County moves to foreclose on MW property site
A dispute between a North Fort Myers business and Lee County that began in the wake of Hurricane Irma has ramped up another notch with the county filing a foreclosure notice against both the business and its landlord.
The county says it has placed a foreclosure lien on MW Horticulture and the property owned by Minus Forty Technologies, based out of Fort Lauderdale, seeking more than $60,000 in fines and fees.
“I can confirm that Lee County has filed a lien foreclosure action against MW horticulture as well as the owner of the subject property,” said county attorney Richard Wesch in a statement. “This foreclosure action seeks to foreclose liens placed upon the property due to MW having been found guilty by the Lee County Hearing Officer of the violation of numerous county ordinances in the conduct of their business.”
MW Horticulture operates a yard-waste recycling site at 17610 East St. in North Fort Myers on property leased to them by property owners, Minus Forty.
After starting in South Fort Myers, MW Horticulture opened its North Fort Myers location in 2015 selling compost and trees. Everything proceeded according to plan for the first two years or so.
Then Hurricane Irma hit.
MW Horticulture became a site for debris, collecting $479,315 as a tipping fee to take the material at its locations.
Owner Denise Houghtaling said she accepted mulch from most Lee County municipalities including as Fort Myers Beach and Bonita Springs, as well as from the School District of Lee County, private companies and even residents, bringing in more fees.
The problems began after the county said MW Horticulture began using a residential parcel on its North Fort Myers location for debris storage in violation of county regulations.
After discovering the debris storage, Lee County informed MW Horticulture the debris had to be removed at the end of the state of local emergency, which was June 18, 2018.
The county also took issue with how MW Horticulture wanted to process the debris into useable, recycled material.
Houghtaling wanted to process the material through grinding. She said that request was denied for reasons she was not told and they were, instead, ordered to mulch the debris.
The result was a series of mulch fires, which either smoldered or outright burned for months at the site along I-75, causing neighbors to complain about the smoke and smell.
The company’s reputation suffered.
“Before Irma, nobody knew who we were. Everyone knows who we are now. Good and bad,” Houghtaling said.
Houghtaling said that mulch fires are not uncommon. But there are ways to mitigate them, and grinding is one of them.
A pile that has been processed will not go up in flames like broad green waste. Raw green waste is the most flammable. Grinding starts the decomposition process which creates heat naturally and thus the risk for fire, especially in dry season. But grinding is not prone to open flame fires, as it is broken into smaller bits.
“They didn’t give us the permits we needed to grind. We never had a violation or citation or a problem with anybody before this. We stepped up and helped the community,” Houghtaling said.
The county has taken a different view.
The county in an e-mail said “the notion that MW is being a good partner by taking debris is nonsensical. MW was paid about half a million dollars to do so.”
County officials maintain the crux of the matter is not the hurricane debris, but rather what it says is the conduct of MW’s operation in violation of county ordinances.
In October 2018, Hearing Examiner Donna Marie Collins found that MW violated code when they did try to grind the pile and ordered the company to remove the mulch from the site by Dec. 17 or face fines of $200 per day.
Houghtaling was emotional after the ruling, saying that opening up the pile for removal would just cause more fires, which would result in nobody willing to take the mulch off their hands.
“If the county had let us just grind, we wouldn’t be here. What they have done to our reputation is wrong,” Houghtaling said. “They didn’t give us the opportunity to do the job properly.”
MW started getting levied with the fines as the county also ruled MW had flattened the piles rather than removing them, a claim Houghtaling denies.
“The pile was gone as of Dec. 16, 2019, yet the county kept charging us $200 per day, saying that all we did the spread the material. There was no way we could spread it. We have 1,500 photos showing every truck that hauled it off,” Houghtaling said.
MW also couldn’t sell, what they had processed as organic compost because it was burnt.
Last August, Lee County filed an emergency lawsuit to bring MW into compliance with regulations and hopefully alleviate the air and water quality issues nearby. Both sides remain in litigation and the fines have continued to pile up.
Meanwhile, the business has felt other financial impacts.
On Jan. 1 the company said it was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after spending more than $200,000 in legal fees.
Neighbors have blocked their intersection, leaving them unable to remove their mulch, Houghtaling said.
Despite that, MW said it was making its way through the bankruptcy process successfully.
The pandemic has proven a boon for soil sales as people are looking to start a victory garden and food. That has resulted in a nearly 300 percent increase in mulch and compost sales, Houghtaling said.
In February, however, a fire started in a hardwood pile at the MW site, with the fire last week in a pile of fresh green waste, which also isn’t prone to catch fire as easily.
Houghtaling said she believes arson is the cause.
“This location has been susceptible to fires and we believe that it is caused by arsonists and we have good evidence to support this,” Houghtaling said.
Houghtaling said the county last week tried to force MW into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and to foreclose on the landlord’s property as accrued code enforcement fines had reached $50,000, leaving MW and those piles of mulch in a state of limbo.
Last month, the county placed a foreclosure lien on the property owned by Minus Forth Technologies, based out of Fort Lauderdale, seeking more than $60,000 in fines and fees.