{"id":2319,"date":"2023-10-16T11:54:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-16T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=2319"},"modified":"2023-10-27T11:56:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T15:56:57","slug":"has-bs-ranchs-allegedly-illegal-operation-finally-reached-a-point-of-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=2319","title":{"rendered":"Has BS Ranch\u2019s Allegedly Illegal, Environmentally Harmful  Operation Finally Reached A Point Of Reckoning?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\">BS Ranch&#8217;s  alleged soil manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Lakeland may finally have reached a point of reckoning.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\">In July the Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued a draft consent order that amounted to an operating permit extension.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:12pt\">Polk County officials challenged FEDP&#8217;s action because they claimed it allowed violations of state environmental regulations to continue and asked for an administrative hearing.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"font-size:12pt\">There will be no hearing because FEDP officials decided on Oct. 3 to withdraw and void the proposed consent order, concluding that &#8221; BS Ranch <span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman\">will be unable to perform CO 22-0423 and that it is not an appropriate exercise of enforcement discretion, and it should not be approved as final agency action. &#8221;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt\">Meanwhile, BS Ranch does have an active request before the department for a permit renewal and that has to be acted upon at some point. Additionally all of the parties involved have legal rights to appeal any decisions state officials make.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\">\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt\">As predicted in an earlier post, this drama could drag on for some time.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\">\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt\">Polk&#8217;s request for an injunction, which was filed Sept. 22 in Circuit Court in Bartow,  seeks to halt BS Ranch from accepting any more waste until it comes up with a plan to market the ,more than 1 million tons of waste it has already received or remove the waste from its property.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\">\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt\">Polk&#8217;s injunction makes it clear that BS Ranch was permitted as a recycling facility, not a landfill and wants to seek the court&#8217;s approval to enforce its development regulations.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\">\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt\">It is worth noting again that if Polk&#8217;s land development staff had been more thorough in their review a decade ago when this operation first came to their attention, this whole mess would have been avoided.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\">\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt\">There really is an important distinction between being customer friendly  and simply being a pushover.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\">\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white\"><span style=\"color:black; font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:12pt\">It is never clear whether that lesson has been learned down in Bartow.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BS Ranch&#8217;s alleged soil manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Lakeland may finally have reached a point of reckoning. In July the Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued a draft consent order that amounted to an operating permit extension. Polk County officials challenged FEDP&#8217;s action because they claimed it allowed violations of state environmental regulations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions\/2325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}