News - March 2003
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31-March-03
WETLANDS
POND APPLE HABITAT WETLANDS RESTORATION
July/August 2001
posted March 31, 2003

Janet Phipps, Ph.
D./Environmental Resources
Management
Palm Beach County, located in southeastern
Florida, has a natural freshwater lake system,
which is relatively rare for Florida. The present day lakes are remnants
of a once-natural system of open water and extensive wetlands located
along the western slope of the Atlantic Coastal Ridge. This chain-of-lakes
system, which extends approximately 30 miles north-south, has been
drastically altered by dredging, filling, and channelization. The system
is interconnected with a complex web of drainage canals created in the
1900s and 1940s to "drain the swamps" of Florida. In fact, several
smaller lakes in the chain have been filled and now are represented by wider
spots in the canal network which interconnects the larger lakes and the
drainage canals. The lakes discharge to the Lake Worth Lagoon; thus, they
are essentially flow-through systems (Vines, 1970).
Read more...
Copyright © 2001
Land
and Water All rights reserved.
Water law change proposed
Wording grabs attention of state, county
A freshman legislator — with the help of developers — proposed
a change in Florida water law that ruffled feathers across the
state and in Lee County. “It was to get attention and boy did we get attention,” said
James Garner, a lobbyist for the Association of Florida Community Developers Inc., which helped write the legislation.
Rep. Baxter Troutman, R-Winter Haven, had proposed a bill that
would eliminate water reservations — an emerging management tool
designed to set aside water for the “protection of fish and wildlife or
the public health and safety.” Lee County is seeking a reservation for the Caloosahatchee
River. But Troutman’s bill is changing now that he and his entourage
have the environmental community’s attention, Garner said.
Copyright © 2003 News
Press All rights reserved.
Students soak up lessons on water issues
A hands-on exhibit teaches children about conserving and
protecting the state's water resources.
Gerard DeChristofaro marched over to two large
rocks sitting on a pedestal and gave a mini-dissertation. "This is limestone from the
Floridian aquifer," Gerard, 9, said
as he lifted an oversized magnifying glass to give a closer look. "In some of
the parts, you can see fossils. There's leaves in there, and some
shells. If you look real close, it has real small holes." His fourth-grade classmates at Suncoast Elementary School,
near Seven Hills in south-central Hernando County, were equally well-versed on other aspects of water conservation and environmental
protection. Emily Kling, 10, walked over to an aquarium filled with sand,
clay and gravel. "This is a model of the aquifer," Emily said. "We learned how
the water percolates through each layer.
Copyright © 2003 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Related Links,
Florida
Department of Environmental Protection
"Beyond
Drought" Information sheet (4 pages, PDF) *
Southwest
Florida Water Management District information and education
* pdf file (must have Acrobat Reader to open)
In the Know: Kudzu and the Everglades
Question: Ten years ago, the Naples Daily News reported that kudzu had
been discovered in the Everglades and could become a major threat to plant life there. Plans to
search and eradicate kudzu vines were
announced. What happened? Is there still a kudzu threat? And for that matter,
how about destruction of the melaleuca trees? — W.N. Butler/Naples Answer:
"Kudzu is an exotic invasive plant," says Jonathan Taylor, a
botanist with Everglades National Park in Miami, "but it is not a threat or
problem within the park boundaries at the present time." Taylor explains that kudzu does not invade areas unless it has
been intentionally planted. Regarding the melaleuca, Bill Synder, forestry technician with
Big Cypress National Preserve, said, "We have a handle on the melaleuca trees in
the preserve."
Copyright © 2003 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Related Link,
Florida Exotic Pest Plant
Council
Editorial: Sugar won't come clean
The sugar industry is trying to weaken environmental
regulation on two fronts, and the meddling could hinder cleanup of the
Everglades and restoration of the Indian River Lagoon. On the state level, the board of the South Florida Water
Management District, under pressure from sugar growers, recently changed wording
in an Everglades cleanup plan to allow unacceptably high levels of
pollution from farms and urban areas in water sent to the Everglades. If that happens, it would thwart a 1994 law
designed to improve water
quality in the troubled ecosystem. Scientists oppose the higher level, and Gov. Bush has said he
agrees. The governor, however, has yet to intervene -- he appointed the water district board members -- and make sure that the lower
standard survives. Two federal researchers have said that allowing the higher
pollution level won't fix the Everglades.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
30-March-03
Students get the dirt on Indian artifacts dig site

Just yards from the shaded banks of Ten Mile Creek, where
American Indians fished about 5,000 years ago, archaeologists focused on a
swatch of land no bigger than a canoe for clues about the natives'
lives. Using flat trowels to slowly strip away layers of darkly
colored dirt, the scientists proved the land in western St. Lucie County — where
water managers plan to build a 550-acre reservoir — is rich with
history. During the past six weeks of excavation, archaeologists have
found bottle-cap-sized bits of brown, sandy pottery, stone spearheads, animal bones and a small circular stone that could have been a weight
for a fishing net. In preliminary digs in October, workers found the artifacts —
slowing the water-quality project by 10 months, but offering the experts and
local elementary school students a close-up look at what life was
like in 3,000 B.C.
Copyright © 2003 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
29-March-03
Wood storks don’t like rain
Waterfowl prefer lower water levels in nesting season

As the single-engine Cessna banked sharply over Corkscrew
Swamp Sanctuary Friday morning, Jason Lauritsen photographed then
counted nesting wood storks, which looked a lot like dandruff on a green wool sweater.
After about a dozen passes, he came up with a tentative number
of 650 nests, down from a high of 1,000 in January. Whether the remaining nests at Corkscrew, the largest wood
stork nesting colony in North America, will fledge a new generation of
the endangered species depends on the weather between now and the
summer wet season. “With the recent rains we’ve had, it looks like about 350
pairs have abandoned their nests,” said Lauritsen, the sanctuary’s resource manager. “We might have more abandon their nests. Some are
renesting, but those that renest this late may be lost.”
Copyright © 2003 News-Press
All rights reserved.
28-March-03
Editorial: Preserve manatee budget
The federal government continues to support manatee
protections, but two Florida lawmakers have introduced legislation that would
undermine protection for the endangered sea cow. A federal judge ruled last week that the Interior Department
must continue creating manatee sanctuaries and designating new slow-speed zones in Florida waters. Under an order from U.S. District Judge
Emmett Sullivan, issued in Washington, the proposal would establish three new protection areas where powerboats either would have to reduce
speed or be banned. Gov. Bush, who once declared the manatee to be his favorite mammal, has opposed federal safeguards, claiming with others
that slow speed zones could cause economic problems in southwest Florida. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has singled out that area, which
has a high rate of boat-related manatee deaths, for special restrictions, such
as more controls on dock-building.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Aspect of water project questioned
Activists want to know where water in reservoirs slated
for Martin and St. Lucie counties will end up.
As federal scientists work to answer new questions by top
officials about Everglades restoration projects on the Treasure Coast, St. Lucie
River advocates say one of their own lingering concerns has yet to be
addressed: Who will get all the water stored in the reservoirs planned in
Martin and St. Lucie counties? The answer, local activists said, should include the
water-starved Everglades and the Caloosahatchee and Loxahatchee rivers, both of
which are struggling with saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico
and the Jupiter Inlet. Making that clear, they said, could meet the concerns of
political foes of the plans and increase support from environmental groups
throughout the state. "We can't expect authorization without that part of the puzzle
put together," said Kevin Henderson, executive director of the St.
Lucie River Initiative.
Copyright © 2003 Stuart
News - TC Palm All rights reserved.
A 'rotten' law stymies fight over well
An environmental group is frustrated by a new state law that won't let it challenge a water permit.
An environmental group contends that
treated waste water from the county's Zemel Road landfill may be tainting the
ground water supply. But the state says the group doesn't have a legal right to
challenge the reissuance of a permit for a deep-injection well, which shoots
the waste water a half-mile under the dump. The reason: The group, known as the Environmental
Confederation of Southwest Florida, has only three members in the county. That wouldn't have mattered a year ago. But a state law passed
last May requires environmental groups who want to challenge water permits
to have at least 25 members in the county where a proposed project is
located. "That is a rotten piece of legislation," said ECOSWF president
Becky Ayech.
Copyright © 2003 Herald
Tribune All rights reserved.
27-March-03
Rules Approved to Reduce Pollutants at Power Plants
Power plants in New York State will have to
sharply cut their output of pollutants blamed for acid rain, smog and other
environmental ills beginning next year under rules approved yesterday by state
regulators. The regulations, which will be phased in over the next five
years, are expected to reduce by tens of thousands of tons a year the emissions
of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides generated by the plants across the state.
Those emissions combine in the atmosphere to produce smog, while also poisoning
lakes and killing fish, especially in the Adirondacks. Gov. George E.
Pataki, in announcing the rules, said that they put New York ahead of the rest
of the country in protecting air quality. He said the restrictions on sulfur
dioxide will be the most stringent in the nation. Environmentalists and
health experts said they were less sure.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
DIGEST: Law would
require reports on water
Law would
require reports on water
Democratic House members joined
environmentalists Wednesday to promote a bill that would require the state
Department of Environmental Protection to issue reports every six months with
statistics on water being pumped in and out of underground storage wells. Rep.
Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said the information the state now provides on
aquifer storage and recovery wells is difficult to understand. "This is all
simply about providing people with information," said Gelber, who sponsored
the bill (HB 1503). "The current situation is intolerable if folks that are
interested in this cannot figure out what is going on." Environmentalists
have opposed the process of injecting water into the ground to save for future
use, saying the water being pumped in may contaminate natural aquifers.
Copyright © 2003 Tallahassee
Democrat / Associated Press All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
March 27, 2003
What's being pumped
into the aquifer?
March 27, 2003
Bill
Seeks Better Well Information
Bill Seeks Better Well Information
Democratic House members joined environmentalists
Wednesday to promote a bill that would require the state Department of
Environmental Protection to issue reports every six months with statistics on
water being pumped in and out of underground storage wells. Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said the
information the state now provides on aquifer storage and recovery wells is
difficult to understand: ``The current situation is intolerable if folks that
are interested in this cannot figure out what is going on." Environmentalists have opposed the process of
injecting water into the ground to save for future use, saying the water being
pumped in might contaminate natural aquifers. The bill would require the state to list on its
Web site the location of injection wells along with the amount of water being
pumped into and out of the wells, the source of the water injected and other
information.
Copyright © 2003 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
March 27, 2003
What's being pumped into the aquifer?
March 27, 2003
DIGEST: Law would require reports on water
What's being pumped into the aquifer?
Adopting a new strategy to rekindle an old
debate, environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers want to force regulators to
do a better job of telling the public what's being pumped into the Floridan
Aquifer, the underground drinking water supply for millions of residents. Flanked by lobbyists for the Sierra Club, Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, rolled
out a bill (HB-1503) on Wednesday that would force the Department of
Environmental Protection to list all of the underground injection wells it
regulates -- and the substances they pump deep underground -- in a
reader-friendly format on its public Web site. "Floridians should not
have to feel that they are in an episode of Fear Factor every time they
drink a glass of water," Gelber said.
Copyright © 2003
Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
March 27, 2003
Bill
Seeks Better Well Information
March 27, 2003
DIGEST:
Law would require reports on water
Water committee end sours some
Members of the Lake County Water Authority’s Citizen Advisory
Committee reacted in different ways Thursday to news that the all-volunteer group has been disbanded.
The water authority board voted 4-3 Wednesday in favor of
doing away with the group because no specific task had been assigned to it
during its one-year existence. “We just didn’t utilize them,” said Larry Everly, water
authority board chairman. Mike Perry, executive director of the water authority, echoed
that reason. “If the board wasn’t going to use the committee it’s not fair to
the members to devote their time and energy and it’s not an
efficient use of staff time,” he said. But soil scientist and state-licensed geologist Greg
Gensheimer said the committee wasn’t twiddling its thumbs. It had great
potential and made many recommendations to the board, he said. “It’s really disappointing. We really had an opportunity to
help out,” Gensheimer said.
Copyright © 2003 Daily
Commerce All rights reserved.
Scientists Lobby For Network of Networks

