Developmental degradation: Two LTEs to the Herald Tribune

Scientists sought to oppose dump

On Aug. 23, Sarasota County commissioners will hold a public meeting regarding a request by Jim Gabbert, of TST Ventures LLC Recycling, to purchase surplus land next to the Celery Fields to develop a recycling dump.

I tried contacting Mote Marine to get an opinion, since Mote has been conducting a snook study in Phillippi Creek. No one at Mote replied.

PhillippiCreek.org of Sarasota’s Science and Environmental Council, a “science-based” not-for-profit working to conserve and restore Phillippi Creek, would not give any opinion on the location of the dump.

Waste Processing Facility built by Gabbert at 8001 Fruitville Rd., now WCA

What good are credentialed science organizations in the community if they cannot speak up to protect the environments they study? If their hands are tied, then community investment and tax dollars to fund their studies are an insult to the people who live in Sarasota and look to them to provide accurate scientific information.

I call upon Sarasota citizens who have environmental credentials and who are opposed to Gabbert’s dump being located next to the Celery Fields. We need you and your expertise, because no one who works at local science entities will step up to the plate and do the right thing. Instead, Sarasota scientists apparently cave to the whims of the developers and our county who support them financially.

It is a sad state of affairs that in Sarasota, money talks and science walks.

Adrien Lucas

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Developer turns corner into eyesore

Each day, we drive by a newly developed dump site as we leave and approach our well-attended homes in Carlyle of the Villages in Palm Aire. Some residents have lived in this neighborhood since its inception in early 2000. Others are new to this beautiful area.

In recent months, Medallion Home has decimated the large corner lot at Whitfield Avenue and Lockwood Ridge Road. Not a tree is left standing for birds or habitat, merely mounds of debris. Piles of dead trees, metal and puddles of mud have turned the corner into an eyesore and a wasteland for bacterial and mosquito growth.

Homeowners who live next to and around this area have expressed their deep concerns about this festering trash dump. Multiple requests to developer Carlos Beruff, the media and Manatee County have yielded no results.

Instead, big money has managed to ruin our neighboring landscape, all the while doing a limbo under the wire of the law by planting a few cows and a horse on the land. To my amazement, the people who make such decisions are able to sleep at night.

Before one buys a home, one may want to research the integrity of the company that has built it.

Margaret S. Shaw, Manatee County