Tests, research ongoing at $37M water district Boma site in Glades County

A chunk of land in Glades County that was purchased for $37 million in 2007 is being used for water quality treatment testing and will eventually be the site of a nitrogen-removal facility.

But some environmental and advocacy groups want to see more done with the property as there seems to be a perception locally that the land is not really being utilized.

"We never really got to implement an operational version of the mitigation strategy," said Calusa Waterkeeper John Cassani. "There was always the test cells and research and doing small scale models, but it never got to an operational phase. Some 14 years later we’re still talking about the certainty of the project."

The South Florida Water Management and Lee County purchased the land from the Boma Corp. to use it to help remove pollution from the Caloosahatchee River.

The idea was to build a water treatment component to help remove nitrogen from the river, but that was more than a decade ago.

Daniel Andrews with Captains for Clean Water said from the outside, it seem as though nothing is being done with the Boma land.

"The most important thing is that they build a project on it so it can be utilized," Andrews said. "It's been sitting there for decades."