MW Horticulture loses round in bid for DEP registration of mulch yards

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A state administrative law judge has sided with the state environmental agency’s decision to reject MW Horticulture Recycling’s registration renewal to operate fire-prone organic waste processing yards in North Fort Myers and San Carlos.

The ruling released Thursday finds that Fort Myers based MW Horticulture “did not provide reasonable assurances” that it would comply with state Department of Environmental Protection standards to continue operations.

However, Administrative Law Judge Francine Ffolkes refused to recommend that MW Horticulture be designated an “irresponsible applicant.” 

Instead, the judge agreed with MW Horticulture that Hurricane Irma was a factor in the company’s inability to comply with requirements for handling mountains of horticultural debris brought to its yards after Irma swept through Lee County in September 2017.

The designation “irresponsible applicant” is a formal finding that an applicant “could have prevented (violations) through reasonable compliance with department rules.”

While MW Horticulture was found responsible for illegal and dangerous activities on its sites, Denise Houghtaling, who owns the company with her husband, Mark, said the ruling that their company is not an irresponsible applicant will be positive for its future.

“We’re a little bit upset that we are going to go through some extra steps to get our permit, but we feel vindicated by the finding,”  Houghtaling said. 

The judge’s decision was critical of the company for continuing to compact plant debris  by running it over with heavy equipment and for storing yard trash more than 50 feet from the nearest point of access for firefighting equipment. 

“We are going to work on the issues that they discussed with regard to mechanical compaction and the 50-foot requirement and verify what we need to do to be in their compliance,” Houghtaling said.

If the DEP agrees with the judge’s decision, MW Horticulture will need to seek a permit to operate as a solid waste management facility, which requires  a more stringent, and costlier, application process and higher operating costs.

In refusing to allow MW Horticulture to continue operating by merely registering with the DEP, the administrative law judge cited a host of issues, including unauthorized open burning of debris, failure to provide sufficient access to fire trucks and failure to reduce the size of debris piles.

Fires at  the company’s two sites have prompted complaints from neighbors about its operations.

Fire chiefs in the San Carlos and Bayshore fire districts reported that by the time the administrative hearing began last March, they had responded to 43 fire calls for the company’s facility in San Carlos and 75 calls at the waste facility in North Fort Myers, which is in the Bayshore fire district.

Ffolkes attributed the fires to spontaneous combustion — the ignition of flammable material due to the growth of mold and other internal pressure in the mounds of organic material. 

MW Horticulture’s owners have consistently claimed, publicly before Lee County commissioners and in a county hearing examiner proceeding, that many of its problems stemmed from overwhelming loads of debris brought to its facilities after the 2017 hurricane.

Ffolkes found that hurricane damage to the Lee County landscape required processing and disposal of “an overwhelming volume of material … haulers took considerable time just to get the materials off the streets.”

MW Horticulture ended up in a situation in which it was out of space but couldn’t legally move the debris.

The company requested, but never received, DEP approval to move the mounds of waste elsewhere to reduce a “temporary” pile that had been started near a lake at the North Fort Myers site to accommodate hurricane debris, the judge said.

“For reasons that remain unclear, such authorization was not obtained,” Ffolkes wrote, noting that the company “believes that this would have resized and reduced the piles” and avoided a violation of DEP rules.

Last year: Lee County sues company over Irma debris it had dumped in NFM

She wrote that the request to move the lakeside pile was denied “despite that a state of emergency was declared,” which MW Horticulture owners said they thought would lead to a grinding permit on an emergency basis. 

It was also noted in the decision that MW Horticulture accepted vegetative waste and yard trash in exchange for a disposal fee.

The MW Horticulture decision recommended by Ffolkes is not final until approved by Secretary of Environmental Protection Noah Valenstein as a final order of the agency. 

The company operates as MW Horticulture Recycling Facility in San Carlos and MW Horticulture Recycling of North Fort Myers. The ruling in the administrative case apply to both companies.

Violations found at the San Carlos facility included not removing “all processed or unprocessed material from the Seminole Gulf Railway right-of-way, failing to reduce the height of horticultural waste piles on site and failing to make sure all waste material was within 50 feet of access by the fire department.

MW Horticulture was found to have complied with the order to remove rubble from the railway right-of-way. 

“We have made huge amounts of improvements and alterations to our  yards. Most of those circumstances are resolved,” Houghtaling said. 

Check back with news-press.com for updates on this story.

Previous coverage: Tree waste dump continues to face $200 daily fines

More: MW Horticulture gets one more month to rid site of Irma debris

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