Re: Elberta, I understand it was the former site of Elberta Crate which used PCB, a very toxic contsminate in their work. It along with several other sites around town were the source of PCBs in Lake Munson/ good reason not to catch or eat fish there.

Mark Heidecker continues to say the water coming into Munson is clean, yet, a random sample I took from my kayak, 4/27 was analyzed showing the highest Total Nitrogen level in 50 years! Mark does not want source testing around town.

The County had an FDEP-FGS report on Jan 2020 recommend source testing after finding dozens of toxic sediment contaminants. Mark immediately sought another consultant to “review” the county’s report. They concluded Jan 2021 source testing is not needed. Maybe we’ll find more toxic sites to add to the over 240 officially ID’d!

Stay tuned!

I’ve been lucky to work with Terry as part of the Wakulla Springs Basin Advocasy Group. I just filed to run for County Seat 2 which includes Lake Munson. Environmental protection and regulation, in particular stormwater issues are a major passion of mine and I will bring that knowledge to the table. Terry is certainly a Tally treasure!

One big issue (out of many) is the County decided to take over all maintence of stormwater ponds, private or public, in the early 20-teens. All 700+ of them. This is an undue burden on the taxpayer and not enough cash to go around. That needs to be shifted back to the private sector. You build it, you clean it!

@Charlie:

You’re correct. “Lake Elberta” is not an actual lake, it’s a stormwater facility, and in 2020 the CoT applied (and received) a “conceptual” permit from FDEP to dump MORE UNTREATED stormwater into that area from the nearby student housing developments. This conceptual permit also included a “blob” over the Elberta Empire neighborhood west of Lake Bradford that covered at least 75 homes and businesses, possibly slated for condemnation and demolition for another pond. This was not approved by the City Commission nor have any residents been informed (I happened to be on a FDEP mailing list for projects in the area and let the HOA know).

Stormwater, including these “lakes” are considered untreated under an MS4 permit and no water quality/testing is required. Like you said, there needs to be ACTIVE filtration to remove contaminants and nutrients. Building a “giant hole in the ground” does NOT clean the water and only grows toxic cyanobacteria/algae like in Lake Munson. Our group also found out the City only cleans out ponds every 20-30 years — this needs to be happening every 5 years or so. Yet, these ponds keep being built as recreational parks that in fact are often highly toxic. Not a place I want a playground!

That development next to the train tracks? Was the original location for the large stormwater pond that ended up being placed further south took out an entire historic neighborhood and a grove of heritage oaks. Blueprint paid $966,000 for the land back in 2012-13 via threat of eminent domain… and sold it for $300,000 just a few years ago in a flawed bidding process.

I’ve also been able to show through records requests that Leon County/Blueprint took $1.6 million in federal funding — and agreed to follow federal standards when displacing people via eminent domain. Blueprint continues to deny this, saying only local funding was used, and from my calculations shorted people nearly $1 million in relocation benefits alone. FAMU Way also demolished over 100 units of housing that should have been replaced one-for-one under federal law.

Lots and lots and lots of issues, nearly all planning related and easily overcome, if there is the will do to the right thing.

You are a Tallahassee treasure! They should run your video on a continuous loop on WCOT as it is very informative.

Perhaps your group should hold a candidate forum. This is a very important issue that needs to move more in the forefront and having a forum would be a step forward to do this

It would be helpful to see where the candidates stand on this and how knowledgeable they are because this is something that our elected officials need to deal with sooner rather than later.

I believe the current leadership have neglected this issue (and that would be the mayor in the city manager in my opinion).

Your work is very much appreciated.