reader back to the realism of Florida politics in what might otherwise seem to be a Pollyannish fable.
If you are looking for some summer reading about Florida culture, politics, public policy debates and more, this would be a great choice.
It is being self-published on Amazon.

As the study of the eastern leg of the Central Polk Parkway grinds on to cut through still undeveloped sections of eastern Polk County, new revelations are emerging.
The most obvious change is the plan to move the preferred route farther east of U.S. 27, which puts it at the edge of the conservation lands in the Marion Creek Basin, which is part of the headwaters of the Everglades.
It is worth pointing out for those who arrived recently that the one of the prime movers for the preservation of the Marion Creek Basin was the late County Commissioner Ernie Caldwell.
Another, which was disclosed at Thursday’s Transportation Organization meeting, involves what appear to be plans to extend Bates Road and Ernie Caldwell Boulevard eastward to lure motorists to the planned toll road since its more remote route seems less likely to attract motorists otherwise.
That would open more land for development, which raises the issue about this entire network about how much of this is about genuine transportation needs and how much is simply part of the economic development community’s wish list.
Polk TPO officials also called the still unfunded Southport Connector that would link Poinciana to Florida’s Turnpike as an economic development “game changer,” which was revealing as well.
That matches long-term economic development dreams that date to the 1920s for a “Road to the East.”
But that’s not all, folks.
There is a proposal to extend Kathleen Road northward to link directly to U.S, 98 and a proposal to build a new road somewhere north of U.S. 192 between U.S. 27 and Stater Road 429, a toll road that loops around the west side of Orlando.
It never ends, it seems.

It has not rained much this month so far and the effects are really obvious in the Peace River.
The main effect is that no one should plan a paddling trip anytime soon.
According to preliminary data from the USGS, flow at the Bartow gauge was about 20 percent of longtime average.
Downstream at Arcadia, flow is less than 10 percent of the long-term average flow.
In eastern Polk County, the flow in Livingston Creek in Lake Wales Ridge State Forest is about half of the long-term average.
Arbuckle Creek in Highlands County is flowing at about 15 percent of average for this time of year.
Typically flow recovers with the onset of the summer rainy season.
If any hurricanes affect the area this year, river flows could swell.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will host a public hearing at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Lake Eva Civic Center in Haines City to discuss the draft management plan for Creek Ranch Wildlife Management Area.
Creek Ranch is a 1,342-acre site on Hatchineha Road east of Haines City that was planned for a residential-commercial development until. the state purchased the property last year for $36.1 million.
It contains a mosaic of habitats including oak hammocks, pastures, scrubby flatwoods and wetlands.
The draft 10-year management plan envisions opening the property for a variety of uses that will include hiking, wildlife observation, fishing, hunting and environmental education.
No date for opening the property to the public has been announced.

On March 25 the Southwest Florida Water Management District Governing Board will consider an agreement with the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services to acquire a perpetual conservation easement on a ranch along the Withlacoochee River.
The property is owned by Headwaters Ranch LLC, which is located west of State Road 33 just north of the Polk-Lake county line.
It contains 3.5 miles of frontage on the Withlacoochee River,, one of five rivers whose headwaters lie in the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern.
The easement, whose purchase was authorized at the March 5 Florida Cabinet meeting, will add to an extensive land conservation effort here.