Copyright  © 2002  Fort Meyers News Press  All rights reserved.

Press Release
Re: Announcement of Programmatic Regulations for Everglades Restoration
--Statement from DEP Secretary David B. Struhs--
“The procedural rules proposed today by the U.S. Army for the governance of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan meet the letter and spirit of the law that launched the effort to save America’s Everglades 18 months ago. They create the procedural framework for the many relevant state and federal government agencies to coordinate and cooperate on this historic task. These rules make sure that responsibilities are clear and progress is measured and reported, which will ultimately ensure the project stays on schedule and on budget.  Read more...
Copyright  © 2002  Florida Department of Environmental Protection  All rights reserved.

 

22-July-02

Group looks to draw Everglades funds
Southwest Florida has restoration projects in plan
A new group begins meeting today to try to get some Everglades restoration projects in Southwest Florida.The advisory group will have a say in what projects here get funded by the $8 billion Everglades restoration program. The new group - the Charlotte Harbor-Caloosahatchee River Regional Coordination Team - reports to the Southwest Florida Regional Coordination Team, which will turn its findings over to the Everglades restoration working group. A similar group for the Estero Bay and Big Cypress areas formed several years ago. Although the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program and county and water management officials are working together on getting projects for the area, Lisa Beever, chairwoman of the new team, said she welcomes public input. "Right now we're getting organized, but the better the participation, the better the product," Beever said. Southwest Florida is also being studied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and South Florida Water Management District in a way similar to how South Florida was studied for Everglades restoration.
Copyright  © 2002  Fort Meyers News Press  All rights reserved.

Editorial: Make room for needs of nature
Snatching back 60,000 acres of Southwest Florida from the jaws of development and restoring it to its natural glory is a noble endeavor, but just because nobody lives there doesn't make this business easy. The planned restoration of Southern Golden Gate Estates in Collier County east of Naples brings together some of the essential conflicts in the Southwest Florida experience. In these cases, government needs accommodate the conflicts.
Copyright  © 2002  The News-Press. All rights reserved.


 

18-July-02

Land restoration falters
By Neil Santaniello
Miramar· It began as an IOU for wildlife -- a 55-acre developer-built wetland offering refuge to birds and fish. But after years of effort, only half of the man-made marsh inside the 933- acre Monarch Lakes development has turned into the aquatic wildlife habitat that had been promised. As concrete and asphalt fanned out in other parts of the development, producing a Publix, two banks, a McDonald's, an industrial warehouse and blocks of homes, the rest of the restoration site north of Miramar Parkway, east of Interstate 75 and south of Pembroke Road never grew in, district officials said.
Copyright  © 2002  Sun-Sentinel  All rights reserved.
 

FLORIDA'S WATER CRISIS
The body toxic
The newest water-pollution threat starts with a simple cup of coffee, a smoke break, a spray of cologne, a few headache pills or some cholesterol-lowering medicine. Thousands of man-made chemicals and drugs are designed to soothe, clean and heal the human body. But when we wash off the remnants in the shower or flush them out of our bodies into the toilet, the byproducts of our individual habits can accumulate to corrupt our common water sources, new research suggests. Tiny amounts of everyday products ranging from caffeine and hormones to antibiotics and detergents survive in wastewater throughout the country even after it is cleaned and disinfected. Much of that treated wastewater is then flushed into rivers, sprayed on lawns or put underground to replenish drinking-water supplies.
Copyright  © 2002  Orlando Sentinel  All rights reserved.



 

Dispute Stalls Everglades Project
By Michael Grunwald
For 13 years, the Modified Water Deliveries Project has symbolized the decline of the Florida Everglades. Congress enacted Mod Waters in 1989 to improve water flows to Everglades National Park, but the project has been paralyzed by infighting and litigation. Its price tag has soared from $85 million to $191 million, and it has yet to deliver a drop of water to the park. At a 1999 hearing, House Resources Committee Chairman James V. Hansen (R-Utah) warned that "we will all be pushing up daisies" before Mod Waters is done.
Copyright  © 2002  Washington Post  All rights reserved.

 

Editorial: Guiding The Army Corps Of Engineers
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is spearheading the restoration of the Everglades, one of the most ambitious environmental projects ever undertaken. The $8 billion effort will restore a more natural water flow to the River of Grass, undoing much of the damage caused by diking, ditching and other water diversions. The project will not only save the Everglades but ensure that the people of South Florida have adequate fresh water. 
Copyright  © 2002  Tampa Tribune  All rights reserved.

 

14-July-02

ULI installs new chairperson
The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Southwest Florida District Council has installed David Graham as its new chairperson. Graham will serve a three-year term. He succeeds Wayne Falbey, who served in that position since 1999.  Graham is head of The Bonita Bay Group's Planning & Development department.  The department is responsible for the design, engineering, planning, permitting, budgeting and construction of all project infrastructure and amenities as well as all building, landscape and signage construction.  During his 26 years of experience as a professional planner and community developer in both the private and public sector, Graham has been involved in community development and home building projects throughout the United States including Coral Springs and developments in Arizona and California.  Graham has led to The Bonita Bay Group's involvement as a founding member of the Southwest Florida Transportation Initiative which lobbies the state Legislature for regional transportation funding, and the formation of the Water Enhancement and Restoration Coalition which is working to preserve water resources and enhance water quality. 
Copyright  © 2002  Naples News  All rights reserved.

