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News - December 2002
Everglades Village News
Daytona Beach News Environment | Sun-Sentinel: Everglades Site | Commons-Everglades Discussion | Sun-Sentinel Everglades Discussion | SFWMD News Releases
31-December-02
Environment: New Federal Wetlands Plan Looks at Watershed-Wide Impact
Wetlands "action plan"
includes several
new guidance documents by 2005
(photo Credit:Environmental Protection Agency)
Federal officials have revised the guidance for
determining what sort of mitigation is required when construction results in a
loss of wetlands. A key element of the new Environmental Protection Agency and
Army Corps of Engineers directive to their field staffers, announced Dec. 27, is
to consider the impact of wetlands loss on a broader, watershed-wide basis,
rather than just the impact in the immediate vicinity of a project. The
revised guidance on mitigation is one item in a 17-part federal wetlands
"action plan," which aims to improve compensatory wetlands mitigation
under the Clean Water Act. To do that, the plan lays out a series of further
regulatory guidance over the next two years to help agency staffers navigate the
contentious issues of how to offset wetlands damage. According
to EPA, the lower 48 states had an estimated 105.5 million acres of wetlands in
1997, the most recent year for which such data are available. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003
McGraw
Hill Construction All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 27, 2002
Bush
Administration's New Wetlands Mitigation Guidance
Has Positive Aspects, but Lacks Specific Safeguards Now
December 27, 2002
EPA
Releases National Wetlands Mitigation Act, Hope is to Avoid Additional
Losses
December 28, 2002
US
Launches Action Plan to Halt Loss of Wetlands
January 6, 2003
New
Wetlands Mitigation Guidance Released
Related Links,
Corps-EPA
Issue Regulatory Guidance Letter and National
Wetlands Mitigation Action Plan.
The National
Action Plan To Implement the Hydrogeomorphic Approach
To Assessing Wetland Functions
Making
a Difference
Former
Army Corps Employee Helps Green the Corps
Jim Wood poses with his dog Lizzy in
Arkansas.
Wood, a volunteer with the Arkansas Wildlife
Federation, is now working to reform his
old employer. Photo: Courtesy of Jim Wood
Exploring the Arkansas River bottoms. Learning to
duck hunt. These are among the childhood experiences that helped shape Jim
Wood's love of wildlife and wild places. His passion for protecting these
resources is also fueled by a lesson learned in youth: "A quitter never
wins, and a winner never quits," a teacher once wrote on a blackboard. The
words have always stuck with him. For three decades, Wood worked for the Army Corps
of Engineers as a power plant employee. Retired eight years, the Arkansas native
is now working hard to help reform his old employer. "Jim has volunteered
countless hours of his time and traveled thousands of miles to advocate for his
cause," says F. G. Courtney, senior grassroots outreach manager at NWF. Read
More...
Copyright © 2002 National
Wildlife Federation All rights reserved.
House Echoes NWF's Call
End Wasteful and Destructive Corps Projects
Great blue herons and other wetland
creatures
were aided by congressional
action in October, when House leaders
pulled a bill that failed to reform destructive
practices of the Army Corps of Engineers.
Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
In a dramatic victory for people, wildlife and the
environment, the House of Representatives took the 2002 Water Resources Development Act
(WRDA) off the floor in early October, a clear signal that the bill lacked
adequate support without language to reform the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. "This proves that Americans don't want to pay for
pork-barrel projects that destroy our environment," says NWF President Mark Van
Putten.
"The bill sank because an unreformed Corps just won't float anymore."
WRDA, which authorizes Corps water projects, was scheduled for
floor action under a rule that would have prohibited debate on key amendments
critical to reforming the Corps. Read
More...
Copyright © 2002 National
Wildlife Federation All rights reserved.
Western Everglades on a
"Road to Ruin"
NWF Releases New Report
Florida panther. Photo: NWF
American taxpayers will have to dole out billions
of dollars to repair the damage that's been done to Florida's Everglades by
draining the "River of Grass" to build affordable housing and strip
malls within a stone's throw of Miami. Yet the same kind of poorly planned
development is still ravaging the western Everglades near Naples and posing
serious threats to people and wildlife, according to a new report by NWF, the
Florida Wildlife Federation and the Council of Civic Associations. Titled Road
to Ruin, the report exposes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for
violating federal laws by delaying formal action on the Southwest Florida
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and, instead, allowing the annual
development of more than 900 acres of wetlands in the EIS area. Read
More...
Copyright © 2002 National
Wildlife Federation All rights reserved.
Editorial: Grubbing for growth -- Grade: D+
State lawmakers had a
prime opportunity to put some muscle into Florida's flabby growth-management
laws this past year, but never really rose to the challenge.
Sure, school boards and water managers and other protectors of vital
resources must now confer with local elected officials making development
decisions. But still, there's nothing in state law that requires local officials
to turn down new subdivisions if services such as classrooms, road capacity,
water, and police and fire protection aren't readily available.
As a result, local officials are merrily tripping down the yellow brick
road to ruination, ignoring a looming water crisis in the state and a crush of
public-school students that prompted voters this year to require smaller class
sizes. State officials are helping communities assess the cost of growth.
Copyright © 2002 Orlando
Sentinel All Rights Reserved.
White House Eyes New Pollution Controls
Heavy construction vehicles and other large
off-road machinery will have to meet tougher emissions requirements and use
cleaner diesel fuel under proposals being discussed by the Bush administration.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to send a proposal to the
White House next month on dealing with pollution from the off-road vehicles,
administration officials said Monday. They said a formal proposal is planned for
the spring, with a final rule to come a year later.
Diesel-powered vehicles from huge earth movers to harvesting combines
used in agriculture account for more pollution, especially microscopic soot
linked to respiratory problems, than the trucks and buses on the nation's
highways. Health officials say these emissions account for 8,500 premature
deaths annually as well as increased cases of asthma and other respiratory
ailments.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times, AP online All rights reserved.
Temperatures Are Likely to Go From Warm to Warmer
Roger J. Braithwaite/University
of Manchester
The surface of the vast ice
sheet in Greenland melted more
last summer than at
any time
in the 24 years that conditions
had been tracked.
Climate experts say
global temperatures in 2003 could match or beat the modern record set in 1998,
when temperatures were raised sharply by El Niño, a periodic disturbance of
Pacific Ocean currents that warms the atmosphere.
El Niño that year was the strongest ever measured. A new one is brewing
in the Pacific but is expected to remain relatively weak, experts say. Still,
they say, a persistent underlying warming trend could be enough to push
temperatures to record highs. Some of the
warming could be the result of natural climate variation, but the experts say it
is almost impossible to explain without including the heat-trapping properties
of rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by
smokestacks and tailpipes.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Southern California Water Officials Race Deadline
Getty Images
The Colorado River dispute has vast
implications for farms like this one in the
Coachella Valley and for the Salton Sea,
shown in the distance.
With a deadline of New Year's Eve nearly upon
them, water officials from across Southern California held talks today on an
agreement that would avert a showdown with the federal government over water
from the Colorado River. There were several
indications that progress had been made, though officials warned that the
negotiations were tentative and delicate. The Bush administration has said that
if no agreement is reached by midnight on Tuesday, it will reduce water flows to
farms and urban areas in Southern California beginning on Wednesday.
"We have been meeting continually, day and night, throughout the weekend
and the holidays," said Dennis Cushman, an assistant general manager at the San
Diego County Water Authority, one of four water agencies involved in the talks.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Bush Administration Planning to Extend Cuts of Diesel Emissions
In an effort to reduce a dangerous source of air
pollution, the Bush administration is devising rules that would sharply cut
diesel pollutants from construction vehicles, certain farming and mining
equipment and other off-road vehicles.
Environmental groups are hopeful that the standards, which may not take full
effect for almost a decade, will continue the administration's stance against
health hazards caused by diesel engines. Those
policies, which include strong support of a Clinton administration plan to cut
pollutants from trucks, buses and other diesel-powered highway vehicles, have
drawn praise even from environmentalists who criticize the Bush administration
for its stance on other air-quality issues.
Government officials said the plan would prevent more than 8,000 premature
deaths and hundreds of thousands of respiratory illnesses every year.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
30-December-02
Students take interest in panthers
Program to monitor orphaned kittens
Children at almost 50 elementary schools around
Southwest Florida are pitching in to help two panther kitten orphans.
The youngsters are part of the Pennies for Panthers campaign initiated by
the Wings of Hope program at Florida Gulf Coast University. Wings of Hope
teaches fourth-grade students about the endangered Florida panther and keeps the
project going all year by helping the children track individual panthers through
remote photographs, maps and updates. The
children have now learned enough to know they want to help the endangered
animal, especially the two orphans. The male and
female kittens are being cared for at White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee
after their mother was killed two months ago by a male panther. The kittens were
6 months old at the time of her death and could not survive on their own.
Copyright © 2002 News-Press
All rights reserved.
Real Towns: Making Your Neighborhood Work
Just as owner-builders can learn how to work on their homes,
citizens can learn how to work on their communities. The obvious place to start
is by looking at the parts that aren't
working well - figuring
out how they are interrelated - and diagnosing how to fix them
together. This
book gives local government officials, developers and citizen activists
the tools needed to apply time-tested principles to revitalize their
neighborhoods. You can read "The Citizen Planner" - a
full-chapter excerpt from Real Towns - in Terrain at www.terrain.org/articles/rue.htm
or order the handbook from The Local Government
Commission at http://www.lgc.org/publications/puborder.html
or (800) 290-8202. Seed
funding for development of the Real Towns handbook and
The Citizen Planner workshops was provided by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation's Sustainable Everglades
Initiative. Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Local
Government Commission All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 30, 2002
Commentary: Committed Foundations: Smart Growth's Ace In The Hole
December 30, 2002
Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. ...
Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. ...
The Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
was launched in the Spring of 1999 by a group of seven foundations. These
foundations included: Surdna Foundation,
Turner Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation,
Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Energy Foundation.
The Network was established to inform and strengthen
philanthropic funders' individual and collective abilities to support and
connect organizations working to advance social equity, create better
economies, build livable communities, and protect and preserve natural
resources. The Network is housed at the Collins Center for Public Policy
in Miami, Florida. The Collins Center for Public Policy, Inc. - http://www.collinscenter.org/
was created in 1989. Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Funders'
Network All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 30, 2002
Commentary: Committed Foundations: Smart Growth's Ace In The Hole
December 30, 2002
Real Towns: Making Your Neighborhood Work
Commentary: Committed Foundations: Smart Growth's Ace In The Hole
Will America's
sprawl-fighting smart growth movement turn out to be a flash in the pan? Will it
subside as championing governors leave office? Will the field be left open to
helter-skelter big-box stores, strip malls and suburban expansion roads?
It could happen. Maryland's Gov. Parris Glendening, smart growth's most
eloquent spokesman, steps down Jan. 15. Economic hard times may press his
successor and other state and local officials to embrace any development idea
thrust before them. But don't count on smart
growth to go away. First, it's picking up
potentially strong new backing from such incoming governors as Republican Mitt
Romney of Massachusetts and Democrat Jennifer Granholm of Michigan.
Even more significant, since 1999 a grass-roots support system for smart
growth has formed with backing from some of the country's most influential
foundations--Surdna, MacArthur, Irvine, Turner, Ford, Packard and others.
Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Stateline
All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 30, 2002
Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. ...
December 30, 2002
Real Towns: Making Your Neighborhood Work
St. Joe Plan Spurs Battle In Franklin
Life in
Franklin County drifts along today much as it did 50 years ago.
Oystermen spend long days working out of open boats in Apalachicola Bay,
wielding the 20-foot rakes their fathers and grandfathers used to scrape the
shellfish from the shallow, grassy bottoms.
Other county residents work in the sleepy fishing village of East Point,
scraping precious pink meat out of stubborn blue crabs or bundling oysters in
100-pound bags for shipments all over Florida. Apalachicola Bay provides 90
percent of the oysters eaten in Florida. Most of
the 7,500 working-age residents work in government jobs or restaurants and
hotels that cater to sport fishermen and other tourists fleeing the
condo-crowded beaches to the south. Web sites for the
Panhandle county advertise it as the "Forgotten
Florida,'' a place where time stalled soon after cotton boats quit bringing
bales south on the Apalachicola River.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Silicon boosts rice, sugar cane growth
Today's computer-connected world is brought to you by silicon.
The move to make the second-most-common element in the Earth's crust the
choice for semiconducting material was made in the late 1950s by engineers who
were pioneering the computer revolution. But silicon has other important uses
besides lending its name (along with a "Valley") to a tech-happy section of
Northern California. Just ask George Snyder.
The 63-year-old scientist has spent his career working on silicon
research in the Glades farming region. It turns out that one of the crops that
benefits most from adding silicon to the soil is sugar cane, second only to rice.
"Silicon can have a bigger effect on rice than on any other crop. Next in
line is sugar cane," Snyder said. "It happens that in this area we grow both."
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
For Senate Committee, a Big Change
New Environment Chairman Opposes Many Protections
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the new
chairman
of the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, has championed
his state's oil and gas industry and opposed
many environmental protection initiatives.
(File Photo/
Ray Lustig -- The Washington Post)
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
is about to undergo a dramatic transformation, as Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.),
long a nemesis of the environmental movement, takes control as chairman.
The committee, with jurisdiction over a broad range of environmental
issues and government construction projects, traditionally has had a moderate or
liberal chairman -- such as the late Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.) and outgoing
chairman James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) -- who maintained strong ties to conservation
and environmental groups. Inhofe, by contrast,
is a conservative who has championed his state's oil and gas industry and
opposed many environmental protection initiatives.
Copyright © 2002 Washington
Post All rights reserved.
Related Links,
James M. Inhofe - US Senator - Oklahoma
Friends of Jim Inhofe - Official Campaign Website
James M. Inhofe: 2002 Politician Profile
Whatever happened to ... Wayne Daltry and Smart Growth?
When Wayne Daltry was hired as Smart Growth
director for Lee County in February he said the Smart Growth committee appointed
by county commissioners will tell him what smart growth means.
It has. The definition is 567 words long — and growing.
The committee has yet to finalize its issues lists for areas like
transportation and community character, but Daltry says the group's on target to
render recommendations in April for changes in the way the county does business.
More detailed recommendations will follow as Daltry continues his
two-year mission, which will end when the county launches its next Evaluation
and Appraisal Report in 2004. The report is a far-reaching review of the
county's comprehensive growth management plan, and smart growth is a movement
toward tailoring the land use and zoning regulations driven by the plan to local
needs and wants. The smart growth movement in
Lee County dates back to early 2000.
Copyright © 2002 Bonita
Daily News All rights reserved.
FWC set to protect land crabs
FWC to hold hearings on new plan to protect blue land crabs
A final hearing on protecting blue land crabs in Florida is set
for January. The Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
recently reviewed a draft rule to begin proactively
managing and
protecting blue land crabs.
The commission has received public input that harvesting effort
for blue land crabs has increased in certain areas of south and central
Florida. There have also been reports that blue land crabs are being
harvested in commercial quantities.
Harvesters of wild populations can catch hundreds of crabs per
night, and harvest effort increases
around and during the June through
December migration period.
Females migrate from their land burrows to the ocean during full
moon cycles and lay their eggs in saltwater where the eggs
develop into tiny
creatures called planktonic larvae for about one month.
Copyright © 2002
Upper
Keys Reporter All rights reserved.
Endangered crocs hatch in Key Largo wildlife refuge
Tramping through the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
last month with a group of visiting
biologists from Cuba, Steve Klett discovered
a welcome surprise. Scattered across an elevated
nesting site, the refuge manager
discovered remnants of crocodile eggs.
Although unable to determine the number of hatchlings, the
leathery remnants indicated one of the endangered
females that inhabit the refuge
had successfully nested there.
“Throughout the Harrison tract, there were six nesting attempts
this year, and only two were successful,” Klett said. “One of
them was
on the elevated berm." This success is encouraging to Klett and his army of
volunteers. Last winter, 26 people moved peat from one area of the nesting
levee to an adjacent site in an effort to build up nesting mounds.
Because the area is only accessible by kayak or canoe, this work
was done by hand using shovels and 5-gallon buckets.
Copyright © 2002
Upper
Keys Reporter All rights reserved.
Lee struggles with land preservation
Development puts strain on areas vital to water supply
LIMITED USES: Land in the 170-square-mile
Density Reduction Groundwater Resource
area also can be used for agricultural purposes.
CLINT KRAUSE/news-press.com
All pines, shading
acres of spiky palmettos, stand next to bare, raw land where machines dig
enormous watery pits — pits so large they could swallow entire neighborhoods.
Pristine and altered lands such as these dot southeast Lee County in an
area declared vital to the county water supply. It’s the DRGR, short for Density
Reduction Groundwater Resource. Development
pressures are growing, however, and new projects, such as Ginn Co.’s golf course
community proposed last summer, are forcing the county to decide the
150-square-mile area’s fate. The land has been
steeped in controversy since commissioners created the groundwater resource
designation in 1989 in response to the state’s demands.
Copyright © 2002 News-Press
All rights reserved.
Letter to the editor: Fast-paced land buys help the Everglades
This month the South
Florida Water Management District moved to acquire thousands of acres of land
needed for Everglades restoration. This new progress is a result of Gov. Jeb
Bush's decision to get in front of the development pressure on Everglades land.
With solid commitments of state funds, the governor's actions are making a
difference. Acquiring land may be the most
important thing that Florida government can do right now. One project, the Bird
Drive Recharge Area in Miami-Dade County, is a favorite of land speculators
betting that increasing land values will allow them to gouge the taxpayers.
Fortunately, the agencies are getting ahead of the game.
Another purchased parcel will buffer the water-conservation area in
Broward County, and another will preserve wetlands.
Copyright © 2002 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Related Link,
29-December-02
Wildlife officials to decide manatee status
After more than 100 years of boat propellers and
beach developments, the manatee's difficult encounter with human civilization
will reach a milestone next month when the state wildlife commission decides
whether to take away its status as an endangered species.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is scheduled to
vote Jan. 23 whether to downlist the manatee from endangered to threatened. The
move would be largely symbolic, since the manatee would retain its protection on
the federal endangered species list. But all sides say the symbol would be
important and could lead to concrete changes such as fewer slow-speed zones for
boats and looser rules on dock-building."If there's a public perception that
manatees are better than they are, you lose public support for putting
protection measures in place," said Patti Thompson, director of science and
conservation for the Save the Manatee Club.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Guest
commentary: Conservation efforts in Cuba transcend international
politics
David Guggenheim, former president/CEO of
the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and now vice president for conservation
policy at the Washington-based Ocean Conservancy, invited me to Cuba in November
with a group of Ocean Conservancy staff and other donors to get an understanding
of what is being done across the Florida Straits to conserve ecosystems.
Why is an American nonprofit organization spending time and money in
Cuba? It's important that we engage Cuba in conservation issues because what
happens there impacts an ecosystem — the Gulf of Mexico — that is shared with
Southwest Florida. Larvae from fish spawning in Cuban waters are believed to
move northward and populate U.S. waters. Sea turtles nesting on U.S. beaches
forage in Cuban waters, and vice versa. Ecosystems don't recognize county, state
or even national borders.
Copyright © 2002
Naples News
All rights reserved.
Editorial: Mother Nature knows best
For now, Tigertail beach best without boardwalk
The forces of wind and wave continue to tamper
with Collier County's original master plan for a beachfront recreational area on
Marco Island. Tigertail Beach Park, with ample
parking and clean facilities coveted by the beach-going public, isn't as popular
as it once was. In six years, the number of people using the park has dropped
from 420,000 annually to 180,000, according to the county Parks and Recreation
Department. Though the availability of a new
beach access point on the south end of Marco and a $4 daily parking fee may be
contributing to the decline in visitors, some blame has to go to Mother Nature.
She decided a few decades ago to build another island right off Tigertail Beach.
What started out as a sand spit became a full-fledged island, with vegetation, a
thriving colony of beach birds and a name, Sand Dollar.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Environmental issues at top of Lee 2003 priorities list
Land buy, manatee protection highlights
Environmental issues are elbowing their way
toward the top of Lee County government’s list of key issues in 2003.
A list of potential leading issues compiled by County Manager Don
Stilwell and his communications director, Pete Winton, included:
Buying and preserving thousands of acres of the
Babcock Ranch proposed for development as a new city, Getting the permits required to expand the
county’s waste-to-energy incinerator, Securing a guarantee from the South Florida
Water Management District to provide a minimum amount of water from Lake
Okeechobee for the Caloosahatchee River, Completing a manatee protection plan.
Another project with environmental impact is the
completion of a master environmental plan for the Three Oaks Parkway-Livingston
Road project, said Lee County Transportation Director Scott Gilbertson.
Copyright © 2002 News-Press
All rights reserved.
The Republican who roared
For some people he is still "the
governor." You may speak of Governor Askew, Governor Bush, Governor Collins,
Governor Chiles, but when you say "the governor," there is only one man you
could be referring to: Claude Roy Kirk Jr., the first Republican governor of
Florida since Reconstruction. He will be 77 Jan.
7. He lives in Bear Island, a gated community in West Palm Beach, with his
German-born wife, Erika Mattfeld Kirk, a stunning blonde he introduced as
"Madame X" at his inaugural ball in 1966. He's still active, still lucid, still
funny, still unpredictable. For instance, he thinks he'd make an excellent
mayor, "better than that idiot (Joel) Daves who lets his wife run the city,
anyway," he says. That's Kirk: still a pistol.