Shared access to ecological
measurements could greatly aid
ecologists and
researchers.
(Photo courtesy High
Performance
Wireless Research and Education
Network)
Advances in scientific observation and measurement over the past century have
provided far reaching knowledge about individual species and local ecological
processes, but scientists are quick to point out that there is still far more to
be discovered about how ecosystems interact and change. "Ecosystem models are more constrained by lack of accurate input data
than by lack of basic understanding," said John Aber, professor at the
University of New Hampshire's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and
Space. To remedy this, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is calling for a new
scientific infrastructure - a "network of networks" - that
standardizes measurements, affords instant data sharing and facilitates
cooperation between the nation's variety of field stations and environmental
observatories.
Copyright © 2003 Environmental
News Service - ENS All rights reserved.
Related Link,
For additional information about NEON, see: http://www.nsf.gov/bio/neon/start.htm
26-March-03
State budget squeezing out waterway cleanup plans
Pensacola Bay project could take funding hit
Programs to clean up Florida's lagoons, estuaries
and lakes would be severely scaled back under legislative budget proposals,
jeopardizing the very waterways that pump life into the state's ecotourism
industry. At risk are at least $118 million in water pollution programs
currently under way to help clean up Pensacola Bay, Indian River Lagoon and
Loxahatchee River. Only the biggest environmental projects - Everglades
restoration and Florida Forever, the state's land-buying program - would be
spared, Rep. Jerry Paul, R-Port Charlotte, said in a Tuesday House budget
briefing. "At this time, most of the (state revenue) we had available
we had to put on high-priority issues," said Paul, who chairs the House
budget subcommittee that drafted the cuts.
Copyright © 2003 Pensacola
News Journal All rights reserved.
Press Release: Service Officer Honored for Contributions to Wildlife
Conservation
Special Agent Frank Kuncir, who works in the Fish and Wildlife
Services law enforcement office in Fort Myers, Florida, has received
the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's 2003 Guy Bradley Award for his contributions
to protecting the Nation's wildlife resources. The award,
which is named after the first wildlife law enforcement officer killed in the
line of duty, was presented to Kuncir at the annual North American
Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
on March 26. Special Agent Kuncir and his Federal and State counterparts
risk their lives every day to uphold wildlife protection laws in this
country, said Service Director Steve Williams. We are proud that one of our
agents has won this prestigious award and join the Foundation in
applauding the contributions that law enforcement officers make to wildlife conservation
throughout this country. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003
National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation All rights reserved.
25-March-03
Editorial: Threats and Alaska Oil
To the Editor:
Re "Drilling in Alaska, a Priority for Bush,
Fails in the Senate" (news article, March 20):
The threat of retaliation implied by Ted Stevens,
the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, to those opposed to drilling for
oil in the Alaskan wildlife refuge echoes what is becoming an all too common
theme among some Republicans: trying to silence those who disagree with them.
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's suggestion that Senator Tom Daschle's criticism of
President Bush's diplomatic failures may serve to aid our enemies is more of the
same. Such intimidation and character assassination is behavior more
reminiscent of repressive dictatorships than of our democracy, whose fundamental
principles of free speech and respect for others' opinions these elected
officials claim they wish to export.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 20, 2003
Drilling in Alaska, a Priority for Bush, Fails in the Senate
Big Cypress official transferring
The National Park Service announced Monday it is transferring
John Donahue out of Big Cypress National Preserve, where his crackdown on
off-road vehicles infuriated hunters and earned praise from
environmentalists. Donahue, who was superintendent of the preserve for three
years, will take over Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey, one of the most heavily visited parks in the United
States. He said the transfer was voluntary. But it comes at a critical time
for Big Cypress, a vast stretch of wet prairies and cypress swamps that
has become an environmental battleground. The preserve is working on a plan for managing hunting,
off-road vehicle riding and other activities on 147,280 acres that were added to
it in 1988. Hunters are demanding access to these areas, known as the
Addition Lands. But environmentalists are pushing to protect some areas
from rifles and swamp buggies.
Copyright © 2003 Sun-Sentinel
All rights reserved.
Cabinet orders negotiations for Miccosukee Everglades land
Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet ordered the
Department of Environmental Protection to try to negotiate a land swap with the
Miccosukee Indian tribe Tuesday instead of seizing their
Everglades property through condemnation. Department Secretary David Struhs was told to proceed with
condemnation of the 805 acres in Golden Gate Estates South, southeast of Naples,
only if good-faith negotiations fail. The department had recommended condemnation of the property,
which is needed for the Everglades restoration project. The agency has said the
tribe refused offers to buy it for well above its appraised
price. But Dione Carroll, the tribe's general counsel, told the
Cabinet the land had cultural significance to the Miccosukees and was used for
gathering medicinal herbs and palm fronds used for building dwellings.
``Selling culturally sensitive land is anathema to the
tribe,'' Carroll said.
Copyright © 2003
Sun-Sentinel
/ Associated Press All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 18, 2003
Letter-writing
helps vet save home: Florida landowner given another reprieve from eminent
domain
24-March-03
Editorial: Let public keep control over the public's water
A bad bill making its way through the Florida House would
jeopardize Everglades restoration and lead to a a terrible idea -- private
ownership of the state's public water supply. Rep. Baxter Troutman, R-Winter Haven, admits that developers
wrote the main parts of House Bill 1005. According to published reports,
Mr. Troutman, a grandson of citrus magnate Ben Hill Griffin Jr. and a
cousin of Katherine Harris, asked lobbyists to explain it to a House
committee last week. That's bad, but it still isn't as bad as the bill. His legislation would kill part of a 1972 law that allows
water to be "reserved" to protect fish and wildlife or for public health
and safety. Developers want to substitute language that would allow
reserving water for Everglades restoration -- but also for flood control,
water supply and other growth-related needs. Developers and utilities
and others would have a right to water that has been reserved to protect the
environment.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Commentary: Troutman Defends His Comments in Article
Freshman state Rep. Baxter Troutman was madder than a
Chihuahua in a boot factory testing room. Troutman filed a bill that would take away the state control
on ground water reserves during some water emergencies. Troutman says it would
be a very rare occasion when that would be necessary. The bill, which is opposed by environmentalists and the state
Department of Environmental Protection, passed a committee hearing
unanimously. The St. Petersburg Times reported that Troutman, R-Winter
Haven, "repeatedly" deferred to a lobbyist for developers when other committee
members asked him questions about the bill. The Ledger ran the Times' story, and Troutman angrily called
editors, the publisher and a kindly, but grizzled political reporter. "To say I did not know anything about the bill is a lie,"
Troutman said. "I asked the person who has a knowledge of the 10-year evolution
of this bill to answer highly technical questions for the committee.
Copyright © 2003 The
Ledger All rights reserved.
Editorial: A Water Bill Lawmakers Should Quickly Deep-Six
Credit Rep. Baxter Troutman for the most shameless display of
toadying to special interest at the expense of the public during this
legislative session. The Winter Haven Republican is pushing a measure that would
prohibit state agencies from managing water to sustain fish and wildlife.
The scheme was cooked up by development interests who fear
that preserving Florida's flora and fauna might slow down the bulldozers by
limiting the amount of water that would go to residential and
commercial development. Troutman could not even explain his bill. He had to have Jim
Garner, a lobbyist for such major developers as St. Joe Corp., describe how it
would stop water districts from reserving water for fish and
wildlife and the public safety. Water is not being husbanded for fish and wildlife at the
expense of development - as a quick glance at the state countryside will
confirm.
Copyright © 2003 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
23-March-03
Splendor in the Glades Artists thrive in year-old park program

Frank DuVal, 57, of Frederick, Md.,
painted
this 'Brown Pelican' as part of the artists-in-
residence program.
COURTESY EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK
A swirl of inky water near
mangroves, a rod suddenly slicing a happy arc and, at daylong last, the fishless
curse of Frank DuVal is broken. A spotted sea trout soon flops in the net. It's the moment when the typical Everglades visitor poses a
predictable question: Can I eat that? But DuVal studies the fat fish
shimmering silvery in the sun and asks, ``Can I sketch that?'' He may fumble with fishing gear but, pen and drawing pad in
hand, DuVal is an artist. Literally and officially. He's an ''artist in
residence'' at Everglades National Park. The program, run on pennies and
passion, has been a boon to participants and park alike. For DuVal and poet Roger Mitchell, the eighth and ninth
artists in the year-old program, the park provides immersion in an exotic world
and a rare escape from the real one.
Copyright © 2003 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Trees in Haiti Fall Victim to Poverty of the People
In a musty shop near the capital's dilapidated
cemetery, Josue Termidor takes a rasp, gently sanding a coffin made of avocado
tree planks. A decade ago, the coffin would have been carved from heavy mahogany.
"All the good wood is gone," says Mr. Termidor, 32, his fingernails
caked with putty used to seal the brittle wood. "It's got harder to make a
living, and the lack of wood makes families disappointed and the dead
angry." Once blanketed by lush forests, Haiti is now nearly 90
percent deforested. Competing against a demand that has far exceeded supply, the
Caribbean nation loses more than 30 million trees a year to provide wood, fuel
and work to a desperate population. "The peasants cutting down the
trees make even less," added Mr. Termidor, flanked by a metallic mauve
"tête-boeuf" or first-class coffin.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
For Town, Water Is a Fighting Word
As its name suggests, this mountain hamlet more
than 5,000 feet above the desert floor near Palm Springs is endowed with many
gifts of nature: centuries-old pines, rare and endangered species, bucolic lakes
and stunning vistas. But it is what lies beneath that has taken center
stage recently: a battle is being waged over spring water and whether it is a
commodity to sell or a resource to protect. For Paul Black, a retiree
whose Idyllwild Mountain Spring Water Works Inc. has been selling water to
bottlers from his property here for nearly seven years, the issue is one of
practicality. "I see a very effective use of the water," said
Mr. Black, who Riverside County officials estimate is taking 28,000 gallons of
it a day from his parcel of slightly more than an acre. "It's safe, clean
drinking water. Would you let it go, or would you do something with
it?"
Copyright ©
2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Opinion: The Missing Energy Strategy
The Senate struck a blow for the environment and for common sense last week,
defeating President Bush's second attempt in less than a year to open the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Credit goes to the Democrats, who
mainly held firm in a close 52-to-48 vote, and to a small, sturdy group of
moderate Republicans, which now includes Norm Coleman, a Minnesota freshman who
wisely chose not to renege on his campaign promise to protect the refuge despite
an aggressive sales pitch from senior Republicans and the White House. The
pitch included the usual hyperbole from the Alaska delegation, which typically
inflates official estimates of economically recoverable oil in the refuge by a
factor of four. It also included a new but equally spurious argument minted for
the occasion, namely that rising gas prices and the war in Iraq made drilling
more urgent than ever.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
22-March-03
Water district's top attorney resigns.
The South Florida Water Management District's top
lawyer resigned Friday -- a move he called "kind of that middle-age thing."
"I'm at a point in my life right now where I'm ready for new and different
challenges," said general counsel John Fumero, who turned 40 last summer.
"I've literally and figuratively grown up at the district." He
announced he will step down May 30 after 3 1/2 years as general counsel and 15
years working for the district. He said he hasn't decided what his next job will
be, although he plans to stay active in South Florida environmental and water
issues. Fumero, who lives in Boca Raton, earns $145,933 a year. He's also
due to receive a still-to-be-determined sum for a total of 1,706 hours of unused
sick leave and vacation. As general counsel, Fumero is the district's
highest-ranking Hispanic employee, and one of a handful of executives who work
directly for its governor-appointed board.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Bird Man of New Jersey

