The long-sought environmental education center at Se7en Wetlands Park is a go.
The Lakeland City Commission has approved a $1.2 million contract with Rodda Construction to build the center near the 1,600-acre park’s northern entrance.
The work will be funded with a $977,165 grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and $259.927 in city funds.
The park, which opened in 2018, contains a trail system that is popular for wildlife viewing. It contains a number of treatment wetlands designed to remove nutrients from the city’s sewer discharges before the water reaches the North Prong of the Alafia River and a pipeline that supplies cooling water to TECO’s Polk Power Station.

For the time being the efforts of the Polk County Regional Water Cooperative are focused on developing a network of Lower Floridan Aquifer wells, treatment plants to remove impurities and a pipeline system, to deliver water to utilities and their customers to feed the growth machine.
But utility officials have admitted the Lower Floridan Aquifer, like the Upper Floridan Aquifer they have been tapping for more than a century, is not an inexhaustible source of water.
And for now the timeline stretches only to about mid-century. Beyond that there is talk of drilling even deeper into the aquifer where water quality is even worse and treatment more expensive.
But in the meantime they are also talking about tapping surface water. That means scraping whatever water is available from the Peace River and maybe the Alafia River when there’s extra water to be had after maintaining enough flow for fish movement and a healthy ecosystem.
But, as Shakespeare told us long ago, there’s the rub.
Current conditions provide a good example.
2025 was the third driest year in Winter Haven since figures began to be collected in 1941. This is significant because the Winter Haven lakes form part of the headwaters of the Peace River.
Current flow in the Upper Peace River is about a quarter of the long-term average.
Downstream in Zolfo Springs and Arcadia flow is about15 percent of average and this is just the beginning of the dry season.
One of the needs any utility has is a dependable supply of whatever it needs to operate, be it fuel, water or anything else.
No one knows what our climate future will be.
Will droughts become more regular of will rain-soaked hurricanes be the new normal?
That’s the dilemma since both scenarios have their obvious downsides.
Guess we’ll have to stay tuned, keeping in the back of our minds that somewhere out there lies a limit. on growth that we will not be able to overcome, no matter how many billions of dollars they throw at it.

Now that the latest state-sanctioned bear hunt is over, some observations are in order.

–It was a bear hunt not a bear “harvest.” These are living creatures not oranges,
–The fact that only 52 bears were killed is not surprising. Unlike the earlier hunt, which was a free-for-all, this hunt involved a limited number of permits, some of which were snatched up in a guerilla campaign by Sierra and other groups.
–It seems likely that even among the people who actively tried to kill a bear they may have been unsuccessful because bears are not that numerous and may be hard to find unless you have some staked out as occurred in the earlier hunt.
–The rationale for the hunt was always questionable because the hunt areas were mostly areas with little growth pressure
–FWC was secretive about how the hunt was going, which aligns with the general way information is withheld from the public under the DeSantis administration.
–The FWC reportedly will present a report on the hunt results sometime later this year. It is unclear whether that delay is needed to make sure they have good data or to figure out how to spin it to enable the next hunt.

