A Florida engineering outfit expects to get started in the next three months mining the mucky bottom of 5,000-acre Lake Hancock in a project that they expect will extend for more than a decade and produce millions of tons of fertilizer. Hayes-McKay of Lakeland, headed by Bob Hayes as CEO and Robert McKay as executive vice president, has the go-ahead from Polk County, which owns the lake, and the Southwest Florida Management District for exclusive dredging over the next 11 years of what Hayes describes as a “huge natural sink of decomposing animal and plant waste.”
Actually, he noted, the muck layer flows above the lake bottom and will be wet-vacuumed rather than mechanically dredged for the 24-7 operation, which utilizes a proprietary process called the FTX/R to produce an organic rich material, resembling potting soil, from the dredge water. He told Green Markets that Hayes-McKay has already started to accumulate material and equipment and will soon be rolling out trucks to the lake. He said operations will be ramped up in three stages, which during the first six months will optimize the technical and financial parameters of the process with plant-size equipment on three low-boy trailers, then move to permanent foundation and steel in a quarter-scale operation, and finally expand all of the equipment, including clarifiers, centrifuges, and bagging, in a full-bore operation. “In other words,” he explained, “we will be starting and expanding the plant to ensure that demand always exceeds the supply.”
McKay’s big selling point is that 24-7 operation will micro-filtrate and immediately return over 95 percent of the dredged water, and over time restore to its former natural state what has been an environmental challenge for Polk County for years. Polk County Commission Chairman Sam Johnson told the local press, “I kind of like this as a green idea. Anyone who has ever water-skied in the lakes around here and fallen into the mess in the waters will appreciate this.”
Hayes-McKay has spent the last five years doing market research and expects that for starters its 8-6-2 product will appeal to organic growers; then in the next phase, a specialty fertilizer with adjusted NPKs will lend itself to numerous different uses. Interest also has been shown by the Florida highway department and their contractors in the organically-rich soil for top-dressing during road construction and maintenance. “All the people we’ve talked to so far are in Florida and Louisiana, and we have one group which wants to handle distribution and sales,” Hayes added.