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
New Jersey Audubon Society's
paid birdwatcher conducting the
spring count of migrating birds
along the Atlantic flyway from
his "hawk" platform at the very
tip of the peninsula.
To the untrained eye, it was just a speck coming
out of the western sky riding the thermals out over Raritan Bay. To Dan
Hegarty, the dihedral angle of the wings and the flying attitude — smoothly
soaring as opposed to kiting as it sought to save energy — told him that it
was a red-shouldered hawk migrating north. It was in the first wave of birds
passing by the narrow finger of the Sandy Hook peninsula on its way up the
Atlantic Flyway. Mr. Hegarty, 34, is the New Jersey Audubon Society's only
paid bird counter stationed here. He spends his days atop a large platform
scanning the skies with his practiced eyes and a powerful telescope and
binoculars to count the migrating birds, particularly the raptors. It can
be lonely work perched above the windy March desolation of the ocean shoreline.
The scrubby barrier dunes dotted with freshwater ponds and low growing shrubs
merge into uplands with locust and hackberry.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Opinion: Invoking War to Ease Rules
Invoking War to Ease Rules
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
has begun a campaign it calls, portentously, "Operation End
Extremism." The purpose is to expose "the increasing burden U.S.
soldiers face on military training bases because of irrational enforcement of
environmental laws." The whole thing might be dismissed as another
ideological stunt from the committee's reactionary chairman, James Inhofe of
Oklahoma, were it not for the fact that the Pentagon is trying to do the same
thing. With White House backing, the Defense Department has asked Congress to
approve a program it calls the "Readiness and Range Preservation
Initiative," which would broadly exempt military bases and some operations
from environmental regulation.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
21-March-03
Swiftmud Candidate Process Doubted
Southwest Florida Water Management District
officials are poised to pick a new executive director next Tuesday amid questions about the selection process.
The questions have been coming from Florida Department of
Environmental Protection Secretary David Struhs, who has questioned whether the
11-member Governing Board searched widely enough for a new
head for the agency. Swiftmud has jurisdiction over a 16-county area that includes
most of Polk County and some of the most water-strapped areas in Florida.
The two finalists out of 11 applicants are Interim Executive
Director Gene Heath and Dave Moore, deputy executive director for resource
management and development. One of them will replace "Sonny"
Vergara, who resigned in January. "The narrowing down happened very quickly," said Struhs'
spokeswoman Deena Wells. "Our interest was in having a thorough search
internally and externally."
Copyright © 2003 The
Ledger All rights reserved.
An Inexhaustible Energy to Protect the Environment
The danger is growing, and if it is left
unchecked, say those who demand the use of force, it will be only a matter of
time before someone is attacked. This is New Jersey, and the danger is
from black bears that are increasingly intruding into urban areas. The State
Fish and Game Council, if it has its way, will hand out 10,000 licenses so
hunters can tromp through the cold in December to shoot the 2,000 to 3,000
animals that have grown from a population of about 100 over the last 30
years. At the center of this tussle and every other contentious issue that
involves the environment and wildlife in New Jersey is the state's combative
commissioner of environmental protection, Bradley M. Campbell. The
commissioner, however, has not yet said whether he will accept the Game
Council's recommendation and allow the bear shoot to go forward. "The
bears," he said one recent morning in his Lambertville row house, "are
a small part of a much larger problem I face."
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Business: Fuel Economy Regulations Could be Revised
The Bush administration is considering changes to
fuel economy regulations that would encourage manufacturers to offer more large
cars, station wagons and smaller sport utility vehicles that are built more like
cars. The idea behind the changes is that such vehicles are safer than
both small cars and sport utility vehicles and pickups, and that if more people
drove them, fewer people would die in crashes. Producing more such vehicles and
fewer very small or very large vehicles would reduce the increasing disparity
among American vehicles, both in weight and how high they ride. Because
they ride so high, sport utility vehicles and pickups pose more dangers to
drivers of small cars than large cars do. They are also more dangerous for their
own occupants because of their increased rollover risk. But the idea is
opposed by environmentalists and has already drawn a sharply worded protest from
the United Automobile Workers union.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Searching for scale
Crocodiles are for pansy Australians, give us nine-foot-long,
goat-eating pythons
The big-shouldered bald man with the inscrutable face plops a
plastic one-gallon jug on the wooden counter and says, ``Here's the
answer to your question. Roadkill. Happened about eight weeks ago, on a Monday.
I cleaned it and put the skin in here to cure. It was 9-feet-5-inches
long.'' We're standing in a slightly cramped wooden office, store and
nature exhibit at the Trail Lakes Campground on U.S. 41, about 70 miles west of
Miami and 30 miles east of Naples in the part of the Everglades where city
boys are eyed as carefully as cobras. Doing the eyeing here are three men:
a local buck with the beard, cap, jeans and boots that make the perfect
uniform for someone surrounded by walls adorned with Confederate flags; Jack
Shealy, who co-owns the campground with his brother David; and Rick Scholle
(pronounced ``sholly''), the animal curator at Trail Lakes who has just
placed a plastic jug containing a gutted snake on the wooden counter.
Copyright © 2003
Miami Herald
All rights reserved.
Before war, there was sand
Sand is one of the Earth's great elementals,
older than the human race. American and Iraqi
troops will fight atop the crushy, powdery, granular, crystalline, silicon-based
substance in desert terrain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They
will live on, and breathe in, sand. Sand will
be mixed in their breakfasts. Sand will
absorb all the spilled blood and oil that flows from this war. Sand is "a term popularly applied to loose,
unconsolidated accumulations of detrital sediment consisting essentially of
rounded grains of quartz," according to Chambers's Technical Dictionary,
published in 1961. Nearly all of Florida is
sand, and our original beaches are made of powdered granite, washed down from
the Piedmont Plateau by oceanic action in the Jurassic Period, 65 million years
ago, when the dinosaurs still believed they
had a chance at survival.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 20, 2003
Some
oil fields begin to burn
20-March-03
Changes to Everglades cleanup plan
criticized
Water managers' changes to an Everglades cleanup plan have
drawn rebukes from two federal science consultants, who say the alterations "create grave doubts" that pollution will ever be removed.
The consultants, Massachusetts environmental engineer William
Walker Jr. and Michigan wetlands expert Robert Kadlec, added to an already loud chorus of objections from environmentalists denouncing
the changes by the South Florida Water Management District. District board member Mike Collins called the
environmentalists' criticism misinformed and largely the product of an Audubon
of Florida lobbying campaign. The accusations "are being made by people who haven't read
what's in the plan," said Collins, an Islamorada fishing guide who proposed the
changes last week. He said he hadn't seen Walker and Kadlec's letter and couldn't
comment on it.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Bill Would Alter Water Oversight
Developers and sewer utilities are pushing a
bill that would radically alter how water is managed in Florida as well as
reserve water generated by the Everglades restoration project for new
housing and commercial development. Proponents of House Bill 1005 say they are worried that
agencies such as the state Department of Environmental Protection and water management districts will reserve water for fish and wildlife,
leaving cities and economic development scrambling for what's left. ``What we're talking about is jobs in an economy that's built
- whether for good or bad - on growth,'' said Jim Garner, a lobbyist for large developers such as WCI and St. Joe Corp. ``Take away water ...
we may be out of business and not be able to build anything.'' The bill would scrap state regulations that allow water
management districts to reserve water for fish and wildlife and for public
safety.
Copyright © 2003 Tampa
Tribune All rights reserved.
Developers win early round on water bill
Developers scored an early victory Wednesday,
pushing a measure through a House panel that environmentalists warned could turn the clock back more than 30 years in Florida's
struggle to preserve water for conservation. Defending a measure (HB 1005) he acknowledged was largely
written by the Association of Florida Community Developers, freshman Republican Baxter Troutman of Winter Haven said the measure was necessary
to protect Florida's ability to continue to grow. The bill erases a 1972 provision of the Florida water code
that allows regulators to deny permits if they think development threatens
wildlife and other natural systems. The provision has been used only once,
in 1994, to protect Paynes Prairie Preserve near Gainesville. But as growth puts continuing pressure on Florida's dwindling
drinking water supplies, water managers and environmentalists say the important tool is necessary to protect future preserves and restoration
projects.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Whose water is this bill carrying?
A freshman lawmaker sponsors it. He defers to a lobbyist to
explain it.
A freshman lawmaker was so unfamiliar with his
own bill Wednesday that he couldn't answer any questions posed by a legislative committee. So he turned to someone he said was the
expert: a lobbyist for the state's biggest developers. The lobbyist, Jim Garner of the Association of Florida
Community Developers, helped write the bill for Rep. Baxter Troutman, a Winter
Park Republican elected last year. It's not unusual for lobbyists to write legislation, but it is
unusual for a lawmaker to admit that a lobbyist knew more about a bill he's
sponsoring. "I'll have to defer to Jim Garner," Troutman repeatedly told
committee members. Garner was happy to oblige. Troutman's bill (HB 1005)
is opposed by environmentalists and the state Department of Environmental
Protection.
Copyright © 2003 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Broward organizations lobby state
legislators
Mayor Becky Tooley of Coconut Creek leaned across the conference table in a
senator's office and started arguing the state's need for video lottery
machines. It was the beginning of a lobbying effort that is one of her main
reasons for being in the state capital this week. The senator, Alex Diaz
de la Portilla, who is Senate president pro tempore and a member of the GOP
Senate leadership, had set aside five minutes for Tooley and other Coconut Creek
officials. In little slices of time -- five minutes with this legislator,
10 minutes with that one -- 400 political, business and civic leaders were
making the rounds in Tallahassee this week. The annual orgy of lobbying for
Broward County's needs is called Broward Days. De la Portilla, R-Miami, wanted to hear about Coconut Creek's experience with
video slot machines, which some think is an easy way to raise $1.5 billion for
the beleaguered state budget.
Copyright © 2003 Sun-Sentinel
All rights reserved.
Related Article,
May 11, 2002
New rules create unhappy campers
Some oil fields begin
to burn

During the 1991 Gulf War, when
Iraq spilled 6 million to 8 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf and set
afire almost 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, there were widespread predictions of a
worldwide environmental disaster. "If hell had a national
park, it would be those burning oil fires," said William K. Reilly, who was
then the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. In some respects, the fears
proved overly pessimistic. The huge plumes of black smoke never went high enough
in the atmosphere to create the "nuclear winter" some people
projected. And though damage to marine environments and species was extensive,
oil levels in the sea and populations of some birds and fish returned relatively
quickly to pre-war levels.
Copyright © 2003 USA
Today All rights reserved.
Related Links,
March 21, 2003
Before war, there was sand
Drilling in Alaska, a Priority for Bush, Fails in the Senate

Senator Barbara Boxer, a leading opponent
of drilling in the Arctic refuge, celebrated
the chamber's 52-to-48 vote against it,
on Wednesday.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
The Senate narrowly voted against drilling for
oil in the Alaskan wildlife refuge today, dealing a crippling blow to the
central element of the Bush administration's energy plan. The vote, 52 to
48, came after the hardest-fought lobbying campaign yet in the Congressional
session, setting environmental groups, who said oil production would destroy an
unspoiled wilderness, against Alaskan business interests, who said the oil was
necessary for jobs and energy independence. Until the final moments, neither
side was certain of victory, and the decision came down to two Republicans —
Senators Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Gordon H. Smith of Oregon — whose
opposition to drilling was not final until the floor vote.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
March 19, 2003
Senate Rejects
Oil Drilling in Alaskan Refuge
March 19, 2003
How Senators Voted on
Drilling in Alaska
March 25, 2003
Editorial:
Threats and Alaska Oil
19-March-03
Seminole Tribe gives Billie the boot
James E. Billie, suspended chairman of the Seminole Tribe of
Florida, was ousted from his position Tuesday morning by a unanimous vote of
the remaining four Tribal Council members -- the first time a
chairman has been removed in tribe history. Gone is his $300,000-plus annual salary and control of the
tribe and its $300 million a year gaming empire. But tribal elections are set
for May, and Billie said he will run for chairman. Just under 100 tribal members attended the brief meeting,
closed to outsiders. Last Thursday, Billie defended himself against
misconduct charges brought by the Tribal Council. Last month, Seminole tribal leaders took steps to permanently
remove Billie, the tribe's controversial, charismatic chairman. He had been
suspended for the past 22 months. Robert Saunooke, Billie's attorney, said the Seminole tribe
has been divided even further.
Copyright © 2003 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Federal judge orders continuation of manatee protection
The Interior Department must continue creating new protections
for the Florida manatee, including slow speed zones in the Caloosahatchee River,
a federal judge has ruled. Last year, 95 manatees were killed by boats in Florida
waters, a record in the state, and that is one reason environmental groups, led
by Florida's Save the Manatee Club, have pursued federal help.
The Interior Department is in the process of designating new slow-speed zones
for Florida waterways, including the Caloosahatchee, and manatee
sanctuaries. Such steps will continue under an order issued Tuesday in
Washington by U.S. District Judge Emmett Sullivan approving an agreement between
the Interior Department and the coalition of environmental groups.
Sullivan also withdrew an order threatening Interior Secretary Gale Norton
and other agency officials with contempt of court for failing to honor a
3-year-old agreement with environmentalists to protect Florida manatees.
Copyright © 2003 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Two endangered Miami Blue butterflies may give rise to captive
colony