There was no shortage of local environmental news in 2025 and as usual it was a mix of good, bad and ugly.
The longest running story was the controversy over plans for a toll road through portions of rural northeast Polk County that would destroy the tranquility in these areas, make management of conservation lands more difficult and spend tons of public money on a project that no one but the development and road-building lobbies asked for.
At year’s end the Florida Turnpike Enterprise had selected an alignment for the eastern leg of the Central Polk Parkway and the Osceola Expressway Authority had done the same for another toll road through ranch lands south of Lake Tohokepaliga to link to the Florida Turnpike.
Sierra opposed these projects because of their environmental impacts on wildlife movement and prescribed fire, their encouragement of urban sprawl and their furthering the fallacy that you can build your way out of congestion.
There are several steps ahead including design, right of way acquisition and construction that will total hundreds of millions of dollars or more, a lot of which is currently unavailable.
The only good news on the transportation front was that work is underway on a wildlife overpass across Interstate 4 that will restore a missing link to the Green Swamp from the Upper Peace River watershed.
Development issues also caused public outrage.
One long-running battle involves a plan for a massive residential development along the Peace Creek Drainage Canal on the east side of Bartow on land with marginal soils that will require a bridge over the canal’s floodplain to reach in order to funnel traffic to State Road 60.
The County Commission had denied the project a few years ago, so backers applied to be annexed into the city, apparently hoping it would have more lenient development standards.
At year’s end, city commissioners had given the project tentative approval, but made it clear it would take another look at the project when it came back for final approval in early 2026.
Farther east, a massive sand mine that straddles State Road 60 was proposed east of Lake Wales next to Saddlebag Lake Park, where residents opposed the idea and persuaded the Polk County Planning Commission to vote 6-1 to deny the project. The developer is appealing the decision to the County Commission.
One sidelight of the hearing is that the County Commission, in an unprecedented move, voted to remove Michael B. Schmidt from the Planning Commission after the lawyer representing the applicant complained about his comments at the hearing and County Attorney Randy Mink cited earlier comments Schmidt made that violated the guidelines for how members of the panel should conduct themselves.
Meanwhile, Polk County planners are working on an update of the county’s growth plan, which will be considered by the County Commission in 2026.
That effort is complicated by state law approved earlier this year that restricted what kinds of regulatory changes local officials can enact and could force commissioners to table the changes until and whether the Florida Legislature undoes the restrictions.
Polk officials had earlier this year scrapped plans to enact tighter regulations for development in flood-prone areas and Winter Haven scrapped plans for a tree-protection ordinance for the same reason.
Polk’s parks and environmental lands programs was in the news.
One big change was the retirement of long-time director Gaye Sharpe, who will be succeeded by Tabitha Biehl.
The Environmental Lands Program continues to consider a number of sites for acquisition or conservation easements all over rural Polk County.
However, there are some snags ahead regarding funding.
While the Legislature has generously funded programs to buy conservation easements on working lands, the matching funds to buy land with higher value for protecting intact natural habitats have faced cuts.
In addition, it is unclear at this point how proposals to reduce or eliminate residential property taxes will affect the amount of local revenue available for environmental land purchases. At year’s end it was unclear which proposals, if any, will advance to the 2026 general election ballot and whether the idea will attract 60 percent approval.
It will also be interesting to see how or whether this will affect plans for a first-ever environmental lands referendum in Highlands County, which is also tentatively scheduled for the 2026 ballot.
Finally, no discussion of environmental issues in this region would be complete without talking about water.
Polk County utility officials are working on two projects to possibly provide more drinking water and to reduce groundwater pollution.
One involves a pilot project to bring treated sewage to drinking water standards to deal with projected water shortages.
The other involves the construction of a long-sought facility to treat septic tank wastes that were historically dumped in pastures, resulting in odor complaints and concerns about groundwater contamination.
That project, which will be completed in 2026, comes after the shutdown of the BS Ranch facility that promised to turn these and other wastes into useful products but never delivered.
Meanwhile, officials at the Polk Regional Water Cooperative continue to work on securing some sort of future water supply from the Upper Peace River and the headwaters of the Alafia River, but it remains unclear how much water will actually be available after the Southwest Florida Water Management District updates its minimum flows and levels calculations for those water bodies.
In any event, water would be available only during times of peak flows, which this year has shown are unpredictable.
Below average summer and fall rainfall has dropped river flow to between low normal to extreme low levels as what may be the beginning of a drought affecting the area. That condition was even more evident when Polk fire officials pushed for an unprecedented fall burn ban that likely will remain in effect until next summer’s rainy season arrives.
Meanwhile don’t plan any camping trips that involve campfires or paddling trips that don’t require portages.
Take day hikes and enjoy the outdoors in Sierra fashion.
Happy New Year!