You grapple for historical parallels and there really aren't any.
Kirk somewhat resembles Huey Long, the flamboyant "Kingfish" governor of
Louisiana in the 1930s who told reporters: "Just say I'm sui generis."
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Ranchers Bristle as Gas Wells Loom on the Range
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
Orin Edwards, a Wyoming rancher,
examining a discharge pipe from a
methane well on his land along the
bubbling Belle Fourche River.
Related Article,
January 2, 2003
Letters: Energy Wells in the Wide Blue Sky
January 4, 2003
Letter:
Wyoming as Metaphor
28-December-02
U.S. Launches Action Plan to Halt Loss of
Wetlands
Goal is "no net loss" of environmentally
critical habitat
U.S. environmental agencies -- led by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers -- have
released a comprehensive action plan to ensure effective restoration of the
nation's wetlands that are lost to development. "These actions affirm
this Administration's commitment to the goal of no net loss of America's
wetlands and its support for protecting our nation's watersheds," EPA
Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said in a press release issued on December
27, 2002. The National Wetlands Mitigation Action Plan lists 17 action
items that the agencies will undertake to improve the effectiveness of restoring
wetlands that are covered by laws such as the Clean Water Act, according to the
EPA. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003 International
Information Systems All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 27, 2002
Bush
Administration's New Wetlands Mitigation Guidance
Has Positive Aspects, but Lacks Specific Safeguards Now
December 27, 2002
EPA
Releases National Wetlands Mitigation Act, Hope is to Avoid Additional
Losses
December 31, 2002
Environment:
New Federal Wetlands Plan Looks at Watershed-Wide Impact
January 6, 2003
New
Wetlands Mitigation Guidance Released
Related Links,
Corps-EPA
Issue Regulatory Guidance Letter and National
Wetlands Mitigation Action Plan.
The National
Action Plan To Implement the Hydrogeomorphic Approach
To Assessing Wetland Functions
U.S. Cuts Allotment for California Water
Wetlands Guidelines Are Revised
27-December-02
EPA Releases National Wetlands Mitigation Act,
Hope is to Avoid Additional Losses
EPA Releases National Wetlands Mitigation Act,
Hopes to Have a No Net Loss of Wetlands
In an effort to address the problem of the
nation’s decreasing wetlands, the Bush Administration December 26 adopted a
new plan and guidelines for replacing swamps and bogs that have been filled or
drained to make way for highway, housing or other projects. The Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) worked with the Department of Agriculture, Commerce,
Interior Transportation, and the US Army Corps of Engineers to release a
comprehensive action plan and improved guidance to ensure restoration of
wetlands previously impacted by development activities. “These actions
affirm this administration’s commitment to the goal of no net loss of
America’s wetlands and its support for protecting our nation’s
watersheds,” EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003 American
Public Works Association (APWA) All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 27, 2002
Bush
Administration's New Wetlands Mitigation Guidance
Has Positive Aspects, but Lacks Specific Safeguards Now
December 28, 2002
US
Launches Action Plan to Halt Loss of Wetlands
December 31, 2002
Environment:
New Federal Wetlands Plan Looks at Watershed-Wide Impact
January 6, 2003
New
Wetlands Mitigation Guidance Released
Related Links,
Corps-EPA
Issue Regulatory Guidance Letter and National
Wetlands Mitigation Action Plan.
The National
Action Plan To Implement the Hydrogeomorphic Approach
To Assessing Wetland Functions
Bush Administration's New Wetlands Mitigation
Guidance Has Positive Aspects, but Lacks Specific Safeguards Now
"The Bush administration has taken a
positive step to improve federal wetlands mitigation policies, but safeguards
that are needed now are still not in place," Julie Sibbing, wetlands policy
specialist at the National Wildlife Federation, said here today. Sibbing's
comments came in response to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the
Army Corps of Engineers release a new Mitigation Action Plan, an interagency
process to develop improved policies governing how developers must replace, or
mitigate for the wetlands they destroy. According to EPA and the Corps,
the 17-point guidance letter emphasizes the quality of wetlands created to
mitigate for wetlands lost to development. "Mitigation certainly should
result in the creation of real wetlands," Sibbing said. "But that
alone is not enough. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003
National Wildlife
Federation All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 27, 2002
EPA
Releases National Wetlands Mitigation Act, Hope is to Avoid Additional
Losses
December 28, 2002
US
Launches Action Plan to Halt Loss of Wetlands
December 31, 2002
Environment:
New Federal Wetlands Plan Looks at Watershed-Wide Impact
January 6, 2003
New
Wetlands Mitigation Guidance Released
Related Links,
Corps-EPA
Issue Regulatory Guidance Letter and National
Wetlands Mitigation Action Plan.
The National
Action Plan To Implement the Hydrogeomorphic Approach
To Assessing Wetland Functions
Editorial: Find A Compromise
On Dredge Holes
Some
scientists want dredge holes in Tampa Bay filled, saying sea grasses and other
natural habitat will return and thus improve fish numbers.
This can be done economically because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
will have excess material from dredging projects that could be used to fill the
holes, which are up to 30 feet deep. But many fishermen want to keep the holes,
where fish congregate, particularly in cold weather.
Fortunately, the Tampa Bay Estuary Program is handling the controversy
thoughtfully. As the Tribune's Susan Green reports, it has secured a $150,000
federal grant to study dredge holes. In addition to compiling scientific data,
the agency is seeking reports from fishermen who regularly fish the holes.
Officials wisely appointed Jan Platt to chair the
committee that will recruit fishermen and report on 10 dredge holes in the bay.
Whatever happened to: There's more traffic, less notoriety for
Tom Olliff in West Palm Beach
The voice on the other end of the telephone
sounded like Tom Olliff's. But then it didn't.
It was much more relaxed. In fact, he
actually seemed as though he wanted to talk — quite a contrast from the man who
left Naples four months ago. Olliff resigned as manager of Collier County
government to take a position as director of land acquisition for the South
Florida Water Management District in West Palm Beach.
It appears from all indications that he's adapting well to the change —
except for the traffic. "There's a lot of
traffic here," he said. "I would love to bring some people who think Collier is
bad to Interstate 95," he said. Olliff lives in
Boca Raton and works in West Palm Beach. It's a 45-minute bumper-to-bumper drive
at 7:30 in the morning.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
S.
Dade farmland incites debate
Planners
review urban boundary
At
one corner of the crowded table, hunched over a map of agricultural South
Miami-Dade County, stood Pat Wade, owner of a small Redland nursery. At another
was James Humble, a big area farmer. Both had pencils in their hands.
The
planners running a public brainstorming session had given them a tough chore:
Determine where to draw the line on development in South Miami-Dade.
But
the people around the table did more bickering than drawing.
There's
certainly a lot to bicker over in South Miami-Dade.
Big
agriculture is in dire straits. Many struggling farmers would happily sell out
to developers, who are salivating at the prospect of so much vacant land.
Copyright © 2002 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
26-December-02
Florida's Old Faithful Is Muddy, Shorter and Not Very
Dependable
An
accident of weather, geology and engineering has given Florida its own version
of Old Faithful, albeit muddy, much shorter and apt to quit at any time.
Florida's geyser recently roared to life along the western shore of Lake
Warren in southern Orlando. Every few minutes, a gush of water and mud rockets
skyward from a marshy area of the Crescent Park neighborhood, spewing as high as
60 feet. By contrast, Yellowstone National
Park's Old Faithful is steamy white as it shoots as high as 180 feet. And while
Old Faithful is a quirk of nature, there's a man-made explanation behind
Florida's geyser: It's an old, uncapped drainage well
running deep into the Floridan Aquifer. During heavy rains, it sucks down so
much water and trapped air that every few minutes, between 7 and 30 minutes in
recent days, the aquifer belches some of it back up with a roar.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune / Associated Press All rights reserved.
Collier counts: Christmas bird tally begins Saturday
To some, Christmas means partridges in pear trees
and swans a-swimming, but to scores of birders in Southwest Florida, the holiday
means counting of the wilder variety. The big
day is set for Saturday, when birders plan to pull out their binoculars and pull
on their hiking shoes for their annual Naples Christmas Bird Count, a local
version of a winter tradition that dates back more than a century.
On Christmas Day in 1900, a group of 27 conservationists in 25 spots from
Ontario to California started the count as a statement against "side hunts," a
holiday competition in which hunters would choose sides and see which team could
shoot the most birds and small animals. Now, under the
auspices of the National Audubon Society, the Christmas Bird Count has become
the longest-running volunteer-based bird census — part recreational event and
part citizen science in action.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Tycoon drops excess, picks up university
The millionaire founder of Domino's Pizza decided
he was committing the sin of pride, so he sold his business to open a Catholic
school.
In a previous life, Thomas S. Monaghan, the
founder of Domino's Pizza, would sail his yacht to this money-laden paradise and
play. The Naples area was a place for communing
with fellow millionaires, a balmy refuge where a hard-driving mogul from
Michigan could rest before resuming the quest for more wealth.
That was before the epiphany -- Monaghan's sharp and well-chronicled
shift to an entirely different life. It occurred to him suddenly, during a
sleepless night a dozen years ago, that he had been overly indulgent. A staunch
Catholic, he concluded he had committed the sin of pride. He stopped work on a
huge house in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Copyright © 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Study: Funds Can't Buy Lake Purity
Polk County weighs costs and methods for cleaning
up Lake Hancock.
Even if government officials
can find the estimated $83 million needed to complete the restoration of Lake
Hancock, they shouldn't expect a dramatic change in water quality.
That's the conclusion Polk County officials are drawing from the results
of a study of the lake's sediments by a team of University of Florida scientists.
"Even with dredging, you can't make it any better than a trophic state
index of 70," said Joe King, a lakes scientist at Polk County Natural Resources
Division. "Trophic state" refers to the amount
of biological activity that occurs in the lake. The different stages are usually
measured on a 100-point scale, although there is not uniform agreement among
experts on exactly where each stage begins and ends.
Copyright © 2002 The
Ledger All rights reserved.
Rainfall Ranks Third Since 1948
Wrecks are many; it's second-wettest December on
record so far.
Christmas Day dawned dry and
sunny -- a big change from Christmas Eve, when 1.83 inches of rain pushed Polk
County's total high enough to make it the third-wettest year since 1948.
The total for 2002 is now at 67.52 inches, pushing past 1994's 67.13
inches. This year's total is also just a smidgen less than 20 inches above the
annual average of 47.54 inches recorded at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport.
All that water made roads slick, which may have contributed to a number
of car accidents in Polk County on Tuesday night.
Most of the accidents Tuesday night were minor with no fatalities or
serious injuries reported, the Florida Highway Patrol and Polk County EMS said.
The heavy rain also pushed the Peace River at Bartow to 8.2
feet at 11 a.m. Wednesday, twotenths of a foot over flood stage, according to
the National Weather Service.
Copyright © 2002 The
Ledger All rights reserved.
Golf course gets county go-ahead
Golf may soon be the latest tourist attraction on
the edge of the Everglades in south Palm Beach County.
County officials are moving ahead with plans to build a 27-hole golf
course at the South County Regional Park just west of the Loxahatchee National
Wildlife Refuge. The 175-acre course was delayed more than a year because of an
environmental dispute with the South Florida Water Management District.
But the dispute over the proper elevation for the golf course
has been
resolved, and the planned course west of U.S. 441 and north of
Glades Road
is now scheduled to open by 2005. The golf course will sit just north of
the planned West Boca High School, which will be built on the southwest corner
of the park, and to the west of a planned performing arts center.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Waterway legislation change debated
Environmentalists protest rule
tossing
A proposed change in rules designed to clean up
U.S. waters has environmentalists worried it could set Florida waterways back 30
years. The effects in Florida could be
devastating, according to environmentalists. But state officials say it won’t
change anything. The Bush administration is
proposing scrapping a July 2000 rule revision. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency said it was eliminating the Clinton-era rule change because it was
“unworkable." The program is supposed to set
pollution limits in particular waters. The 2000
rule required that states include pollution that runs off roads and lawns via
storm water and prepare detailed cleanup plans that many critics said were too
time-consuming and expensive.
Copyright © 2002 News-Press
All rights reserved.
25-December-02
Environmental groups raise awareness with 'thankful' event
The holidays came early for several local
environmental groups. About 15 organizations and
government agencies set up exhibits last month during the Give Thanks for the
Environment Day at the Anne Kolb Nature Center in Hollywood.
The event was conducted not only to give thanks for South Florida's
environment, but also to raise awareness of the many challenges that the groups
face in preserving the area's resources and to entice more people to join their
ranks, said Lisa Reardon, a board member of the Broward County Audubon Society.
"Hopefully, for those who already consider themselves an environmentalist,
they will come away with a renewed vigor for the activities and programs
highlighted here today," Reardon said. "For those who are considering
becoming involved in environmental causes, we hope they will come away inspired
to do so."
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Related Links,
Parks and Recreation Division
West Lake Park and Anne Kolb
Nature Center
Anne Kolb Exhibit Center
Hollywood, Florida
Editorial: Follow manatee accord
Florida's manatee needs a gift of understanding
from people in high places this holiday season --
particularly from Gov. Bush, who once championed the
endangered sea cow as his favorite mammal.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said adequate slow-speed zones,
signs and enforcement to protect manatees all
must be in place before new boat docks, marinas and
ramps can be approved in Southwest Florida, where
manatee deaths from boat collisions are at an all-time high. Gov. Bush
opposes plans to stop building boat facilities because the loss of
business from a marine construction
moratorium could, according to Fish and Wildlife
Service statistics, cost the area up to $175 million
and 1,000 jobs. In a recent speech to several
hundred local business and community leaders in Fort
Myers, the governor vowed to help fight the proposed regulations and
offered to join a lawsuit if necessary.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved
Federal
Appeals Court Decisions May Go Public
U.S. Issues Rule Over Disputes on Federal Lands
The Bush administration is adopting a property-dispute
rule this week that it says will afford the government protection from lawsuits
but that critics describe as a way for national parks and forests to be opened
to mining, drilling and other development. Much of the issue addressed by the rule has roots in the Mining Act of 1866,
which allowed states to claim rights of way across federal land so that roads
could be built there. The law, whose purpose was to encourage settlement of the
Western frontier, was repealed in 1976, along with several other homestead-era
statutes, when Congress decided that it needed to keep a closer eye on the
development of remaining federal lands. But several
Western states, along with localities and groups like off-road-vehicle
users, continued to assert a right of access to federal land, and brought
legal cases against the government.
24-December-02
Whatever happened to? — Wandering panther killed in auto accident
Florida panther 99, who was first captured
on the
Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge
in 2001, wandered into Lee County earlier
this year. The male, who was last documented
alive on Nov. 27, and five other panthers died
in automobile accidents in 2002.
Photo courtesy of David Shindle, a biologist
with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission
Earlier this year, a young male panther roamed
into the city of Fort Myers while searching for a 200-square-mile area to call
his home. Known as panther 99 to biologists who
track the endangered cats, the male wandered into urban Lee County this spring
and came within a few hundred yards of TECO Arena in Estero. Like five other
panthers this year, 99 met his demise in an automobile accident.
Biologists for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
found panther 99 on Nov. 28, Thanksgiving Day. The 33-month-old cat weighed 130
pounds, which is pretty healthy for a male reaching physical maturation.
David Shindle, a panther biologist with the Conservation Commission, said
the panther was found near the Collier County fairgrounds along Immokalee Road.
The Conservation Commission tracks about 40 panthers and cougars.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
2 Western Cities Join Suit to Fight Global Warming
Federal Judge
Rules Los Angeles Violates Clean Water Laws
A federal judge found Los Angeles in violation of
the Clean Water Act today, holding it liable for 297 sewage spills from January
2001 to July 2002. The ruling by Judge Ronald S. W. Lew of Federal District Court here could
result in fines exceeding $8 million — $27,500 for each spill — and
court-ordered remedies. "The City of Los Angeles can no longer treat daily sewage spills as
business as usual," said Steve Fleischli, executive director of the Santa
Monica Baykeeper, an environmental group that sued the city about the spills
four years ago. "This sets the stage for liability on thousands of
spills." In court documents, Baykeeper,
which was joined in the suit by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the
Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board and several community groups,
contends that the city has a "chronic, continuing and unacceptable number of
spills from its sewage collection system."
Letter: New York Water Supply
Re "U.S. Sets New Farm-Animal Pollution Curbs" (news article, Dec. 17):
New York was one of the first states in the nation to develop a general permit for concentrated animal feeding operations. Using rigorous federal standards, New York trains and certifies professional planners to develop nutrient management plans for individual farms, which address both environmental concerns and business objectives. Gov. George E. Pataki's Agricultural Environmental Management program aids in the development and implementation of nutrient management plans, and since 1996 the program has helped farms of all sizes attain water quality goals by providing financial incentives and technical assistance.
Related Article,
December 15, 2002
To
Save the Forest, the Trees Must Go
December 17, 2002
U.S.
Sets New Farm-Animal Pollution Curbs
23-December-02
Scientists build mini-marsh to test plan for restoring
Everglades
On 60 swampy acres of
muck and limestone on the northern edge of the Everglades, scientists are
sculpting an ecological crystal ball. It is a
distilled version of the 2-million-acre Everglades, a mini-marsh that will allow
water managers to peer into the ecosystem's uncertain future and see how
proposed changes might affect its vegetation, birds and fish.
The River of Grass replica being built at the Arthur R. Marshall
Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge -- complete with tree islands molded from
peat and Everglades bedrock and backhoe-dug alligator holes -- is a $600,000
laboratory. It also is an admission by
scientists and engineers -- two years into a four-decade, $8.4 billion project
to restore the 'Glades -- that they don't know all they would like to about how
the marsh and its wildlife interact. "We're
trying to remove uncertainty, I suppose," said John Ogden, chief restoration
scientist for the South Florida Water Management District.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Letter to the editor: Get top scientists in debate
Re: “Lee orders final manatee plan,” Dec. 18. It
was reported that commissioners asked staff to write three letters to try to
break the moratorium on new docks, one to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton, the second to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the third to Gov.
Jeb Bush to use the state’s resources to evaluate the scientific information
available about the manatee population in Southwest Florida.
I would like to suggest a fourth letter, one to Gov. Bush to request an
investigation of the manatee situation by the National Academy of Sciences,
asking them to investigate the status, condition, plight, endangerment and
future of manatees in the State of Florida.
Copyright © 2002 News-Press
All rights reserved.
Editorial: Everglades restoration needs funds
Siphoning research money could doom this critical project
Cutting back on the scientific research
supporting Everglades restoration is a dangerous, foolish economy.
There are two reasons. First, this whole
$8 billion restoration program is needed because of faulty environmental science
practiced in the Everglades up until very recently. It took a long time for us
to appreciate that fresh water is not our enemy, and that it needs to be
conserved, not dumped as fast as possible into the sea.
Now, a huge public works program is in large part being undone and
replaced by a different huge public works program. This time we need to get it
right, to avoid more expensive mistakes. We need a steady commitment to the
science that will make that more likely.
Copyright © 2002 News-Press
All rights reserved.
Editorial: Three Lakes
Our position:
The Osceola wildlife area is a jewel that would benefit from more land.
At first glance, the Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area, pictured
above, about 20 miles south of St. Cloud in Osceola County, doesn't look like
much. Yet the seemingly endless stretches of
swamps, prairie and woods that sweep from U.S. Highway 441 across to lakes
Kissimmee, Jackson and Marian contain some of the most environmentally valuable
land in Central Florida. The management-area land
serves as a watershed that helps filter water runoff through the Kissimmee chain
of lakes and eventually into Lake Okeechobee. What's more, Three Lakes is home
to varieties of animals and plant life that are rare elsewhere in Florida.
Copyright
© 2002 Orlando
Sentinel All Rights Reserved.
List of endangered butterflies may grow
The Miami blue butterfly is found only on Bahia Honda.
The Florida purplewing is found on Lignum Vitae Key.
Big shots in the bird and butterfly world visited the Keys
last weekend in search of the
endangered butterfly, the Miami blue. The group also searched for another butterfly that could
become
the next casualty – the Florida purplewing.
According to Jeff Glassberg, president of the North American
Butterfly Association, only two of the thumbnail-sized blue beauties were
found at Bahia Honda State Park, the last haven offering refuge.
The previous weekend, eight were spotted, said Dennis Olle with
the Tropical Audubon Society.
A recent incident at the park where workers disturbed the blue’s habitat, the
nickerbean plant, further threatened to wipe out the species, which prompted
Glassberg’s intervention.
Copyright © 2002
Upper
Keys Reporter All rights reserved.
Everglades restoration faces financial obstacles
Federal deficits and new leadership in the Senate
have created potential obstacles for the costly Everglades restoration project
in the next session of Congress. Everglades
proponents must carve out funding from what will become an extremely tight
budget. They also must overcome deep skepticism from the incoming chairman of
the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe, a fierce
critic of some environmental regulations and the only senator to vote against
the Everglades replumbing master plan. "It is
not being pro-environment to throw money out the window," Inhofe , R-Okla., said
in September. "Congress is pouring billions of dollars into a
project that is not restoring the environment."
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Success of turtle hatchlings vary
Figures show slight increase for loggerheads in
Martin County
The number of loggerhead sea turtles hatched on
the Treasure Coast increased slightly in Martin
County this summer but dropped in St. Lucie
County compared with last year's figures, scientists who
study the animals reported last week.
