Mark Firing wants to know if pollution caused by a local company twice busted for illegal dumping is contaminating his neighborhood’s wells. He’s so worried about it, he is waging a legal fight to find out. And he’s filtering his water.
Lee County Commissioner David Mulicka, owner of Honc Destruction, is responsible for the dumping at Gator Road near Firing’s house in Briarcliff. Last year, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection ordered Mulicka and the property owner to clean up the toxic mess after inspectors found hazardous materials there, according to state records.
Mulicka and the property owner entered into a consent order with the DEP in September requiring them to remove the hazardous materials and other illegal waste, to measure the contamination it caused, and to pay a $41,000 penalty. The 239-acre site, where 179 acres are polluted, is not permitted as a waste-disposal facility.
Lee County businessman and County Commissioner David Mulicka.
In 2019, Mulicka entered a consent order with DEP for similar violations related to his nearby Mainline Holdings site, where he formerly operated a state-permitted “materials recovery facility.” He was ordered to remedy the violations and pay $3,000 in penalties and $500 in DEP costs. The order was updated in 2020, reflecting additional violations and requiring Mulicka to hire engineers to guide remediation. The company dissolved in 2022, according to state corporation records.
On Monday, the Fort Myers City Council will consider whether to grant Mulicka a $987,439 contract to demolish the City of Palms Park ballfield complex and remove debris. Mulicka’s bid, the lowest of nine, is set to be recommended for the council’s approval. Online records show the next lowest bid was close, at just over $1 million, and the highest was $3 million.
Mark Firing and his neighbors say Mulicka’s track record of violating waste-dumping laws should disqualify him.
“If they hire him, knowing his history, they’re complicit,” Firing said. “If they want to grant him that contract, they should … accept any liability for what he does.”
‘The system is failing us’
Firing and his neighbors in the Briarcliff neighborhood have petitioned DEP to rewrite the September consent order. They want it to mandate ongoing testing for water contamination around Mulicka’s illegal dump site — contamination they fear could spread to their water supplies, flow through local canals into Hendry Creek, and even reach Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve.
“That is our water source, for cooking, for bathing, and for consumption. Hundreds of homes could be affected,” Firing said. Contamination in local waterways would also be dangerous for fish and wildlife, he said, adding he has enjoyed fishing and boating on local waters all his life.
Firing gave a Florida Trident reporter a tour of his landscaping nursery and his home, located on Green Acre Lane, which is bounded on two sides by canals named Fiddlesticks and Briarcliff. A good golfer could drive a ball from Firing’s place over Fiddlesticks Canal onto the property where Mulicka illegally dumped hazardous materials including fuel tanks, used oil containers, spent lead-acid batteries, containers of paints and solvents, and other hazardous materials. Inspectors found the unauthorized materials in piles above ground, buried, in wetlands, and in former sand-mine pits filled with water.
Also named in the September consent order with DEP is the property’s owner, Alico Park Investment, whose managing member is listed as Philip DeStaven Jr. DeStaven Jr. also is listed in state records as a manager of USA Mulch, located on adjacent property, along with managers Philip DeStaven and Brian Lulfs.
DEP records show that Alico Park Investment invited state and Lee County inspectors to assess how much illegal waste had been put there by Mulicka before Alico Park bought the property from Alico Lakeside, whose manager was Scott Westlake. The site had long been an inactive sand mine and was pocked with pits that had collected water. A Lee County complaint in August 2019 led state inspectors to find that Mulicka’s Mainline operation was dumping unauthorized material into the pits to fill them, as part of a business arrangement with Alico Lakeside. That led to the October 2019 consent order against Mulicka’s now-defunct Mainline Holdings.
(Mulicka, the two DeStavens, Lulfs and Westlake have numerous current and former companies listed in state corporate records with similar or identical addresses on Gator Road.)
All of this preceded the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian in late September 2022 that killed approximately 150 people in southwest Florida and put wreckage-removal companies into long-term overdrive.
