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Randy Gilde

Published: February 13, 2008

My name is Randy Gilde. I live in Lake Placid and I am one of the owners of Highlands Greenhouse-Delray Plants. We are the proposed site for the ethanol plant in Venus.

This opinion is written with all due respect to Hilary Swain and Archbold in response to her guest column in Saturday's paper. We have nothing but admiration for what they do and represent. We are a green industry and are also good stewards of the land the Lord has blessed us with.

Although I am not as educated nor can I write as eloquently as Hilary, I would like to make some positive points about co-locating with the plant.

I know Archbold says they will be "sandwiched" between industrial sites, but it is seven miles from S.R. 70 to the site, so it needs to be noted that Archbold is big and it will be hard to avoid any endeavor whatsoever in the south part of the county that won't impact them in some way.

Some of the benefits were left out of co-locating with the plant. It will provide electricity and methane gas to run heaters and equipment. It will provide hot water for our rooting benches; we currently heat the water with about 3,000 gallons of propane a month. But most importantly it will provide approximately 160 million gallons of fresh water for the nursery that we currently pull from the aquifer. Everyone knows the value of water today.

I would also guess that with groves being plowed under and cattle prices being low that these agricultural enterprises are looking to diversify and also welcome the need for 25,000 acres of sugar sorghum production. That is what will produce the ethanol and other byproducts.

In closing, like Archbold, we too feel we are a major economic force in Highlands County. We are the largest supplier of tropical indoor foliage in the United States. We supply the big box retailers in 40 states. We moved here 11 years ago from Palm Beach County to be in a progressive farmer-friendly county. We have grown here to over 300 full-time employees. We urge Highlands County to approve the special exception to allow this state of the art facility on agricultural zoned land.

I think I will stop calling it an ethanol plant and start referring to it for what it really is" an agricultural bio-fuel plant.

Randy Gilde
Lake Placid

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