Based on nests scientists marked with wooden stakes and
monitored throughout the nesting season, the
reports sent to a statewide database varied from beach
to beach on the Treasure Coast. "That's the
way it is up and down the coast. Different things happen on different
beaches," said Erik Martin, scientific director of Ecological Associates,
which tracks nesting and reproductive success of sea turtles from Normandy Beach
in St. Lucie County to the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge.
Copyright © 2002 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
Sticking his neck out for turtles
"The killing zone starts right down there, by
that lawyer's office," Matt Aresco said. His
brown eyes are worried. Wind from passing traffic ruffles his longish dark hair.
He has been trying to save turtles on this stretch of road about seven miles
north of Tallahassee for about three years, ever since the day he was out
driving on U.S. 27 and saw a smashed turtle. And another. And another.
He pulled over. "When I got out and
walked, I picked up 90 dead turtles in just a third of a mile."
He piled the dead turtles on a tarp and took a grisly picture. Ten species
of turtles have been dying on this road for many, many years. Aresco is the
first person who ever tried to do something about it. He's a reptile guy,
a 39-year-old graduate student in herpetology at Florida State University.
A Swim Against The Tide
From the road, it looked
like little more than a patch of swamp the bulldozers forgot to clear and fill
two decades ago, when the strip center was built at Kings Avenue and Lumsden
Road. But hidden in the marshy tangle of brush
and trees, unseen by passing motorists, a pair of frisky otters swam and sunned
themselves along the banks of a small, murky creek.
For years, the otters inhabited the wetland island, surrounded by a sea
of pavement - until this summer, when their secret life was revealed in their
very public death. Few passers-by likely
recognized the bloated roadkill as two aquatic members of the weasel
family. Who would have expected to find river otters crossing one of the
busiest streets in the county, miles from the nearest river? And how many would
recognize an elusive otter at all? Yet otters
are all around us.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Invasion of the Everglades: Giant snakes have a new hangout
This thing, this
tremendous thing, swimming toward his boat deep in the middle of mangrove
nowhere just wasn't supposed to be there. Daniel
Cabarcos Jr. had gone looking for redfish and snook in a favorite isolated
Everglades haunt, cruising a maze of uncharted channels to a tight and twisty
creek. He found something else instead -- the latest, and scariest, creature to
invade the Everglades. A very big Burmese
python, from one of the largest species of snakes in the world.
It slithered from some mangrove roots, head poking up like a scaly
pale-yellow periscope in the cola-colored water, body slicing ripples on the
glassy surface. Cabarcos, who has fished the back country for more than 40
years, was stunned. He'd seen snakes swim before but nothing like this, a
reptile as long and thick as a cypress log.
Copyright © 2002 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Editorial: Wither Wekiva?
Our position:
If the Wekiva basin doesn't get state protection, it could be destroyed.
Apopka Mayor John Land is the very epitome of why the state needs to play
a far more active role in protecting the Wekiva River basin from the withering
and insatiable demands of new growth. The
long-time mayor last week balked at a proposal to protect rural northwest Orange
County and southeast Lake County from even more urban sprawl, calling it a
throwback to the Depression era. Certainly,
times were tough back then. As the mayor well knows, many relied on the
government for food and gasoline rations simply to survive. Imagine, though,
what the Depression would have been like if there were no drinking water -- the
very lifeblood of human existence. Is that what Mr.
Land wants for Apopka, for the entire region? Well, that's what could
happen if Mr. Land and others prevail.
Copyright ©
2002 Orlando
Sentinel All Rights Reserved.
Donating Technology's Castaways
21-December-02
Water, water -- but not everywhere
December's rains have the aquifer beneath Tampa
at its highest level in four years. But in the well fields, it's still way low.
Bottom line: Keep conserving.
[Times photo: Skip O'Rourke]
THIS WEEK: Water surges through the
spillways of the Hillsborough River dam near
Rowlett Park in Tampa. The chart shows
why: Influenced by El Nino, the city's rainfall
so far this month is already 10 inches higher
than normal.
Driven by this month's heavy rains, aquifer
levels in Tampa are higher than normal for the first time in more than four
years. "It's just an indication that things are
filling up," said Michael Molligan, spokesman for the Southwest Florida Water
Management District. The aquifer has risen
nearly 2 feet in the past week. That's about 3 feet higher than this time last
year. Molligan warned, however, that residents
should still conserve water. "The short-term
view is December rainfall looked good and helped greatly," he said. "From a
long-term standpoint, we still have a water supply problem and we want people to
continue to conserve whether it's raining today or not."
Copyright © 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Keys sanctuary case is settled for $969,000
Tug ran aground there in May '93
The nation's largest
dredge company has agreed to pay a record $969,000 to help restore coral and
seagrass damaged when a tugboat ran aground in the Florida Keys National Marine
Sanctuary nearly 10 years ago. Money from the
settlement announced Friday will cover reef repairs and help reimburse
government agencies for their response to the Florida Bay grounding.
''This adds to our authority to collect damages in these cases, so it
will definitely help us in obtaining settlements in the future,'' said Cheva
Heck, spokeswoman for the sanctuary protecting the longest barrier reef after
Australia and Belize. The Justice Department
said in a release it was the largest settlement ever negotiated for a grounding
in the sanctuary.
Copyright © 2002 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 20, 2002
TUG COMPANY TO PAY NEARLY $1 MILLION FOR SEAGRASS DAMAGE
Michael Peltier: Local lawmakers take house leadership posts
A pair of Southwest Florida lawmakers will hold
key House positions in the areas of health care and the environment when
lawmakers return to the state's capital early next year in preparation for the
March session. Meanwhile, Sen. Burt Saunders,
R-Naples, will again hold a critical health-care role in the Senate as the
veteran lawmaker heads up that chamber's committee on health and long-term care.
"This committee will tackle some difficult issues, such as increasing
access to affordable health care, addressing medical malpractice issues and
finding solutions to the nursing home dilemma facing Florida," Senate President
Jim King said when announcing the post last week. "I am confident that Burt will
continue to build upon his record of success."
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Local groups trying to prioritize Everglades restoration work
Local studies that will be considered in February
range from developing an inventory of shorebirds to expanding sea turtle surveys
to include areas such as Cape Romano. Local
scientists and officials involved with Everglades restoration are trying to
prioritize a list of studies and restoration projects that target areas from
Charlotte Harbor south to Big Cypress National Preserve.
Two groups made up of dozens of scientists, planners, government
officials and others cover the region. One group focuses on Charlotte Harbor and
the Caloosahatchee River and the other covers Estero Bay and Big Cypress.
Both groups will meet in February to discuss dozens of studies and
restoration projects already identified. The prioritized list will be sent to
the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, the two government agencies that will oversee restoration projects.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
E.P.A.
Opposes Plan on Runoff Pollution
The Bush administration said today that it wanted to
drop a Clinton-era proposal to reduce pollution runoff into rivers, lakes and
streams. The Environmental Protection Agency said the program, offered in mid-2000 but
blocked by Congress, was unworkable. It would have required states to prepare
detailed plans for reducing runoff from storm water and agriculture. State and
local officials criticized it as too expensive and inflexible.
The administrator of the E.P.A., Christie Whitman, said an effective
program required participation and support from all levels of government.
Mrs. Whitman
said her agency was not abandoning the effort, but she did not spell out what,
if anything, might replace it. Mrs. Whitman said the agency would continue to try to improve the program.
Officials had previously said a new rule was being drafted.
20-December-02
Commentary: Ocala water levels are baffling
Jim Hoffman of Ocala loaded his antique, 1973
Ouachita bass boat onto its trailer at the State Road 19 ramp on Lake Beakman.
He and his bother-in-law, Bruce Watson, had fished the 91-acre lake, gone
through a canal to the 348-acre Lake Sellers and all the way back to
Chain-o-Lakes. "This is the first time in more
than two years I've been able to launch a boat here," he said. "We didn't catch
anything. We tried Rapalas, plastic worms, everything. Got a few small hits, but
no fish. Still it was nice just getting back in here again."
Once almost dried up during the Drought of the Century, the lakes in the
east end of the 400,000-acre Ocala National Forest are brimming with water.
But other forest lakes, just a few miles west, have hardly received any
rainfall. Federal fisheries biologist Bob
Grinstead said water levels in the western two-thirds of the forest are only a
foot or two higher than they were during the middle of the drought.
Copyright © 2002 Orlando
Sentinel All Rights Reserved.
TUG COMPANY TO PAY NEARLY $1 MILLION FOR SEAGRASS DAMAGE
Settlement to Restore Seagrass & Coral in Florida Keys
National Marine Sanctuary
Great Lakes Dredge
and Dock Company of Oak Brook, Ill., will pay nearly $1 million for damages
to seagrass and other
natural resources in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, the
Justice Department and the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today.
The $969,000 settlement reached on behalf of NOAA
and the
State of Florida is the largest ever obtained for damages to seagrass in the
sanctuary. The funds, combined with an earlier $618,485 settlement obtained from
co-defendant Coastal Marine Towing, will help restore the injured
areas and reimburse NOAA for response costs.
"We are pleased with the settlement," said Sharon
Shutler, attorney for the
NOAA General Counsel for Natural Resources. Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 21, 2002
Keys sanctuary case is settled for $969,000
Wildlife agencies seeking answers to pelican deaths in
Southwest Florida
Reports of dead and sick brown pelicans from
Tampa Bay to Fort Myers Beach have wildlife agencies on search for elusive clues.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission assistant regional
biologist Alex Kropp, in Lakeland, said Thursday that the agency has a "few more
reports than usual" and is hoping to collect fresh carcasses to send to a
University of Florida laboratory for testing.
"We don't really know whether it's a significant event yet or not," Kropp said.
The sick birds often are undernourished, disoriented and wobbly, symptoms
of possible exposure to a parasite or pesticides or maybe a toxic algae bloom,
according to reports. Many of the pelicans are
juveniles leaving their coastal island nests, leading some observers to reach a
more benign conclusion that cold weather has stressed the birds' systems. They
also might be having a hard time finding fish in shallow waters.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Commentary:
Proving her worth in the great outdoors
Julie Jones knew she was in trouble. "We had received several reports of untagged game,
especially wild turkeys, coming out of the Big Cypress Swamp,"
said the
state's chief wildlife officer of an incident that occurred 20 years ago. "I saw
a large hunting party coming out of the woods, so I decided to check
their
vehicles." Jones quickly found herself surrounded by five armed men, when
the matriarch of the clan stepped forward and asked an obvious question.
"Why should we listen to you?" the woman said. "We could take you
real easy." Jones rested her hand on her Model 19
Smith & Wesson and said, "This gun has six
cylinders and the first one is for you." The old
woman laughed, and Jones checked her swamp buggy. "I
learned then that if you are honest and direct with
people, you earn their respect," she said.
Editorial:
Keep lake level lower
Even good news about Lake Okeechobee draws some criticism. The
challenge
for the state is to make the good news universal.
According to the state's Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission's annual October survey, released last week, largemouth bass are making a
comeback in the lake. Bass are
to the lake what wading birds are to the
Everglades -- a key environmental vital sign. Fishing guides confirm the
survey's conclusion that young largemouth
bass are more plentiful than
they have been in five years. To stimulate that
comeback, however, the South Florida Water Management District
lowered the lake by dumping water into the St. Lucie River to the
east and the Caloosahatchee River to the west.
Lower levels allowed sunlight to reach the bottom and
allowed grasses, on which the bass feed, to regenerate.
No ruling on missed manatee deadlines
A federal judge decided Thursday to delay a
decision on whether U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton should be held in
contempt of court for failing to meet deadlines imposed as
part of a manatee protection lawsuit. Another hearing has been scheduled before U.S.
District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Jan. 15. To show their desire to
comply with the lawsuit settlement, officials from throughout the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service have scrambled during recent
days to gather available buoys and use them to mark manatee protection zones
around Tampa Bay and other parts of Florida.
Because there were not enough extra buoys to go around, the federal
officials had to take every other buoy from manatee
sanctuaries in Citrus County.
Water Policy May Need Updating
Polk County's year-old water policy could be due for
an update as members of the Water Policy Committee prepare to become
involved in assembling a long-range water plan for the county.
Some of those changes may include a re-examination of the
stormwater utility fee, more emphasis on pushing water conservation
and partnerships with adjacent counties.
Jeff Spence, the county's water coordinator, encouraged the discussion.
"If the group feels the water policy doesn't go far
enough, it can recommend changes," he said. Polk's
Water Policy Committee was formed in July 2001 in response to concerns that
without planning, Polk County might not have enough
water available to handle future growth.
Officials expect tougher regulations from the Southwest Florida Water
Management District to restrict new permits because
years of overpumping in this part of the state have
left aquifer levels, lake levels and streamflows in need of recovery.
Boaters gather forces to fight proposal enacted to protect
manatees
Jim Haynes likes manatees."I had several manatees in the canal behind my
house," Haynes said. "We named them all."
What Haynes doesn't like is the new regulations set up to
protect manatees. He is one of several Marco Island residents who has set up a
new local group that will fight a proposal by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service that is designed to protect
manatees. The group is called Standing Watch of the 10,000 Islands and
membership encompasses Marco Island, Goodland, Isles
of Capri, Everglades City and all the other island
communities south of Naples. Haynes, who is vice president of the group, says
150 people have already joined. Standing
Watch is a statewide boaters rights group that is now forming local chapters.
Vance Hurd, president of the statewide Standing Watch,
said chapters in Naples, Lee and Charlotte counties are also in the
process of being set up.
Endangered deer's dangers:
Keys study assesses effort to stem road deaths
Anthony Braden, a Texas A&M graduate student, is an avid
deer hunter who once bagged a pretty big buck near his home in Garden City.
This fall, Braden went deer hunting nearly every day. But he's
not looking to shoot deer anymore. Instead, Braden is using his outdoors skills
and science background to track endangered Key deer in the lower
Keys. Since May, Braden has captured nearly 30 of the tiny deer, fitted
them with radio collars, then tracked their movements on Big Pine and No
Name keys. His research will tell managers at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service's National Key Deer Refuge and highway planners at the Florida
Department of Transportation whether nearly $7.3 million in improvements to
U.S. 1 are working to reduce automobile-deer collisions.
With about half the average annual mortality of 125 Key deer
blamed on vehicles traveling on
U.S. 1, scientists and engineers looked for
ways to keep the animals away from the
highway.
California farmer fine upheld by split Supreme Court
An evenly
divided Supreme Court has upheld a judgment against a California farmer who
accused the government of going overboard to protect wetlands.
The Supreme Court, on a 4-4 vote, affirmed Angelo Tsakopoulos'
punishment for converting wetlands into vineyards
and orchards without obtaining a federal pollution permit. The U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental
Protection Agency determined that Tsakopoulos' Borden Ranch violated the Clean
Water Act of 1972. He was ordered to pay $500,000 in
fines and restore four acres of wetlands. His lawyer
argued recently before the Supreme Court that he was wrongly
punished. One member of the court, Justice
Anthony M. Kennedy, who is from California, did not participate in the case. The
remaining eight members were "equally divided,'' the
justices said in an unsigned opinion. They did not announce the breakdown of the
vote. Read more...
Copyright © 2002
US
Water News
All rights reserved.
Interior secretary cuts California's share of Colorado River
water
Likening the West's latest water war to a
"high-stakes game of power,'' Interior Secretary Gale Norton played a hand
none of her predecessors have: cutting back the amount of water California
draws from the Colorado River. Norton said the
history of the Colorado River, which brings water
to millions of people in seven states, had reached a turning point,
declaring, "The era of limits is upon
us." As of Jan. 1, the Interior Department will begin withholding
river water from California, Norton said, although exactly how much
water the state would lose had yet to be worked out. Water agencies
supplying Los Angeles and San Diego said they have enough
reserves to last two years. For years, the state has used
enough excess water from the Colorado to supply 1.6 million households
because other states didn't use their full share. Rapid growth in the
West, combined with the worst drought in the river's history, forced
the Interior Department to crack down. Read
more...
Copyright © 2002 US
Water News
All rights reserved.
Report for Congress says Everglades restoration plan
lacking in scientific research
Science, which is
supposed to guide Everglades restoration, is losing clout in the $8 billion
project, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Research
Council. Environmentalists said the report,
while limited in scope to one federal research program, supports much of their
criticism that political compromises to accommodate farmers and cities threaten
to undermine the natural system. ''You read this
thing and on the one hand, you want to cheer because this is exactly what we've
been saying for years, and on the other hand, it's extremely disappointing
because the Bush administration is doing its level best to paint a picture of
Everglades restoration that is unsupported by the facts,'' said Alan Farago,
Everglades committee chair for the Sierra Club of Florida, one of the harshest
critics of the plan.
Copyright © 2002
Miami Herald
All rights reserved.
Related Article,
January 11, 2003
Letter
to the editor: Funds wasted to restore 'Glades
Hearst Corporation Near Deal to Preserve Vast California Ranch
Former U.S. Army Corps of Engineer employee indicted on
bribery charges
A former U.S. Army Corps of Engineer employee was indicted
Thursday on charges of accepting bribes from a businessman in return for
government contracts. Rhonda Lynette Stubbs, a former transportation specialist in
the Jacksonville district of the corps, and Jose Antonio Martinez, of Tampa,
face up to 135 years in prison
and fines of $3.6 million. Martinez was the owner and operator of several freight
forwarding companies in Miami. Between 1997 and April 2001, Martinez bribed
Stubbs with cash, three vehicles, cruises and a $124,000 Jacksonville home,
according to the indictment. In return, Stubbs awarded government
transportation contracts to Martinez and his companies, the
U.S. Attorney's Office said. Stubbs and Martinez also face forfeiture of the house and a
sports utility vehicle, as well as forfeiture of $1 million as proceeds of the
bribery.
18-December-02
Another study points to sewage in canals;
More testing planned
A Nature Conservancy program designed to shed light on water
quality in Keys canals shows extremely high levels of enterococcus bacteria in
canals after recent rains, according to the environmental group.
Conservancy members said that since August, the group has been
testing canalwater every two weeks at 17 sites throughout the Keys. The
program, known as Florida Keys Watch, calls for water samples to be measured
for enterococcus bacteria, dissolved oxygen, salinity and temperature levels.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set a recommended
guideline of 104 "colony forming units" of enterococci per 100
milliliters of water. Samples taken after last week’s heavy rains showed levels as
high as 9,139 per 100 milliliters of water, according to the
Conservancy.
Copyright © 2002 Keynoter
All rights reserved.
Nature Conservancy study reveals contaminated Keys canals
The idyllic scenario of a home on a canal became less than
picture perfect this week when scientists from The Nature Conservancy released
the results
of water quality testing conducted on 17 canals from Boca Chica
to Key Largo.
The tests showed extremely high levels of enterococcus
bacteria in 10 of the 17 sites immediately
after the heavy rains of Dec. 9 and 10. The
Environmental Protection Agency has established a guideline of 104
colony-forming units of enterococcus as an acceptable level in 100 milliliters
of water. Four Keys canals showed more than 2,000 CFUs, with the canal at
Saddlebunch Keys in the Bay Point subdivision registering 9,139 CFUs. The same
sites averaged significantly less enterococcus bacteria in August, September and
October when the highest reading of 384 CFUs was taken at the canal on Cudjoe
Key at Cutthroat Estates. The 17 sites were selected to provide a cross-section
of various types of canal structures throughout the Keys.
Editorial:
Restoring a river's heart
The Kissimmee River restoration, a prelude to the 20-year, $8
billion replumbing plan for the Everglades, is going so well that its managers
recently decided to publicly show off the initial results.
Four decades ago, after massive flooding caused by a
hurricane, Congress directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to drive a canal
straight through the Kissimmee's heart -- its curvy,
meandering course. The canal drained the river's oxbows
and sloughs, killing off a lush, complex ecosystem
even as it provided flood protection. But the project appalled as many as it
pleased, and the loss of a vast section of the state's
unique environment was a festering sore. As the
idea that destroying natural systems ultimately can threaten human
society became more widely known and accepted, the movement to
restore the Kissimmee grew. Thus, in 1992, Congress approved a plan to
restore 40 square miles of the river and its flood plain.
Editorial:
Tell Father Leo no ...
Palm Beach County has been patient with Father Leo Armbrust
and generous with its own staff time and energy. At this point, less patience
and accommodation would be more effective in getting both the
county and Father Leo what they say they want. County
Administrator Bob Weisman admits that his staff has devoted unprecedented effort
to dealing with Father Leo's attempt to build Renaissance Village, a facility
for troubled teens, on environmentally sensitive land near the Loxahatchee
River. The recent focus has been on finding a better spot. Suggestions have
included the Vavrus property in Palm Beach Gardens, Cholee Park west of
Greenacres, and the Lantana landfill. But Father Leo and his supporters have not
accepted that they need to find another site.
Editorial:
Saving More Of Natural Florida
The state's acquisition of nearly 5,000 wilderness acres in
Polk County underscores the importance of the Florida Forever program.
The state now has purchased more than 9,000 acres that connect
the Air Force's Avon Park Bombing Range with the Lake Kissimmee State
Park and Three Lakes Wildlife Management
Area. The state rightly wants to buy and preserve the entire 42,000-acre
parcel - the Bombing Range Ridge - between the
range and Lake Kissimmee. This notable
wilderness preservation would not be possible were it not for Florida Forever,
which generates $300 million a year for land
acquisition. The money is raised through state bonds,
which are paid back with revenue from documentary stamp taxes on
real estate transactions. The program,
originally called Preservation 2000, has acquired more than a million acres, and
it's essential if Florida is to maintain its natural
beauty while gaining 300,000 new residents a year.
