What a load of crap

The front page of the Palm Beach Post's local section today featured a cow and a large hill of maneure. Here is the article. You got to love the Florida MSM, who else would think an overturned port-a-potty is news?

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finally piled up.

The heap of horse manure at Plant Factory reaches three stories high and spreads across 5 acres.

Loxahatchee Groves residents say it's ugly and smelly, and they worry it's leaching phosphorus into a nearby canal. They logged complaints over the years, and now county officials have decided their codes don't permit compost and soil manufacturing operations.

That's a relief to Angel and Myrian Sosa, an elderly couple who live next door and catch daily whiffs of the stench. They asked Plant Factory to move the heap away from their lot line and closer to Okeechobee Boulevard, a major roadway. When that didn't work, they called the county. But nothing changed.

"I'm not sure there's a better example of a public nuisance," said Amy Dukes of Lewis, Longman & Walker, a law firm the Sosas hired in January hoping for help.

County officials said they weren't trying to make life difficult. The problem, it seems, stemmed from the state's Right to Farm Act, which allows horse manure to be used as a type of fertilizer. So they fielded complaints and scratched their heads.

No more.

Plant Factory's pile has to go by May 12.

Code enforcement director Terry Verner said county commissioners had him take another look at the laws last summer. He took action recently after the Loxahatchee Groves Landowners Association called on his team to do something about the brown mountain at Plant Factory.

Plant Factory owner Rick Wagner said he's fine with that: "It may be a godsend. It's expensive. It comes in so fast, you need more acreage," he said of the manure. It is unclear at this point, where it might be transferred.

Folks in Wellington, however, might wind up in a bind. The village bans stockpiling of manure, except on a temporary basis in concrete bins designed to keep the waste from washing away. The law was designed to cut the amount of phosphorus that drains from southern Wellington's horse country into the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. Wellington's horses produce about 640,000 pounds of waste a day during the equestrian season. And Plant Factory handled a whopping 80 percent of that this year, Wagner said.

Closing down his operation could mean higher fees for truckers to haul it farther away.

"It could become a burdensome cost," said Dean Turney, executive director of the Wellington Equestrian Alliance.

Or worse: "They're going to dump it anyplace they can," Wagner said. Operations like his turn the manure on a regular basis, mixing it with muck and making it ready for farms.

Ultimately, the solution might be turning the waste to energy. To that end, the Equestrian Alliance plans to invite government agencies and power companies to brainstorm.

"A manure workshop," Turney said. "We'll always have this issue of getting rid of the waste."