Billionaire Businessman Moving Forward with Manure Composting Facilities; County Stuck in First Gear Wringing Its Hands

By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

While Levy County Commissioners wring their hands and pretend to agonize about whether to regulate manure composting facilities, staff members for billionaire businessman Reid Nagle are busy moving forward with plans to get two sites near Williston and Morriston registered with the state for that very purpose.

Responding to a public records request filed by Linda Cooper, founder and administrator of Spotlight on Levy County Government, Florida Department of Environmental Protection officials on Thursday released applications received from Nagle representatives aimed at registering a site in Morriston and a site near Williston as Source-Separated Organics Processing Facilities (SOPFs).

SOPFs refer to a range of facilities that include composting operations that process or blend manure. Angry neighbors of the proposed facilities near Williston and Morriston call them manure dumps based on what is piled on the land – horse manure bedding – as well as how the waste material looks and smells as it rots in the hot Florida sun and eventually degrades into composting soil. Used horse bedding is a blend of manure, urine, and pine shavings.

Jeffrey Schoer, the environmental specialist with the Solid Waste Compliance program for DEP in Jacksonville, said the agency hasn’t issued registrations for the NE 30^th Street site (near Morriston Baptist Church) or the site at the corner of County Road 316 and U.S. 27 just east of Williston, but the paperwork is being reviewed internally by DEP. It’s not clear what else is needed beyond registration to trigger manure dumping at those sites.

At the county level, Spotlight was told Planning and Zoning Director Stacey Hectus and possibly County Attorney Nicole Shalley met with DEP officials this week to find out how the DEP plans to rewrite its springshed protection rules to shield underground rivers from pollution. But the meeting between Shalley and Hectus and DEP has been smothered in secrecy and it’s unclear what, if anything, came of the meeting.

Documents sent to Spotlight by DEP showed that Michael Earnest, COO and president of All-In Removal, a company owned by Nagle and his wife Sarah that specializes in hauling horse waste from Marion County to deposit sites away from Marion County, was involved in filing the applications with DEP along with Christi Carel, Chief Risk Officer for Big Lick Horse Stall Rental, another company owned by Nagle and his wife Sarah.

The Levy County Commission is well aware that its Land Development Code and its Zoning Ordinance make no mention of composting. Without land use regulations in place to control manure composting, there appears to be little the county commission is willing to do at this point to stop manure dumps from springing up throughout the rural Levy County countryside.

DEP functions independently of the county and enforces its rules and regulations based on what’s written in state law, but the county commission has the authority to adopt its own land use rules that could prohibit or severely restrict where manure composting facilities can be established in Levy County. However, commissioners have done the “two-step” around the issue. The board appears to be positioning itself to watch from the sidelines on the issue of manure dumping.

Cooper challenged county commissioners at Tuesday’s board meeting to adopt local rules and regulations to protect citizens from manure dumps rather than relying on DEP to protect the county.

Cooper asked Commission Chairman Matt Brooks if he was in favor of Home Rule, a state law that grants local governments the authority to adopt their own rules and laws to operate and manage their affairs.

“Pretty emphatically I can answer yes to that,” Brooks said. “Although I usually don’t respond to public comments, as alluded to earlier, there are state regulations that preclude us from doing anything, or we could make stricter regulations (than the state). We do want to have a conversation with the state. That’s kind of where we’re at right now.”

Cooper said the county needs to control its own destiny.

Brooks cited the case of the proposed primate facility in Gulf Hammock in response to Cooper. He said the county’s Home Rule powers and its zoning authority protected it from a primate facility establishing in Levy County.

“But there are some things where Home Rule goes out the window. I’m not talking about this particular issue (manure composting) but I’m just saying I don’t think anyone is against Home Rule but still we have to work with the state and we have to go by the guidelines,” Brooks said.

Commissioner John Meeks injected his own views into the conversation, saying management of resources also factors into the situation.

“If you don’t have the resources to manage or maintain or rule over something, you have to use resources out there whether it be a state agency or a private partnership with a private company – it could mean a lot of things,” Meeks said.

It’s unclear where he was headed with that comment.

Cooper said she has attended a lot of county court hearings dealing with animal rescues and that sort of thing and she often sees the judge faced with civil cases that come before him where he has nothing to work with because the Levy County Commission hasn’t provided enforcement rules or regulations. She said the same is true of manure composting. The county has nothing on the books to control or regulate manure composting.

“We don’t have any rules in place so the judge can’t judge anything because we have no rules,” she said. “I think it’s our job to put rules in place,” she said.

Cooper repeated a statement she made to commissioners in the past that there is one option available to the board with regard to manure composting that could be implemented. She said the board could adopt Marion County’s composting rules. She said Marion County rewrote its composting rules in 2020. She asked why Marion County’s composting rules can’t be adopted by Levy County?

“You can’t punish the people on the east side of Levy County by preventing them from going forward with their projects or being unable to sell their property because you want to wait and kick the can down the road to the DEP who may not rule until the end of the year,” Cooper said.

She said the county can’t wait for DEP to make its new springshed rule. She said the agency may or may not do its job, or its rewrite of springshed rules may come too late to make a difference in Levy County.

“We want you to protect us. That’s what we elected you to do and you should not wait for the DEP. We want you to protect us. We elected you. You get paid to do this. We pay our taxes for this. I want you to do it,” she said.

Brooks responded, “It’s before us, it will be before us.”

Cooper: It’s been before us. We need to stop it.”

Brooks: “I respect your opinion and we’ll leave it at that.”