Judah takes swipe at Bush, Cabinet for passing on Estero 60 land buy
"The governor, I think,
was miffed at the high
price because he doesn't
understand the appraisal
process," Lee County
Commissioner Ray Judah
told his fellow commissioners
Tuesday.
Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah said Tuesday
the "arrogant and defiant" stance of Gov. Jeb Bush will hurt the state's efforts
to buy environmental lands, and may have already cost it the chance to pick up a
key piece of buffer area for Estero Bay. The
governor and Cabinet recently passed on the $2 million purchase of what's known
locally as Estero 60, a 60-acre parcel nestled between the western end of Pine
Avenue and the existing bay buffer area, citing a nearly 300 percent jump in the
price since a trust headed by local Realtor Andy Desalvo bought the land in 1998.
Bush objected to high land costs being pegged by "highest and best use,"
despite the fact Lee County has twice denied density increases. If the county
doesn't want the land developed at high density, the governor said,
commissioners can simply refuse a requested change.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Wetlands Protections Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court
Millions of acres of wetlands have been
drained for agriculture across the U.S.
(Photo
courtesy EPA)
The U.S.
Supreme Court has upheld a lower court decision aimed at protecting wetlands
from agricultural operations. In a divided decision, the court reaffirmed a half
million dollar fine against a California farmer who converted wetlands into
vineyards and orchards without obtaining a federal pollution permit.
At issue was whether the deep ripping of protected wetlands for farming
purposes was a violation of the Clean Water Act. After hearing oral arguments in
the case last week, the court voted 4-4 on Monday, with one justice abstaining
from the vote, to support a federal appeals court decision levying a $500,000
fine against Angelo Tsakopoulos. Justice Anthony
Kennedy did not participate in the vote because he is an acquaintance of
Tsakopoulos. Justice Anthony
Kennedy did not participate in the vote because he is an acquaintance of
Tsakopoulos. Under court rules, in the case of an evenly divided vote, the
appellate court ruling is affirmed.
Letter:
It's Called Logging, and We're Not Blind
Copyright © 2002 Environment News Service (ENS)
All Rights Reserved.
You report that the United States Forest Service has proposed the
experimental logging of half a million acres in two forests in the Sierra Nevada
to see how it will affect the habitat of the California spotted owl and the
ferocity of forest fires (Week in Review, Dec. 15). But of all the national
forests, the heavily damaged Lassen and Plumas can least afford this experiment.
My last position was as a Forest Service fisheries biologist at both of
these forests, and my findings were not good.
Last year, logging activity was at the highest level I had ever witnessed
anywhere in the system. Entire mountainsides were being leveled, and the traffic
was perilous, requiring one to "ditch dive" constantly for survival. Where fire
had engulfed thousands of acres, all the vegetation was gone.
Related Article,
December 15, 2002
To Save the Forest, the Trees Must Go
U.S. Sets New Farm-Animal Pollution Curbs
December 24, 2002
Letter:
New York Water Supply
New Rules Aim to Cut Pollution From Factory Farms
Large livestock operations like this hog farm
produce tons of runoff polluted with animal
wastes.
(Photo by Gene Alexander, courtesy USDA)
New federal regulations aimed at reducing water
pollution from the nation's largest livestock operations will do little to
control runoff, conservation groups said as the rules were released today. The
new regulations come on the heels of last week's release of a study suggesting
that the federal government must do more to control emissions from animal
factory farms. At a press conference this
morning, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie
Whitman announced that the agency is working with the agricultural community to
control water pollution from large livestock operations while keeping American
agriculture economically viable. Whitman, joined by U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Ann Veneman, announced a final rule that will
require all large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to obtain
permits that will ensure they protect America's waters from wastewater and
manure.
Copyright © 2002 Environment News Service (ENS)
All Rights Reserved.
Related Links,
For more information on the new CAFO regulations,
visit:
http://www.epa.gov/npdes/caforule
To read the NAS report online,
visit:
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309087058/html/
Editorial: Big Agriculture vs. Wetlands
The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a case that, while it turns on
arcane issues, could have a major impact on endangered wetlands. At its heart,
the case is about whether agricultural interests will be free, as commercial
developers are not, to harm wetlands. The United States Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit upheld the government's rules protecting wetlands, and the Supreme
Court should as well. Angelo Tsakopoulos, a California real estate developer, bought an 8,400-acre
ranch containing wetlands. He wanted to convert part of it from grazing land to
vineyards and orchards, which require deep root systems. To clear the way, he
proceeded to "deep rip" the land, using bulldozers to drag metal
prongs of up to seven feet. Deep ripping disgorges rock, sand and dirt, which
can interfere with wetlands' ability to retain water.
The Clean Water Act of 1972 prohibits discharging pollutants into wetlands
without a permit.
Related Article,
December 16, 2002
Justices
Let Wetlands Case Stand
Justices Let Wetlands Case Stand
Related Article,
December 16, 2002
Editorial:
Big
Agriculture vs. Wetlands
What a croc! Injured Keys crocodile returns home
Seven months ago, he almost became a rack of pricey women’s
handbags or several pairs of really
swell boots, but today he’s fully
recovered and back home in the mangrove swamps of North Key
Largo. “He” is Jack, a 10-foot, 200-pound American crocodile that in
April was struck by a car just
south of Jewfish Creek. On Wednesday, Dec. 11, he was returned to his native habitat in
Key Largo’s Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
After the collision, the battered croc was taken to
Miami MetroZoo, where he spent several months rehabbing from injuries that cost him an eye
and included a broken leg and head trauma, said refuge manager Steve
Klett. Klett, by the way, is the
person who named him Jack, as in
“One-Eyed."
Copyright © 2002
Upper
Keys Reporter All rights reserved.
15-December-02
Redevelopment - 'Smart Growth' Ideas Welcome
Say the words "think tank" and you might come up
with negative stereotyped images: a highfalutin bunch of eggheads, preoccupied
with irrelevant issues boring everyone but a
nerdy policy wonk,
spewing gobbledygook and dreaming impossible dreams.
By then there's the exceptional Collins Center for Public
Policy, an excellent beneficial but little appreciated friend to South Florida.
The center, based in Miami, is a think tank with a
positive
difference: Resisting the urge to be a know-it-all, the center forms
partnerships with local homeowner and business groups and developers to find
consensus about innovative but workable solutions to real world problems of
ordinary people. Its vital Growth
Partnership promotes "Smart Growth"
policies to fight blight and revitalize deteriorated urban neighborhoods.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Which events of recent days are likely to have the most significant long-term
impact on American business and the economy? To my mind, it was not the Bush administration's new team of economic policy
makers, who dominated the headlines last week. Nor the efforts to clean up Wall
Street. And not the buildup of troops to fight a war in Iraq, either.
No, my money is on the barely noticed introduction by Honda and Toyota of a
handful of experimental fuel cell vehicles to be tested by the State of
California. The possibility of running cars on
fuel cells has been heavily promoted in business circles in recent years, and
for good reason. Imagine a global economy no longer dependent on oil and the
internal combustion engine. Fuel cells, because they produce energy from pure
hydrogen rather than from petroleum, emit only water and heat as waste,
potentially generating power without burning fossil fuels.
To Save the Forest, the Trees Must Go
More big trees, like this one in California's
Plumas National Forest, will be axed
under new rules.
In the name of science, the United States Forest Service has
proposed the experimental logging of half a million acres in two forests in the
Sierra Nevada to see how it will affect the habitat of the California spotted
owl and the ferocity of forest fires. But skeptical environmentalists are saying
the real purpose is simply to give timber companies a chance to cut more big
trees on some of the nation's 190 million acres of public land.
The study is to be conducted in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests, two
of the 11 national forests that run along the mountainous spine of California.
The Bush administration's experiment is designed on such a grand scale
that it will vastly increase the amount of timber being taken from the two
northern California forests, which have been heavily logged in the past.
Related Link,
December 17, 2002
Letter:
It's Called Logging, and We're Not Blind
Letter:
New York Water Supply
Kissimmee River alive again amid major restoration project
Lou Toth always knew it would happen, that the Kissimmee River
could run wild again, but he still marvels at how fast nature went to work once
humans got out of the way. Two years ago, the riverscape largely amounted to a drainage canal, straight
as a highway and nearly as lifeless. Now, a thin ribbon of water dark as
molasses curls around glistening ponds and soggy marsh. Gators soak up sun on
sandbars. Flocks of white wading birds rise at the hum of Toth's helicopter
overhead, then flutter down again like snowflakes.
After four decades, one of Florida's worst environmental boondoggles is fast
mending -- at least in this 14-mile stretch where engineers blew up a dam and
repacked that deep wound of a canal, sending water, and life, flowing again into
stagnant river courses and parched wetlands. It is the first step in a project
that ultimately will fill in 22 miles of canal and bring water back to 43
meandering miles of river.
On Florida Key, Butterfly Is Making Its Last Stand
Jaret C.
Daniels/University of Florida
The thumbnail-size Miami
blue butterfly
has become one of the rarest creatures
on earth, all but eradicated by forces of
man and nature.
What is it, really, except a caterpillar
showing off? No bigger than a thumbnail, as insubstantial as a
shred of
tissue paper, it flashes from weed to weed, a wildly beating speck of blue that
soon vanishes against the vaster, bluer backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean.
It is as close as a living thing can be, it seems, to being
there, and not being there at all.
In fact, it is. This little butterfly, the Miami blue,
once blanketed much of
Florida, but it has been all but eradicated by development, hurricanes,
mosquito spraying and more. Now, with only a few adult butterflies spotted here
over a three-day period, the blues cling to their very existence in the
sharp thorns of the Nickerbean plants that sprout
from Bahia Honda
State Park, an island of coral, sand and palm trees in the Florida Keys.
Extinction seems just one wing beat away.
"We would be poorer," said Akers Pence, a University
of Florida graduate student
who is studying the blue.
Bush gets set to tackle state's booming growth
Gov. Jeb Bush is preparing to revamp state
government to tackle what he has described as his
biggest disappointment of his
first term, his administration's inability to get a grip on Florida's
mushrooming growth.
The governor is almost certain to dismantle the Department of
Community Affairs, the 450-employee agency that oversees the way land is
developed in Florida's 67 counties.
Last week, Bush acknowledged the department's land-planning
duties should be put under the
Secretary of State, a position that been an
elected one but one which Bush will get to appoint next
month. A restructured
Secretary of State's office could make growth management a top priority,
Bush said. "Absolutely, it would be critical," Bush said.
"I think it would be one of, if not the most
important, function of the new agency." Steve Seibert, who has headed the Department of
Community
Affairs for the past four years, has already resigned.
Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Bush Opposes Proposed Dock-Building Ban in Southwest Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush said he opposed a
proposed dock-building moratorium in southwest Florida because of
the millions
of dollars in losses that could be caused by the measure to protect
manatees. Bush told several hundred local business and community leaders
Friday that he planned to help the fight
against the proposed regulations,
saying he would join a lawsuit if necessary.
He cited a recent report by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service, which estimated that stopping construction of new boat
docks, marinas
and ramps could cost southwest Florida $87 million to $175 million and
1,000 jobs over five years.
"The focus needs to be on protection of manatees, not on
creating economic hardships for an entire region," Bush said.
"We have
done more to protect manatees in the last five
years than ever before, and I think the
federal government should reward that."
Tougher Rules Are Proposed for Gas Mileage
Tim
Boyle/Getty Images
The Bush administration has
proposed a 7 percent improvement
in the fuel efficiency of sport
utility vehicles, pickup trucks
and minivans.
The Bush administration proposed the largest increase in
automotive fuel economy in more than a decade today, calling for a 7 percent
improvement in the performance of sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and
minivans. Critics, including many environmentalists and top Democrats, said the
proposal demanded no more of the auto industry than it had already committed
itself to achieve on its own. But the plan was praised by some moderates, and
auto executives called it a challenge. The proposal would require automakers to increase the average fuel economy of
so-called light trucks by 1.5 miles per gallon, to an average of 22.2 miles per
gallon, by the 2007 model year. The administration said that would reduce
gasoline consumption by 2.5 billion gallons through that year.
"I'm sure everyone who doesn't know about the industry will say,
`Gee-whiz, what's a couple of tenths of miles per gallon per year?' " said
Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, who announced the proposal in Washington.
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
Office of the Secretary
The Secretary is appointed by the Governor, with
the concurrence of three or more members of the Cabinet, and is subject to
confirmation by the Senate. Governor Jeb Bush appointed David Struhs to head the
DEP in January 1999. The Secretary’s Office
includes a Chief of Staff, Deputy Secretary for Land and Recreation, Deputy
Secretary for Regulatory Programs, Deputy Secretary for Planning and Management,
External Affairs Office,
Office of
Inspector General,
Office of General Counsel,
Office
of Legislative and Governmental Affairs, and the
Division of Law
Enforcement. The Deputy Secretary for Regulatory Programs
provides oversight to the Cabinet Affairs Office,
Division of Air Resources
Management, Division of Water
Resource Management,
Division of Waste Management, the
Bureau of Beaches & Coastal
Systems, the Siting
Coordination Office and the
District
Regulatory District Offices (6). Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Florida
Department of Environmental Protection All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 13, 2002
Struhs a possible successor
Struhs a possible successor
Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary David
Struhs was rumored in 2000 to be
among President Bush's prospects to lead
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Now, with EPA Administrator Christie Whitman rumored to be
resigning soon, his name is surfacing again.
Asked whether Struhs might be leaving, DEP spokeswoman Deena
Wells said Thursday, "He will be
staying in Florida as long as the
governor wants him to." Struhs was in South Florida on Thursday
and was not
available for comment. Gov. Jeb Bush last week reappointed Struhs to serve in his
second term. Struhs' strong GOP credentials have fueled rumors that he's
bound for Washington. His wife, Sara, is the sister of White House Chief of
Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
Struhs has won mixed reviews from both environmentalists and
industry group representatives.
Copyright © 2002 Tallahassee
Democrat / Associated Press All rights reserved.
Related Link,
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
Office of the Secretary
Water district to take tribal land
The Miccosukee Indian Tribe made it clear their land was not
for sale -- that it had historical and
cultural significance for its people. But water managers voted Thursday to take 375 acres of that
Miami-Dade County property through condemnation to help restore the
Everglades, even after being warned they were facing a huge fight.
"You must know the tribe will not go quietly on
this," tribal attorney Dione Carroll told the South Florida Water Management District
board. "I mean the tribe will
oppose this with every imaginable
resource." The water district views the site at Krome Avenue and
the Tamiami Trail -- across the street from the Miccosukee resort and casino but not
on the tribe's reservation -- as a key piece of a 1,900-acre reservoir
envisioned in the $8.4 billion Everglades
restoration plan. That water storage land would
be a multipurpose project with environmental, flood control and water supply
benefits, they noted.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Bush slams manatee protection plan
Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday denounced a federal plan for
protecting manatees, saying proposed
restrictions on dock-building would be
"disastrous" for southwest Florida's economy.
"The rule could lead to a moratorium on dock permitting
in that region and make it significantly more difficult to
register vessels and
operate boats," Bush wrote in a letter read by an aide at a public
hearing in Fort Lauderdale. "With regard to marine-related activities alone,
we estimate that the proposed rules would
have an adverse economic impact of
$87 million to $175 million over the next five years."
Bush requested a meeting with U.S. Interior Secretary Gail
Norton to try to persuade her to consider
alternative ways to protect the
endangered sea mammal. More
than 50 people attended the hearing at the Renaissance Hotel, one of a series
conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to hear comments on its proposed
rules.
Group
scrutinizes water to ensure it keeps flowing
The eight members of Citizens for WATER work to
ensure the good stewardship of a natural resource vital to
the region's future.
Each time somebody twists a faucet, the quality
of the water that comes out and how much it costs
can depend on distant
aquifer-fouling developments or the decisions of office-bound bureaucrats or,
more often than not, both.
On Thursday, in the second of six seminars being conducted by
Citizens for WATER, the seemingly miraculous -- a clean water supply in every
home and building -- was shown to result from a complex web of land and
water regulation that most people know little about.
Members of Citizens for WATER (Water Awareness Through
Education and Research) are an
exception.
Copyright
© 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Related Links,
Project
WATER (Water Awareness Through Education and Research) East Bay
Municipal Utility District
* -
Program provided free to 465 schools in 23 school
districts, 24 day care and after-school programs,
which used more than 65,000 published materials in
year 2000. A total of 38,260 published materials were
sold at cost to 10 water agencies in 2000. Since Project WATER
was created in 1974, more than 1.5 million
student workbooks have been used free in schools
served by EBMUD. Sales to other water agencies
and
schools have totaled more than 2 million workbooks and teacher's guides
over the same period.
WaterWiser
-- The Water Efficiency Clearinghouse
List of Educational Programs
Plan
to restore river gets OK
Restoration of the Loxahatchee River is under way, water
managers promised Thursday after officially
pledging a minimum flow of fresh water
and salvaging a $38 million land deal.
The South Florida Water Management District's actions drew
praise from a throng of environmentalists, even those who
had denounced the
agency as too weak-kneed in safeguarding the region's last wildly flowing
river. "It's a great first step," said Joann Davis of the
environmental group 1000 Friends of Florida.
First, the district's board approved a rule calling for the
river to receive at least 35 cubic feet of fresh water each
second over
the Lainhart Dam, north of Indiantown Road west of Jupiter.
District scientists estimate that will stop,
but not reverse, a saltwater invasion that has killed
miles of cypress trees following decades of
drainage and dredging.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Government: Metro Report
The board of the South Florida Water Management District took
the following action Thursday. Votes
were 8-0 unless otherwise specified: Miccosukees: Voted to condemn 341 acres the
Miccosukee Indians had bought west of Miami,
despite tribal attorney Dione
Carroll's warning that "the tribe will not go quietly." The
district intends to build a 4,000-acre Everglades restoration reservoir on the
land, but the Miccosukees say the district
has used other
tribal lands as a "septic tank" for pollution.
Trump's pumps: Approved a $9,500 fine for Donald
Trump's Trump International Golf Club in suburban West Palm
Beach for using 13.7 percent more water than its permits
allowed. District employees earlier said the fine would
be $12,000, but they said Thursday that the amount of excess pumping merited a
smaller penalty.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Water managers to buy rock pits
With blessings from Gov. Jeb Bush and cheers from
environmentalists, water managers agreed
Thursday to spend $139 million on 900 acres of
gigantic holes. The 45-foot-deep rock pits in
Loxahatchee, owned by
limestone-mining company Palm Beach Aggregates Inc., are to be used to
store 10
billion gallons of water for the Everglades, the Loxahatchee River and
central Palm Beach County's flood control and water supply. They're a crucial
element in the $8.4 billion blueprint to
overhaul South Florida's drainage
system and save the Everglades.
The price is eight times what one appraiser hired by the South Florida Water
Management District said the land would sell for on the open market. At
more than $150,000 an acre, the price for the empty holes is roughly twice the
estimated profit that Palm Beach Aggregates makes from mining and selling rock.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Corps approaches Lake O releases cautiously
When it made the decision to drain Lake Okeechobee starting
Thursday, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers had the El Nino of 1997-'98 weighing
on its mind. That was the season water managers
prepared for a normal, dry
winter and let the lake rise accordingly, but a weather phenomenon that
occurs near Christmas (hence, the Spanish name meaning "The Child")
caught them off-guard and delivered a wet, rainy one instead.
With the lake pushing 18 feet above sea level, the corps
started a discharge on Jan. 25, 1998, that lasted through April and
devastated the St. Lucie estuary.
Four years later, South Florida is experiencing another El
Nino, a moderate one. But the corps is not
taking any chances. When the lake
reached 15.38 feet Wednesday, the decision was made to pull
the plug.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
State moves to seize tribe's wetland tract
State water managers and the Miccosukee Tribe, locked in a
dispute over land for a huge Everglades
restoration reservoir, drew a line in the
muck Thursday, potentially setting up a messy and important
legal
battle. The South Florida Water Management District moved to condemn
375 acres the tribe bought a few years ago just across Tamiami Trail from its
$55 million resort and gaming hall. The tribe
responded with a flat refusal
to sell and a warning from Chairman Billy Cypress that any effort to take
its
wetlands would be considered a hostile seizure of sovereign territory.
''More than once, tribal lands have been used as a septic tank
-- that's the chairman's words -- for water coming from other places,''
said Dioné Carroll, the tribe's attorney.
But members of the district governing board, who voted
unanimously to begin condemnation proceedings, said they had no choice if the tribe
wouldn't negotiate.
Copyright © 2002 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
State: Creeks, ditches add to lagoon pollution
After a year of monitoring, state scientists
on Thursday said 27 of the 38 urban creeks and ditches
tested in Martin and
St. Lucie counties directly pollute the St. Lucie River and the southern
Indian River Lagoon with high amounts of nutrients and metals.
The bi-weekly testing started in November 2001 to determine
the quality of the water in the tributaries that account for 30 percent of the
runoff into the river.
The tributaries are not part of the $1 billion local
Everglades cleanup plan, unlike the
irrigation canals in St. Lucie County and the
St. Lucie Canal in Martin County. Those waterways
make up the remaining 70
percent of the flow into the river and lagoon, according to South Florida
Water Management District reports.
