Within six months, the roughly 500 customers of the problem plagued Landmark Utilities sewage plant should be hooked into the city sanitary sewer system. ...more

March 5, 2009

The other day, the New York Times ran a story of a thinly veiled attempt to insult our president. It told how in San Francisco the Presidential Memorial Commission intended to ask voters to change the name of a water treatment plant to the "George W. Bush Sewage Plant." Apparently the plan was "hatched in a bar" and is proposed as "an appropriate honor for a truly unique president." ...more

July 10, 2008

Reagan has his highways. Lincoln has his memorial. Washington has the capital (and a state, too). But President Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom. ...more

June 27, 2008

SEBRING — In about 60 days, Highlands County will have to take over operations of the long troubled Thunderbird Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant. This past week, David S. Plank, owner of Landmark Utilities, filed legal documents informing the county of his intent to abandon the plant. ...more

May 4, 2008

A community group wants to make sure the nearly 700 black victims piled into an unmarked, mass grave after the hurricane of 1928 are remembered. ...more

February 10, 2008

Recently there appeared several articles about the privately owned sewage plant off Thunderbird Road, serving a small subdivision in this area. Let me share facts and thoughts about this debacle. The present owner appears to be David Plank, who inherited this facility from his now deceased father, Seth Plank, about six years ago. The elder Mr. Plank subdivided and platted this area mostly consisting of Sunbird Circle, about 50 to 60 lots zoned for mobile home single- and double-wide units. Understand, as a developer a business was created to make a profit on the sale of lots. Part of the plan was to provide a treatment plant to serve this development. A cheap, substandard plant was built with a planned obsolesces to be 20-25 years. ...more

December 6, 2007

SEBRING — Assessments of more than $5,000 on customers of the Thunderbird Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant may not be necessary to solve the long-standing problems at the plant. In an effort to eliminate, or at least minimize, the potential assessments, Highlands County commissioners agreed Tuesday to talks on a possible new solution. Next week, county officials will meet with representatives of Highlands Utilities, which runs a wastewater treatment plant serving 1,250 customers, including Lakeshore Mall and many businesses along U.S. 27. There will be one topic: arranging for the Highlands Utilities wastewater plant to treat the sewage from the nearby Thunderbird Hills plant, which has been operating without an operating permit from the state Department of Environmental Services for six years. ...more

December 5, 2007

SEBRING — Here's the upshot of Tuesday's Highlands County Commission meeting: the Thunderbird Hills South wastewater treatment plant has operated without a Department of Environmental Protection permit since 2001, it needs hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of repairs, and by January, Highlands County may be forced by state law to take over. ...more

November 21, 2007