HRT for Women in Tangerine, FL

The Florida Department of Health in Orange County has issued a second Health Alert for the presence of harmful blue-green algal toxins in Lake OLA - NE Shore. This is in response to a water sample taken by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on February 6th.

Lake Ola is a 426-acre body of water that sits in the northwest corner of Orange County near the town of Tangerine, about eight miles from the center of Apopka.

A previous alert was issued on January 20th.

The public should exercise caution in and around Lake OLA – NE Shore.

Ned Bowers, a resident of Tangerine who lives on Lake Ola, has been frustrated by actions taken by Orange County for over a decade.

"One of the last of the cleanest lakes in Florida is now under the second pollution alert by Florida DEP," Bowers said. "This should keep Florida as the #1 State in America with the most polluted lakes. County officials were alerted over 12-years ago of local concerns for unlawful stormwater activities taking place in and around Lake Ola by the County."

Residents and visitors are advised to take the following precautions:

What is blue-green algae?

Blue-green algae are a type of bacteria that is common in Florida’s freshwater environments. A bloom occurs when rapid growth of algae leads to an accumulation of individual cells that discolor water and often produce floating mats that emit unpleasant odors. Some environmental factors that contribute to blue-green algae blooms are sunny days, warm water temperatures, still water conditions and excess nutrients. Blooms can appear year-round but are more frequent in summer and fall. Many types of blue-green algae can produce toxins.

Is it harmful?

Blue-green algae blooms can impact human health and ecosystems, including fish and other aquatic animals. For additional information on potential health effects of algal blooms, visit floridahealth.gov/environmental-health/aquatic-toxins.

Find current information about Florida’s water quality status and public health notifications for harmful algal blooms and beach conditions by visiting ProtectingFloridaTogether.gov.Protecting Florida Together is the state’s joint effort to provide statewide water quality information to prioritize environmental transparency and commitment to action.

What do I do if I see an algal bloom?

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) collects and analyzes algal bloom samples. To report a bloom to FDEP, call the toll-free hotline at 855-305-3903 or reportonline.

To report fish kills, contact the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute at 1-800-636-0511.

Report symptoms from exposure to a harmful algal bloom or any aquatic toxin to the Florida Poison Information Center, call 1-800-222-1222 to speak to a poison specialist immediately.

Contact your veterinarian if you believe your pet has become ill after consuming or having contact with blue-green algae contaminated water.

If you have other health questions or concerns about blue-green algae blooms, please call the Florida Department of Health in Orange County Call Center at 407-723-5004.

In Orange County, Blue Green Algae Alerts have also recently been issued for Lake Mann-McQueen Park, Lake Pineloch-East Shore, Starke Lake-Boat Ramp, Lake Killarney-N Lobe, Lake Sue-NW Shore, Lake Martha-NE Shore, Lake Burkett-Center, see articles (https://orange.floridahealth.gov/newsroom/all-articles.html).

Of the recent Blue Green Algae Alerts listed, only Starke Lake is currently considered "Impaired." The other Lakes mentioned are classified as, "Not Impaired" according to data found on the Orange County Water Atlas website (https://orange.wateratlas.usf.edu/). In Florida, according to Water Management District Policy, regulators issuing Environmental Resource Permits are not required to consider water quality of runoff flowing into lakes until the water body is classified as "Impaired."

"It may be time to urge our elected officials and policy-makers to raise the bar. Our clean Lakes are becoming polluted with nutrient rich runoff feeding Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB's)," said Kim Buchheit, Orange County Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor for District 2, covering Northwest Orange County. "I plan to take a careful look at these issues and help educate elected officials and constituents about sending dirty runoff to our clean waters. I wish our local officials would take an interest and lower their guard to have the conversations that are needed. Unfortunately, that is not happening. We have to do better."

Buchheit can be reached at kimbuchheit2022@gmail.com regarding protection of soil and water natural resources.

Keywords

Orange County, Lake Ola, Blue-Green Algae, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Tangerine

The City of St. Petersburg is accepting new proposals for the redevelopment of Tangerine Plaza, which once housed a Sweetbay supermarket and a Walmart Neighborhood Market. Residents living near the site, located at 1794 22nd St. S., were left without a neighborhood grocer when it closed a few years ago. The city bought the plaza after the Walmart Neighborhood Market closed in 2017.

The city was in the process of negotiating a term sheet with prospective developer Sugar Hill Group LLC to open a grocery store in the shuttered plaza along with affordable housing, an e-sports gaming business and retail; however, the city is now restarting the process and opening the floor to other developers after receiving a new proposal from Sugar Hill.

The Sugar Hill Group, whose partners include Louis Murphy, Roy Binger and New Urban Development, said it would build 115 affordable family housing units and 10,000 square feet of commercial or retail space.

“We are more focused on the residential component in the new proposal,” Binger said to the St. Pete Catalyst. The original proposal was more tailored toward commercial space, calling for 40,000 square feet of retail uses, including a grocer – a dire need for the South St. Pete neighborhood.