However, Boyd Gunsalus and Al Goldstein, both senior
environmental scientists with the district, said the high amounts of
phosphorous, ammonia, nitrites
and nitrates, copper and even arsenic in the
area's small water bodies is cause for concern.
Copyright © 2002 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
12-December-02
Evamarie Mathaey, 65, helped found nature magazine
Evamarie Mathaey, one of the founders of Nature Photographer
Magazine, which eventually reached
20,000 subscribers worldwide, has died
in a car crash. She was 65.
Mathaey died Monday. She and two others started the magazine
13 years ago with 300 subscribers. The how-to magazine, based in
Lubec, Maine,
features photographs and stories about nature and wildlife from around the
world and is marketed to nature photographers and enthusiasts.
Editor Helen Longest-Saccone said Mathaey's love of nature
drove her to join the magazine.
The two ran the magazine after a third
partner, Jeff Ripple, left 10 years ago.
Longest-Saccone said Mathaey's conservative nature helped the
magazine survive as others like it went broke.
"We never, in 13 years, had an argument," said
Longest-Saccone. "When things were more important
to her, I'd give a little and she'd do
the same for me."
Copyright © 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Related Link,
Endangered butterfly gets instant protection
Underside of a rare Miami Blue.
Once common throughout South Florida, the rare
Miami Blue butterfly, or Hemiargus thomasi, is now
found only on a single island in the Florida Keys. The
state has just issued an emergency order protecting
the butterfly as an endangered species.
The state's chief wildlife officer has issued an emergency
endangered-species protection order for the Miami Blue, a tiny butterfly
confined to a single island in the Florida Keys. Down to as few as 20 to 50 adults, the Miami Blue was
given
immediate help because it couldn't afford to wait for an endangered-species
petition to work its way through the lengthy approval process, state
officials said. "It is in imminent danger of extinction," said
Kenneth Haddad, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission, in a statement issued on Wednesday after he exercised his rarely used
authority to impose instant protection. "Emergency listing as an
endangered species is a crucial step in the attempt to save this unique Florida
treasure." The order, which will protect the Miami Blue from butterfly
collectors, makes it a third-degree felony to kill, capture or harm a Miami
Blue. Violators would face up to five years in prison and fines of up
to $5,000.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Related Article,
November 12, 2002
Tiny,
nearly extinct butterfly caught in web of controversy
December 11, 2002
STATE OF FLORIDA
EMERGENCY LISTS MIAMI BLUE (a butterfly) AS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
December 12, 2002
New
status gives Miami Blue butterfly a safety net
State makes waves over undersea cables
Damage to coral reefs
A cable off the coast of Broward County
rests across a coral reef. Fearing
damage
to Florida's fragile coral reefs, state environmental
officials are
trying to restrict telecommunications
cables that connect the state to South
America,
Europe and the Caribbean.
(AP/Ray McAllister)
The state Cabinet on Wednesday took the first step toward
preventing future undersea telecommunications cables from damaging coral reefs.
The Cabinet gave preliminary approval to a plan that would
designate five corridors through the reefs off Broward and Palm Beach counties
where telecommunications companies could lay their cables. Surveyed by
divers, the corridors would go through gaps in the reefs, allowing cables
to be placed with minimal damage to delicate corals and sponges. The decision came a day after a national environmental group
released a study claiming that five fiber-optic cables had severely damaged
reefs off Hollywood. About a dozen fiber-optic cables now run through the reefs,
providing telephone and computer links to Europe, Central America, South
America and the Caribbean.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 10, 2002
UNDERWATER
CABLES DESTROYING BROWARD COUNTY REEFS
December 12, 2002
Comments
on Corridors for Fiber Optic Cables
Comments on Corridors for Fiber Optic Cables
I fully support the proposal by DEP to create
corridors, or fiber optic safety zones, for fiber optic cables installed in
coastal waters in southeast Florida. Unlike the industry, whose planning only
encompasses a 10-year horizon, the Trustees are responsible for the long-term
management and use of Florida's delicate sub-tropical marine environments. The
health of these environments is the key to Florida's economic future. Our
nationally famous lifestyle is absolutely dependent upon healthy beaches, clean
coastal waters, and robust marine resources. The corridor concept fits
within the zoning techniques being applied by coastal states all over the U.S.
to separate potentially conflicting human activities in the coastal ocean.
Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Florida
Ocean Alliance All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 10, 2002
UNDERWATER
CABLES DESTROYING BROWARD COUNTY REEFS
December 12, 2002
State
makes waves over undersea cables
Lake O's bass making comeback
It's official: Lake Okeechobee's largemouth bass are bouncing
back. A baby boom for fish is the strongest sign to date that
Florida's largest lake is recovering from the twin devastations of the wet 1990s
and the 2000-2001 drought, state biologists say. And that's good news for the
tourism economy that depends on anglers worldwide flocking to the "Big O."
"Everybody I talk to says the fish are fat as
Butterballs," said Jim Wells, manager of Angler's Marina in Clewiston, who has fished the lake
since 1959. Now comes the hard part: Keeping the boom going. Water
managers must prevent a repeat of the abnormally high water that drowned the
lake's marsh grasses and bottom plants in the late '90s, destroying habitat
for young fish. "We're in a pretty fragile state right now,"
said Don Fox, biological administrator for the state Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission in Okeechobee.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Lake O water releases begin today
Citing recent rainfall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will
begin draining water from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie River
today in a discharge that will last 10 days. The lake level on Wednesday was 15.38 feet, the stage at
which
the corps is authorized to lower it for flood control. The discharge is a "pulse" release, which is
designed to mimic rainfall with heavier flows the first four or five days and then a
gradually tapering volume. The low-level release will send an average of 5,461 gallons of
fresh water per second into the St. Lucie Canal, which flows into the
delicate, brackish St. Lucie River. The Caloosahatchee River to the west of Lake Okeechobee will
get more than twice the amount that is being routed toward the St. Lucie
Canal. "We're supposed to be in our dry season right now, but a
moderate El Nino event is occurring," said Mark Perry, executive director
of the Florida Oceanographic Society."
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Cabinet told state's debt pushing limit
Associated Press
Gov Jeb Bush, center, comments on the
state's debt ceiling during a final meeting of
the six-member Cabinet Wednesday. From
the top are: Education Commissioner Charlie
Crist; Treasurer-Insurance Commissioner Tom
Gallagher; Attorney General Richard Doran;
Gov. Bush; Agriculture Commissioner Charles
Bronson; Secretary of State Jim Smith and
Comptroller Bob Milligan. The new Cabinet
structure calls for the Governor and three
members: Attorney General, Agriculture
and Chief Financial Officer.
Florida has almost maxed out its ability to borrow money, even
as it faces the potentially expensive prospects of reducing class size and
building a high-speed train. Finance officials told Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Cabinet
on Wednesday that a combination of increased borrowing and lower tax
collections will push the state's debt next year above the target of 6 percent of
all revenue. In total, the state has borrowed $19.2 billion as of June 30,
or $10.9 billion more than a decade ago, most of it going to education.
Florida has the second highest debt rate among the country's 10 largest
states and has grown faster than the national average, said Ben Watkins,
director of bond finance. This year, taxpayers will spend $1.4 billion paying off that
debt but borrow an additional $1.7 billion to build roads, renovate college and school buildings, buy new park space and restore the Everglades.
That will push the debt rate to 6.18 percent, Watkins said.
Copyright © 2002 Tallahassee
Democrat / Associated Press All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 12, 2002
Florida
nears the limit on its state debt
December 12, 2002
Russell
to chair top committee
Russell to chair top committee
After engineering two years of change in state
road and growth management policies, Rep. Dave Russell of Brooksville will
repeat his role as chairman of the State House Transportation Committee.
Republican House Speaker Johnnie Byrd of Plant City announced the appointment
Wednesday, commending Russell for his leadership as a state lawmaker who
addressed Florida's most pressing transportation needs statewide. "Rep.
Russell is a successful small businessman who has brought a breath of fresh air
to the legislature," Byrd said. "David's experience in a small
business and as a former chairman of the Hernando County Aviation Authority,
combined with his prior work on the transportation committee, gives him the
tools necessary to be a top-notch transportation chairman." Former
House Speaker Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, who graduated to a Congressional seat in
November, first appointed Russell to the position in 2000.
Copyright © 2002
Hernando Today
All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 12, 2002
Cabinet
told state's debt pushing limit
December 12, 2002
Florida
nears the limit on its state debt
Florida nears the limit on its state debt
The state has very little borrowing capacity
left, officials say. But billions more still will be needed.
The state is pushing its debt ceiling and has
little borrowing capacity for the next five years, Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet
were told Wednesday. Ben Watkins, director of the state's Division of Bond
Finance, said the state is expected next year to exceed the 6 percent debt ratio
that it has set as a target limit. The debt ratio is the percentage of the
state's annual revenues that it must pay to service its debt. An absolute
cap of a 7 percent debt ratio is set by law. The state is faced with
having to come up with billions in the next few years to pay for school
construction required by the class size reduction amendment and the construction
of a bullet train required by another constitutional amendment.
Copyright © 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 12, 2002
Cabinet
told state's debt pushing limit
December 12, 2002
Russell
to chair top committee
Corps misses deadline on Everglades rules
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced
Wednesday that it had missed the deadline for completing the regulations that will
guide the $8.4 billion Everglades restoration project. Under the 2000 law authorizing the
restoration, the corps was
scheduled to publish the final regulations Wednesday. Instead, it issued a
two-page news release indicating a "target of early 2003" for the
regulations. The corps did not say why it would not meet the deadline, but
Maj. Gen. Robert Griffin, its civil works director, said, "I am
convinced that taking additional time now to complete the programmatic regulations is a
solid investment in the Everglades. "By focusing on the quality of the final
regulations, we
will have done the best we can to ensure the success of restoring the Everglades and
to ensure the greatest return on the investment and expectations of the
nation."
Copyright © 2002
Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Links,
Everglades Plan:
Press
Room
Programmatic
Regulations
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District
Public Affairs
Office - news/press releases
Editorial: Return of the wading birds
Increase in Everglades nesting is a hopeful sign
Evidence that wading birds are flourishing again in the
Everglades is good news -- for both the present and the future of the Everglades.
Scientists who produce the annual South Florida Wading Birds
Report say birds such as the snowy egret, great blue heron and roseate
spoonbill are breeding at a rate unmatched in 60 years. The scientists attribute
the increase largely to a dry season
without unusually high rainfalls. Unseasonably heavy rains can raise
water levels, causing birds to abandon some nests and making the fish they feed
on harder to catch, say the report's authors. The report, released last month, cited 68,750 wading bird
nests this year in the Everglades and surrounding areas -- about twice the
average recorded over the past decade.
Copyright © 2002 Herald
Tribune All rights reserved.
Florida Cabinet rejects Estero Bay land buy
In a unanimous vote that shocked, saddened and
angered local backers, the Florida Cabinet rejected Wednesday a proposal to
spend $1.8 million in state money to purchase 60 acres near Estero Bay. Saying the price was too
high, a visibly irritated Gov. Jeb
Bush led the charge against the purchase of the property. While thanking Lee County
commissioners for coming up with $200,000 in local money to help
lower the state's cost, Bush said he still could not go along with buying
the parcel from a local developer who paid $501,000 for it just five years
ago. "Can't you see how we're getting the shaft on this?"
Bush asked Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah, who flew to Tallahassee to address the
panel. "And you're just joining in on getting the shaft by adding $200,000 to
it." By its ruling, the seven-member panel rejected Judah's argument
that the commission may be forced into allowing development on the parcel.
Copyright © 2002 Naples
News All rights reserved.
New status gives Miami Blue butterfly a safety net
Messing with the elusive Miami Blue butterfly, one of the
scarcest creatures on earth, is no longer just an offense on nature, it's a real
crime. In a rare emergency action, Florida's wildlife agency has
declared the Miami Blue -- which despite the name actually exists only in one small
colony at Bahia Honda state park in the Florida Keys -- an endangered
species, at least for now. That heightened status affords the tiny butterfly, once common
along coastlines from Daytona Beach to the Keys, more protection from
its most immediate threats -- things like destroying its tropical plant
habitat, mosquito spraying and even specimen collecting. Since the
butterfly was rediscovered on Bahia Honda Key in 1999, at least one would-be
poacher packing a pocket net has been thwarted, said Thomas Emmel, director of
the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research at the University of Florida.
Copyright © 2002 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Related Article,
November 12, 2002
Tiny,
nearly extinct butterfly caught in web of controversy
December 11, 2002
STATE OF FLORIDA
EMERGENCY LISTS MIAMI BLUE (a butterfly) AS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
December 12, 2002
Endangered
butterfly gets instant protection
7th round of water releases OK'd
Water managers hope to head off rising levels at
Lake Okeechobee with the freshwater discharges.
Highlighting the
challenges of water management on the Treasure Coast, officials on Wednesday
agreed to initiate the seventh round of freshwater discharges from Lake
Okeechobee to the St. Lucie Estuary this year. Much to the dismay of local
river advocates -- who last week greeted the end of the wet season and poor
water quality in local waterways -- water managers said the releases are
necessary to stave off rising lake levels in the face of a wetter- than-normal
dry season. "We got a lot of rain over the past couple days. We're
beginning to see the effects of El Nino," said Chris Smith, chief of the
Army Corps of Engineers' water management division in Jacksonville. "This
is the time of year you want the lake to be going down, and we're trying to
bring it down." Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
Bush Proposes Change to Allow More Thinning of Forests
Casting the threat of wildfires next year as an
emergency, the Bush administration today proposed rule changes that it said
would speed up environmental reviews to allow the thinning of forests, intended
to reduce the buildup of dense stands of trees and dry tinder on millions of
acres across the country. While the proposal was short on details, it did suggest that thinning
projects could be undertaken without environmental impact statements and
assessments if they were, in the judgment of the Forest Service, unlikely to
affect the environment. This possibility alarmed some environmental organizations, which said that
thinning was still considered risky and that bypassing environmental reviews was
like issuing a blank check to the timber industry to let it log under the guise
of protecting the forest. Moreover, they said, by proposing these changes
administratively instead of legislatively, the president avoids contentious
public debate in Congress.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
$100 Million Deal Proposed for Central Valley Farmers
The United States Bureau of Reclamation has agreed
to pay more than $100 million to landowners in the Central Valley to stop
farming about 34,000 acres because of severe water drainage problems. Federal officials said it would be the largest buyout of farmland in the
bureau's 100-year history and, some Central Valley water officials hope, could
lead to a much bigger land retirement in the coming years totaling as much as
200,000 acres of farmland. The proposed payment is part of a settlement of a 15-year-old legal battle
over agricultural drainage issues that will be submitted for approval Thursday
to a federal judge in Fresno, Calif. The judge, United States District Court
Judge Oliver W. Wanger, is expected to take comments from the public before
deciding whether to approve the deal. Though all the details of the
proposed settlement have not been made public, some environmental groups and
members of Congress have already expressed concern about it.
Copyright © 2002
NY Times online
All rights reserved.
UM to Announce Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy
In response to the unprecedented environmental
challenges and opportunities we now face, the University of Miami is creating
the new interdisciplinary Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. The goal of
the new Center is to educate the next generation of environmental scientists,
policy-makers, managers and planners, with a grounding in the basics of the
natural sciences, social science and public policy. The center will be the nexus
for a new and flexible undergraduate program, which will allow students to
explore both environmental science and policy in the context of problem-oriented
learning and with the opportunity for substantial field experience. The Center
will also bring faculty from various schools and departments in the University
together with external scientists, policy-makers, and planners to facilitate
research on environmental problems involving both science and policy
dimensions. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002
University of Miami. All rights reserved.
11-December-02
Oil industry technology said to clean phosphorus runoff
A coalition of companies known for their work
in removing oil from water has unveiled a clay-based
filtration system that
it claims will remove all phosphorus from Wellington's Everglades runoff.
Officials of Aqua Technologies Inc., which produces the
special clay called ET-1 Activated, and major
partners PSI Engineering, Consulting
and Testing and Project Integration, Inc., on Wednesday
released lab tests
from a two-week pilot water treatment project showing that levels of
phosphorus were undetectable.
"We didn't know the results were going to be this
good," said ATI marketing vice
president Anthony Brown II, standing beside a flatbed
trailer-mounted water treatment system next to
Wellington Pump Station 2, a
stone's throw from the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge.
Studies used to justify freshwater level
HOBE SOUND Water
management scientists on Tuesday said they support the proposed minimum level of
fresh water flowing to the Loxahatchee River, even as vocal river advocates
remained unconvinced the plan would save the waterway. Scientists and
planners with the South Florida Water Management District met with Martin County
residents at the Hobe Sound Nature Center to explain the studies behind a staff
recommendation to have a minimum flow of 35 cubic feet a second or 262 gallons a
second. The state is required to find a level at which the amount of fresh
water flowing over the Lainhart Dam near Indiantown Road cannot drop below
without causing "significant harm" to the river's habitat. The
proposal does not address maximum amounts, water quality or any other water
management plan that would improve the health of the river in the future.
But controversy continued to haunt the plan Tuesday.
Copyright © 2002 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
Editorial: State must bend on coastal growth
The State of Florida giveth and it taketh away. It encourages
development and redevelopment along the coastal areas of our cities ... but
not too much. We need more clarity and flexibility from Tallahassee. In the early 1990s, Florida created a
program called
"Eastward, Ho." It was aimed at halting the westward creep of development into
environmentally sensitive areas. South Florida is the poster child for such
negative sprawl, and the Eastward Ho concept made sense. Many of our coastal communities were showing signs of aging.
Although there are few traditional "downtowns" in this region, the commercial centers
showed much promise for refurbishing, renovation and a
rededication to the kind of growth that would bring people east ... and keep them
there. That's why Jupiter's ambitious Jupiter Inlet Village and
Riverwalk projects deserve praise.
Copyright © 2002 Jupiter
Courier - TC Palm All rights reserved.
Jupiter Farms group to push for extension
About a dozen concerned residents and environmental activists
expressed their disagreement with South Florida Water Management District
rule development policy during a public workshop Monday in West Palm Beach.
"I just don't understand why we're sitting here three
days before the actual rule development," said Lisa Interlandi, senior
attorney for the West Palm Beach-based Environ-mental & Land Use Law Center.
"How can any input the public interjects be processed and included in this
report? I just don't think it's acceptable." Members of the Jupiter Farms Environmental Council, 1,000
Friends of Florida and most of the concerned residents attending the
workshop agreed with Interlandi's comments. The workshop, conducted by SFWMD in the Clayton Hutchinson
Building on Military Trail, was the third and final meeting where public
comment can be added to discussions on proposed amendments that will set minimum
freshwater flow levels on the Northwest Fork of the Loxahatchee River.
Copyright © 2002 Jupiter
Courier - TC Palm All rights reserved.
Water district's Loxahatchee outline given mixed reviews
A small group of environmental watchdogs put a
sizable group of water managers on the defensive Tuesday afternoon about the
latest plan to save the Loxahatchee River. The South Florida Water Management District came to the Hobe
Sound National Wildlife Refuge to talk about a proposal that will go before its
governing board on Thursday. A key part of it is the minimum water flow
needed to keep the river from dying of thirst. The district has determined that the river
needs 35 cubic feet
of water per second, which is the equivalent of 262 gallons per second, to
maintain health. But many in the group of 15 or so Martin County residents
didn't agree. "I've been listening to this debate for 10 years at least," said Marge
Ketter, who lives on the river in southern Martin County. "I
remember when the district was talking about 65.9 (cubic feet per second), and
now it seems like overnight we're down to 35. It's a
disappointment."
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 10, 2002
Final
workshop on Loxahatchee today
Group plans protest of Jupiter development
An environmental group plans to protest recently
approved plans for Jupiter Isles saying the proposed 424 luxury homes would be
built too close to Jonathan Dickinson State Park. Even though developer Wally Schickendanz agreed
to increase a
town-required 25-foot buffer more than sixfold to separate the 150-acre
development from the park, a community planner for 1000 Friends of Florida said
the wider 155- to 180-foot-wide buffer still doesn't provide enough protection.
Joanne Davis, a planner for the environmental watchdog group,
said she will meet with Councilwoman Kathleen Kozinski to request major changes
to the project the council approved last week. While Schickendanz agreed to widen the buffer on the western
edge of the project north of Indiantown Road and east of Interstate 95, Davis said it
will consist mostly of a large lake that won't provide shelter
for wildlife.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
County OKs road through preserve
Despite protests from environmentalists and
angry landowners, county commissioners directed engineers to pursue cutting a road through protected land from Okeechobee Boulevard north to
the Acreage. A public hearing Tuesday drew about 50 people, most opposed to
the 3.5-mile route that county officials chose to ease traffic on Okeechobee.
