Florida the rules are different here Chapter CXLVI

A landfill as a South Florida landmark. Just keep piling up the garbage Marion County, you may soon have the highest point above sea level in the Sunshine State. Won't that be something to brag about, Mt. Trash! Isn't this a great state or what.

Linked to- Bright & Early, Bullwinkle, Morewhat, Perri Nelson,

NORTH MANATEE -- New York has the Statue of Liberty. St. Louis has its arch.

And in the coming years, one of Manatee County's most visible landmarks could be a 150-foot-tall mound of construction debris.

A landfill proposed for a site just a mile and a half from Tampa Bay could tower 180 feet above sea level on Manatee's northwest coastline, according to recently filed plans.

In a county that prides itself on having few high-rises, the dump's eventual peak would be among the first sights for visitors who enter the county from the north or across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

North Manatee residents, who have dubbed the proposed landfill "Trash Mountain," are fearful it will spoil their community's skyline and lower their property values.

"This is obviously going to be an eyesore," said Andrea Torkelson, who lives about four miles from the site. "People are going to drive over that (Skyway) bridge every day, and that's what they're going to see."

The landfill, proposed by Waste Management, would be opened on land now occupied by Airport Manatee, whose owners have agreed to sell to Waste Management if the dump gets government approval.

The landfill is only partway through a complex approval process, and still needs a sign-off from a few state agencies and final county approval.

It would cover 130 acres of a 300-acre site east of Port Manatee and north of the abandoned phosphate processing plant at Piney Point.