“With headwinds like inflation and a potential recession, we want to have 10,000 square feet versus 40,000,” he explained. The team isn’t exclusively seeking a grocer, but it is still open to a grocer taking control of the space or another user(s).

The Sugar Hill Group proposes to enter a 75-year ground lease with the city. Payment for the ground lease will be $1.5 million in the form of a capitalized lease payment. Sugar Hill would also have the right to negotiate the purchase of the city-owned land throughout the duration of the ground lease. The total development cost would be roughly $37.3 million, including debt, funding and equity. Sugar Hill would work with Red Stone Equity Partners to purchase up to $19 million of tax-exempt bonds to construct the property and provide permanent financing, according to a letter from Red Stone.

If the city selected Sugar Hill’s proposal, the residential unit mix includes 34 one-bedroom units, 58 two-bedroom units and 23 three-bedroom units.

The residential units will be leased to residents whose households earn 80% or below Average Medium Income (AMI). A portion of the total units will be earmarked for future residents whose AMI is low or very low (60% AMI and below), “creating a truly inclusive residential development plan for the Deuces community,” according to its proposal.

Binger also noted how Habitat for Humanity will be building affordable housing units across the street from the plaza site.

The commercial component of the development would be located adjacent to one of the residential buildings, designed to front 22nd Street S., enhancing the curb appeal of the site.

SHG will also commit to providing a green energy building that follows the Nation Green Building Code to minimize the carbon footprint and create sustainable, high-quality development.

SHG plans to utilize local Pinellas County bonds from the Housing Finance Authority paired with both state and city subsidies. The group plans to apply for affordable housing subsidies to support the Debt and Equity derived from the affordable units, including Penny for Pinellas funds.

New alternative proposals from developers wanting to undertake the lease, purchase or development of the site, must be submitted to the city by 10 a.m. on Aug. 17.

We’re coming to the end of orange harvesting season in Florida right now. The Sunshine State produces almost all of the orange juice we drink in this country, which is an impressive half a billion gallons a year.

But a virulent disease has been hammering Florida’s citrus groves and has pushed many farmers to leave the business or sell off their groves.

In Bartow, Fla., the Florida Department of Citrus is meeting to talk business and budgets. Everyone rises for the Pledge of Allegiance before the presentations begin.

It’s mostly bad news — for most of the past decade, Florida’s $9 billion citrus industry has been hammered by a disease called greening. Florida is now producing half the oranges it used to.

Greening infected trees stop being able to move nutrients from leaf to root. They starve to death over several years … as they decline, their leaves turn yellow and they often produce small, misshapen fruit.

Quentin Roe and his brother, William, run one of the largest tangerine operations in the country in Winter Haven. At their facility in Winter Haven, we’re watching thousands of tangerines come off of a conveyer belt. It’s been sorted for size and a lot of undersized fruit is being picked out.

“Here you can see this fruit is not any bigger than a golf ball,” says farmer Quentin Roe. “There’s just thousands and thousands of them coming out of these runs.”

W.G. Roe and Sons, Inc. can’t sell the undersized fruit on the fresh fruit market, so it gets taken to the adjoining juicing plant. William Roe shows me a row of stainless steel extractors, the size of industrial washing machines. These produce tens of thousands of gallons of juice a day. The size of the fruit doesn’t matter for juice, but taste does, and, says William Roe, greening affects that, too.

“We aren’t developing the Brix in the fruit that we used to develop,” he says. “With less Brix, it doesn’t taste as sweet, it doesn’t taste as balanced.”

As they watched their product quality decline along with their profits, the Roe brothers took action.

At their prototype grove in Winter Haven, Quentin Roe inspects rows of young, hip-high tangerine trees wrapped in white plastic tubing. These are special fast-growing trees, planted close together and sprayed frequently. The Roes yank out anything that looks infected and scout regularly for signs of greening.

“This is the culmination of literally millions and millions of dollars,” says Quentin Roe. He says they’ve been able to keep greening out of these groves. And that, says Roe, is the industry’s only hope. “In the next 5 to 8 years, all the tangerine groves in Florida as we know them right now will be dead or non-productive.”

The Roe’s system has pushed the cost of caring for the trees from $1,200 an acre to more than $3,000. The brothers hope those costs will be offset by the premium customers will be willing to pay for full-sized, sweet fruit, which is getting harder and harder to come by.

While the Roes are spending millions of dollars to keep greening out, there’s another school of thought among Florida famers: living with the disease.

Maury Boyd has become something of a celebrity in the Florida citrus community. When greening first hit Florida, the state asked farmers to destroy infected trees, Boyd refused, earning him the nickname ‘Typhoid Maury.’

“The trees are infected and you’ll see symptoms, but the fruit looks good,” says Boyd, as he walks past Valencia orange trees at one of his groves near Winter Garden.

There are signs of greening all over Boyd’s Valencia grove, such as yellowing leaves, but the trees are heavy with baseball sized oranges.