Endangered
The Miami Blue, found only !in the Florida
Keys, is the size of a quarter.
Offering hope for a species on the edge of extinction,
scientists said Tuesday that they have created the very first captive-bred
population of Miami Blue butterflies. Biologists at the University of Florida produced a male and a
female butterfly last Friday from eggs collected at Bahia Honda State Park in
the Lower Keys, the site of the only known population of the
endangered butterflies. They hope the two butterflies will form the beginning of
a captive colony that could serve as insurance against extinction and a
source of recruits for new populations in the wild. "We hope, if everything goes well, to have hundreds of Miami
Blues in captivity," said Jaret Daniels, assistant director of the university's
McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research. "It's primarily a reservoir
to hopefully re-establish in the Keys within the historic range of the
butterfly.
Copyright © 2003 Sun-Sentinel
All rights reserved.
Related Link,
Listen: University of Florida researcher Jaret Daniels
talks about a
laboratory hatching of the endangered Miami Blue butterfly.
Collier may revise rules about construction on coastal
parcel
Collier County officials are poised to revise a land-use
formula that for years has allowed developers to overstuff dwelling units
on coastal parcels. A proposed change to the county's growth management plan would
prevent a scenario like this: A project site has 80 acres of saltwater wetlands, and 40
acres of solid, construction-worthy property. The developer can use the
120 acres to determine density — or the number of housing units per acre — even though building on the wetlands would be impossible.
That means the developer could place all the units allowed for
120 units on 40 acres. Some county commissioners are ready to change that, as early
as this summer. "We're in the process of reshaping the land development code
to give us better control over growth," Collier Commissioner Fred Coyle said. "You can't use a road on a property to figure density
because you can't build there. The same thing is true of land that is
submerged."
Copyright © 2003
Naples News
All rights reserved.
How Senators Voted on Drilling in Alaska
Following is the roll call by which the Senate
voted 52 to 48 today against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
in Alaska. A yes vote was a vote to remove the drilling provision from the
budget resolution. A no vote was a vote to keep it in. Voting yes were 43
Democrats, 8 Republicans and an independent. Voting no were 5 Democrats and 43
Republicans.
DEMOCRATS YES
Baucus, Mont.; Bayh, Ind.; Biden, Del.; Bingaman,
N.M.; Boxer, Calif.; Byrd, W.Va.; Cantwell, Wash.; Carper, Del.; Clinton, N.Y.;
Conrad, N.D.; Corzine, N.J.; Daschle, S.D.; Dayton, Minn.; Dodd, Conn.; Dorgan,
N.D.; Durbin, Ill.; Edwards, N.C.; Feingold, Wis.; Feinstein, Calif.; Graham,
Fla.; Harkin, Iowa; Hollings, S.C.; Johnson, S.D.; Kennedy, Mass.; Kerry, Mass.;
Kohl, Wis.; Lautenberg, N.J.; Leahy, Vt.; Levin, Mich.;
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
March 19, 2003
Drilling
in Alaska, a Priority for Bush, Fails in the Senate
March 19, 2003
Senate
Rejects Oil Drilling in Alaskan Refuge
Senate Rejects Oil Drilling in Alaskan Refuge
The Senate rejected the keystone of President
Bush's energy plan this afternoon, narrowly defeating a proposal to begin oil
drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge. The vote, 52 to 48 against opening
the refuge to drilling, was largely along party lines. The result had been
expected, since Republican vote-counters had concluded on Monday that they did
not have a majority. But the result was nevertheless a stinging defeat for Mr.
Bush. Mr. Bush came into office vowing to reverse President Bill Clinton's
refusal to permit drilling in the refuge. The president has argued that the
United States must free itself from dependence on foreign oil. Mr. Bush and his
allies in the Senate had hoped that rising oil and gasoline prices and the
threat of war with Iraq — now all but certain — would lend momentum to their
cause. Mr. Bush has had wide support from oil companies and Alaska's
powerful Congressional delegation.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
March 19, 2003
Drilling
in Alaska, a Priority for Bush, Fails in the Senate
March 19, 2003
How
Senators Voted on Drilling in Alaska
18-March-03
RURAL CLEANSING:
Letter-writing helps vet save home:
Florida landowner given another reprieve from eminent domain
Disabled veteran Jesse Hardy and his neighbor George Miller
won a second reprieve last week in their ongoing battle to save their homes and
land when Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Cabinet again voted
unanimously not to approve the use of eminent domain to acquire the properties. Cabinet members on Thursday told Department of Environmental
Protection Secretary David Struhs to return to the negotiation table with better
offers. According to the Naples Daily News, these might
include buying the properties outright, paying all moving and legal fees, or
allowing the two to remain until the area is actually flooded, which
wouldn't take place until 2006, if then. No deadline was set for coming to an
agreement.
Copyright © 2003
WorldNet
Daily All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 25, 2003
Cabinet
orders negotiations for Miccosukee Everglades land
Related Links,
Veteran
still fighting for his home
Disabled
vet's home safe for now
Disabled
vet fights for home
Multi-state
convoys converge in Florida
Commentary:
Get
rid of the people!
Senators
steal Florida land
Panther recovery studies under way
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is evaluating sites in
seven southern states, including the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge on the Florida-Georgia border, for potential reintroduction of the
endangered Florida panther. The site selection study, part of the comprehensive Florida
Panther Recovery Plan, is still in its early stages, and final recommendations
aren't expected until June. But based
of conversations with project leaders and a review
of draft site maps, a number of key locations in the South - including the
Okefenokee, parts of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest
in Georgia and the Ozarks in Arkansas - have emerged as possible locations for long-term panther recovery efforts.
"There are a couple of draft maps that the research team are
working with," said John Kasbohm, a biologist with the federal Fish and Wildlife
Service in Jacksonville and leader of the recovery team.
Copyright © 2003 Gainesville Sun All rights
reserved.
Related Links,
Florida Panther Multi-species Recovery Plan - Implementation
Comprehensive Conservation Plan
Letter to the editor: State working hard to get best value on land deals
The Post's recent editorial "Overpay for land now, or pay even
more later" (Feb. 26) draws attention to the need to move ahead with land
purchases for Everglades restoration, although it suggests
that the state is overpaying for that land. It is true that the state operates
within a "seller's market," not only because our purchasing plans are
public but also because they are so specific. We are seeking to acquire those
specific parcels necessary to restore the Everglades. It is
this lack of flexibility that puts the state in such a position. Nevertheless, we are committed to securing the best deal
possible for Florida's taxpayers. In fact, Gov. Bush and the Cabinet this month
convened a conservation roundtable to ensure that the state's
land acquisition program is making wise and effective investments. More progress has been made in the past four years toward
restoring the "River of Grass" than in the entire preceding
decade.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
February 26, 2003
Editorial:
Overpay for land now, or pay even more later
17-March-03
Editorial: Gov. Bush must protect Everglades standard
Gov. Bush and his environmental protection chief must move
swiftly to affirm their support for low pollution levels in the Everglades. The
governor also must exert his influence over South Florida Water
Management District Board members -- all people he appointed -- to stop an end
run that could put the entire Everglades restoration in jeopardy. The governor and Department of Environmental Protection
Secretary David Struhs so far have steadfastly upheld limiting the amount of phosphorus that will be allowed in water sent to the
Everglades to a low 10 parts per billion. Scientific studies support their
position. Higher levels of phosphorus --found in manure, fertilizer, urban runoff and
muck throw the delicate Everglades ecosystem off balance. Sugar industry representatives have just as consistently
pushed for a higher standard of 15 parts per billion.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
This day in Tallahassee
Everglades Money
The state has spent all of the money from its Save Our
Everglades land-purchase trust fund and is looking for ways to keep the program
going until the resolution of lawsuits that are tying up the
issuance of additional bonds. "We are now out of money," Environmental Protection Secretary
David Struhs told the Joint Committee on the Everglades. Struhs said that Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet want the
Legislature to borrow $300 million being used as collateral for exisitng bonds
and use it to continue the acquisition program. He said borrowed money
would be replaced with a surety bond.
Copyright © 2003
Wilmington
Star All rights reserved.
Letter to the editor:
State must give tribes dignity of self-government
It's time for the Florida Legislature to right a wrong
inflicted on the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida more than 40 years ago.
It happened during a disgraceful period when the federal government
attempted to terminate its jurisdiction over Indian tribes. The tribe is seeking approval of a bill that will clarify in
state law our right to have exclusive federal jurisdiction on our reservations
in the Florida Everglades. Our bill would treat the Miccosukee reservations
as other Indian reservations are treated in a vast majority of the states. It
will clarify once and for all that federal, not state courts, will try
criminal offenses committed on our reservations. The bill will bring Florida into conformance with 44 other
states that have acknowledged federal jurisdiction over Indian tribes. It will
also remove a vestige of the government's disgraceful - and long since
repudiated - termination policy that attempted to eliminate Indian tribes and
their reservations.
Copyright © 2003 Tallahassee
Democrat / Associated Press All rights reserved.
International: A Province Is Dying of Thirst, and Cries Robbery
Millions of people in southeastern Pakistan are
seething with anger and despair — and not over the American threat to attack
Iraq, the plight of fellow Muslims in Kashmir or the political role of the
mullahs. The life-and-death matter that has provoked hundreds of irate
demonstrations in Sind Province in the last three years is water. More
precisely, what farmers and politicians alike here charge is that "water
robbery" has been committed by Punjab, the more powerful Pakistani province
upstream. "Punjab isn't giving us the water we are owed and our lives
are being destroyed," said Muhammad Usman, a 40-year-old father of 10, who
has received enough water this year to plant only one of his 50 acres. To keep
his family alive he has opened a tea hut along the roadside, where he earns less
than a dollar a day.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Letter: Conserving Wetlands
To the Editor:
It is laudable when the federal government joins
private efforts to restore and protect wetlands ("There's More Than One Way
to Protect Wetlands," by Gale Norton and Ann Veneman, Op-Ed, March 12). But
private initiatives are likely to continue without federal help. What is
needed from the Interior Department, which Ms. Norton heads, and the Agriculture
Department, headed by Ms. Veneman, is strict enforcement of existing
regulations, vigorous pursuit of violators and resistance to further loss of
wetlands to developers and farmers, actions only the federal government can
take. Unless conservation laws are enforced, supporting private
conservation efforts is an empty and suspect gesture.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 12, 2003
Opinion: There's More Than One Way to Protect Wetlands
Rare Arizona Owl (All 7 Inches of It) Is in Habitat Furor

The pygmy owl, an endangered
species, has lost some land that
was designated as critical habitat
in northwest Tucson.
Chris Richards for The New York Times
At last count, the greater Tucson area was home
to about 900,000 people and 18 pygmy owls. Under federal law, that ratio is a
mismatch. To protect the owls, an endangered species, the United States
Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in November that 1.2 million acres in and
around the city be set aside as "critical habitat" for the birds, or
about 67,000 acres per owl. The designation, issued under a court order, imposes
obstacles to development, so developers in this fast-growing community are
fighting back, calling it patently unfair. "When you come right down
to it, this is about land that would be lying fallow for no particular good
reason, other than that the environmentalists want to have it that way,"
said Alan Lurie, the executive director of the Southern Arizona Home Builders
Association.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Global Water Conference Opens in Japan
The world's biggest international water conference began
Sunday with international financiers and small-scale project leaders at odds
over how to finance water projects for the poor. Some 10,000 ministers, scientists and international financiers from 165
nations are debating how to halve the number of people without access to water
by 2015. The United Nations has said that the world's water crises can be solved if
rich, developed nations devote about $100 billion more than the $80 billion a
year currently spent on developing countries. But in a panel discussion at the forum, Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute
said an extra $10 billion a year -- spread out among a multitude of small
projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia -- would suffice. "The money is out there. But money for water areas is currently misspent,''
said Gleick, president of the Oakland, Calif.-based think tank.
Copyright © 2003 AP
All rights reserved.
Related Links,
World Water Forum
Everglades
collection site page on forum
16-March-03
State seeks permit to dump polluted water in Gulf of Mexico
State officials are seeking an emergency federal
permit to dump millions of gallons of polluted water from a bankrupt phosphate
plant into the Gulf of Mexico. The state inherited the wastewater problem
when Mulberry Phosphate went bankrupt two years ago, giving the Department of
Environmental Protection just 48 hours notice before abandoning its plants at
Port Manatee and in Mulberry. At the port, a giant earthen dam is in
danger of spilling the acidic water into Tampa Bay. Heavy rain over the last two
years has filled the diked pond so high that state regulations fear it could
burst in a hurricane and flood U.S. Highway 41, a key evacuation route. "If we have a failure of the dike system ... pretty much anything it comes
in contact with would be killed in that part of Tampa Bay," Allan Bedwell,
DEP deputy secretary for regulatory programs, said Friday.
Copyright © 2003
Naples
News All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 15, 2003
To
spare bay, state may dump in gulf
Related Links,
DEP,
CARGILL AGREE TO LONG-TERM SOLUTION TO MULBERRY
PHOSPHATE’S
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS - News Release, 5/7/02
Questions
& Answers
Damage
Cases and Environmental Releases from
Mines
and Mineral Processing Plants *
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1997
Mulberry Phosphate
Museum
* pdf file (must have Acrobat Reader to open)
Marine rescuers, fisheries service at odds
In attempt to help one sea creature, rescuers may
have disrupted the habitat of another mammal, Fish and Wildlife officials fear.
Marine Mammal Conservancy members took a 12-foot pygmy sperm whale to a Key
Largo canal, after it beached itself off the coast of Islamorada. For several
weeks, rescuers had the canal fenced off so they could nurse the animal. The fence prevented two manatees from swimming up the canal toward a fresh water
spring, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers said. Fish and Wildlife officers want to prevent this from happening in the future.
Marine Mammal Conservancy members are working with National Marine Fisheries
Service officials to come up with a solution. Fisheries officials want
conservancy members to set up a plastic "pop-up" pool to house marine
life while they are rehabilitated, National Marine Fisheries stranding
coordinator Blair Mase said.
Copyright © 2003 Keys
News / Key West Citizen All rights
reserved.
15-March-03
To spare bay, state may dump in gulf
Florida wants to dispose of treated phosphate-polluted
water to prevent a spill in Tampa Bay.
Hoping to avert an environmental catastrophe,
state officials want to take the unprecedented step of removing millions of
gallons of polluted water from an aging phosphate plant and dumping it into the
Gulf of Mexico. The treated wastewater would be loaded into large barges,
then dribbled into the gulf. The dumping could begin as close as 50 miles
off St. Pete Beach, a top official of Gov. Jeb Bush's administration told state
legislators on Friday. State officials say they would remove most of the
pollution from the water and it would not threaten people or marine creatures.
But federal officials want more evidence before they grant Florida's request for
a little-used emergency permit for ocean dumping. A top state
environmental official called it a last-ditch solution to a "rapidly
deteriorating situation."
Copyright © 2003
St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 16, 2003
State
seeks permit to dump polluted water in Gulf of Mexico
Related Links,
DEP,
CARGILL AGREE TO LONG-TERM SOLUTION TO MULBERRY
PHOSPHATE’S
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS - News Release, 5/7/02
Questions
& Answers
Damage
Cases and Environmental Releases from
Mines
and Mineral Processing Plants *
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1997
Mulberry Phosphate
Museum
* pdf file (must have Acrobat Reader to open)
National Park Service may fast-track repairs to Fort Jefferson

