From fighting city hall to making gas from grass

Journalists may be the least paid of all professions. They make less money than cops, teachers, even social workers.

But we have great jobs. On a regular basis, I talk to county commissioners, state legislators, lake managers, soil scientists, real estate magnates and the hoi polloi.

In October, President Obama came to commend Florida Power & Light for placing a grove of solar panels in a field north of Arcadia. In 2010, nearly the entire city will be powered with energy from the sun. It was my first chance to cover a president.

We've been promised solar power for decades, and the future is finally here. Next: a solar facility at Indiantown that will power 11 Arcadias.

In the future, Coke-bottle sized solar cells will get smaller but gather even more energy, just like the batteries and the electronics in our cell phones. Remember the brick-sized bag phones of the 1990s?

The best part of my job is what I learn. Lakes manager Clell Ford told an anecdote about a bumper sticker, "Save the Swales."

When oil, asphalt, grime, leaves and dirt run off the roads, they're caught in mini holding ponds beside the roads - swales. The water filters through the sand before reaching rain gutters to the lakes. The result: a clever, low-tech solution for cleaner lakes.

I learned that a tiny hole can cause a plane crash. The National Transportation Safety Board released a report in November on the December 2008 Gulf Hammock crash.

The investigator appears to have found that the 1946 Ercoupe broke apart in midair because a hole was drilled into the I-beam that supports the wings and the two seats. There were supposed to be two holes in that beam, but there were three. And that may be where the split occurred.

I learned how ethanol is made. At the Highlands County landfill, they're growing jatropha. There are hundreds of varieties of jatropha trees and shrubs, but jatropha curcas - a weed in Australia - produces a seed that can be pressed and boiled to produce oil, a biofuel component. Unlike corn, which has to be replanted every year, jatropha seeds are harvested, and the parent plant continues to grow.

Maybe. The process is still being worked out, but the results will be used at the Brighton biofuel plant planned by BP and Verenium.

And I learned, again and again and again, that we can fight town hall. In the spring, Spring Lake residents fought tooth and nail against their improvement district board, which wanted to buy the golf course. They won. The Florida attorney general ruled against the idea.

In tiny Venus, with a population that barely exceeds the caloric content of a quarter pounder with cheese, residents fought the promise of a $425 million war games facility with 250 jobs. They won.

Sun 'n Lake residents have been fighting their board of supervisors for decades. The residents think they should control town hall, but the landowners choose three of the five board members. Next year, the residents may win, and if they choose the majority of the board next year, they could change everything.