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Mulch Dump Angers Activist

News Channel 8 photo by PAUL LAMISON

The dump for ground-up yard waste covers nearly 60 acres and is up to 10 feet deep at some points.

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By LINDSAY PETERSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 20, 2008

TAMPA - Two years ago, local environmentalist Mariella Smith asked Hillsborough County to consider buying a piece of property to connect wetlands near the Little Manatee River with a rare scrub habitat and creek system near Manatee County.

"It's gorgeous property," said Smith, who is a member of the site selection committee for the county Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program. Through the program, the county buys environmentally sensitive property and puts it in conservation to protect it from farming and development.

However, the 1,100-acre site Smith nominated has one problem. It contains a dump for ground-up yard waste covering nearly 60 acres. It was prominently pictured in The Tampa Tribune the morning of the site committee's meeting last week.

When committee members realized that the picture of brown streaks spreading across the green field was on a potential conservation site, Smith said, they gasped.

"Everyone was heartbroken," she said. "The staff said that was where the pine scrub habitat would be if it wasn't buried under all this stuff."

The Tribune reported last week that tons of chopped-up yard material had been spread across the property off Hobbs Road, southeast of Wimauma, in violation of state solid waste laws.

State regulations allow people to deposit mulch on their property without getting a dumping permit, as long it remains less than 2 feet. In March, county environmental inspectors found that the mulch on the Hobbs road land was 5 feet-to-6-feet high across much of a 60-acre area. In some spots, piles rose to 10 feet.

They warned the owner, Dianna Williams, and property manager, Paul Savich, to bring the mulch down to 2 feet across the property.

But last month, the state exempted them from the rule, increasing their limit to 5 feet across an area covering more than 600 acres, including dozens of acres of wildlife habitat.

Inspectors with the county planning and growth management department said that several acres of rare wildlife habitat, the type that is home to the endangered gopher tortoise and indigo snake, were likely buried underneath the mulch.

Savich disputes that. "I never saw any snake out there, except a pigmy rattler. I never saw any turtles."

Williams received $30 each for roughly 7,700 loads of mulch over two years. That amounts to about 170,000 tons. The material came from solid waste facilities in Hillsborough and Manatee counties and Pinellas Park, Savich said, and he planned to use it to plant palms.

Never Told Of 2-Foot Level

He said he was never told that he had to keep the material down to 2 feet. "I wanted all I could get," he said. He had some 4-foot to 5-foot palmettos on the property that he wanted to kill and wanted to cover them in mulch.

The state exempted him from the 2-foot rule on the basis of a letter from a local agent for the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

That agent, Alicia Whidden, wrote that mulch conserved water and nutrients and could be used to grow palms. Whidden specializes in vegetables.

However, a palms specialist with the University of Florida said last week that there was little to no benefit in that.

"I am not aware of any commercial field growers of palms that use mulch in their palm fields," said Timothy Broschat, a UF professor of environmental horticulture.

"The primary benefit of mulch in the landscape is for weed control and it is decorative. In most landscapes, however, it is misused and probably does more harm than good to the palm."

Despite questions about Whidden's assertions, county and state environmental regulators are allowing Savich to keep up to 5 feet on his property. The county planning department plans to survey his property and obtain his agreement to preserve the remaining wildlife habitat. But it doesn't plan to impose any penalties for the wildlife habitat that inspectors say was lost.

The lack of enforcement infuriates Smith, who is one of about 10 people on the environmental lands site selection committee.

Smith nominated the 1,100-acre property in late 2006. It was reviewed and put on the list for purchase but still has to be ranked with several other proposed sites. Then the county must get the agreement of the property owners.

Ross Dickerson, of the county's conservation program, said the existence of the mulch on the land Smith nominated could affect how it is ranked, but that will be up to the committee, which is made up of citizens and public officials from throughout the county.

In Smith's eyes, the land has been marred, though she still wants it to be preserved.

Angry E-Mail To Commission Chief

Last week, Smith sent an e-mail to environmental commission chief Richard Garrity titled, "Mulch dumped on my ELAPP nomination!"

"I am appalled that our county has PAID a LOT of money to these people to dispose of our yard-waste-turned-mulch, and they seem to be getting away with illegally dumping it all over a precious ecosystem," she wrote.

She wants the county to require the property owner to clean it up, though she realizes that is unlikely.

She is also asking for a study of the area around the mulch site, which is near a creek system that runs directly into the Little Manatee River.

"With this much waste over this much acreage, they need to look at the effect on the larger area," she said.

Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834 or lpeterson@tampatrtib.com.

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