National Park Service
The National Park Service, which operates
Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, is concerned
about deterioration that 130 years in a marine
environment has caused to the Civil War-era
structure. The agency is talking about speeding
up a repair project, which could take more
than five years.
The crumbling brick walls of Fort Jefferson in
the Dry Tortugas might not be crumbling much longer. The National Park Service, which operates the
fort, is aware of the deterioration that 130 years in a harsh marine environment
caused to the Civil War-era structure. The agency is now starting discussions
about speeding up the repair project, which could take more than five years.
Before any mortar is replaced and before any
interior walls are stabilized, the National Park Service must complete an
environmental assessment, which includes gathering input about the stabilization
project from the public at an informal workshop Thursday. After receiving input,
the park service will continue to assess the project and expects to have a
repair plan finalized by July.
Copyright © 2003 Keys
News / Key West Citizen All rights
reserved.
Parts of Estero Bay tributaries are polluted, officials now
say
The state has revamped a list of polluted waters
in Southwest Florida to include several Estero Bay tributaries that weren't on
the original draft, although some groups still want to see Naples Bay added to
the batch of impaired waters. The Florida Department of Environmental
Protection has finalized a list of polluted waters in this region with hopes of
implementing maximum pollution loads for those water bodies by 2007. The list
will soon go to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for review. Having polluted waters identified could eventually affect development in the
region. Permits could be denied for construction projects proposed in areas
identified as adding too much pollution to a local waterway. The
Department of Environmental Protection released a draft of the list last summer
that didn't include Estero Bay tributaries such as the Imperial River in Bonita
Springs.
Copyright © 2003
Naples
News All rights reserved.
Growth workshop debates environment versus development
Smart Growth committee co-chairman Brian Griffin
said Friday's workshop on recommendations for water and the environment would be
where the battle lines were drawn. He was right. The all-day workshop
featured spirited discussion and finger-pointing as a group of about 50 hammered
away at a slate of recommendations for how Lee County government should manage
its growth. The recommendations will be reviewed in public meetings by the
county's Smart Growth Advisory Committee, which will propose sweeping changes in
the comprehensive growth management plan next year. The recommendations range
from a ban on smoking on public beaches to a development moratorium in the
controversial Density Reduction Groundwater Resource area, which currently
allows sparse development.
Copyright © 2003 Naples
News All rights reserved.
Babbitt: environmental steward or sellout?
Critics say the 'green' the ex-governor cares about more is
money he gets to represent developers.
Former interior secretary and Arizona governor
Bruce Babbitt has stepped through the revolving door. Once viewed as the
federal government's most vigilant protector of the environment, Babbitt is
cashing in on his government expertise to help developers and other business
interests in the United States and abroad in his job as a Washington, D.C.-based
lawyer. In addition to helping prominent Tucson developer Donald Diamond
negotiate land swaps for properties in Ironwood Forest National Monument, which
was detailed in Thursday's Tucson Citizen, Babbitt has represented Washington
Mutual and the Hearst Ranch, two of the largest developers on the California
coast. "Since he has stepped down as interior secretary he has been
on the developers' side," said Daniel R. Patterson, desert ecologist with
the Center for Biological Diversity.
Copyright © 2003 Tucson
Citizen All rights reserved.
Related Articles,
July 30, 2001
Bruce Babbitt: Man Without Shame
August 21, 2001
Babbitt: I Was Wronged!
Opinion: Environmental Word Games
Whenever the Republicans find themselves in
trouble on environmental issues, the call goes out for Frank Luntz, a respected
party strategist. Back in 1995, Mr. Luntz urged the party to soften its language
when it became clear that the Gingrich revolution had gone too far in its
attacks on environmental law. Mr. Luntz is now making the same point. In a
memorandum recently described by The Times's Jennifer 8. Lee, he warns that
after two years of regulatory rollbacks, environmental issues have become
"the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans and especially for
George Bush." Mr. Luntz's remedy is not to change the policy, but to
dress it up with warm and fuzzy words. As in 1995, he says that the problem is
one of communication, and that what must be done is to start using comforting
words like "balance," "common sense," "safer,"
"cleaner" and "healthier." So far, Mr. Bush has been
following the strategy to the letter.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
14-March-03
New mercury warning falls short
State adopted less stringent FDA guidelines for its
pamphlet
Florida’s updated health advisory on avoiding
fish with high levels of toxic mercury — increased from a one-page flier in
1997 to a six-page pamphlet — still doesn’t provide consumers with the
safest advice on mercury. Instead, the Florida Department of Health
brochure uses mercury amounts that are far higher than those the Environmental
Protection Agency regards as safe for long-term diets. Spotted sea trout
— the state’s most popular recreationally caught fish — provide an
example. Florida changed its advice for eating spotted sea trout caught in
Southwest Florida waters by removing legal-size fish from its list of species
recommended for limited consumption. The result could allow those at
highest risk from mercury damage — fetuses and children — to get twice the
EPA-recommended dose.
Copyright © 2003 News-Press
All rights reserved.
Related Links,
Fish advisories
Consumption advice
Florida Department of Health
Look up where you fish: Mercury consumption advisories
sorted by county, waterway and type of fish
*
EPa's position: Read document that defines for official
agencies key issues in mercury problem
*
* pdf file (must have Acrobat Reader to open)
Editorial: Upper Keys sits on precarious perch
Environmental groups in neighboring Miami-Dade
have filed suit to block the widening of Krome Avenue. Noted Keys author
and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen, in his Sunday column, blasted the
Florida Department of Community Affairs for supporting the proposal to four-lane
Krome. And he warned that if this scheme proceeds, then "rural
southwest Miami-Dade will soon look like southwest Broward – an unbroken
congealment of suburbs." This has special impact on Upper Keys
residents and businesses, who perch quite precariously on the backdoor to this
vast stretch of open space in the southern third of Miami-Dade County. And
it offers testament to the adage that more roads equal more development equal
more congestion, in a spiral that too often causes more harm than good. Here in the Keys, debate over widening the 18-Mile Stretch of U.S. 1 sounds
suspiciously similar to the refrain being chanted now in Miami.
Copyright © 2003 Keynoter
All rights reserved.
Governor criticizes Collier in Southern Golden Gate Estates
land buy
Gov. Jeb Bush angrily postponed a key land buy
Thursday after learning that speculators had positioned themselves to profit
from state Everglades restoration efforts in Southern Golden Gate Estates.
“We need to start second guessing Collier County on this,” Bush said during
a Cabinet meeting after state workers told him officials there had enabled the
purchases by allowing land destined for government purchase to be privately
acquired and then divided into smaller parcels for resale to the state. “It makes no sense in terms of real-world common sense to have our partner on
this — a county government — going one way and us going another,”
Bush said, adding that the relationship between the Collier tax collector and
property appraiser and the two speculators made him “queasy." Officials for both offices denied any
wrongdoing.
Copyright © 2003
News-Press
All rights reserved.
Metro report: The board of the South Florida Water Management District
took the following actions Thursday:
Palm Beach County water: Voted 9-0 to let Palm Beach
County supply 67 percent more water to residents and businesses by 2023, an
increase that water managers say won't harm efforts to replenish the Everglades.
The county says it will increase its recycling of highly treated sewage,
allowing it to replace the extra water it takes from the ground. The county
supplies water to unincorporated areas and a few small municipalities. Pal-Mar purchase: Voted 7-0 to pay $3 million to the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for 2,033 acres in the marshy
Pal-Mar area of Palm Beach and Martin counties. Martin County will pay $667,000
of the cost. Martin County Commissioner Sarah Heard and County Administrator
Russ Blackburn praised the purchase, part of a years-long effort to buy the
foundation's Hartsel Ranch.
Copyright © 2003
Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 14, 2003
Water
district to monitor land buys
Water district to monitor land buys
A third of the way through a $2.3 billion
land-buying spree, water managers want to take a closer look at how they're
doing it. Board members of the South Florida Water Management District
agreed Thursday to take a personal role in reviewing their staff's land buys
before voting on the deals. That includes scrutiny of the appraisals and lawsuit
settlements that often drive up the prices. "I think it's important
that a governing board member listen to the arguments of staff on why we should
pay 20 percent more, why we should pay more, why we should settle," said
board member Trudi Williams of Fort Myers, who proposed the idea. "We're
talking about huge sums of money." Williams' proposal came 2 1/2
weeks after The Palm Beach Post published a series examining the deals,
including one in which district-hired appraisers pegged the value of a rock mine
at anywhere from $17.6 million to $164 million. The board voted in December to
buy the land for $139 million.
Copyright © 2003
Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 14, 2003
Metro
report: The board of the South Florida Water Management District took the
following actions Thursday
Wildlife Refuge System: 100 years old
Teddy
Roosevelt. John James Audubon. Rachel Carson. These famous names are synonymous
with the conservation and protection of our land and wildlife. But it was
an obscure Floridian named Paul Kroegel who played a vital role in the creation
of one our nation's greatest treasures, the National Wildlife Refuge System. In
doing so, he demonstrated that one person -- with dedication and fearless
conviction -- can make a contribution for conservation that will last for
generations. His life reminds us that we, too, can make a difference. Today we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the refuge system with a ceremony on
Pelican Island, a sliver of land off the coast of Florida. On March 14, 1903,
Roosevelt signed an executive order setting aside this important bird rookery as
the first national wildlife refuge.
Copyright © 2003 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Related Link,
National
Wildlife Refuges in Florida
(Click for links to home pages)
Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge
Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge
Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge
Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge
Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge
Passage Key National Wildlife Refuge
Pinellas National Wildlife Refuge
Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge
J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge
Caloosahatchee National Wildlife Refuge
Island Bay National Wildlife Refuge
Matlacha Pass National Wildlife Refuge
Pine Island National Wildlife Refuge
Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge
Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge
Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge
Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge
Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge
Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge
Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge
St. John's National Wildlife Refuge
National Key Deer Refuge
Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge
Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge
Key West National Wildlife Refuge
St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge
St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge
Press Release: DISTRICT BOARD MEMBERS CHALLENGE GOVERNOR ON EVERGLADES AND
SIDE WITH POLLUTERS
Will America's Everglades get clean water as proposed by
Governor Bush?
A coalition of major state and national environmental
organizations called on Governor Bush and DEP Secretary David Struhs urging them to
stand
firm in defense of America's Everglades, maintaining their current
science backed positions, and insist on a 10 part per billion phosphorus
standard for the Everglades that protects the whole ecosystem. The coalition concerned with water quality in America's
imperiled Everglades has condemned the action of South Florida Water Management
District (SFWMD) board members who on Wednesday joined with major polluters in an
effort to block the cleanup of phosphorous pollution. At Wednesday's SFWMD meeting, the board agreed to a policy
position that had been drafted by the sugar industry. Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003 Audubon
Society
All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 13, 2003
Everglades pollution plan may change
National Briefing: Rockies
MONTANA: WOLF MANAGEMENT PLAN
The state's plan for managing gray wolves would maintain at least 15 breeding
pairs in the state, but would allow ranchers to kill animals that threaten their
livestock. That proposal, part of a draft environmental impact statement,
details how the state wants to manage wolves once they are removed from federal
protection, which is expected next year. State officials said the plan's success
rested on whether the federal government would help pay the $800,000 annual cost.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times, AP online All rights reserved.
13-March-03
Developer Gets Rent-Free Deal on Federal Land
The Army Corps
of Engineers owns 456 lakes in 43 states, and under federal rules, private developers must pay fair
market value to lease land from the corps along those lakes. But Ronald
W. Howell, an Oklahoma lobbyist, a consultant and a prominent Republican
fund-raiser, is one developer who recently found a cheaper way. Last month, Mr. Howell and his\
company, StateSource L.L.C.,
signed a 50-year rent-free lease on 280 acres of lakefront at Skiatook
Lake in Oklahoma, not far from Tulsa. The deal was a sublease, between StateSource and the Skiatook
Economic Development Authority, which had just leased the land free from