“Our yields have increased,” says Boyd. “We’ve got very good yields. It’s somewhat amazing.”

Boyd started experimenting and eventually developed a treatment known as the ‘Boyd Technique.’ It involves showering trees with food and nutrients, literally.

“Picture this,” says Boyd. “We’ve got a high-blast sprayer blowing all these nutrients. It’s coming out 90 miles an hour. It’s kind of like eating six meals a day instead of three meals a day.”

Boyd says if you care for the trees properly, they can live with greening. But it isn’t cheap. Just like the Roes’, Boyd’s costs have tripled, but he’s able to make a profit because the price of oranges has gone up as the supply as declined.

“We’re surviving it, doing alright,” says Boyd.

Harold Browning is a botanist who has helped Florida citrus farmers battle diseases like canker and blight. He says greening is like nothing he’s ever seen and, although it’s good to see farmers innovating, he worries none of the solutions are economically viable in the long term.

“There is no good economical, sustainable, durable kind of management system,” says Browning. “So we’re building that on the fly.”

Browning says the rising price of Florida citrus has consumers backing away. We’re drinking 20% less orange juice than we used to. Browning thinks the only real solution is finding a cure to the disease, but after eight years battling greening, there’s nothing in sight.

Quentin Roe says his grandfather started this business and he and William are passing it on to their children. Bouncing through their groves at dusk in a work truck, Quentin and William say it’s about more than economics.

“You look at Bill and I in our late 50s … mid-to-late 50s,” he says, smiling at his older brother. “For us and the rest of our family, it’s been our life’s work and, yes, it is worth it.”

Originally from Ohio, this bread business expanded into a new breakfast spot on Tangerine Avenue. Mama Pearl’s officially opened Nov. 4 to the Gulfport community.

Owner Karen Koncsol moved her business to Florida two years ago, but didn’t have a restaurant until now. She came across this Gulfport location earlier this year, and got right to work.

Koncsol and her partner Chef Jackie Smit expressed excitement over the restaurant’s weekend opening.

“This is a welcoming place for everyone,” Koncsol said.

Mama Pearl’s offers $5 on-the-go breakfast sandwiches, a $16.95 buffet-style breakfast, and special dessert breads. The buffet has ham egg bake, veggie egg bake, pancakes, waffles, potatoes, sausage and chorizo gravy with biscuits, and eggs benedict. The buffet comes with drink options such as coffee, juice, milk, and water.

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Koncsol dedicated her business to her late mother, Pearl. Pearl has a mini photo gallery hanging on the restaurant’s wall.

“The banana nut bread is her [Pearl] famous recipe,” said Koncsol.

The business will not be open on Mondays. On Tuesdays, the to-go sandwiches and desserts will be available, but no breakfast. Try the breakfast buffet Wednesday through Friday, 8 a.m.-1 p.m. and Saturday to Sunday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m.

Mama Pearl’s, 5004 Tangerine Ave. S., Gulfport. 727-605-1444.

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During each festival at EPCOT, the Refreshment Outpost has a few additions to its menu to fit the theme of the festival. For the 2022 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival, it has added a fresh and juicy Pineapple Skewer along with a Tangerine soft-serve.

Menu for Refreshment Outpost at the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival

Photos of Menu Items for Refreshment Outpost at the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival

The pineapple skewer is, straight-up, a piece of pineapple on a stick with Tajin. There’s not enough Tajin to make any noticeable flavor difference. It seems like they’re afraid to add too much in case guests can’t handle the Tajin flavor. Skip this.

We absolutely loved this! It’s incredibly refreshing, which is great in the Florida heat.

The tangerine and vanilla are both prominent here, while the fruity flavor of the tangerine is fresh and citrusy.

This is one we highly recommend!

From Lexington Brewing: “Kentucky Tangerine Cream Ale has a refreshing white head with a slight hop body with a luxurious mouthfeel. Moderate balance of maltiness and pleasantly sweet with notes of both vanilla and tangerine coming through clearly without being overpowering, allowing the vanilla and tangerine to shine.”

From Blake’s Hard Cider Co.: “Electrify your tastebuds with juicy blueberries, tart lemons, and our five apple blend. Kick back and enjoy this bold lemonade, fresh from our farm…”

From correspondence with Orlando Brewing: “Our Blonde Ale is light straw in color and has a 4.7% ABV, making it our version of the light beer. We use the perfect touch of Hallertau hops to create Blonde Ale’s low hop bitterness and crisp taste finish. With Passion Fruit, we have added to the citrus notes a super sweet, somewhat tart cousin of citrus. It becomes a very unusual Brazilian-like tropical drink.” This beer is currently exclusive to Walt Disney World.

Location of Refreshment Outpost at the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival

Refreshment Outpost is located on World Showcase Promenade, just over the drawbridge from the China Pavilion. You can find it at number 18 on the map below.

What did you think of these fruity items added to the menu? Let us know in the comments below!