NEW PORT RICHEY - Less than a week after dismantling their lemonade stand because it violated a neighborhood association's rules, two New Port Richey girls were back to pouring pitchers, this time during an on-air radio promotion in Plant City.
In two hours, Kara Liechty, 8, and cousin Breanne Tanner, 9, raised $800 - a hundred times what they pulled in during a quiet hour on a residential street in the Seven Springs subdivision the prior Monday.
"And it was good lemonade," said Muriel Larrington, who wrote the largest check, $500, on behalf of her company, ML Trucking in St. Petersburg.
The girls got the idea after seeing an interview on NBC's Today show with Alexandra "Alex" Scott, a 7-year-old cancer patient who has raised $100,000 for pediatric cancer causes with her own lemonade stand.
After reading the girls' story in the St. Petersburg Times, Mason Dixon, local radio personality for WRBQ-FM 104.7, and producer Marc Haze persuaded the girls to give their stand a second chance at Jarrett-Bodiford Ford.
The youngsters called Alex and her family after the drive was over to deliver the news. Alex, who has suffered with a rare form of cancer for six years, was headed back into chemotherapy treatments this week. Strangers a week ago, the three girls talked for about 20 minutes, their parents said.
Builders plan to tie up Clearwater bridge's loose ends
CLEARWATER - Some troubled onlookers have been pondering the new Memorial Causeway bridge.
Look up, and at the top of the span between two newly built sections, there is an 8-foot gap.
The sections don't line up. In fact, the piece to the east looms about 3 feet higher than its neighbor to the west.
City officials have been telling the alarmed residents calling City Hall that the bridge sections are doing exactly what they were designed to do, said Public Works Administrator Mahshid Arasteh.
"There is a reason for it," she said.
Turns out, steel and concrete are a lot more flexible than most people imagine. Before the final bridge section is poured early next year, the edges will be brought in line with help from counterweights, then locked together with steel beams, Arasteh said.
Pasco moves closer to building parkway shortcut
NEW PORT RICHEY - After three years of delays, regional water managers gave the go-ahead for Pasco County to start paving the way for Ridge Road Extension, the 8.6-mile shortcut to the Suncoast Parkway.
The county still needs a similar permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, but Tuesday's vote cleared the biggest obstacle to a highway stymied by environmental activists.
Led by the group Citizens for Sanity, opponents emphasized that Ridge Road would sever the 9,000-acre Serenova nature preserve, destroy 49 acres of wetlands and endanger animals forced to cross the asphalt.
The issue of urban sprawl also played a part: Ridge Road will be a line to farm land between the Suncoast Parkway and U.S. 41 that developers plan to convert to thousands of homes.
Citizens for Sanity arranged a hearing with a judge to challenge the water district's plan to issue the permit. But right before the June hearing, the group's spokesman, Clay Colson, unexpectedly withdrew the challenge, citing personal reasons to supporters.
But county officials view Ridge Road as a needed east-west route to relieve traffic and as a future hurricane evacuation route for Pasco's densely populated coastal communities.
Workers at former Stauffer chemical plant to be studied
ATLANTA - A panel of medical experts agreed Thursday that a federal health agency should continue to study the long-term effects of contaminants on former Stauffer Chemical Co. workers.
Doctors and environmental health experts from around the country affirmed the agency's findings that pollutants from Tarpon Springs plant likely endangered the health of the roughly 2,400 people who worked there during the 34 years it was open.
The 130-acre plant on the Pinellas-Pasco border processed phosphate ore into elemental phosphorous. When it closed, it left behind the residue of dozens of cancer-causing substances. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the property a Superfund site in 1994 and ordered Stauffer to pay for the cleanup.
Though the panelists did not always agree on the scope and range of future health studies on former Stauffer workers, all said that without further information about the roughly 550 workers whose cause of death is still unknown, research could be costly and time-consuming.
Rain lifts water levels, and may lift sprinkler rules
It's raining, it's pouring, so water rules may be going.
Thanks to the recent rainfall, a strict once-a-week restriction on watering lawns - imposed by the Southwest Florida Water Management District during the three-year drought - could be lifted by the district board as early as next month for Tampa Bay Water's 2-million customers.
The need for the restrictions has evaporated because the lakes, rivers and wetlands near Tampa Bay Water's well fields are finally recovering from the drought, said Mike Molligan, spokesman for the agency commonly known as Swiftmud.
The rain has been so heavy that water levels around those 11 well fields are "at or higher than they have been since before 1989," said Warren Hogge, evaluation and permitting manager for Tampa Bay Water, the region's largest water utility.
But don't crank up the sprinklers yet. Even if Swiftmud allows more frequent lawn watering, it does not mean the counties and cities around Tampa Bay will follow suit. Their restrictions still will apply to homes and businesses.
But if they do, it could signal a return to twice-a-week watering for the first time in three years. Even a twice-a-week rule would be the most stringent watering restrictions in the state.
In short . . .
- TAMPA - High-end retailer Lord & Taylor will be packing up its Pradas at International Plaza, ending the struggling chain's decadelong expansion into new territory. The company said Wednesday it will close 32 of its 86 department stores, including the store at the new Tampa mall. Though a replacement is expected to be named quickly, the loss is nonetheless a major blow to International Plaza. Even if the site is snapped up by another chain, months will pass while it is renovated. Sales at rival WestShore Plaza plummeted for the year after it lost Dillard's to International Plaza.
- SPRING HILL - The nation's smallest population of black bears declined by one Wednesday morning when a 12-year-old male was hit by a car on Osowaw Boulevard. Arline Erdrich, vice president of the Coalition of Anti-Urban Sprawl and the Environment (CAUSE) blamed the bear's death - the fifth since September 2001 - on the new Wal-Mart Supercenter on U.S. 19 about a mile east of where the bear was found. Mary Barnwell, a Swiftmud biologist who has helped with a long-term study of the population, said there is no way to determine whether Wal-Mart traffic caused the bear's death. She did agree that more bears will inevitably die as traffic increases.
Coming up this week
- You can get a look at America's best swimmers and some Olympic hopefuls next week. The national team for the Pan-American Games will have an open practice at North Shore Pool in St. Petersburg on Tuesday from 4:15 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. Swimmers will sign autographs and pose for pictures at some point in the practice, according to pool officials. Swimmers from around the country are practicing at the city pool Monday through Thursday before heading to the games in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Aug. 11 to 17.
- This week doctors around the state are expected to refuse to do elective surgeries to protest Florida's medical malpractice rules. About 75-100 doctors are expected to take part at Tampa's leading hospitals, where schedules for elective surgeries are nearly blank.
- Compiled by Times staff writer Sharon Kennedy Wynne.
