News Cast for December 15th:
A glimpse of the past
The Okeechobee downtown area will get an historic touch.
Some old photos of businesses back in the day will be placed on lamp posts for people to view as they visit the new modern buildings and how they look today.
The city of Okeechobee, Main Street and the Okeechobee Historic Society have been working on the project.
The tourist development council recently provided $10,000 to help the project.
Maggie Cable with the historical society aid they got the idea from Alaska.
Her friend visited Ketchikan and noticed along the street they had signage that showed what it used to look like as compared to what it looked like today.
Some 17 buildings will be featured with the historic photos that include Winkler’s barber shop, Peoples bank, Clement’s Café and Gladys, the Freedman-Markham building, the train station, Gilberts theater and dealership, bank of Okeechobee, boardwalk building McCarthy’s store, Southern Hotel, Northern Hotel, Raulerson Department Store, Dr. Darrow’s Park Drugs, Park Theater, Scharfschwerdt’s Brothers, Okeechobee Hardware and the O.O Davis Building.
The Larson Dairy renewable energy project had milestones this year.
They have been transporting tankers of fuel from the Bright Mark Project for the past few months.
The company has 30 similar projects around the nation creating power out of cow manure.
Ray Hodge with United Dairy farmers said this will have many benefits for farmers.
“There are some opportunities in the future fore the legislature to help us support the environmental benefits, not just the air quality, but water quality and re-use, resiliency, using these sites during times of emergencies.”
He said generators often fail during storms and FPL gets a lot of calls from dairy farms.
Senate Agriculture committee chairman Jay Collins said he thinks this will help all dairy farms in the state deal with their nutrient problem.
“It is important that as we stabilize, revitalize and grow agriculture that we find new ways to create revenue. This is another stream.”
Hodge would like to have more dairy barns take part in Okeechobee.
Martin County Commissioners approved another solar farm in Indiantown.
The Fawn Solar Energy Project is near the C-44 reservoir on SW Citrus Boulevard.
Will Sabernick said they do put fences around these facilities and try to be compatible with the surrounding agriculture uses.
The 74.5 megawatt power plant will be able to serve 15,000 homes.