the corps under an exemption that allows such arrangements for government
agencies. The authority then handed off the property to Mr. Howell, with
the corps' full approval. Mr. Howell and his lobbying and communications
company plan to build a $10 million marina, golf and cabin complex and, in the
process, turn a profit.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Everglades pollution plan may change
The super-strict Everglades pollution limit
endorsed by Gov. Jeb Bush could be in jeopardy because of what Bush's water
managers did Wednesday, a leading environmental lobbyist warned. And all
because of 63 bureaucratic words. Those words are contained in changes to
a draft Everglades cleanup plan that won an informal endorsement Wednesday from
the board of the South Florida Water Management District. Depending on who
is interpreting them, the changes could persuade lawmakers or regulators to
allow phosphorus pollution levels in the Everglades as high as 15 parts per
billion, Audubon of Florida lobbyist Charles Lee said. That's a 50 percent
leap above the 10 parts per billion that Bush and his staff endorsed just over a
year ago. "I find that politically a little bizarre," said Lee,
who denounced the proposal as "a lobbying stunt by the sugar
industry."
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 14, 2003
Press
Release: DISTRICT BOARD MEMBERS CHALLENGE
GOVERNOR
ON EVERGLADES AND SIDE WITH POLLUTERS
Hundreds of dead puffer fish washing ashore in southwest
Florida
Evidence of red tide has been found along the
shores of two southwest Florida counties, which can partly explain why hundreds
of puffer fish washed up on a beach, scientists said. Red tide showed up
in water samples taken along the Collier and Lee county coast and offshore,
according to results released Friday from the Florida Marine Research Institute
in St. Petersburg. Lee County volunteers this week collected more than 650
striped burrfish, a type of puffer fish, from a 2-mile stretch of Bonita
Beach. "We're no longer having fish dying without a cause," said
Earnest Truby, a scientist at the research center. Results are expected
next week that could show whether something other than red tide had a role,
researchers said. Fish kills are often caused in the area by red tide, a
bloom of algae that produces toxins fatal to fish. Four of the dead fish
were sent to scientists at the Florida Marine Research Institute.
Copyright © 2003 St.
Petersburg Times All rights reserved.
Related Link,
On the Net:
Florida Marine Research Institute
Water management chairman from east coast
Fort Myers’ Trudi Williams completes her term
Water management leadership shifted back to the
east coast Wednesday as Fort Myers engineer Trudi Williams handed the reins to
Nicolas Gutierrez Jr. The South Florida Water Management District oversees
the $8 billion Everglades restoration and manages water supply and flood control
over 16 counties from the Kissimmee River valley to the Florida Keys. Taking turns in the top seat is normal but means less clout for Southwest
Florida, said Bill Hammond, an environment professor at Florida Gulf Coast
University and former board member. “It does, I think, because the chair
is on the inside on the budget and all that,” Hammond said. “It’s all that
subtle indirect stuff that you miss." Williams said the opposite may
be true. “I think we can actually be more productive behind the scenes
rather than as chair,” Williams said.
Copyright © 2003
News-Press
All rights reserved.
Editorial: Refuge for a century
Pelican Island, the birthplace of America's
national wildlife refuge system, marks its 100-year anniversary on Friday. The
2-acre island in the Indian River Lagoon south of Sebastian was the start of a
national refuge system that has grown to include 538 sites and 150,000 square
miles of preserved lands across the U.S. -- including the Hobe Sound National
Wildlife Refuge in Martin County and the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National
Wildlife Refuge west of Boca Raton. President Theodore Roosevelt saved the
island as the nation's first wildlife refuge in 1903 at the behest of Paul
Kroegel and other conservationists who asked him to protect Florida's wild birds
from poachers who killed them for feathers for ladies' hats. Mr. Kroegel, a
37-year-old German immigrant, patrolled the island from a sailboat and used a
double-barreled shotgun to warn poachers away from the bird haven.
Copyright © 2003
Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Both
Sides Confident as Senate Nears Vote on Alaska Drilling
As the Senate neared a close vote on whether to allow oil
drilling in the Alaska wilderness, each side in the debate expressed
confidence that it would prevail. Oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is among
the highest priorities of the Bush administration, and the Senate's
switch to Republican control after the November elections has put
the drilling plan in closer reach than last year, when the Senate
rejected it, 54 to 46. Supporters are seeking to persuade wavering senators with an
argument that increased domestic oil production is needed more than
ever on the approach of a possible war with Iraq and with gasoline
prices rising sharply. "In the last few months alone, our oil imports from Iraq have
doubled," said Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who is a
leading proponent of drilling. "We're paying Saddam Hussein billions
of dollars for gasoline and aviation fuel to send our aircraft
carriers and troops to fight him.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
12-March-03
Florida's Rarest Visitors This Year Are Flying In on Their
Own Wings
Most birdwatchers keep lists
of some sort. They keep lists of all of the birds they've seen everywhere, which
is called a life list. But they also keep lists of the birds they've seen
in their state, county or backyard. One aspect of the list keeping, as
least for me, is trying to predict which species of birds are the most likely to
be the next I'll find in Florida. I guess you could call it my "bird wish
list." My most recent list envisioned closing in on 400 species for
Florida. I'm nearly there, but some of the species I've seen to advance
toward my goal weren't on my list. Some of them weren't on anyone's list. The latest surprise was a Eurasian kestrel, a type of falcon, discovered at the
Lake Apopka restoration area near Zellwood in Orange County late last month.
This is a species that isn't even depicted in most of the North American field
guides.
Copyright © 2003 The
Ledger All rights reserved.
Editorial: Pelican Island's 100th: a time to recommit
At 5-feet
6-inches tall, Paul Kroegel wasn't a big man. But he was big enough to stand up
against the hurricane-force wind of slaughter a century ago, and win. Kroegel
stopped hunters from decimating flocks of pelicans that inhabited the Indian
River Lagoon near Sebastian because their plumes made fanciful decorations atop
women's hats. President Theodore Roosevelt heard about Kroegel's crusade,
and was inspired to create the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge and with
it found the National Wildlife Refuge System. Today, the system consists
of 540 refugees sprawling over 95 million acres, from the Alaskan arctic to the
Florida tropics in a grand mosaic of protected land and animals that has no
equal in the world. On Friday, dignitaries will gather to mark the
island's 100th birthday and the centennial of the wildlife system.
Copyright © 2003
Florida
Today All rights reserved.
Related Links,
Warden Paul Kroegel, Pelican Island - 1917 First Wildlife Officer and
Refuge Manager
Images
http://training.fws.gov/history/pelisle/paulk.html
http://training.fws.gov/history/directoratehall/topics/mans.jpg
Monument
http://www.byways.org/image_library/media_details.html?CX_MEDIA=36187
Bio (1 page, PDF) *
http://pelicanisland.fws.gov/media/KroegelFlyer.pdf
* pdf file (must have Acrobat Reader to open)
Opinion: There's More Than One Way to Protect Wetlands
Every year, the federal government and
Americans across the country preserve, restore and enhance thousands of acres of
wetlands through cooperative conservation efforts, partnerships and voluntary
programs. Unfortunately, that's not the news that most Americans read about.
Instead, the focus has been on the wetlands regulatory program. Wetlands are essential to a healthy environment. They filter water, provide
habitat for wildlife and offer opportunities for recreation. Over the past
century, the United States has lost slightly more than half its wetlands,
leaving about 105 million acres of intertidal basins, coastal estuaries,
saltwater marshes and freshwater ponds, swamps and lakeside areas. The debate is not whether to protect wetlands, but how. For the last 25
years, government officials and environmental activists have largely relied on
the Clean Water Act's regulations to protect wetlands.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 17, 2003
Letter:
Conserving Wetlands
National Briefing: West
CALIFORNIA: INJUNCTION AGAINST TREE-SITTERS
A request from Pacific Lumber Company for a temporary restraining order against
environmental activists who are occupying redwood trees on company property was
granted on Monday by a Humboldt County Superior Court judge. Activists have been
protesting Pacific Lumber's logging practices by sitting high in the branches of
at least 18 trees near Freshwater Creek, which empties into Humboldt Bay.
(AP)
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
11-March-03
Group backs lake releases
The County Coalition for Responsible Management of Lake
Okeechobee and St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Estuaries met Monday morning at the Okeechobee County
Courthouse. The coalition, made up of commissioners from Okeechobee, St.
Lucie, Martin, Lee, Palm Beach, Hendry, Glades and Highlands counties passed a resolution encouraging Osceola County to join the
coalition. Commissioner Sara Heard of Martin County suggested that the
entire ecological system be treated as an integrated whole, and warned against crisis
management. Glades County Commissioner Alvin Ward said there was
restoration work going on south of Moore Haven. He said South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) gave the Glades County
commissioners an update on restoration of Lake Hicpochee. He said the Department
of Environmental Protection (DEP) wants to take in more Glades
County land for reservoirs.
Copyright © 2003
News
Zap - Okeechobee News All rights reserved.
The Charles Atlas of Algae
The
Charles Atlas of Algae
Diatoms, algae that are major components of plankton, are proof that small is
beautiful. Their silica shells, called frustules, are exquisitely ornamented,
symmetrical structures. But a diatom is more than just a pretty face. Its frustule is a form of armor
that can protect the diatoms from predators. Just how much protection the
typical diatom frustule offers has been determined by scientists in Germany, who
performed load tests on several species. Engineers perform these kinds of tests all the time — putting thousands of
pounds of pressure on an aircraft part, say, until it breaks. The diatom tests
were the same, but since diatoms are on the order of 100 microns in diameter,
very tiny amounts of force were applied, using a microscopic glass needle.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Debating Whether Oil Wells and Wilderness Mix
A
leading question in the debate over drilling for oil in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska is whether wilderness can coexist with oil
wells on America's only Arctic coast. Alaska's North Slope, after all, is a place with a freeze-thaw climate that
can turn a tire rut into a permanent geological feature. In the warm months, its
treeless plains are cloaked with breeding birds, caribou and bear. Offshore,
pods of bowhead whales are still hunted by Alaska Natives. Last week, a panel of scientists, oil industry consultants and
environmentalists organized by the National Academies, the nation's closest
thing to a scientific arbitrator, completed a two-year assessment.
Their task was to measure the effects of 35 years of expanding seismic
thumping, drilling and pipeline construction west of the refuge, in the web of
industrial activity spreading out from the site of the first big find, in
Prudhoe Bay.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
09-March-03
Keep Krome as a two-lane road
Despite all the noble talk about restoring the Everglades,
Florida's planners continue to act schizophrenically toward the fabled river of
grass. A prime example is the decision by the state Department of
Community Affairs to endorse the four-laning of Krome Avenue from Okeechobee Road
all the way to Homestead. If that's allowed to happen, rural southwest Miami-Dade
will soon look like southwest Broward -- an unbroken congealment of suburbs. This
time, though, it will be the fragile rim of Everglades National Park being paved and polluted.
Considering the billions being committed to replumb and renourish the 'Glades, it
seems crazy to encourage rampant development throughout the adjoining
wetlands. Yet that's exactly what widening Krome is intended to do.
The farms, nurseries and five-acre ranchettes between Kendall and Homestead
represent the last buildable open spaces in Miami-Dade.
Copyright © 2003 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Color Them Green (or Greedy)
A
lot of publications marshal facts and figures to influence car-buying decisions.
The latest, 2003 edition of "ACEEE's Green Book" is no exception, though it
doesn't provide the usual fodder of top speeds or zero-to-60 acceleration times.
Rather, the publication offers lesser-known measures like the "environmental
damage index" of a car, plus estimates of the health care costs to society from
the pollution produced by a particular model. The Green Book is published by the
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, an environmental group in
Washington. The Green Book also ranks cars by environmental standards. "The mantra of our
book is to encourage consumers to buy the greenest vehicle that fits their needs
and their budget," said James Kleisch, the co-author (with John DeCicco). "We
don't say, `Stay away from pickup trucks.' We say that if you're going to buy a
pickup, here's the greenest one on the market."
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
'Coal': Sovereign of the Industrial Age
When I was a boy growing up in West Virginia, I
would lie in bed at night listening to a small AM radio, eager to hear ''Joy to
the World'' (the Three Dog Night song, not the carol -- hey, I was 10) or
straining to stay awake for Roberto Clemente's next at-bat in the Pirates game.
In the course of these pursuits, I also became familiar with a ritual
announcement that hit the air every night around 10 o'clock, and that I can
still repeat verbatim. ''The following operations of Consolidation Coal will
work the midnight shift: the Arkwright Mine, the Osage Mine, the Humphrey Mine,
the Pursglove Mine. . . ." Be assured that no other trade enjoyed the benefit of having its work shifts
announced on the local airwaves. But that's how omnipresent ''king coal,'' as
the mineral is sometimes called, was.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Ancient Dunes vs. Exotic Trees

