The ongoing saga involving Polk County’s attempts to overturn some of its past wrongheaded zoning decisions on a soil-composting plant on the outskirts of Lakeland took an important step forward Wednesday.

The Polk County Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve a proposed set of rules—some of them agreed to in a September settlement designed to resolve pending litigation, others proposed since the settlement by county planners—that will deal with persistent odor complaints and make sure the operation meets state rules on wetlands protection and stormwater management.

The soil-composing facility accepts a variety of material including septic tank waste, vegetative waste and other materials. It opened quietly in 2015 without obtaining either county zoning review or state environmental permits and part of the saga has involved the attempts by state and local officials to draft after-the-fact permits instead of simply shutting the place down.

It lies on a 300-acre site in an industrial area off East Maine Avenue adjacent to a 428-acre tract along Saddle Creek owned by Florida Audubon Society and within two miles of residential developments and a public school.

The case goes to the County Commission Dec. 4 for final action.

BS Ranch representatives are pushing back on some of the new conditions, particularly one that involves notification of odor problems within a two-mile radius of the site rather than the one-mile radius in the settlement agreement. That wider area would include Oscar Pope Elementary School, where staff members have reported odor problems suspected to being caused by the plant, according to a non-voting Polk County School Board representative on the Planning Commission.

One of the key proposals from Polk planners involves ensuring there is proper enforcement of any violations of the new facility operations plan and establishing a clear process for anyone in the area to report an odor complaint and a process to determine whether the source of the odor is BS Ranch or another operation in the area.

The complaint process, which is still in the testing phase, will include an online complaint form area residents and property owners can fill out to document any odor problems they notice.

The election for a number of federal, state and local offices will occur Tuesday.

So will a number of constitutional amendments.

Florida Sierra has approved the endorsement of candidates in several of the races on Tuesday’s ballot.

The information is available at this link.

The $40 million commitment the Southwest Florida Water Management District ‘s Governing Board made to Polk County could be up for reconsideration, Executive Director Brian Armstrong told board members Tuesday.

His comment came in response to a question from board member Ed Armstrong of Pinellas County following a briefing by General Counsel Karen West on the current litigation filed by Polk County to challenge a proposed permit request by the Peace River Manasota Water Supply Authority.

“Committed funds can be changed by the board if it so chooses” Brian Armstrong said, explaining only $11.5 million of that amount has been encumbered by formal contracts. He added those contracts are performance-based.

No board member has proposed such a change.

West cautioned board members not to comment on the pending litigation, explaining they will be required to vote on a final order after the administrative law judge issues a recommended order. At that time the board will have to consider all of the evidence and legal arguments in the case.

The three-week trial in the case is scheduled for January, West said.

Board member Armstrong asked West how much the case has cost the agency.

She said the agency has spent about $130,000 as well as used “substantial” staff time, but added she expects that number will increase as depositions begin and the process proceeds. Swiftmud has reportedly budgeted up to $1 million to cover litigation costs.

This litigation involves competing claims by utilities at opposite ends of the river in connection with their long-term water-supply planning.

An attempt to resolve the dispute through mediation so far has not been fruitful, though it is still possible a settlement could be reached before the case goes to trial.

The public relations battle over the Polk Regional Water Authority’s challenge of a water permit proposed by the Peace River Manasota Water Supply Authority is reaching our area.

Sunday, PRMWSA purchased a full-page ad in The Ledger.

The advertisement framed the current dispute in the context of the costly and contentious water wars that occurred in the Tampa Bay area for decades until it was settled 20 years ago via the creation of a regional utility called Tampa Bay Water.

However, one of the bullet points, which claims that PRMWSA is “so far downstream, they can’t affect water resources upstream” is actually at the heart of the dispute.

Polk water officials contend that if PRMWSA’s permit is approved, it would commandeer all of the available withdrawals from the river, upstream or downstream.

However, data being assembled by third parties argues any withdrawals in the upper Peace River as envisioned by Polk officials would be a bad idea anyway because aquifer overpumping and diversions of surface flow as a result of phosphate mining over the past century has diminished that section’s of the river’s ability to serve as a water supply source unless Polk officials are intent on harming the river’s ecology.

The competing arguments will get a hearing at some point and in the meantime taxpayers will get the bill.

The ongoing legal dispute over competing requests for withdrawals from the Peace River is scheduled to be discussed at Tuesday’s Southwest Florida Water Management District Governing Board meeting.

Here’s what has happened so far, at least the part that has been publicly disclosed:

On Oct. 2, 2017, the Peace River Manasota Water Supply Authority applied to Swiftmud for a permit to increased its permitted maximum withdrawal from 120 million gallons a day to 258 mgd.