The plan also earned some support from several residents and Royal Palm
Beach officials. The road would pick up where State Road 7 now ends at
Okeechobee, then curve west, cutting across a southern portion of the 1,500-acre
Pond Cypress Natural Area. From there it would turn north, skirting
the western edge of the preserve and connecting with Persimmon Boulevard in
The Acreage. Officials said it would not pass within 300 feet of
homes, and would be shielded by a landscaping buffer. The $12 million road is intended to relieve Okeechobee's daily
commuter crunch.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 10, 2002
Editorial:
No road in preserve
Editorial: To speed Everglades plan, buy rock pits for water
Looked at one way, the proposal to buy 900 acres of rock pits
in western Palm Beach County would reward a company that has not been a good corporate citizen. Looked at another way, the deal would help
the state to complete the most important public works project in this region's history. The South Florida Water Management District board
should take the second view. To carry out the $8.4 billion Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Project, Florida needs to buy about 300,000 acres in the southeast
part of the state. The land will store water now lost to runoff, providing
new, 50-year supplies for the environment and population growth. To get that
land, the district must deal with owners who know that when negotiating
with the state, they are in a seller's market. That's the case with Palm Beach Aggregates, which has been
mining limestone rock for road construction.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
STATE OF FLORIDA EMERGENCY LISTS MIAMI BLUE (a butterfly) AS
AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
Responding swiftly and surely to a petition filed by the North
American Butterfly Association (NABA), the State of Florida today declared
the Miami Blue (Hemiargus thomasi), a small but brilliantly colored
butterfly, to be an endangered species. We are extremely pleased and
gratified that the State of Florida, under the direction of Governor Jeb Bush, has
chosen to work with NABA, and its eight Florida chapters, and that it has
embraced an environmentally responsible program to protect Florida’s
wildlife, including its butterflies. We believe that this is the
first time that the State of Florida has used the emergency listing process and the
first time that the State of Florida has listed a butterfly as endangered in
advance of federal listing. Miami Blues were once common throughout southern Florida and
the Keys, but declined precipitously in the 1980s. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002
North American
Butterfly Association (NABA) All rights reserved.
Related Article,
November 12, 2002
Tiny,
nearly extinct butterfly caught in web of controversy
December 12, 2002
Endangered
butterfly gets instant protection
December 12, 2002
New
status gives Miami Blue butterfly a safety net
California Vote Threatens Deal on Colorado River
A two-year-old plan to end fighting among seven
Western states over water from the Colorado River appeared near collapse today
after a rural irrigation district in Southern California refused to sell water
to nearby San Diego County. Officials from the Imperial Irrigation District voted Monday night to reject
an important provision of the plan, which required the agricultural district to
transfer a small portion of its allotment from the Colorado River to the San
Diego County Water Authority, one of state's biggest urban water users, for 75
years. The district's board, by a 3 to 2 vote, determined the sale would be too
risky for farmers in the Imperial Valley, a desert land that has been irrigated
for 100 years with Colorado River water. Some board members said they feared
that if farmland were put out of production to free up water for city users, the
spigot might never be turned off.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Letter: British Columbia's Owl
To the Editor:
Your Dec. 4 Grouse Mountain Journal, about the spotted owl in British
Columbia, suggests that species-at-risk conservation takes a back seat to
logging in British Columbia. British Columbia is concerned about the spotted owl and its delicate
situation. As responsible stewards of the forests, we're assessing potential
actions for species preservation. The provincial government, forest companies and other stakeholders are
working together to identify means of addressing management and recovery of the
spotted owl in British Columbia. Habitat decisions are made with the best available understanding of
scientific and socioeconomic factors affecting species sustainability, not with
lumber interests solely in mind. There is more old-growth forest in British Columbia now than 100 years ago,
amounting to 62 million acres.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 4, 2002
On This Chick's Future, a Species Could Depend
10-December-02
UNDERWATER CABLES DESTROYING BROWARD COUNTY REEFS
Governor Bush Set to Approve More Cable Corridors This Week
Cable lines strung across Florida’s southern
coast are severely damaging coral reefs, according to a report released today by
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
The report, written by an international review panel, details how fiber
optic cables, used to connect central and Latin American phone and internet
service with state residents, destroy the brittle reef structures as they swing
back and forth underwater. This
Wednesday, December 11, the State of Florida is slated to enact a plan that
would increase the number of cables crossing reef structures. Conducted
during the summer of 2002, the new study is the first research documenting how
fiber optic cables continue to damage reef structures long after their initial
installation. Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002
Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility (PEER) All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 12, 2002
Comments
on Corridors for Fiber Optic Cables
December 12, 2002
State
makes waves over undersea cables
Final workshop on Loxahatchee today
HOBE SOUND Water managers will conduct a final workshop and
the only one in Martin County on the future of the Loxahatchee River. At 4 p.m. today at the Hobe Sound Nature Center on U.S. 1 just
south of Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Martin County residents will have
a chance to learn about and give their opinions on the minimum amount of
water to flow into the river. Scientists with the South Florida Water Management District
Monday conducted an all-day workshop on the issue in West Palm Beach to
listen to activists who say the minimum amount of water proposed is too low.
The district is proposing that the minimum amount of water
legally allowed to flow to the river be 35 cubic feet per second or 262 gallons
per second.
Copyright © 2002
Stuart News - TC
Palm All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 11, 2002
Water
district's Loxahatchee outline given mixed reviews
Editorial: No road in preserve
In 1994, Palm Beach County used $14 million in voter-approved
conservation bonds to buy the 1,500-acre Pond Cypress Natural Area in the
west-central part of the county. Commissioners now are threatening to run a
road through it. That would be a horrible precedent. The road would help get residents of The Acreage and Royal
Palm Beach out of a mess that the county created by what passes for
"planning" in name only. Couple exploding growth in The Acreage and nearby areas
with complete lack of transportation foresight, and the result is a horde of
people trapped in competition to commute on dismally inadequate roads. Today's public hearing will examine what supposedly is the
best in a batch of bad solutions. It would create a new road linking The Acreage
to Okeechobee Boulevard and State Road 7.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 11, 2002
County OKs road through preserve
Black bears' hair barely there
'Like a large, bald rat.'
(FLORIDA FISH AND WILDLIFE
CONSERVATION COMMISSION)
Perhaps now we finally know why Fuzzy
Wuzzy had no hair. Folks in Lynne, a little Marion County community in the
Ocala
National Forest, sure do: He's got the mange. More than half of the black bears that live in the forest
around Lynne are suffering from a unique type of mange that causes their hair to
fall out. It is the only area in the country where biologists say they have
seen a relatively large number of bears with the affliction. "They look like a large, bald
rat," said Mark
Cunningham, veterinarian with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "I
show pictures to people who don't even recognize they are bears." Cunningham said the mange -- a type of bear-pattern baldness
similar to the mange dogs get -- is linked to tiny mites that attack the bears'
skin. Most bears can have some mites, but the Lynne bears seem to have far
more than their share.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
New UM Facility for
Satellite Data Reception and Analysis
The Center for Southeastern Tropical
Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) is the University of Miami's newest facility
conducting research with remotely sensed data received from earth-orbiting
satellite systems. CSTARS, part of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and
Atmospheric Science, is located at a new campus near Richmond Heights in
southern Miami-Dade County. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002 University of Miami. All rights reserved.
Related Link,
Research Notes - October 2002*
* pdf file (must have Acrobat Reader to open)
Letter: For a Good Energy Bill
To the Editor:
Bob Kerrey ("Keeping Momentum on the Energy Bill," Op-Ed, Dec. 3)
paints the energy legislation that emerged at the end of the last Congress as a
reasonable compromise that would benefit the environment and consumers. In fact,
the measure would do virtually nothing for the environment while repealing
important consumer protections. It's no secret that energy executives enjoy a cozy relationship with the Bush
administration, whose energy policy served as the basis for recent energy bills
in both the House and the Senate. But Americans deserve policies that promote safe, clean and affordable
energy, not policies that are a grab bag of pricey giveaways to corporate
polluters. The measure Mr. Kerrey praises rightly died as Congress
adjourned.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 3, 2002
Op-Ed:
Keeping Momentum on the Energy Bill
Judge Says Cheney Needn't Give Data on Energy Policy to G.A.O.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Representative Henry A.
Waxman after
the adverse ruling.
Vice President Dick Cheney won a major victory today
when a federal district judge here threw out a suit, brought by the head of the
General Accounting Office, to require him to release records of the Bush
administration's energy task force, which Mr. Cheney led. Though the ruling made no fundamental pronouncement on
the
separation-of-powers issues that Mr. Cheney had insisted were at the heart of
the case, it served as a judicial validation for an administration that has come
under criticism as excessively secretive. The judge, John D. Bates, observed that no court had ever ordered a president
or a vice president to produce information for Congress, which the General
Accounting Office serves as an investigative and auditing arm.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Op-Ed: The Land That War Protected
The demilitarized zone, a ribbon of land running 155 miles across the entire
Korean peninsula, was established in 1953 to separate the two Koreas and
diminish hostile confrontation between them. During the half century following the Korean War, a new kind of peace has
descended on the fallow land: its forests and other wild habitats have rebounded
luxuriantly, and with them an abundance of wildlife. Rare and endangered animal
and plant species, including leopards and possibly tigers, have increased in
population. In addition, the demilitarized zone now offers a secure refuge for
endangered migratory birds, most notably white-naped and red-crowned cranes and
the black-faced spoonbill. Thus the conflict's unforeseen legacy includes the
peninsula's largest and best nature preserve. Fenced off, guarded and mined,
nearly the entire zone was until recently a place where no human had set foot
since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Letters: Seeking Effective Policy
To the Editor:
Re "A Conversation With David Ropeik," Dec. 3: Mr. Ropeik describes
the work of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis as a "rational,
cost-benefit" approach to environmental and health policy making. But effective policy involves more than a simple risk-benefit equation. It's
a struggle over values and over who decides society's winners and losers in food
safety and agriculture, consumer choice, environmental protection, public and
occupational health, and global trade. It's a war waged over government oversight that's unduly reliant on industry
research favoring corporations and undermining public trust. Fix the reality behind those regulatory problems and thereby change the
perception held by most soccer moms that government favors corporate profits
over children's health.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 3, 2002
The
Fear Factor Meets Its Match
A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID ROPEIK
Letters: Debating Global Warming
To the Editor:
When people admire the undulating meadow behind my house, I tell them the beauty
results from global warming. Thousands of years ago, large areas of North
America were covered with a great ice sheet. When the earth warmed and the
glaciers retreated, they left behind many things, including the moraine on which
I built my house. My question: How much carbon dioxide got trapped in the atmosphere as a
result of fossil fuels burned at the end of the ice age 20,000 years ago and
what part did greenhouse gases play in the warming of earth when the glaciers
moved north?
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 3, 2002
Can
Global Warming Be Studied Too Much?
Into The Fifth Decade: The First Forty Years of the
South Florida Water Management District 1949 - 1989
FORWARD
Thomas E. Huser joined the Central and Southern Flood Control
District in 1961. He has served as Assistant Secretary to the District's
Governing Board since 1970. Prior to that, he coordinated the agency's
public information programs. This document chronicles his personal
recollections as the official record-keeper of Governing Board appointments and
actions, with special emphasis on the agency's formative years and the
transitional period from flood control to water management. The entire report is available
online.
Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 USGS
- South Florida Information Access (SOFIA) All rights reserved.
Related Links,
These are other earlier materials that are now available online:
http://sofia.usgs.gov/tmorris/reports_completedposted.html
http://sofia.usgs.gov/tmorris/reports_inprogress.html
09-December-02
Number of fish in lake increasing
Coalition receives update on Lake Okeechobee
The annual meeting of the County Coalition for Responsible
Management of Lake Okeechobee and St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Estuaries was held Dec. 9 at the Okeechobee Civic
Center. In addition to the commissioners who comprise the coalition
board, the other county commissioners from the eight participating counties were
invited. Those counties are Okeechobee, St. Lucie, Martin,
Lee, Palm Beach, Hendry, Glades and Highlands. Each commissioner gave a brief report on what they are doing
environmentally within their counties. Don Fox, fisheries biologist with the Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission, then gave a presentation on the fisheries condition
in Lake Okeechobee. He said the drought had uncovered seed banks
not exposed for 30 years and they are now producing again.
Copyright © 2002 News
Zap - Okeechobee News All rights reserved.
EPA overestimates number of polluted sites in Florida
A Web site that the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency created to provide information on companies' cleanup
records has overestimated the number of polluted sites in Florida, state
officials said. Enforcement and Compliance History Online, or ECHO, lists 117
"major" facilities in Florida as being in violation of federal pollution
laws governing water, air and hazardous waste. That's not correct, according to Florida Department of
Environmental Protection officials, who say 100 of those cases already have
been remedied, or are now getting state action. The EPA itself is
directing the remaining 17 Florida environmental compliance investigations,
state officials said. "Providing the public with the most up-to-date and
accurate compliance information is essential," DEP Secretary David Struhs said.
"Reporting faulty or unverified information has the potential to mislead the
public and cause erroneous charges to be made against facilities."
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
River's fate is in state's hands
Under a leafy ceiling, the shaded water flows peacefully,
drawing along flotillas of canoes. But, recently, the sedate and usually low-profile Loxahatchee
River's northwest fork has been thrust into a controversy that could help
shape its future. Spurring public attention is a confluence of events: a
proposed water board rule setting a minimum flow through the waterway, a government
effort to purchase river-nurturing wetlands and open space, promises to
restore the river to its older self, and developers' dreams to put schools,
homes and golf courses nearby. "It's very much in contrast to the way it was
before," said Patrick Hayes, of the Loxahatchee River Coalition. "A year and a half ago,
nobody was talking about the river." Eric Bailey, who sends groups of rented canoes floating down
the northwest fork -- the stretch from Jupiter to south Martin County that hearkens most
to long-ago Florida -- also sees a public shift in attitude about
the river.
Copyright © 2002 Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Grand Soviet Scheme for Sharing Water in Central Asia Is Foundering
James Hill for The New York Times
A Kyrgyz looks out at the Narin River,
which passes through five hydroelectric
plants before they become the Syr River
downstream.
Forty years ago, when Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet
Union, the Kremlin ordained a colossal task: to turn this heat-puckered land and
four of its neighbors, a swath of desert and scrub as big as Western Europe,
into an irrigated cotton plantation. Improbably, it succeeded. From the mountainous Chinese border to the Caspian Sea, the Soviet Union
remade the two grand rivers of Central Asia, building 20,000 miles of canals, 45
dams and more than 80 reservoirs. The government turned sand and dust into one
of the world's great cotton-growing regions. But the Soviet Union is long dead. And here in western Uzbekistan and in
areas of its four neighbors, one of socialism's most grandiose schemes is being
sundered by capitalism, nationalism and a legacy of waste.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Editorial: Rollback on Forest Law
The Bush administration's anti-environmental agenda has been gathering steam
since the November elections. First it weakened rules governing industrial air
pollution. Then it proposed a major revision in the rules governing management
of the national forests. The revision could undermine protections for fish and
wildlife. The administration provided the same benign rationale for the forest rules as
it did for the air pollution rules. Existing regulations, it said, had become
too prescriptive, too costly and too cumbersome. But in the name of regulatory
efficiency, the administration would also eliminate mandatory environmental
reviews. The only obvious beneficiary would be the timber interests and others
who use the forests for commercial purposes. As such, the rules depart
from both the spirit and the letter of a bedrock environmental law, the
1976 National Forest Management Act.
Copyright ©
2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
08-December-02
'Enrichment of the human spirit'
An excerpt of the text of President's Truman address
dedicating Everglades National Park: Not often in these demanding days are we able to lay aside the
problems of the times, and turn to a project whose great value lies in the
enrichment of the human spirit. Today we make the achievement of another
great conservation victory. We have permanently safeguarded an irreplaceable primitive area. We have assembled to dedicate to the use of all
the people of all time, the Everglades National Park. Here in Everglades City, we can savor the atmosphere of this
beautiful tropical area. Southeast of us lies the coast of the Everglades
Park, cut by islands and estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico. Here are deep
rivers, giant groves of colorful mangrove trees, prairie marshes and
innumerable lakes and streams. In this park we shall preserve tarpon, trout and pompano,
bear, deer and crocodiles -- and rare birds of great beauty.
Copyright © 2002 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 8, 2002
On a Saturday in the swamp: history
On a Saturday in the swamp: history
Written in December 1947
The President of the mightest nation on earth stood on a
palmetto-thatched platform in the Everglades Saturday and told 10,000 of his fellow
citizens: 'Here we can truly understand what the Israelitish Psalmist
meant when he sang: 'He maketh me lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me
beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul.' " For a second, the 10,000 were as
silent as the great swamp
around them. Then their applause thundered. The band played, and a soprano
voice sang: "Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light . . .
" The words soared into the war December air, bringing no echo
from the pale green water in the background, the dark green mangroves beyond
that or the flat marsh that is the southernmost tip of the United States
mainland. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002
Miami Herald
All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 8, 2002
'Enrichment
of the Human Spirit'
Book Review: Warmth, Power, Blood and Smoke
This summer, Americans were moved by the bravery of nine men trapped in a watery
coal mine and the rescuers who finally freed them. Their ordeal was a fresh
reminder of the price that some people pay for our collective dependence on
coal. A new book, "Coal: A Human History" (Perseus Publishing; $25), due
in stores next month, aims to further raise awareness of this dependence. The book looks at how coal transformed England and then the United States
into an industrial superpower and how coal is reshaping developing giants like
China. "The industrial age emerged literally in a haze of coal smoke,"
writes the author, Barbara Freese, "and in that smoke we can read much of
the history of the modern world." The author has clearly culled many diverse historical sources and is able to
draw intriguing links in disparate historical events. For instance, she argues
that Henry VIII indirectly assisted England's nascent coal industry in the
mid-1500's.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Growing Poverty Is Shrinking Mexico's Rain Forest
Lynsey Addario/Corbis Saba, for The
New York Times
Luis Daniel Lopez Perez on the shores
of Laguna Miramar, in the Montes Azules
Biosphere Reserve.
Manuel López Gómez is watching the green
world around him disappear, ravaged by people whose only path from starvation
lies in slashing and burning the jungle to plant a patch of corn. "We are out of balance here," said Mr. López, 60, a local farmer
turned conservationist. "We are trying to stop the destruction. If nothing
changes, all the land around here will be destroyed." Five miles up a muddy trail from Emiliano Zapata, in southeastern Chiapas
State, is Mexico's largest unpolluted lake, Laguna Miramar, and beyond that
stands the last rain forest in Mexico. But today almost half a million poor
people, speaking six different languages, live in that dying forest. For some
here in Chiapas, the issue is turning from saving the trees to saving the
people. A century of government reaching into this most remote corner of Mexico has
left most citizens with next to nothing.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
How Green Is BP?
A B P oil facility in Prudhoe Bay. The
company
was fined $7 million in 1999
for violations involving the dumping of
hazardous
waste in northern Alaska.
Last March, Lord John Browne, the group chief executive of the British oil
giant BP, gave a speech at Stanford University. Had you stumbled into the
auditorium partway through, you might be forgiven for assuming the man at the
podium was not an oil baron, an industrialist, an extractor of fossil fuels from
the tender earth but an environmentalist of the high church calling for the
abolition of hydrocarbons, the very substance that had made his company and
himself so fabulously rich. His subject was global climate change -- in
particular, the process by which humans, by burning oil and gas, have been
slowly, perhaps irreversibly, warming the earth's atmosphere. And instead of
hewing to the line of industry, instead of calling (as President Bush and the
head of
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Interview: The Outsider
QUESTIONS FOR ROBERT
REDFORD
Catherine Ledner for
The New York Times
Robert Redford.
Q: Last month the Vote Solar Initiative, an organization
you're involved with that promotes renewable energy, celebrated the dedication
of one of the country's largest solar installations in San Francisco. What's the
importance of an effort like this right now?
From the moment Bush stepped into office, he's been leading a sly and
extremely disciplined campaign to destroy, dismantle, unravel, undo 30 years of
environmental-regulations development. I know because for the last 30 years I've
been a part of the organizations and activists fighting tooth and nail for those
regulations. The current assault on environmental policy is unspeakably
disturbing and shortsighted, and we're going to be paying for it.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Arctic Ice Is Melting at Record Level, Scientists Say
The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean
sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades, scientists reported
today. This year's summertime melt, which provides more evidence of recent quick
warming in the Arctic, is in part driven by natural climate oscillations, the
researchers said. But they added that human-driven changes to the environment
like the destruction of ozone and the emission of carbon dioxide could well have
accelerated and enlarged the effect. In September, the end of summer, ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean dipped to
two million square miles before it started to grow again. Since 1978, when
direct satellite measurements of sea ice started, the average summertime minimum
has been 2.4 million square miles. Of the sea ice that survived, most was
thinner than usual.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Lynxes to Be Released Into the Wild in Colorado
About 180 Canada lynxes will be released in southwestern
Colorado in an effort to re-establish the threatened cat in the state. The Colorado Wildlife Commission recently approved plans to release 50 lynxes
a year for three years and up to 30 after that if the number needs to be
increased. Wildlife officials hope the lynx, a long-haired, reclusive cat, will
reproduce in self-sustaining numbers to firmly re-establish it in Colorado's
rugged southwestern mountains, which has not happened since recovery efforts
began in 1999. "We're definitely at a crossroads," Rick Kahn, a biologist with the
Colorado Division of Wildlife, said on Friday. The cats will be held in cages and fattened until April, when more prey will
be out. State biologists have argued that more lynxes should be released to reach the
numbers they say are needed for the cats to find each other and reproduce.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Use of Renewable Energy Took a Big Fall in 2001
Consumption of energy from renewable sources, like the
sun, the wind and biological fuels, fell sharply in 2001, the Department of
Energy has reported. The department attributed much of the decline to a drought that cut
generation of hydroelectric power by 23 percent. Such variations are natural.
