Alternative power planned

County commissioners cleared the way Thursday for an alternative-energy industrial park in east Hillsborough County that developers say will create 600 jobs within five years and give the county another source of electric power.

Plans call for the park to produce electricity using solar panels and burning household garbage, algae and agricultural crops. Between 150 to 170 megawatts of electricity, enough power to light 111,000 homes, will be produced when the plant is fully operational, said Rhea Law, an attorney representing the development company, Imperium.

Commissioners had to amend the county's comprehensive growth plan before the plant could go forward. The proposed site, a former phosphate mine on 3,000 acres off S.R. 60 between South Dover and Turkey Creek roads, lies outside the county's urban service area and could not receive water and sewer service unless changes were made to the plan.

About a half-dozen residents from the area asked commissioners to withhold their vote or deny the changes because of the project's potential to create sprawl in the rural area. They cited objections to the plan posed by the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the state's growth management agency, including the potential for sprawl in a largely rural, agricultural area.

The agency later withdrew its objections when Imperium agreed to delete a hotel from its plan and decrease the non-energy-producing aspects from 20 percent to 10 percent of the development.

But the residents said they didn't trust the developers' promises that the site would be devoted to alternative energy, not other commercial and residential uses.

"All of a sudden, we'll see six or seven houses an acre where now we're growing crops," said Gladys Will, who owns property nearby.

Commissioner Mark Sharpe acknowledged the property owners' concerns but said the county cannot pass up a project with the energy park's job-creating and power-producing potential.

"I can't pick up the paper without reading about the desperate need for jobs," Sharpe said. "We need energy in this state or we're going to have brownouts."

Law said the development has to be "in the ground" before the end of the year to be eligible for $150 million in federal energy grants.