On April 24, 2018 Swiftmud officials issued a notice of its intent to issue the permit at its May 22 regular meeting. Polk officials claim they were unaware of the proposed permit until the notice was issued.

On or about May 10 Polk Regional Water Cooperative submitted permit request to Swiftmud for water withdrawals from the Peace River, Peace Creek and Alafia River.

Between May 14 and 21, the Polk Regional Water Cooperative, Polk County and the cities of Bartow, Fort Meade, Lakeland, Wauchula and Winter Haven filed challenges to halt the issuance of the permit, arguing it would foreclose their ability to use water from the river to meet their future water needs.

On Sept. 19, Swiftmud officials attended the PRWC meeting to propose an alternative future water supply consisting of wells in southeastern Hillsborough County that might become a possible new water source if a pilot project to pump treated sewage underground to create a freshwater barrier to salt water intrusion works. They set up an Oct. 3 information meeting for PRWC members to get more information.

The Oct. 3 meeting occurred, but only Davenport representatives attended following an email circulated by Ryan Taylor, PRWC’s executive director, urging members not to attend because of alleged concerns that it would interfere with a mediation meeting scheduled for Oct. 8.

The Oct. 8 closed-door mediation meeting occurred as scheduled. Swiftmud officials said the parties are at an impasse, but PRWC officials disputed that.

In the meantime, without a settlement, the case will go to a formal hearing next year. The full cost to the taxpayers will be unknown until it’s over.

Swiftmud officials have lobbied Polk officials to avoid another lengthy and costly water war, similar to those that raged in the Tampa Bay area decades ago.

The Swiftmud meeting will be held at the agency’s Brooksville headquarters, beginning at 9 a.m. You can go to Swiftmud’s website and view the meeting online.

It will be interesting to hear what board members—particularly those from the counties involved—say about this issue.

Tuesday’s 4-1 rejection of urban density in a rural corner of the Kathleen area by the Polk County Commission highlighted the various way development regulations are interpreted here.

It was unusual that commissioners rejected both the Planning Commission’s split recommendation and the staff’s seemingly unanimous recommendation for approval.

Commissioner George Lindsey’s dissent focused on the way the rules are set up to justify and to accommodate development, which he argued should guide decision-making.

He argued that it seems inequitable that a developer should be advised how to make a project compliant with the existing regulations only to face denial.

But the reality is that in many cases the staff report reflects an effort supported by county policy to accommodate development applicants to devise a rationalization for approving applications.

The window for that rationalization is the result of the way Lindsey and his colleagues in the development community lobbied commissioners to write development regulations that contained provisions such as the one that was at the heart of Tuesday’s case.

So instead of staff report that criticized a plan that would plop 5,000-square-foot lots next to 200,000-square-foot lots, there was a staff report that emphasized a provision in the development code that authorized the ability to transfer the imaginary density on undevelopable sections of property to the developable sections through something called density bonus points.

This flies in the face of traditional philosophy that if you bought a swamp, that was your problem, not the county’s.

Lindsey called for a work session to clarify what the rules should be to provide more certainty for applicants.

But it seems that if there are regulations that guarantee approval, you might wonder why have a public hearing at all.

Perhaps what’s needed is a review that results in a development code with fewer loopholes that gives property owners in the path of new development a little more certainty.

Next Tuesday the Polk County Commission will have to deal with a roomful of angry homeowners.

The issue is a plan to use a permissive provision of the county’s development regulations to cram a subdivision with 5,000-square-foot lots in an area where many of the lots are as much as 50 times as large.

Residents appealed the case after even the developer-friendly Polk County Planning Commission split 4-3 in recommending the project’s approval.

At the heart of the dispute is something called density bonus points.

This is an oddity of Polk’s development regs that provides a windfall for property owners with land that is dominated by wetlands or other development limitations.

It reflects the inordinate influence of the development community in drafting Polk’s development regulations.

In the case of this proposed development, it works this way.

The site is 121 acres, about 73 acres of which is covered with wetlands.

This land in the Kathleen area, lies in something called the Suburban Development Area., where development density is normally limited to one home per five acres.

But a loophole in the development regulations allow applicants to cram housing lots on the non-wetlands portions of the property at the rate of one home per wetlands acre if they agree to review as a Suburban Planned Development, which allows additional conditions, such as building sidewalks and putting in street lights.

So instead of about 10 lots on the 48 developable acres, there will be 139 lots.

I predict the application will be approved because it complies with the regulations.

Until the regulations are changed, this will recur and there isn’t much anyone but the County Commission can do about it.