Firing, his neighbors and his friend Marsha Ellis are worried that the influence wielded by Commissioner Mulicka and his affiliates could impact the case. Mulicka’s family includes his wife, state Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, and his father-in-law, Armor Persons, a businessman who chairs the Lee County School Board. Despite years of casework by DEP and Lee County environmental regulators, the neighbors don’t trust Mulicka to do what he’s been told.
“He’s a repeat offender,” Firing said. “The system is failing us.”
Citizens action
Despite seemingly long odds, two dozen Briarcliff neighbors are mounting a fight to persuade the state to force Mulicka and Alico Park to monitor their water supplies for years to come. If contamination reaches them, they want to know, and they want the polluters to pay for the fix.
“We’re on well water, so water contamination would be a serious problem,” said Jonathan Guenther, who with his wife, Maureen, bought a 5-acre homestead on Broken Arrow Road in Briarcliff after their home in Fort Myers Beach was destroyed by Hurricane Ian. They support the Briarcliff petitioners. “We’re not very far from the property where he was dumping hazardous materials and toxic substances,” Guenther continued. “The water table goes under all of us.”
Twice since January, the citizens group filed petitions to intervene in the September consent order, and twice DEP dismissed the petitions for procedural flaws. But the agency left the door open for another revision.
On March 16, the Briarcliff group filed its third petition and is awaiting DEP’s latest response. Marsha Ellis, who lives in a nearby neighborhood and is active in Lee County public affairs, has played a key role in gathering documentation for the petitions and demanding information.
“We don’t have a vendetta against Mr. Mulicka,” Ellis said. “It’s just, how can we feel comfortable with any of this and with what’s going on around us?”
The baseball complex is slated for demolition. It was once the spring training home of the Boston Red Sox.
While Firing and Ellis are dubious about oversight of the toxic-waste cleanup on Gator Road, DEP appears to be watching. When Philip DeStaven Jr. and David Mulicka presented their February site assessment, DEP South District Director Elizabeth Sweiger rejected it, sending back five pages of explicit orders to detail the full extent of contamination in the water and soil. The assessment was prepared for DeStaven and Mulicka by Nathan Krohne, a geologist with Montrose Environmental Group, with an office in Tampa.
On March 19, Sweigert ordered them to acquire the data needed to fill out the “incomplete measurement of arsenic (used as a wood preservative and in lead-acid batteries), dieldrin (an insecticide), Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) ( a residueof vehicle exhaust, cigarette smoke, asphalt, wood smoke ) and BaP equivalents, total xylenes (industrial solvents), and TRPHs (such as gasoline, diesel and oil-based solvents). Sweigert ordered the additional information be delivered within 60 days of her letter.
Neither admit nor deny
After repeated attempts by the Trident to contact Mulicka, he called this Monday. He declined to answer questions about the seven years of DEP enforcement actions against him. He did say he believes he can dispose of “clean concrete” at the Gator Road site if he wins the contract to demolish the ballfield.
The Trident also left messages requesting comment from Mulicka’s wife, Rep. Persons-Mulicka, a lawyer who is copied on DEP correspondence in the case, and with the DeStavens. None responded.
In the September 2025 consent order, Mulicka and DeStaven Jr. neither admit nor deny any of the violations attributed to them by DEP. Those orders involve unlawful disposal of waste that requires special handling to prevent contaminants from spreading into adjacent soil and water.
In their petition, Firing and Ellis call on the DEP to require admissions of guilt from the parties responsible for the pollution near the Briarcliff neighborhood. They argue that an admission of guilt can serve as a deterrent and would better hold Mulicka – an elected official – accountable to the public.
Ellis said it is ironic that Mulicka, who won an at-large seat on the County Commission in August 2024, pledged in campaign literature to “restore and protect our water quality” despite his track record on pollution. She said she fears how he may influence Lee County policy on environmental protection.
Mark Firing is just angry.
“Where is the accountability?” he demanded. “For these people, it seems like the sky’s the limit. You can get away with anything.”
Laura Cassels is a veteran Florida journalist and former Capitol Bureau chief who specializes in science, the environment, and the economy. The Florida Trident is an investigative news outlet focusing on government accountability and transparency across Florida. The Trident was created and first published in 2022 by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a non-profit organization that facilitates local investigative reporting across the state.
