Lakeland, Polk County | featured news

A handful of community members protested in the sweltering heat in front of Mulberry City Hall on Saturday, demanding accountability and transparency from Mosaic in the wake of a sinkhole that developed and released contaminated water. Jessica Broadbent, a Mulberry native who organized the protest, along with five other protesters, said they want Mosaic to bring in experts not financially backed by the company who can be up front with the community about any problems posed by the sinkhole.

Claudia Tritton and other members of the Lakeland Economic Development Council recently met with some of the city’s largest employers. Part of the LEDC’s mission is to generate jobs and capital investment by attracting companies to the area and helping existing businesses expand. Tritton said one of the biggest takeaways from those recent meetings involved accommodating all this potential new activity.

Mosaic Co. officials expressed confidence they can contain and recapture about 215 million gallons of contaminated water that drained into the Floridan Aquifer last week after a sinkhole opened up beneath a gypsum stack at Mosaic's New Wales fertilizer plant south of Mulberry.

Saturday's mission is to mix successful people with youth in the community to inspire and empower them to strive for a better future.

"America's Educator" gave Polk County teachers a lesson Thursday. "School can be young, fun, sexy and hot," said Ron Clark, who got his nickname from Oprah Winfrey. "People look at teachers as tired... I want to change the way people view education."

Long before he founded a Lakeland funeral home, Foster Eugene Heath Sr. found himself parachuting to safety into the icy Baltic Sea and into the hands of the German navy.