Next to the
Presidio Golf Club, a small grove
of Monterey cypress trees that
were planted
by the Army back in the late 1700's have
been
reforested after many trees have
been blown down by high winds.
From the city's hilltops, the trees of the
Presidio form luxurious green plumage against winter's crystalline
skies. When the United States Army planted this urban forest — now a
1,480-acre national park — on ridges and wind-swept sand dunes in
the 1880's, it imbued the trees of what was then a military post
with deep symbolism. Maj. W. A. Jones, the landscape engineer, wrote
that soaring Monterey cypress, eucalyptus and other trees would make
the base appear imposing and "indirectly accentuate the idea of the
power of government." San Franciscans take their history and horticulture seriously. So
it is probably not surprising that a philosophical tempest has
erupted over a draft plan by the United States Fish and Wildlife
Service, now under review, that suggests removing 3,800 trees to
re-establish the sand dunes that once blanketed the landscape.
Copyright © 2003
NY
Times online All rights reserved.
08-March-03
Bay housing project gets the go-ahead
Environmental groups upset, saying water flow will suffer
Federal regulators will allow Lennar Corp. to
build up to 3,000 new homes near Biscayne Bay, where they will sit amid a narrow
swath of struggling coastal wetlands targeted for revival in the Everglades
restoration plan. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Friday it plans to
approve a major expansion of Lakes by the Bay in South Miami-Dade. Damage
would be minimized by a 145-acre wetlands preserve the developer has agreed to
set aside on the 516-acre site, the Corps said. Environmentalists, who
have been fighting the project for a year, were disappointed. They said it could
undermine plans to clean up water flowing into Biscayne National Park and set a
bad precedent of allowing big development in the footprint of an Everglades
project.
Copyright © 2003 Miami
Herald All rights reserved.
Water district chair reappointed
South Florida Water Management District
Chairwoman Trudi K. Williams was reappointed on Friday by Gov. Jeb Bush, his
office announced. Williams, 49, heads a consulting engineering firm in
Fort Myers. Irela M. Bague, 34, of Coral Gables, a former district permit
and public affairs representative and former Audubon Society executive, was
named to succeed board member Gerardo "Jerry" Fernandez. Kevin
McCarty, 53, of Delray Beach, a managing director of the Bear Stearns investment
bank and husband of Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty, succeeds board
member Pat Gleason. Fernandez and Gleason opted not to seek new terms. The
terms run through March 2007.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Oil and Gas Industry Exempt From New Clean Water Rules
New clean water regulations
requiring small construction sites to develop plans for storm water will not
apply to the oil and gas industries, officials of the Environmental Protection
Agency said today. The new rules, which take effect on Monday, will require construction sites
bigger than one acre to have plans to handle storm water, which can carry
chemical and metal runoff from the disturbed soil. Existing rules already
require such plans for sites larger than five acres. The agency says it is giving the oil and gas industries a two-year exemption
from the requirement at the smaller sites while it conducts further study.
Critics in national environmental groups and in Congress say the oil and gas
industries are taking advantage of close ties to the administration to lay
political groundwork for broader exemptions to the Clean Water Act.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Firm Puts Swath of Adirondacks Up for Sale
A 94,000-acre swath of
forest in the Adirondacks has been put up for sale by the company that owns the
land, raising concern among conservationists who fear that developers may buy
chunks of it before it can be preserved. The company, the Hancock Timber Resource Group, a subsidiary of
John Hancock Financial Services Inc., began
sending out 32-page reports last Friday describing the land to a wide-range of
prospective buyers and will accept bids until May 21. Henry Whittemore, the
northeast regional manager for Hancock Timber, would not estimate the value of
the property, but he said the company could withdraw the sale if it does not
receive a favorable bid. About 40,000 acres of the 93,911-acre property are already protected by
conservation easements, which bar development but allow recreation and a certain
amount of logging.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Europe's Carmakers Sticking With Diesel
Chalk it up to the widening gap in the way Europeans and Americans
look at the world. Last week,
General Motors
brought its prototype of a hydrogen-powered car to the Geneva International
Motor Show. The futuristic car, known as the Hy-Wire, had just gotten a nice
lift from President Bush, who was photographed admiring it after announcing that
the government would put $1.7 billion into researching hydrogen as a replacement
for gasoline. In the salons of Geneva, however, the Hy-Wire sat forlornly next to a
prototype of a monstrous Cadillac with a 16-cylinder engine. The crowds all but
ignored the car, preferring to swarm around the latest Mini, which is made by
the plucky English carmaker owned by BMW of Germany. What was the attraction? The new Mini has a diesel
engine. To be fair, the Mini is rolling out this summer, while the Hy-Wire is merely
a twinkle in the eye of automotive engineers.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
07-March-03
Manatee sides try to work out deal
New protection rules may be delayed while talks occur
New manatee protection measures could be put on
hold in Florida while both sides of the controversy work on a permanent solution.
That means that new boating speed zones proposed for the Caloosahatchee River
and other manatee protection measures, such as tougher restrictions on boat dock
permits in Southwest Florida, could be delayed. Officials from state and
federal agencies, environmental groups, marine industry representatives and
boaters met in Orlando on Tuesday to begin discussing a compromise. It’s
the first time the parties in the controversy have had meaningful discussions to
resolve the situation that is creating hardships for boat-dock builders who
can’t get permits. Boaters also claim that new speed zones will harm
recreational boating and the marine industry in general. But there’s a
catch. All the parties have to agree.
Copyright © 2003 News-Press
All rights reserved.
Study of Antarctic Points to Rising Sea Levels
New
evidence from a rapidly warming part of Antarctica suggests that ice can flow
into the sea much more readily than had been predicted, perhaps leading to an
accelerated rise in sea levels from global warming. Many polar and ice experts said the new study, to be published today in the
journal Science, suggested that seas might rise as much as several yards over
the next several centuries. They called that prospect a slow-motion disaster,
the cost of which — in lost shorelines, salt in water supplies, and damaged
ecosystems — would be borne by many future generations. The new analysis focuses on the recent breakup of one of the floating ice
shelves fringing the 1,000-mile Antarctic Peninsula after decades of warming
temperatures there. The loss of the coastal shelves caused a "drastic" speedup
of the seaward flow of inland glaciers, the researchers say.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Stricter Rules for Modified Crops
In an effort to prevent contamination of the food
supply, the Agriculture Department announced stricter rules yesterday for crops
that are genetically modified to produce pharmaceuticals or industrial chemicals.
The rules were criticized as inadequate by two groups usually opposed to each
other, opponents of biotechnology and the food industry. The growing of such crops, sometimes called pharming or biopharming, is in
the experimental stage. Companies in the field say the process may one day
manufacture proteins for pharmaceuticals at lower cost and in greater amounts
than is now possible. Genetically modified crops might also allow the
development of vaccines that can be eaten instead of injected. But there are concerns that such crops might inadvertently enter the food
supply, posing a possible danger to public health and forcing costly recalls.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
06-March-03
New, Cheaper Means Sought to Clean
L.I. Sound
Over the last few years, some scientists have begun
quietly wondering whether the huge effort to reduce nitrogen pollution in Long
Island Sound will really be the magic bullet that delivers a long-beleaguered
estuary to ruddy health. New information concerning climate change and water temperature has raised
questions about the scope of the sound's problems. And studies have shown that
the low level of oxygen in the water, which nitrogen reduction was supposed to
correct, is a more complicated issue than previously thought. Now, New York City's Department of Environmental Protection is charging into
the thick of those questions, hoping to save $1 billion for the city's battered
budget and lead what the department's commissioner, Christopher O. Ward, hopes
will be a sweeping re-evaluation — if not a small revolution — in communities
around the sound about how nitrogen pollutes the waters and how to remove it
most efficiently.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Military Seeks Exemptions on Harming Environment
The Defense Department is
asking for broad exemptions from environmental regulations in an expanded
version of a bill that was defeated last year in the Senate. The proposed legislation, introduced today by the White House, would give the
military more discretion in activities that affect marine mammals and endangered
species. In particular, the military is asking for exemptions from sections from
the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which officials said would give needed
flexibility to sonar and underwater bombing exercises. In contrast, the last version of the bill gave limited exemptions for small
numbers of marine mammals in specified regions. Environment groups have
criticized military sonar exercises over the last several years for beaching
whales, in a few cases because of burst eardrums.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
California Offers Change in Car Rules
California is seeking to
compromise with automakers by dropping a requirement that they sell electric
cars, the state's latest attempt to persuade carmakers to end their opposition
to the program. The California Air Resources Board outlined proposed changes to the
zero-emission vehicle program today that would let companies sell more
gasoline-electric hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell autos instead of battery-powered
cars starting with 2005 models, a spokesman, Dimitri Stanich, said. Last year,
General Motors
and
DaimlerChrysler, joined by the Justice
Department, won a federal injunction temporarily blocking the board from
enforcing the program. It requires that 10 percent of cars sold in the state by
the six biggest automakers emit almost no pollution. A district court in San
Francisco is expected to rule on the suit this month.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
05-March-03
Water manager won't seek second term
A board member's last-minute withdrawal leaves
Gov. Jeb Bush with at least two seats to fill at the South Florida Water
Management District. Gerardo "Jerry" Fernandez of Miami, who has
served on the unpaid board since 1999, told Bush by e-mail last week that he's
withdrawing his application for a second four-year term, gubernatorial
spokeswoman Alia Faraj said Tuesday. "The time has come for me to get
back to my business endeavors," wrote Fernandez, an environmental
consultant. Fernandez has been the subject of a criminal investigation by
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement since July, apparently related to
$37,000 worth of advertising and Spanish-translation contracts the district has
awarded to companies in Miami. That investigation is still open, said FDLE
spokeswoman Paige Patterson-Hughes, who would not disclose details. Faraj declined to say whether Bush would have
reappointed Fernandez despite the investigation.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Experts Conclude Oil Drilling Has Hurt Alaska's North Slope
Even though oil companies have greatly improved
practices in the Arctic, three decades of drilling along Alaska's North Slope
have produced a steady accumulation of harmful environmental and social effects
that will probably grow as exploration expands, a panel of experts has
concluded. Some of the problems could last for centuries, the experts said in a report
yesterday, both because environmental damage does not heal easily in the area's
harsh climate and because it is uneconomical to remove structures or restore
damaged areas once drilling is over. The report, produced by the National Research Council, was immediately hailed
by opponents of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which lies east
of established oil fields and is the only part of America's only stretch of
Arctic coastline that for now is off limits to drilling. Advocates of drilling
called it biased.
Copyright ©
2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
A Fine Kettle of Fish, Trout or Not
BACK when the Peckman River was a watery dump for sewage, grass clippings and
broken furniture, the notion of its becoming a trout stream seemed like a
fantasy. But two sewage plants on the small river were upgraded. Residents
cleared debris, then began stocking the river with trout. Lo and behold, the state wants to label this unremarkable river in the
unbroken sprawl of northern New Jersey a trout stream. The moral of the tale? Be careful what you fish for. The federal Clean Water
Act, filtered through the state bureaucracy, is emitting a fine mess. Officials in two towns are fighting the state's attempt to bestow on the
Peckman River the rare distinction of being an urban trout stream. They fear
that it would require an even cleaner river, which they estimate could
ultimately cost them a combined $28 million in sewer plant improvements, partly
to cool the treated sewage flowing to the river.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
04-March-03
Business: Auto Sales Fell to Lowest Rate in 4 1/2 Years