But in a report last month, the department's Energy Information Administration
also said solar equipment was being retired faster than new equipment was being
built. "Back in the late 70's and early 80's, we had very, very large support
programs," said Fred Mayes, who handles data on renewable energy at the
energy information agency. Those programs, begun after the loss of oil from Iran pushed the price to
almost $40 a barrel, expired in the 1980's, and "things went into the
tank," Mr. Mayes said. Equipment from the boom years is wearing out, and
the base of installed equipment is shrinking, he said.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
07-December-02
River watchers give managers much praise
Stuart Members of the Rivers Coalition on Friday agreed water
managers did a good job controlling the level of Lake Okeechobee during the
rainy season, despite the damaging effects to the St. Lucie River. "This year was a good example of
them trying to manage
the lake better," said Paul Gray, a member of the coalition and Audubon of Florida.
"If they managed it like they did three years ago, the lake would have
gone up 17 feet." After an especially rainy June and July dumped more than
18
inches on Martin County, Army Corps of Engineers officials authorized six
10-day releases of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee down the St. Lucie
Canal and out to the river. In water quality tests, the St. Lucie Estuary often failed
criteria for turbidity, salinity and dissolved oxygen. Local scientists
feared the oyster population, which is considered an indicator species for
the health of the estuary, was dying.
Copyright © 2002 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
A Bad Energy Bill
To the Editor:
Re "Keeping Momentum on the Energy Bill," by Bob Kerrey (Op-Ed,
Dec. 3):
The California Public Interest Research Group disagrees with Mr. Kerrey's
conclusion that Congress should shed a few of the controversial provisions in
this year's energy bill and pick up where it left off. Even without the Arctic drilling provisions, the bill would have been a
wildly generous gift for the energy industry. The very modest clean energy
provisions in the bill do not outweigh the outrageous taxpayer subsidies for the
fossil fuel and nuclear industry. What's worse, the bill would repeal key
consumer protections against an industry making headlines for corporate
abuses. America needs a sound energy policy that recognizes the economic,
environmental and energy security benefits of renewable energy sources.
Copyright ©
2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 3, 2002
Op-Ed: Keeping Momentum on the Energy Bill
E.P.A. Is Sued Over Emissions Classification
Three environmental groups have gone to court in an effort to force the Bush
administration to declare that auto emissions contribute to global warming.
In a lawsuit filed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Washington, the
groups said the Environmental Protection Agency unlawfully failed to respond to
their 1999 petition seeking restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and
other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Agency officials said yesterday
that they could not comment on the suit because they had not yet reviewed it.
The groups said their suit was intended partly to force the government to
curtail auto emissions and partly to clear the way for states to take action on
their own. California has a law restricting tailpipe emissions, and other states
are considering such measures, but experts on climate policy say the laws cannot
take effect unless the E.P.A. establishes that the gases are pollutants.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Everglades project foe gets key post
The only senator to vote against the Everglades restoration
project takes over next month as chairman of the committee responsible for the
River of Grass. And that has environmentalists alarmed. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who will head
the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee, refused to grant interviews until he has met
with committee members. But in September, he explained his vote
thusly: "I did not vote against the Everglades legislation because I hate the
Everglades or the environment. Rather, I think it is anti-environmental to
waste precious resources on unproven plans." Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who serves on the committee and
launched the Save Our Everglades program while governor two decades ago, said he is
concerned that "Sen. Inhofe has indicated that he needs some further persuasion,"
regarding the merits of Everglades restoration.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
06-December-02
Everglades National Park: 50 Years, 1947 - 1997
Past and Present
All Photos and History Provided by Cesar A.
Becerra, South Florida Historian and President of Echoes of
South Florida.
- President Truman arrives in Everglades City
for The Everglades National Park's Dedication
Ceremony
- President Truman gives Park Dedication Address
Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003 Evergladesonline All
rights reserved.
Related Links,
http://www.evergladesonline.com/50years/photo.htmTour of the Everglades
http://www.naplesnews.com/special/everglades/Also, On December 6, 1884: Army engineers completed construction of the
Washington Monument - www.nps.gov/wamo/
South Florida's Watery Wilderness Park Nears 50
Royal Palm State Park
"Here are no lofty peaks seeking the sky, no
mighty glaciers or rushing streams wearing
away the uplifted land. Here
is land tranquil in its quiet beauty, serving not as the source of
water but as the last receiver of it. To its natural
abundance we owe, the spectacular plant
and animal life that
distinguishes this place from all others in our country."
With these words, President Harry S Truman formally dedicated
Everglades National Park on December 6, 1947 in a ceremony held at
Everglades City. This event culminated years of effort by a dedicated group of, conservationists to make a national park in the Florida
Everglades a reality. The early movement to protect a segment of the Everglades
coincided with the settlement and growth of South Florida, as people began to
recognize the uniqueness of the watery wilderness. Read
More...
Copyright © 2002
NPS All rights reserved.
Related Links,
Everglades National Park
http://www.nps.gov/ever/History
http://www.nps.gov/ever/eco/history.htmEstablishment
http://www.nps.gov/ever/eco/nordeen.htm
A swamp park is born
Photo: The Fort Myers High School band as
they appeared in 'The Caloosahatchian,' the
school's 1948 yearbook.
The band had the
honor of playing to open the dedication
ceremonies
for the new Everglades National
Park.
At 2 p.m. on this day, exactly 50 years ago, the Fort Myers
High School Band was in Everglades City, playing the lilting tunes of
"The Swannee River" to open the dedication ceremony of the new Everglades
National Park. The celebration was 46 years in the making. The Everglades'
national park status represented the culmination of conservation efforts that
had begun when the Audubon Society discovered its spectacular flora and
fauna in 1901. Gathered to recognize the milestone were the highest officials
from the state: Sens. Claude Pepper and Spessard Holland and Gov. Millard
Caldwell, plus U.S. Interior Secretary Julius Krug and President Harry
Truman. "Today we make the achievement of another great
conservation victory. We have permanently safeguarded an irreplaceable primitive
area," Truman said in a speech.
Copyright © 2003 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Bush's Plan on Warming Needs Work and Money, Experts Say
The Bush administration's proposed four-year plan to
study global warming is unlikely to clear up uncertainties — and thus unlikely
to lead to shifts in policy — without significant changes and new money, a
variety of climate experts said today. Their comments came at the end of a three-day meeting organized by the
administration and attended by more than 1,200 scientists, economists, officials
and lobbyists from the energy industry and environmental groups. A final version
of the administration's plan will be released in the spring, the administration
said. The meeting was intended to provide a public forum for dissecting the
170-page draft plan, issued in November, outlining a host of new climate
questions that the administration wants answered.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Stand of mangroves mowed down
The trees are reduced to a few inches during
an effort to clean up a swath of land.
[Times photo: Bill Serne]
The mangroves were cut down behind
three
homes in Long Bayou Estates, a
subdivision off Park Boulevard in Seminole.
Officials are investigating to decide whether
fines
should be imposed.
Bob Burguieres couldn't believe his eyes Saturday
as he stood on the second green at the Seminole Lake Country Club. Near a lot on the golf course where he plans to build his
dream home, a front-end loader was plowing down mangroves. "I was shocked," he said Thursday.
He quickly called his wife from his cell phone and told her do
do something. Debbie Burguieres called the Sheriff's Office, then
the city, but it was too late. Hundreds of mangroves had been chopped to the
ground along a
coastal inlet on Long Bayou, and dirt had been dumped into the inlet. Now county officials are
investigating to see if anyone should
be fined for what they say is a violation of environmental rules.
Copyright © 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Cadet makes first visit to river project
First in a series
RIC LILJENBERG/News-Sun
Wiener Cadet,
Kissimmee Restoration Project
manger for the U.S. Corp of Army Engineers,
listens as Sally
Kennedy, South Florida Water
Management District Kissimmee
Restoration
Project
manager, points out a stretch of filled
channel and where water is
once again
flowing in the old river bed. Cadet and
Kennedy
share the
project's management responsibilities.
Civil engineer Wiener Cadet climbed aboard an
airboat Tuesday for a close view of acres of fresh wetlands restored
after U.S. Corps of Army Engineers workers filled in miles of the C-38 channel.
More than 50 miles of nearly straight channel replaced more
than 100 miles of the old meandering river that Native Americans called
Kissimmee - "the river of long water." As the Corps' Kissimmee River Restoration Project Manager
Kimberly Brooks-Hall moves on to her next assignment in the comprehensive
Everglades Restoration Plan, Cadet finished a Major Corps project in Ohio,
picked up the Corps' Engineer of Year Award, and made his first Kissimmee
visit as the Corps' new manager of Kissimmee restoration. In this
two-agency approach to managing the project, Kennedy briefed Cadet on
Tuesday.
Copyright © 2002 News-Sun
All rights reserved.
Related Links,
South Florida Water Management
Kissimmee River
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Kissimmee Project
Blueways land project top priority
The state designation allows more funds to buy
and preserve waterfront property along the Indian River
Lagoon.
State preservation officials on Thursday gave priority to a
project consisting of more than 26,000 acres of waterfront land stretching from Volusia to Martin
counties. Treasure Coast officials couldn't be happier. After putting the project known
as the Indian River Blueways
on hold for more than 10 years, land acquisition planners and restoration
experts in Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin counties said they were ready
to get back to work on negotiations and appraisals to buy the properties. By naming the project a priority, the state Acquisition and
Restoration Council of the Department of Environmental Protection committed
millions in funding to help restore and preserve the Indian River Lagoon,
said Troy Rice, the director of the National Estuary Program for the
lagoon.
Copyright © 2002 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
05-December-02
Commentary: The 'rights' of the few don't do right by manatees
Go figure this one: We give pigs constitutional protections in
Florida, but when it comes to the manatee, we start talking like we're about
to be overrun by Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks in this case wear polo shirts bearing the logo
of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Tuesday night, representatives of the commission held a
hearing in Tampa on proposed rules to protect manatees along the southwest coast,
where they are being killed at rates greater than anywhere else in the
state. The rules would affect the coast from Pasco County all the way to the
Keys. There's no doubt the rules are dramatic: They would cut back
on construction of boat docks, ramps and marinas. Egad! Waterfront
real estate development would be curtailed. Obviously, this is a doozy of a commie
plot. Tuesday night, boat and dock builders, marina operators,
fishing guides and waterfront homeowners came forward, one by one, to disagree with
the rules.
Copyright © 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Related Links,
U.S. Department of the Interior
Fish and Wildlife Service
Region 4: Hot Issues
Manatees: Proposed Manatee Protection Areas, News Releases, and
Federal Register publications
Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission
Bureau of Protected Species Management Manatee Program
Editorial: PASCO: Cypress Creek Needs To Be Protected
A perfect example of why some large development proposals must
be reviewed by different regulatory agencies can be found on what is now cow
pasture in Wesley Chapel. Cypress Creek Town Center, proposed along State Road 56
between S.R. 54 and Interstate 75, would be a 1.5 million-square-foot mall. In
addition, it would offer more than 400,000 square feet of office space, 200
dwelling units and 400 hotel rooms. The project certainly would be attractive to Pasco
residents
who do much shopping at malls in Hillsborough. But its construction and
operation also would impact Hillsborough residents and an important water source
- reasons it is considered a development of regional impact. Florida law defines a DRI as
"any development which, because
of its character, magnitude, or location, would have a substantial
effect upon the health, safety or welfare of citizens of more than one county."
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 4, 2002
State
Balks At Mall Plans
Seminole spending at issue
3 accused of embezzlement
A Broward federal jury Wednesday got an eye-opening reminder of the free-wheeling spending habits of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Tribal Council member David Cypress, testifying at a trial for three men accused of plundering $2.77 million in tribal revenue, described how he overspent his $5 million-a-year personal allocation from gambling profits by about $16 million each year over a 3 ½-year period, and did not keep track of how much he doled out. Much of that money went to the purchase of Lexuses, Cadillacs and other luxury cars for his daughters and other tribal members. Among the most expensive items on Cypress' list was $5.8 million paid to a company called Nationwide Landscaping over a three-and-a-half-year period. That amount paid for the landscaping to 32 homes on the Big Cypress reservation.
Copyright © 2002 Miami Herald All rights reserved.
Changes at Indian Agency
The Interior Department announced changes at the
Bureau of Indian Affairs today to help improve its management of tribal assets.
The shake-up is part of a comprehensive strategy for fixing problems that
have plagued the agency's management of royalties for oil, gas and grazing on
Indian lands. Neal McCaleb, assistant secretary for Indian affairs, announced the largely
bureaucratic changes. Mr. McCaleb said the department was also working on
standards for accounting for Indian money, with the complete strategy due by
Jan. 6.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
04-December-02
Foster and others talk about issues for next La. governor
Issues, not candidates, should be top priority
Gov. Foster at Monday
night forum
Candidates hoping to nab the open
governor's seat know Louisiana needs to improve education, roads
and economic growth. Voters should force the candidates to detail
their plans to fix those problems and hold the wannabe governors
accountable for them, a panel looking at next year's race said. Gov. Mike Foster, who is constitutionally barred from running
for a third consecutive term, said Monday that he has three main
questions for the candidates: How will you fix roads? How will you
get more funding for universities ? How will you fix the
coastline? "If they won't answer, I don't think we should pay any
attention to them," said Foster, one of a five-member panel
talking about what voters should look for in their next governor.
Copyright © 2003 Wbrz
All rights reserved.
On This Chick's Future, a Species Could Depend
Robert J. Galbraith for The New York
Times
Researchers — left to right, Ken
Macquisten, Ian Blackburn and Andrea
Worrall — hope the Grouse Mountain
refuge can help to save spotted owls.
After years of lawsuits and
protests and government efforts to give the spotted owl a forest refuge from
loggers, it has come down to this: a desperate experiment placing one baby bird
in a pen on the outskirts of Vancouver. The spotted owl — the same rare bird that a decade ago gave the American
environmental movement one of its greatest victories in saving an endangered
species and its forest habitat in the Pacific Northwest — is verging on
extinction in Canada. Even now in the United States, the spotted owl numbers only in the thousands.
In Canada, according to the most optimistic estimate, there are no more than 30
mating pairs left, all of them in this western province, after a steep drop in
their population. But many experts say there could be many fewer Canadian
spotted owls left, and that no more than a handful hatched this year.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 11, 2002
British
Columbia's Owl
Editorial: Dubious Beach Renourishment In Light Of Limited Access
The wealthy residents of Captiva Island have good cause to be
grateful to the federal government. It undertook a $10 million project to
renourish 6.5 miles of beaches in the exclusive Lee County community. Among the beneficiaries was South Seas
Resort, a gated retreat. Common taxpayers, who help foot the bill for the project, were
not so lucky. Public access to the beaches is limited, if not prohibited. The situation is, as the Sarasota Herald-Tribune found,
common. Millions of dollars are being spent on beach renourishment projects - yet the
citizens whose taxes pay for the work are mostly locked out. The government does have guidelines calling for public use,
but they are easy enough to get around. Communities often limit citizen access
to a small park or allow only a few parking places for nonresidents.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
State
Balks At Mall Plans
To protect wetlands and drinking water
supplies, developers might have to water down plans for the Tampa Bay area's
largest mall. The Cypress Creek Town Center - planned beside State Road 56
in Wesley Chapel - would destroy too many wetlands and pollute its namesake,
Cypress Creek, state regulators said. Disturbing about 100 acres of
wetlands to make room for parking lots, retention ponds and shops near Cypress
Creek could allow pollution to wash into the waterway, which receives special
protection under the state's Outstanding Florida Waters program.
"It's a primary tributary to the Hillsborough River, which is the drinking
water supplier for the city of Tampa,'' said Mikel Renner, senior planner for
the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 5, 2002
Editorial:
PASCO: Cypress Creek Needs To Be Protected
2 Water
Test Revision Triggers Litigation
Environmental regulators in Florida,
armed with controversial new state standards for determining whether water
bodies are polluted, are giving a clean bill of health to dozens of waterways
that are no cleaner today than they were six months ago. The only change
is the more industry-friendly scientific standards. Now, environmental
groups across Florida are going to federal court in hopes of forcing the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to take a position on whether the new methods
change the state's water quality standards, which would violate the federal
Clean Water Act. The lawsuit filed late Monday is environmentalists' latest maneuver
to derail what they consider a continuing effort by Florida regulators to delay
cleanup of some of the state's most polluted waters.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Obituaries: Ellen Straus, Dairy Farmer and Avid Environmentalist, 75, Dies
Ellen Straus, a passionate environmentalist and co-owner of the first organic
dairy farm west of the Mississippi River, died on Saturday at her home in
Marshall, Calif., north of San Francisco. She was 75. The cause was brain cancer, her family said.
A pioneer in the purchase of development rights from farmers to save the land
from being turned into tract housing and shopping malls, Ms. Straus was a
founder of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust in 1980. But she is probably best
known outside the Bay Area for the rich, thick milk produced on the family farm,
which her son Albert turned into high-quality cheese, yogurt and butter at the
Straus Family Creamery. Ellen Tirza Lotte Prins was born on Feb. 21, 1927, in Amsterdam. Her family
fled the country just ahead of the Nazi invasion in 1940. 
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Administration Suggests Faster Pace on Emission Worries
Facing criticism over the pace and focus of the
president's policy on global warming, Bush administration officials said today
that future scientific findings could speed consideration of more aggressive
actions to rein in emissions of heat-trapping gases. The possibility that that pace could quicken was conveyed by White House
officials on the first day of a three-day meeting convened by the administration
to devise a research plan for clarifying climate hazards and devising
technologies to end emissions of heat-trapping, or greenhouse, gases altogether.
"I fully expect there will be findings in the climate and technology
research initiatives that will affect policy before 2012," said Dr. John H.
Marburger III, the assistant to the president for science and technology.
"
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times, AP online All rights reserved.
Development of Methods to Manage Depredation and Nuisance Problems Caused by Vultures
Black vultures and turkey vultures have shown the capacity to
adapt readily to human activities. Black vultures, for example, damage vinyl,
plastic and other synthetic construction and insulation material.
Additionally, black vultures prey on newly born livestock and, in association with
turkey vultures, form roosts that not only are nuisances (e.g. they can
cause electric power outages) but also contribute to health and safety problems.
Vultures often forage at landfills which in turn are often
located near airports. In their daily flights to and from landfills to feed,
vultures constitute a major hazard to aircraft. According to the FAA
Wildlife Strike Database, since 1991 there have been 152 bird-aircraft strikes
involving vultures. Furthermore, because of the safety hazard they pose,
vultures are considered priority species by the U. S. Air Force.
Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 National
Wildlife Research Center All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 4, 2002
Getting Birds To Buzz Off
Related Links,
Getting Birds To Buzz Off
Photo by: ANDY JONES
Turkey vultures and black
vultures are roosting in
woods near
a Crystal River
waterfront neighborhood
and causing problems as
they gather on homes and
in yards there.
They emerge with the dawn, 5 pounds of black
feathers,
nasty hygiene and a costly, puzzling appetite for things rubber,
vinyl and plastic. As the sun warms a thick patch of trees next to the Crystal
River, they
crowd the top branches, soaking in the morning warmth. As the
branches
fill, the birds turn to rooftops, television antennas, boat tops
and masts. And that's where the trouble starts for residents of this
small subdivision
west of U.S. 19. Vultures by the hundreds leave their crowded rookery in the
mornings,
seeking sun to dry their feathers and waiting for the day's heat
to build
thermal elevators they use to soar over the landscape. If that were all they did, people like Melinda Hastings and
Harry Pierce
would probably have little complaint about the buzzards that
share their neighborhood.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 4, 2002
Development
of Methods to Manage Depredation and Nuisance Problems Caused by Vultures
03-December-02
List of
the organizations expected to file Amicus Briefs
The following is the current list of
the organizations who have requested permission to join the South Florida
Water Management District in their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court against
Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
The case involves the continued illegal dumping of polluted water into the
Everglades by the District. All of the following have filed Amicus Briefs
(more are expected): City of New York, National League of Cities, Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies,
National Association of Flood And Stormwater Management Agencies, Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies,
National Water Recourses Association, Western Coalition of Arid States, Western Urban Water Coalition,
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Lake Worth Drainage District,
Florida Association of Special Districts, Pacific Legal Foundation, Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association,
Florida Farm Bureau, American Farm Bureau Federation, Charles H. Bronson, and Florida Commissioner of
Agriculture. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003 Friends
of Everglades All rights reserved.
The Fear Factor Meets Its Match
Health: A
CONVERSATION WITH DAVID ROPEIK
In this world of new occupations, David Ropeik, a former
television reporter, is the director of risk communication at the Harvard Center
for Risk Analysis. As a professional "risk communicator" for a
research group, Mr. Ropeik writes essays, books and opinion articles about
reasons for people's fears, using the tools of statistics, psychology and
evolutionary biology. With terrorist alerts, threats of war with Iraq and outbreaks of West Nile
fever, Americans seem eager to hear someone who can explain why they are afraid
and, perhaps more important, whether their fears have reasonable grounds. Mr. Ropeik (pronounced roh-PEEK) writes essays on risk and reads them on
"Morning Edition," on National Public Radio.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 10, 2002
Letters:
Seeking Effective Policy
Op-Ed: Keeping Momentum on the Energy Bill
Following nearly a year of heated debate over polar bears, caribou and
S.U.V.'s, a divided Congress decided to put its energy bill on hold late
last month. It did so even after such politically charged issues as oil
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and increases in
automobile mileage standards were taken off the table. Now that
Republicans will control the new Congress, what will they do about energy,
and how will the Democrats respond? If Senator Pete V. Domenici, the Republican from New Mexico who will
take over as Energy Committee chairman, decides to load up a new energy
bill with these same contentious issues, the Democrats will resist, as
they did this year. But if he has the foresight to reintroduce the
compromise bill reached by the last Congress, Democrats should put their
objections aside and support it. Why?