The decades-long campaign to end sugar cane field burning in south Florida is producing some results, we learned during a bus ride that was part of Florida Sierra’s recent winter meeting in South Bay near Lake Okeechobee.
The main concern was how the “black snow.” as residents in communities such as Belle Glade. Pahokee, South Bay and Clewiston term the ash fallout, affects their quality of life as it lands everywhere and reportedly causes health concerns for people who already have respiratory problems.
For years the industry seemed to ignore the issue and enlisted state environmental officials to declare the air was safe and clean.
More sophisticated air analyses by private investigative teams lead by Pro Publica have demonstrated there are issues.
There now seems to be some cracks in the sugar industry’s opposition to ending the practice.
We were told one major company, Florida. Crystals, no longer burns the fields and uses the organic debris that was once burned in open fields as biofuels to power their processing plants.
Plant operators have also installed physical barriers to prevent debris from affecting nearby homes in the Harlem community.
Economic development considerations have played a role, too.
When a new Wal-Mart was proposed for Clewiston, the store’s owners made it clear that they opposed burning in the fields adjacent to the store because it would affect their employees and customers.
There is no burning around the store.
This and other examples demonstrate that sugar cane field burning is not really as necessary as previously claimed.
As a side note to demonstrate how pervasive the “black snow” has become, when I visited John Stretch Park between Clewiston and South Bay, the ash even covered the spider webs as illustrated in the photo above.

Tamara Richardson, Polk’s utilities director, provided an informative update on Polk County’s quest for more drinking water to meet projected development demand and progress on Polk’s first-ever treatment plant for septic tank waste at Thursday’s Ancient Islands Group meeting.
Some takeaways from her presentation were:
–Although the Lower Floridan Aquifer will aid in supplying some of the water Polk officials say they will need to accommodate new development, that source, like the Upper Floridan that was the traditional source of drinking water, it is not inexhaustible.
-Pumping water from the Lower Floridan is unlikely to cause sinkholes because there is a confining layer between those two portions of the aquifer.
-The deep well system, the even deeper disposal well system and the 66 miles of pipeline will affect everyone’s water rates; expect a six percent annual increase.
–The other potential future source of water is the Peace River, but that is far in the future and will depend on how much water is available after the Southwest Florida Water Management District re-evaluates minimum flows in the Upper Peace River.
–Another potential source is what is called Direct Potable Reuse(DPR), which involves treating reclaimed water (treated sewage) to drinking water standards.
–DPS is undergoing a pilot project at a plant in northwest Polk using a series of treatment steps to remove such contaminants as organic compounds, viruses and PFAs (the so-called forever chemicals) that normal treatment doesn’t remove.
–The treatment plant for septic tank waste, which should be completed by next summer, is a long-awaited solution to the pollution problems that occurred when septage haulers were allowed to dispose of the waste on the ground, usually in pastures.
–It also comes after a business called BS Ranch & Farms, which, claimed to be able to turn the waste into usable soil, was shut down after being cited for numerous pollution violations.
–Under the new process the septage will be treated and mixed with leachate (contaminated water that flows through the piles of garbage at the landfill) and used as process water at the landfill.
Richardson said all of these projects are part of a series of anti-pollution and water management efforts required by various agencies aimed at reducing these operations’ impacts on the environment.

A Tallahassee judge on Monday dismissed a proposed injunction against the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission that proposed to halt next month’s bear hunt.
Lawyers for hunt opponents argued FWC’s decision was not based on good science and was simply another trophy hunt.
FWC’s lawyer responded that hunt opponents were simply “whining” because they did not prevail in the debate, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
In a statement issued Tuesday Sierra Club Florida called the ruling “a serious setback for Florida’s wildlife and for the countless Floridians who have worked tirelessly over the past year to stop this cruel and unnecessary hunt” adding ” The science is clear, the public has spoken, and nothing about this decision changes the facts: Florida does not need a bear hunt.”
The rationale for the hunt was that it was necessary to protect bears from the effects of urban sprawl, especially in the Florida Panhandle.
But as we pointed out in this space earlier this year that part of Florida where the hunt will occur is sparsely populated
Hunt proponents also used the passage of a badly worded constitutional right to hunt amendment, which Sierra opposed, to justify the hunt.
We hate to say we told you so, but we told you so.