Sales at Dan Wolf Pontiac in
Countryside, Ill., and other
General Motors dealers fell last
month.
Bloomberg News
Sales of the lucrative, gas-guzzling giants of
the auto industry — the Escalades, Excursions, Suburbans and other big sport
utility vehicles — are sliding, according to figures released today.
Analysts said that rising gas prices and a drumbeat of criticism of S.U.V.'s
figure in the slowing sales. But the biggest culprit, they said, is a new wave
of small and medium-size sport utilities from Asian automakers that are chipping
away at a crucial profit center for the domestic auto industry. Over all,
auto sales fell to their second-lowest pace in four and a half years last month,
as snowstorms and worries about a possible war with Iraq tempered buying. Sales
fell 6.7 percent from a year earlier, to a seasonally adjusted annual sales rate
of 15.4 million vehicles. Sales at General
Motors fell 19 percent last month from a year earlier, and both Ford
and G.M. said they were cutting their production levels for the second quarter,
compared with a year ago.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Science: Restoring a Forest Goes Slowly, and Advocates Seethe

Todd Rall moved logs burned during the
fires of 2000 in preparation for hauling
them to a mill near the Bitterroot Valley
in Montana.
Tim Thompson
In the summer of 2000, fires roared through the
tinder-dry Bitterroot National Forest, cloaking the valley in dense smoke for
weeks, blackening more than 300,000 acres and destroying 70 private homes in a
valley that is a bedroom community for this university town. Now the
restoration of the forest has become the focus of a dispute between
environmental groups and the United States Forest Service. A coalition of local
and national environmental groups say the agency is breaking a promise to move
the restoration along quickly. The Forest Service acknowledges that the work has
been delayed by budget shortages but insists that it will be completed in three
to five years. An analysis by the environmental groups found that of
33,150 acres planned for reforestation, only 4,000 acres had been planted, and
that watershed and road restoration was going even more slowly.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Science: At South Pole, New Home for a New Era

Some residents of the South Pole will
say goodbye today to their home in the
geodesic dome, foreground. They will
begin taking up residence in a large new
center with 65,000 square feet of heated
space, built atop 36 columns so that it
will not become buried in snow. And in
the private quarters, almost everyone
will have a window.
Joan Meyers for The New York Times
The "polies," as they call themselves,
are getting a new home. Residents of the South Pole — astronomers,
chemists, technicians, cooks, construction workers — are carrying their
possessions 100 yards across snow and ice, bidding farewell to the windowless
geodesic dome that has served for three decades as a symbol of polar
exploration. On March 4, they begin taking up residence in a huge
enclosure on stilts that resembles an economy motel, complete with windows. When
the new station is finished in four years, the dome will be chopped into pieces
and shipped to aluminum scrap yards. Everyone who works here knows it is
time to replace the old station. The dome was built to house just 33
people.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
Science: Agonizing, Inhospitable Homecoming of Lynx to Colorado

A female Canada lynx released into
the wild in 1999 by the Colorado
Division of Wildlife, top. The state
plans to release 180 more lynxes
by 2008, but opposition to the release
program has been growing.
Associated Press
The next batch of lynxes is expected to be
released in the San Juan and Rio Grande national forests here in Colorado this
spring. If they knew what they faced, they might not want to come. Life
has not been easy for the lynx here. By 1973, it had disappeared. In 1999,
lynxes trapped in Canada and Alaska were released here, only to find an unduly
harsh environment. Four of the first five died of starvation; a fifth was found
emaciated. Of the 96 lynxes brought to southwestern Colorado so far, 43
are known to be dead and 34 are still tracked by radio collars. Researchers say
53 could still be alive. Over all, nine have died of starvation, six were killed
by vehicles, six were shot and killed and some died of unknown causes. In
addition, the lynxes do not appear to be reproducing. Despite a recent
legal challenge to the release program, state officials are proceeding with a $2
million plan to reintroduce 180 more lynxes over the next five years.
Copyright © 2003
NY Times
online All rights reserved.
03-March-03
National: A New Frontier in Water Wars Emerges
East

The Potomac River, which divides Virginia
and Maryland, is at the center of a dispute
over water use. Similar water battles, common
in the West, are now under way throughout
the East.
Paul Hosefros/The New York Times
In 1632, King Charles I granted Maryland the
right to the Potomac River "from shore to shore." For the most basic
of reasons, that is something Virginia, on the Potomac's south bank, is now
fighting to overturn. "The bottom line is that if Maryland can
restrict Virginia's ability to withdraw water from the river, Maryland is in
control of Virginia's destiny," said Stuart Raphael, a special counsel to
Virginia, rehearsing a complaint that is now before the United States Supreme
Court. It is a fight over royal charters, interstate compacts and years of
precedent, but mostly it is a fight over water, reflecting growing worries in
the region that a commodity is not as bountiful as it once seemed. And up and
down the East Coast, its echoes can now be heard. Such tensions have long
been common in the arid West.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
National: Waikiki Beach's Unloved Backwater Spawns a Record-Setting
Crustacean
Murderous, google-eyed crustaceans with barbed
spears and razor-switchblade appendages that can shred fish and flesh to ribbons
have been captured in the shallow waters off Waikiki. Big ones. Salami-sized.
The biggest ever recorded in Hawaii. Panic, however, has not set in.
That is because these creatures, burrowing predators called mantis shrimp, have
turned up not on Waikiki Beach, the stretch of white sand and blue-green surf
that remains as dreamy and safe as ever, but in the Ala Wai Canal, a smelly,
silty drainage basin behind Waikiki that tourists shun and many locals deride as
one step up from a sewer. The news that the jumbo stomatopods (not shrimp,
technically) were thriving in waters that regularly give canoe paddlers
infections and parasitic rashes caused much wonderment when it was reported
recently in The Honolulu Advertiser.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Opinion: Protecting Waters, Large and Small
Abipartisan group in Congress has now moved to
reassert the historical reach of the Clean Water Act to protect all the waters
of the United States — not just those chosen for protection by the Supreme
Court, the Bush administration or the Army Corps of Engineers. It's a necessary
move. An ill-considered Supreme Court decision two years ago narrowed safeguards
for certain isolated wetlands long covered by the law. Then, in January, the
administration invited a further reinterpretation of the statute that could
narrow its scope far more severely than the court required — enriching
commercial interests while impoverishing the environment. For more than 30
years, the act has been broadly interpreted as shielding everything from large
navigable rivers and lakes to seasonal streams and "prairie potholes"
from pollution and unregulated development.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
02-March-03
Letter to the Editor: Dean -- Water district being frugal in Everglades land buys
Although interesting and informative, The Post's
recent articles regarding the South Florida Water Management District's land
acquisition for Everglades restoration may have raised questions in the minds of
readers. We would like to clarify those matters by reporting the following facts.
First, with regard to Monday's front-page article "Restoration means
shattering of dreams for some," we are happy to report that eminent domain
has been used in fewer than 2 percent of the total Everglades-related land
purchases made by the district. Of the nearly 200,000 acres of property
acquired, only 3,826 acres have been taken under condemnation cases. The
district works hard to acquire property through voluntary purchase and has found
most landowners willing to work with us.
Read
more . . .
Copyright © 2003
Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Related Links,
HENRY
DEAN, executive director
PAMELA
Mac'KIE, deputy executive director, land
resources
South Florida Water Management District
West Palm Beach
A Call for Softer, Greener Language
Over the last six months, the Republican Party
has subtly refocused its message on the environment, an issue that a party
strategist called "the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans and
especially for George Bush" in a memorandum encouraging the new approach. The Republicans, as the memorandum advised them,
have softened their language to appeal to suburban voters, speaking out for
protecting national parks and forests, advocating investment in environment
technologies and shifting emphasis to the future rather than the present. In interviews, Republican politicians and their
aides said they agreed with the strategist, Frank Luntz, that it was important
to pay attention to what his memorandum, written before the November elections,
called "the environmental communications battle."
Copyright © 2003
NY Times online
All rights reserved.
Editorial: Save
the real Florida
Environmental issues are interwoven, making it difficult to prioritize one above
another during a tight budget year. Nonetheless,
the Legislature must not allow any weakening of programs or regulations that
protect Florida's natural resources. Specifically,
it should resist attempts to raid trust funds set up for environmental programs
and make sure the crucial Forever Florida land-buying program and Everglades
Restoration project are fully funded. Water-management
policies should also receive the Legislature's close attention so growth doesn't
further endanger water supplies. Special interests may push to privatize water
resources, but the right approach is to implement regulations tying growth to
supply. Other high-priority issues include
the health of imperiled waterways such as the Indian River Lagoon, which
scientists suspect is dangerously close to pollutant overload. Finally,
it's time for the state to look at restricting coastline development.
Copyright © 2003
Florida
Today All rights reserved.
01-March-03
Opinion: Rebuked on Global Warming
Nothing so far has shamed President Bush into
adopting a more aggressive policy toward the threat of global warming. He has
been denounced by mainstream scientists, deserted by his progressive friends in
industry and sued by seven states. Still he clings stubbornly to a voluntary
policy aimed at merely slowing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, despite
an overwhelming body of evidence that only binding targets and a firm timetable
will do the job. Now there is fresh criticism from sources Mr.
Bush may find harder to ignore. Last week Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain,
Mr. Bush's most loyal ally in the debate over Iraq, gently but firmly rebuked
the president for abandoning the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global climate change
and for succumbing to the insupportable notion that fighting global warming will
impede economic growth.
Copyright © 2003 NY
Times online All rights reserved.
Challenges stall Everglades land deals
For the third time in four years, the Everglades restoration
is looking to Tallahassee for financial rescue. The task this time: Finding a replacement for $100 million a
year in state bond money that lawmakers approved last year. Legislators tied
that money to legal protections for developers, prompting
environmentalists to file suits that have mired the bonds in court. Without the promised $100 million, the South Florida Water
Management District's aggressive land-buying program could run out of cash by
May. But the Everglades' plight might not attract much sympathy
among legislators facing a $2 billion to $4 billion budget deficit -- especially
since Senate President Jim King championed last year's law.
Copyright © 2003 Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
Legislators brace for war over water
Almost every debate in the 60-day legislative
session that convenes Tuesday will be colored by a $4 billion budget shortfall
and the bitter divisions it has already created over slashing
services and hiking taxes. But another battle is brewing over a resource that is
technically free -- water. At stake are such fundamental issues as how rapidly the state
can continue to grow, the future of an $8 billion Everglades cleanup and
continued public ownership of a commodity no Floridian can live without. "That is going to be a huge fight this session," a
weary Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, told reporters at a recent
briefing dominated by the budget. Environmentalists are particularly worried about a proposed
bill by freshman Rep. Baxter Troutman, R-Winter Haven, that would erase a
section of Florida law created in 1972, at the height of the
environmental movement -- a time when Congress was passing the Clean Water Act
and Clean Air Act and creating the Environmental Protection Agency.
Copyright © 2003
Palm
Beach Post All rights reserved.
March
Place and Prices: The Everglades
One of the wonders of the
Everglades is that although the wading bird population is down to less than a
tenth of what it once was and most of the rest of the ecosystem is equally
stressed, what remains is still so awe-inspiring that visitors continue to be
bowled over by what they see. Whether you have only a few hours to spend on a
day-trip or can invest in the week—and the mosquito repellent—that a canoe
trip usually requires, visit from December through March, when cool, dry air
keeps the bug population down and draws birds and animals to water holes, where
they're easier to view. The one thing almost everybody who visits wants to
see is an alligator—and almost no one is disappointed. Mainly night feeders,
these primordial reptiles don't put on much of a show during daylight hours as
they laze on a bank or drift across placid waters, looking like logs with eyes.
Copyright © 2003
Condé
Nast Traveler All rights
reserved.
Related Article,
March 2003
Playing
with Water
Playing with Water
The Everglades is in danger of being loved to
death. Floridians and awestruck visitors, engineers and farmers—all scrabbled
for their causes. A federal restoration plan has survived tough battles, and Bob
Payne finds reason to hope the park will, too. On a dry, mosquito-free
afternoon in February, near Nine Mile Pond, where fresh and salt water mix, a
ranger was talking to a group of us about the threats facing Everglades National
Park. As he was explaining that all the trouble had to do with competing needs
for freshwater, a roseate spoonbill flew overhead. The ranger interrupted
himself to let us exclaim in wonder over the lovely pink-winged creature before
he said, "I see tremendous amounts of wildlife here, unbelievable amounts.
But I have talked with folks who were here as young people, and although
memories fade a little bit and we alter things, they say you can't imagine how
much there was compared with today." I, however, could do more than
imagine.
Copyright © 2003 Condé Nast Traveler
All rights reserved.
Related Article,
March 2003
Place and
Prices: The Everglades
Related Link,
Florida Articles
Letter: History Repeating Itself
Jöelle Harvic's two part series "Water, Water Everywhere?"
(December 2002 and January 2003) makes a fundamentally sound and persuasive argument that land planning and water management decisions
need to be made in concert. Harvic eloquently points to the failures associated with the Florida Water Plan, the water use permitting process,
water managers' ad hoc decision making, and the water management system's disconnect between land planning, water availability and
consumptive uses. The concept is not a novel one. This writer advocated such a position in the Journal 20 years ago. ("Drought in Florida:
Nature's Response to 'Comprehensive' Planning" (April 1983). Thirty years ago, Dean Maloney's Model Water Code established
the fundamental framework upon which coordinated land planning and water management decision making could
occur. Read
More...
Copyright © 2003
Florida Bar Journal All
rights reserved.
Related Articles,
December 2002
Water,
Water Everywhere?
January 2003
Water,
Water Everywhere?, Part 2
Related Links,
Dean Maloney
Writing Contest
Purpose: Named after Dean Frank E. Maloney, this committee plans and
implements an annual writing
contest for Florida law students. The three top students and law schools are
rewarded. Environmental
and land use law section members can participate in judging the submitted
papers.
Dean
Maloney Writing Contest rules and prizes
1999
Dean Frank E. Maloney Memorial Writing Contest
Related Information,
Law School Liaison (Now includes Maloney Scholarship and Book Awards)
Purpose: To coordinate section activities with Florida law schools to
stimulate students'
interest in environmental and land use law.
Goals: To increase the number of law students with an interest in
environmental and land use law.
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