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 7, 2002
A Bad Energy Bill
December 10, 2002
Letter:
For a Good Energy Bill
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
U.S. Microbics Inc
U.S. Microbics Field Trial Achieves 34% Increase in Sugar Cane
Production Proprietary Growing Program Could Increase Worldwide Sugar Cane
Production CARLSBAD, CA, Dec. 3 -/E-Wire/-- U.S. Microbics Inc.
(OTCBB:BUGS) announced today that Natura Agricultura, the Mexico operating
subsidiary of Bio-Con Microbes Inc., which specializes in agricultural
products and services, has completed a rigorous 18-month field trial of the
BioSystem Microbic Treatment. Achieving better than expected growth results, the field
trial showed a combined 34% increase in sugar cane yield and sugar cane content without the use of commercial fertilizer products.
The BioSystem Microbic Treatment consists of U.S.
Microbics'
proprietary blend of natural microbes, developed and tested over 30 years by
the late George M. Robinson, his daughter Mery C. Robinson, and Rene Palomares, the president of Natura Agricultura of
Culiacan, Mexico. Read
More...
A cancer in the Everglades
From a helicopter, the lime-green scourge looks like a vast,
leafy blanket, smothering willows, 60-foot tall hollies and everything else in
its path. "They're like boils," said Dan Thayer, the chief
weed-killer at the South Florida Water Management District, gazing down at the infected
islands in the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.
"It's gross." District board member Patrick Gleason adds his own medical
metaphor for one round island, where a once-proud crown of trees has collapsed in
the center. "It's like it's been eaten out by a cancer," he
said. The invader is Old World climbing fern, a once-obscure Asian
and African vine that has emerged as Florida's most threatening pest
plant. From the Kissimmee River valley to the mangrove fringes of
Everglades National Park, from the Space Coast to the Gulf of Mexico, the
fern is spreading over trees, shrubs, marshes and ditches with abandon,
migrating invisibly as the wind carries its tiny spores.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Manatees And Docks Get A Hearing
Boating interests and manatee advocates are expected to turn
out in force tonight when federal wildlife officials come to Tampa to hear
public comment on proposed rules that please neither side. Boaters, waterfront property owners, real estate agents
and
marine contractors hope to beat back a proposal that would impose a
five-year moratorium on building boat docks, ramps and marinas in areas the endangered marine mammals
frequent. The proposed regulations are part of an agreement with the Save the Manatee
Club and other groups to settle a lawsuit alleging the federal
government had failed to protect manatees. The rules would allow for new boat docks in three regions of
the state - the northwest, Atlantic coast and Upper St. Johns River. New docks would be prohibited in the southwest region, which
includes counties along the Gulf of Mexico from Tampa south to the Ten
Thousand Islands and inland counties like Glades and Hendry.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Industry Seeking Rewards From
G.O.P.-Led Congress
A few weeks ago, officials of the American Petroleum
Institute met in Denver to discuss their chief goal for the new Congress: an
energy bill that would open up public lands in the Rocky Mountain West to
further oil and gas exploration. At that meeting, the oil executives decided among other things to undertake a
multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to convince voters in five Western
states that new exploration in the Rockies would bolster their local economies
while inflicting minimal damage on the environment. The campaign is timed to
start early in the new year, just as Congress convenes with Republicans in
control of both houses and eager to take up an energy bill. Around the country, businesses and industries that donated millions of
dollars to elect Republicans are mapping out strategies to take advantage of the
party's sweep in Washington.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Can Global Warming Be Studied Too Much?
Reuters
Climate experts say
greenhouse gas
concentrations may cause coastal
damage as sea levels rise. Countries
like the Netherlands, above, are
particularly vulnerable.
On Tuesday, the Bush administration convenes a
three-day meeting here to set its new agenda for research on climate change. But
many climate experts who will attend say talking about more research will simply
delay decisions that need to be made now to avert serious harm from global
warming. President Bush has called for a decade of research before anything beyond
voluntary measures is used to stem tailpipe and smokestack emissions of
heat-trapping gases that scientists say are contributing to global warming.
"When you're speeding down the road in your car, if you've got to turn
around and go the other direction, the first thing is to slow down, then stop,
then turn," said David K. Garman, the assistant secretary of energy for
energy efficiency and renewable energy. But many climate experts say the perennial need for more study can no longer
justify further delays in emission cuts.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 10, 2002
Letters:
Debating Global Warming
02-December-02
Letter from LEAF to the Army Corps and South Florida Water management District
re "Comments
on Project Management Plan for ASR Regional Study"
Dear Mr. Kwiatkowski and Mr. Landers:
On behalf of LEAF, the undersigned individuals
and the members of each of the signatory organizations, following are comments
that should be addressed before final approval of the ASR Regional Study Project
Management Plan of Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
1. Representatives of the ASR components in the CERP including those at
public workshops discussing the ASR Regional Study Project Management Plan were
misleading, particularly with respect to the problems and limitations of
ASR. First, the proponents of ASR continue to make presentations greatly
oversimplifying critical components of the theories behind ASR. Read more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Legal
Environmental Assistance Foundation (LEAF) All rights reserved.
Related Link,
December 2, 2002
Letter from LEAF to the Army Corps and South Florida Water management District continued
*
* pdf file (must have Acrobat Reader to open)
Pro, con sides stake out sides about boardwalk plan for Tigertail Beach
Some Marco residents say a proposed boardwalk linking
Tigertail Beach to Gulf of Mexico waters could be just the thing to draw more tourists to
the Collier County beach. But Tigertail bird-watchers and nature-lovers say
it will wreak havoc on Tigertail's wild setting and the creatures that inhabit
it. Friends of Tigertail Beach is against the proposed boardwalk
that would connect the beach to Tigertail's Sand Dollar Island, which has
become a lagoon. The issue came up at a recent Marco Island Beach Advisory
committee meeting. Regina Reiley, vice president of Friends of Tigertail and a
member of the beach committee, said she has passed out a flier explaining the
importance of Sand Dollar Island and its Critical Wildlife Area designation,
which it received in 1987 as part of Big Marco Pass.
Copyright © 2002 Marco
News All rights reserved.
Ave Maria quick to spur concerns over land use
Officials downplay fears of sprawl, ‘knee-jerk’ plans
VALUABLE LAND: An employee of Agmart
sprays tomato plants on land owned by the
Barron Collier Companies. The Naples land
company is donating 750 acres for Ave Maria
University and its surrounding town.
Photos by ANDREW WEST/news-press.com
Ave Maria University is getting a generally warm reception as it
prepares to open near Immokalee in 2006 — but some environmental and
planning concerns are already being raised. Thomas Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza and chairman
of
Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Mich., is endowing the new school with $200
million. Barron Collier Companies, a Naples land company, is donating 750 acres
and will build a town surrounding the university. The arrangement is drawing analogies
by some to Florida Gulf
Coast University in Estero, where Alico Inc. donated about the same amount of land
in the middle of about 12,000 acres of Alico property — much of which
has been sold off for golf course developments.
Copyright © 2002 News-Press
All rights reserved.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF FLORIDA BEEKEEPING
Honey bees are not native to the Americas. They were brought
over from Europe by colonists. They were recorded as being in Virginia in
1622 (Nelson, 1971). Native Americans called them Awhite man's flies.
It is not known when the first honey bees were introduced into Florida. It
is also not known whether they were of English or Spanish origin. Prior to the
turn of this century many colonies in Florida
were kept in sections of hollow logs called Abee gums. It was reported in 1879
that almost everyone in the Daytona area kept several (McIntyre,
1879). However, commercial beekeeping was practiced before this time by a fruit
company from New York. It was reported that they operated one of the first
apiaries of any consequence in the state on the west side of the Halifax River,
where the city of Daytona now stands. This apiary was established in 1872.
The production of lemons, oranges and honey made a very good combination. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2002 Florida
State Beekeepers Association All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 2, 2002
Beekeeper
sweet on honeybees
Beekeeper sweet on honeybees
Like a priest blessing his flock with incense
wafting from a
censer, Jack Rollins pacifies thousands of honeybees with hazy
puffs from
his hand-held smoker, then lifts the beehive lids to inspect the inside. Though feared by some for their sting, these bees are about as
gentle as
butterflies. Occasionally one alights on Rollins' forearm, and
the
beekeeper blows it off. But fears of African "killer" bees and an anti-bee
bias have made it hard
for Rollins, 78, to keep up his beloved hobby in Boca Raton. Five years ago the city asked Rollins to move 108 hives out of
his back
yard after residents complained. He had to move the bees again
after pilots
at Boca Raton Airport complained of bee droppings on parked airplanes. He
is down to 17 hives kept at several locations. Surly suburbanites are not
his only problem.
Copyright © 2002 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
December 2, 2002
A
BRIEF HISTORY OF FLORIDA BEEKEEPING
Related Links,
Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Division of Plant
Industry
Plant and
Apiary Inspection
Federal lawsuit from Illinois may have effect on SW Florida's wetlands
A lawsuit over a landfill outside Chicago might be affecting
the protection of
isolated wetlands in Southwest Florida. It's been = almost two years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
the Corps of
Engineers had overstepped its authority when the Solid Waste
Agency of
Northern Cook County was looking to build a landfill at an
abandoned rock
quarry in northern Illinois. The "isolated wetlands"
the corps asserted
jurisdiction over, basically pits and ditches that had been
reclaimed by
nature over the years, did not qualify as "navigable waters
of the U.S." by
any legal definition, five of nine justices agreed. According to the suit, the corps had assumed jurisdiction and
blocked permits
for the landfill because migratory birds were making use of the
500-acre tract
the Chicago Gravel Co. had mined for rock for three decades
before 1960.
Copyright © 2002 Bonita
Daily News All rights reserved.
Deer Disease Deters Few Wisconsin Hunters
Tradition appears to be stronger than fear for
most deer hunters in Wisconsin, which is trying to determine how far chronic
wasting disease has spread among its herd. Heartened by a lack of evidence that the fatal deer disease can infect
humans, something close to the normal contingent of hunters is taking part in
the first deer season since the disease was found in the southwestern part of
the state. Most told state officials they wanted the venison. "We are seeing some proof of what we felt all along: that deer hunting
is a strongly held tradition and people don't want to give it up easily or
willingly," said Bob Manwell, a spokesman for the state Department of
Natural Resources. License sales dropped 10 percent for the state's
nine-day deer season, which ends Dec. 8, and the 121,000 deer that hunters
registered over the first weekend represented a 20 percent drop from last year.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times, AP online All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
May 31, 2002
National Briefing | Midwest: Wisconsin: Deer Hunters React To Wasting
Disease
November 12, 2002
Out of
Control, Deer Send Ecosystem Into Chaos
December 2, 2002
Killing With
Kindness?
Killing With Kindness?
Librado
Romero/The New York Times
Bill Badgley, left, and
Wayne Trimm
are leaders of the Deer Management
Partnership, which encourages
humane hunting.
At age 74, Ken James offers no apologies for his
lifelong passion — to hunt and kill a deer in the woods every fall. His hunts
are bookmarks in the story of an outdoor life. "Look," he said, pointing at a patch of dirt that had been
scratched clean of leaves and snow. "Here's another scrape. The buck
urinates here to mark his territory and announce to the does and other bucks
that he's around. About 85 percent of the time you find these under a hemlock
tree, though I've never been exactly sure why." Mr. James's love affair with deer hunting belies the fact that almost nothing
about it is what it was even a few years ago. And despite the rhapsodic
narrative he can weave on a morning's hunt about the adventures of years past,
he is also part of a vanguard of hunters trying to transform the sport.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
November 12, 2002
Out
of Control, Deer Send Ecosystem Into Chaos
December 2, 2002
Deer
Diseases
Letters: The Environment: Fight the Tide
To the Editor:
Stemming the incoming anti-environmental tide in Washington will be up to two
other groups in addition to the moderate Republicans ("Environmental War
Clouds," editorial, Nov. 25): first, those Democrats who have spent the
past two years fending off a misguided energy bill, chain saw-oriented forest
policy and other environmental misadventures, and second, the American people.
During the 1995 Newt Gingrich-led broadside on clean water laws and other
environmental safeguards, it was an aroused public that forced the House
speaker's troops to beat a hasty retreat. Today, by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans
believe that environmental protection is more important than producing energy,
according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
November 25, 2002
Editorial:
Environmental War Clouds
November 26, 2002
Opinion-Editorial: Every Breath You Take
Editorial: Bambi's Mother in the Cross Hairs
Very few people like the idea of shooting Bambi's mother. But there may be no
better way to slow the rapid expansion of deer populations that are devastating
ecosystems in many areas of the country. At least 20 million white-tailed deer are ranging the nation at the moment, a
huge jump from only 500,000 in 1900, according to a recent report by Andrew C.
Revkin in The Times. They plunder farm crops and alter the ecology of forests by
eating the low-lying vegetation and destroying the seedlings needed for new
growth. In the process, they displace many smaller animals from their habitat.
Deer also plunder suburban gardens, help spread Lyme and livestock diseases, and
cause an astonishing number of highway accidents. Each year more than a
million deer are hit by vehicles, and while the deer are the biggest
losers, the accidents kill more than 100 people and cost more than $1
billion for repairs.
Copyright © 2002
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
November 12, 2002
Out
of Control, Deer Send Ecosystem Into Chaos
Editorial: Set Tough Standards For Everglades
Agricultural runoff is eating away at the Everglades. The
nutrient-laced
water changes the soil content and the vegetation, upsetting the
delicate
ecology of the River of Grass. At present the tainted runoff is causing up to nine acres a
day of sawgrass
marshes to be overtaken by cattail, which thrives on nutrients
but is
inferior habitat and undermines the Everglades' natural balance. Fortunately, the damage can be halted by adopting a tough
nutrient standard
for the runoff. This week the governor-appointed, seven-member Environmental
Regulation
Commission, which develops rules and standards, is scheduled to
consider a
phosphorous standard for the runoff in the Everglades. The decision should be
easy. Research has confirmed that a
10-parts-per- billion phosphorus standard will protect the Everglades
ecosystem. Gov. Jeb
Bush and the state Department of Environmental Protection have
endorsed
that standard.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
01-December-02
Choking the Glades
Environmentalists fear pollution controls that
would stem the spread of cattails will be weakened.
[South Florida Water Management District]
Cattails
have supplanted saw grass on
100,000 acres of the Everglades, fed by
phosphorus
from the sugar industry,
vegetable farms and suburbs.
When Marjory Stoneman Douglas dubbed the Everglades "the
River of Grass" in 1947, she was referring to the native saw grass. Back then it
covered millions of acres, providing a home for wading birds and other
wildlife. But these days, the dominant plant across 100,000 acres of the
Everglades is the cattail. It's choking the life out of parts of the state's
most famous and precious swamp, blocking wading birds and altering the
flow of water. Scientists estimate it is spreading at the rate of 2 to 9
acres a day. Cattails took over because of phosphorus, a pollutant
that for decades has flowed into the Everglades from sugar and vegetable
farms and the sprawling suburbs of South Florida.
Copyright © 2002 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Editorial: The Hypocrisy of Farm Subsidies
When Mexican corn farmers tramp through their fields behind donkey-drawn
plows, they have one goal: to eke out a living. Increasingly, however, they find
themselves saddled with mountains of unsold produce because farmers in Kansas
and Nebraska sell their own corn in Mexico at prices well below those of the
Mexicans. This is not primarily due to higher efficiency. The Americans' real
advantage comes from huge taxpayer-provided subsidies that allow them to sell
overseas at 20 percent below the actual cost of production. In other words, we
subsidize our farmers so heavily that they can undersell poor competitors
abroad. And just to make sure, we have tariff barriers in place that
make it extremely hard for many third world farmers to sell in the United
States. The same is true for their efforts to sell in Europe and Japan.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Editorial: Shrinking
Glaciers
Every so often a report comes out of a remote part of the world that is so
shocking it makes us sit bolt upright and start thinking hard about global
warming. Now it is news from the Bolivian Andes, where glaciers more than three
miles above sea level are retreating with alarming speed, creating the threat of
potentially disastrous water shortages. According to a story last week by The Times's Juan Forero, the glacier on
Chacaltaya Mountain, which claims the world's highest ski slope, has been
shriveling so fast that scientists predict its disappearance in 10 years.
Chacaltaya Mountain is hardly alone. Shrinking glaciers are a worldwide
phenomenon. Great slices of snow and ice are disappearing in places from
the Austrian Alps to Glacier National Park in Montana, where the number of
glaciers has declined from 150 a century ago to 35 today.
Copyright ©
2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
News Analysis: Clean-Air Battlefield
The Bush administration's move to relax air pollution
standards on old industrial plants has quickly attracted more powerful
opposition than decisions to drill for oil and gas in fragile areas or log trees
in the wilderness. The reason is the unusual way the 1977 Clean Air Act assigns
blame. Other pollution laws blame the polluter. The Clean Air Act does that too, but
it also blames the pollutee: if the air is dirty, states are supposed to clean
it, and if they do not they can lose highway money. Even private development can
be halted. The difference is obvious to the states. "If you had
somebody dump hazardous waste on your lawn, it wouldn't be interpreted as
your fault," said Kenneth A. Colburn, formerly New Hampshire's chief
air pollution official and now the executive director of Northeast States
for Coordinated Air Use Management, a group of officials in state
environmental departments.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
They Brake for Turtles in Padre Island Park
Associated Press
Congress permitted oil and gas drilling
on Padre Island National Seashore.
Timmy Richey, left, Michael Pena and
Bobby Cano on a rig.
Eyeballing a fish supper at 30 miles
an hour, the brown pelican flew just six inches above the surf. Suddenly, it
made nearly a 90-degree dive and crashed into shallow, churning water. "You'd think they'd break their neck, but they never do," said
Johnny D. French, a retired biologist for the United States Fish and Wildlife
Service who has been living, working and driving up and down this beach for most
of his 56 years. Until the pelican stopped so abruptly for a meal, it and the biologist had
been traveling companions here on the longest, at 113 miles, barrier island in
the United States. The pelican was riding the wind. In a parallel lane
about 20 feet inland, Mr. French was driving on hard-packed sand in his
sport utility vehicle.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
U.S. Farmers Put Down Roots in Brazilian Soil
John Maier
for The New York Times
Thomas Shanks, from upstate
New
York, checks
young soybean plants on
his 9,855-acre farm in
the western part
of Bahia state in Brazil. "The
guys who
come down here now are awestruck,"
Mr.
Shanks said.
More than a century after his ancestors
began farming in the Midwestern United States, Dan Carroll's best hope of
bringing his son into the family business is to buy land in the savannas of
Brazil. Two months ago Mr. Carroll, of Carthage, Ill., bought a soybean farm on the
outskirts of this dusty town of pickup trucks and barbecue restaurants 350 miles
northeast of Brasília. He joined more than a dozen other Americans who have
recently begun farming here. "I have no doubt that Brazil is the future of global agriculture and I
want my son to be able to be part of that," Mr. Carroll, 46, said in an
interview. "It's prohibitively expensive for him to buy land in the States
right now." Recent arrivals like Mr. Carroll and his son, John, have
brought the number of American farmers in Brazil to more than 200, including a
small Mennonite community, according to AgBrazil, a company in Columbia, Mo.,
that brokers Brazilian land deals.
Copyright © 2002 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Ships, Pollution Taking Toll On Coral Reefs
Photo by: National Park Service
A diver glides over protected coral
in the Dry Tortugas.
The anchor weighed 15 tons. Each link in the massive
chain that secured it to the 853-foot freighter tipped the scales at more
than 100 pounds. When it plunged into the reef last month, the rare and fragile
coral shattered on impact. "This is some of the greatest destruction of living coral
I've ever seen in my life,'' says Harold Hudson, a biologist who surveyed the
damage for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The captain of the Panamanian-flagged ship apparently wasn't
aware he had chosen to drop anchor in one of the most environmentally critical
slices of ocean on the planet. But that is about to change. Starting Sunday, coral reefs
off the Keys will become part of
a zone designated a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area, where ships longer
than 164 feet cannot anchor or - in some cases - cannot pass through.
Copyright © 2002 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
December-02
Water, Water Everywhere?
Part I
Florida's once seemingly inexhaustible water resources are being
compromised and diminished as a result of increased demand, and a lack of
formalized coordination and planning between planning authorities and water
management districts. Florida's replumbing efforts, in the form of the
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), are insufficient on their own
to address the threat to water and the environment, which ultimately threatens
the habitability of Florida. This article will identify some of the problems and
obstacles to achieving a healthy environment in Florida, particularly as they
relate to water resources, and will examine the existing legislative and
regulatory framework applicable to water resources and water delivery, and
proposals that have been put forward to address Florida's future development and
water management. Read
More...
Copyright © 2003
Florida Bar Journal All rights
reserved.
Related Articles,
January 2003
Water,
Water Everywhere?, Part II
March 2003
Letter: History Repeating Itself
Everglades Litigation Internet Initiative Director
1311 Miller Drive
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
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