Lake County environmentalist advocates for environmental education to be required in Florida schools

EUSTIS – More than 30 years ago, Congress passed the Environmental Education Act of 1990, which required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help with environmental literacy in schools.

In Florida, while some schools offer environmental education as an elective, rarely is it required. One lifelong Floridian is hoping to change that.

Feeding the future through environmental education is something Eileen Tramontana, executive director of Trout Lake Nature Center, has a passion for.

“I grew up playing in the woods as a kid, liking the outdoors, loving what’s here, and started working for a soil and water conservation district many, many years ago," she said. "I worked for a private industry and realized it was a nice job, but I was putting money in someone’s pocket and I wanted to make a difference."

For her, it’s teaching the community about the environment, like feeding their gopher tortoise, that gets people engaged with what’s around them.

“This resource is really important because a lot of the times you wouldn’t get to see the animals or the plants that come here in Central Florida," she said. "They’re often times nocturnal or you just can’t get that close to them."

But Tramontana hopes to make a statewide difference. While she teaches groups and individuals visiting the center, and she brings her lessons outside the classroom in an engaging way.

In an aging Central Florida Superfund site, huge machines aim to knock out a toxic mess

Soon, the dangers of the Tower Chemical site will be confined in an underground tomb

Enormous cranes are building a structure near Clermont that may seem astounishing not only for its weight, about 250 million pounds, and size, a mass larger than a football field, but also for its place and purpose.

The behemoth is taking shape entirely underground — a monolithic, rock-like tomb to solve one of the nation’s earliest Superfund challenges, the storied brew of dangerous pesticide ingredients called the Tower Chemical site 20 miles west of Orlando city hall.

“It looks like a mess,” said Bill Neimes, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project engineer, of slop suggesting congealing turkey gravy smothering a portion of the work area, “but if you scrape it away, it would be a solid slab.”

Once tucked amid rural citrus groves of what is now a fast-developing corridor of Lake County, the Tower Chemical project north of State Road 50 punctuates the takeaway from so many hazardous pollution sites: It takes so little effort to create one compared to the prolonged, costly and muscular toil needed to clean it up.

Butler Street Boat Ramp to close for repairs

2024 Adopt-A-Lake calendar celebrating local photographers, natural waterways available Nov. 21

John’s Lake boat ramp to close temporarily for repairs

Many Floridians with private wells don’t know how to take care of them

Approximately 12% of Florida’s population rely on a private well for drinking water, according to the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

That’s about 2.5 million people. Bithlo resident Tara Turner, 50, is one of them.

After years of relying on wells for drinking water, Turner feels quite comfortable maintaining her own well today, which sets her apart from the estimated one-third of Florida well users who don’t know how to care for their wells properly, according to UF/IFAS research.

Dr. Yilin Zhuang, an environmental engineer at UF/IFAS focused on studying water resources, is working with her colleagues to expand Floridians' understanding of well safety, maintenance and testing. She leads public webinars, shares research findings, and is currently compiling resources for a website to help private well owners, which she expects to launch sometime next year.

Zhuang says ultimately, the burden falls on private well users — not a public utility — to ensure their water system is working safely and properly.

“When it comes to private well users, there are just not that many regulations,” Zhuang said. “So it all relies on private well users to manage their wells, and make sure their drinking water is safe to drink.”

Mount Dora takes steps to stop smell near Sullivan Ranch after residents complain

Some Mount Dora residents say they've been dealing with an awful smell for years and Tuesday night, they hoped the city may have taken a step to help them breathe a little easier.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection says there are several facilities that could be contributing to the smell, including a wastewater treatment facility, which was a topic of discussion at the meeting.

Several residents of the Sullivan Ranch neighborhood described the smell.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection found the city had a number of violations when it came to the James Snell wastewater treatment facility, including that they "failed to operate the collection system in the Sullivan Ranch subdivision in a manner to control objectionable odors."

They sent the city a consent order with multiple actions the city would have to comply with, including submitting an odor control plan prepared by an engineer.

But the city would have to sign the agreement.

The city attorney said the requirements in the consent order were the result of a back-and-forth between the agency and the city.

"Dear members of the council, I move to approve the consent order and authorize the mayor to sign on behalf of the city council," one of the council members said before many gathered broke out in applause.

The council unanimously approved.

It’s fall, ya’ll. Change those sprinklers to once a week!