Leslie Forest Products

A sea of opportunity

Live Rock USA doesn’t do concerts.

This small South Florida company provides colorful, environmentally friendly limestone rocks covered with tiny plants and sea animals to pet shops and aquariums. The rocks come from artificial reefs the company’s owner, Gary Levine, began building about a decade ago in the Florida Keys.

After several years in the water, plants, tiny animals, algae and even some coral grow or live on the porous rocks.

“For every pound of live rock I sell from our artificial reefs, there’s a good chance we’re saving a natural reef from being torn apart,” Levine said, noting that demand for live rock and other decorative rocks in aquariums worldwide means that natural reefs are being ripped up in places like Haiti, Tahiti and Tonga.

Levine’s business is part of Florida’s diverse aquaculture sector, where more than 900 aquaculturists raise and harvest a range of products in fresh and salt water throughout the state, said Leslie Palmer, director of aquaculture at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs. “The total value of Florida aquaculture at farm gate was estimated at between $65 million and $70 million in 2007,” Palmer added, and the total economic impact statewide was put at $247 million.

“Growing” live rocks is only a small segment in this agribusiness, which includes ornamental fish [the largest part in dollar terms], aquatic plants, food fish [tilapia, hybrid striped bass and catfish], shellfish [clams, oysters] and alligators. Many of these businesses are small operations and some concentrate only on wholesale markets. Other companies in South Florida and the Tampa area also sell live rocks.

Levine, a Miami native and entrepreneur who in the past raised alligators, has been concerned about the destruction of natural reefs for many years and advocates creating artificial reefs.

With the help of other divers, Levine began placing pieces of Florida quarry limestone at three sites near Islamorada in 2000. The rocks are moved to the sites in a boat, and divers lower the pieces of limestone to the bottom, usually in 10-25 feet of water. The sites are leased from the state, which requires use of best management practices — such as water recirculation systems at fish farms — so that aquaculture businesses do not negatively impact the environment.

Bethel pellet boiler business benefits from DEP certification | Forest ...

By Leslie H. Dixon – Sun Journal

The state has adapted regulations that will allow rapid introduction of a new wood pellet boiler system to Mainers and others, and bring new jobs to Bethel.

Maine Department of Environmental Protection has accepted European Union emission tests and certifications as comparable to the EPA emission certification for Phase 2 wood and pellet boilers. Maine is the first state in the country to do so.

The decision allows the DEP to issue certifications to Maine Energy Systems in Bethel, owned by Les Otten and Dutch Dresser, for five models of ÖkoFEN pellet boilers, which the company can now sell in the state, the first in the nation to do so, according to a statement released Wednesday by the DEP.

“The state agency went out of their way to facilitate business in a way that makes sense to everyone,” Dresser said Wednesday afternoon.

The new certification has allowed Maine Energy Systems to expand its business, bring more jobs into the area and provide Mainers and others with more heating options. The company pioneered the introduction of automatic wood pellet boiler systems and bulk pellet distribution to the United States beginning in June 2008.

The company has created a dozen jobs over the last two years and hopes to create more jobs as a result of having its products certified and as they become more widely known as an alternative to fossil fuels.

Dresser said they are already in the process of hiring an additional person to help assemble the boiler systems and expect as time goes by to hire even more people. The European designed boilers are assembled in Maine.

In March, representatives of three Maine biomass companies, including Maine Energy Systems, went to Austria to strengthen relations with several high-tech European alternative energy companies and to bring back knowledge and technology to Maine and New England.

During the trip, the representatives, which included Otten and Dresser , Bill Strauss of FutureMetrics and George Soffron of Corinth Wood Pellets, met with OkoFEN officials to see their state-of-the-art wood pellet boiler system.

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