8-July-02

Growth In Panhandle Sparks Dam Debate    

 A tiny river that cuts through the Panhandle before spilling into Pensacola Bay is at the heart of a debate over the future of water use in far western Florida. The Yellow River is prized by fishing aficionados and coveted by people concerned with finding water to feed the area's growth. The Army Corps of Engineers began a study earlier this year on whether it is feasible to dam the river - splitting it in two, creating a reservoir from which area towns could draw water. Supporters say the Floridan Aquifer can't provide enough water to fuel the western Panhandle's expected growth during the next several years. ``If the feasibility study comes back negative, well, I'm just going to say, `People, get your rain buckets ready to catch whatever water you can,' '' said Donald Griffith, a Baker resident who has been a leader of a grass-roots effort to build a dam. But damming the river would drastically decrease water levels on the lower part of the river and could endanger species there. That makes the state Department of Environmental Protection unenthusiastic - particularly since the Yellow River is designated an Outstanding Florida Waterway, which garners it special protection. And environmental activists say they'd likely sue to stop it even if regulators do approve it.
Copyright  © 2002  Tampa Tribune  All rights reserved.

Livable cities' idea gaining momemtum        

Even after six years of participating in a Capitol Hill process that regularly grinds great ideas to partisan mush, Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer still has a streak of the idealist. He commutes to work on a bicycle, lives in a spartan Capitol Hill apartment, is superbly fit, and appears at committee hearings wearing polka dot bow ties. When he arrived in SUV-guzzling, buy-your-way to influence, boom time Washington in 1996 as an unabashed progressive from one of America's most livable cities, Blumenauer's right-wing opponents genuinely derided him as a wacky lightweight. His unconventional views about development -- such as trying to convince the road-building lobby and its friends in Congress that killing urban freeways produces much greater economic and cultural benefits than building them -- even drew a snort or two from friends. But the 53- year-old lawyer and lawmaker, who was born, raised and educated in Portland, had irrefutable evidence that the seemingly illogical actually made sense. As a young Democratic state representative in the 1970s he helped replace Portland's downtown Mount Hood Freeway with a new light rail line. It was a crucial early step in Portland's transformation from a tired Pacific Northwest river town to a glittering 21st century city with a quality of life so superior that people and businesses are flocking there.
Copyright  © 2002  Sun-Sentinel  All rights reserved.

Decision Time In Miami-Dade  

Tuesday, July 9, 2002, may go down as one of the most important dates in South Florida history. It's when the Miami-Dade County Commission is scheduled to make a decision on which the region's future heavily depends. Two decisions, actually. The first will be whether to place a referendum on the November ballot asking Miami-Dade voters to approve a new sales tax to fund a $16.9 billion "People's Transportation Plan." The plan, offered by county Mayor Alex Penelas, represents a recognition that better public transit is essential to future economic prosperity. It has several progressive elements, including its proposed links to Broward County, where, for instance, commuters could catch a Metrorail train at the county line and ride in comfort to downtown Miami, then switch to light rail to continue on to Miami Beach. Penelas has wisely presented his proposal as a possible cornerstone of a more comprehensive regional mass transit system that would connect Miami- Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. The "People's Transportation Plan" is an important first step toward the kind of transit system South Florida desperately needs. Commissioners should approve it without hesitation. But it's only a first step. Read more...
Copyright  © 2002  Sun-Sentinel  All rights reserved.

Lights out as hatching season arrives for baby turtles            

 This month and next, thousands of baby sea turtles should be digging out of their buried beach nests at night. Under the pale moonlight, they'll scramble across the sand to begin their life at sea. The bulk of those hatchlings-- less than 2 inches long when they dig their way out of a nest -- will surface in July and August. That means it's especially important to keep beaches dark during the next several weeks, county environmental officials say. They're urging residents to obey turtle-protection laws and extinguish, dim or redirect artificial lights along the coast that become fatal lures for baby sea turtles. Those lights can draw hatchlings away from their natural destination -- the Atlantic Ocean -- and to their deaths in streets, parking lots and sand dunes, sea turtle experts say. "Beachfront lighting is the No. 1 killer of hatchlings," said Kirt Rusenko, who supervises the sea turtle program at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton. "Turn the lights out." Officials also warn people not to break federal law by pocketing any hatchlings they might find. Those who do that occasionally run into trouble keeping the hatchling healthy.
Copyright  © 2002  Sun-Sentinel  All rights reserved.

Mosquito fighters send in the fish 

Officials hope to raise thousands more gambusia, a small larvae-eating fish they use to combat a mosquito population boosted by recent rains.  Mosquitoes swarmed around Bill Kellner's head as he squatted among the ferns. They moved to his sleeveless arms, but Kellner continued to work without the slightest wince. With a gentle tip of a bucket, he poured revenge into the swampy area off Halls River Road. An army of fish, each no bigger than a pen cap, slipped into the brown water. "These things will take over and knock out just about anything," said Kellner's co-worker, Wayne Webb, watching from dry land. Recent rains have mosquito control officers racing to distribute the larvae- loving fish, called gambusia, in prime mosquito habitats throughout Citrus County. "They work seven days a week, 24 hours a day," said Kellner, who was working in Homosassa last week. More help is on the way. The Mosquito Control District expects to take over the county fish hatchery in Hernando this month and begin raising thousands of gambusia. If the larvae can be attacked in time, with fish or a granular bacteria, the mosquito populations may be kept in check. But as anyone who has been outside recently knows, there are plenty of mosquitoes. And they seem to be getting worse with every drop of rain.
Copyright  © 2002  St. Petersburg Times  All rights reserved.

       7-July-02

Toxic mess may stay because polluters won't pay       

All aboard! Welcome to Florida Toxic Tours, your expert guide to some of the nastiest polluted sites left behind by corporate America. Remember our motto: If it wreaks, if it stinks, If it's bubbling up your sinks, Take Toxic Tours, and leave the driving to us! Thanks for riding with us aboard our new tour bus, the Flying Contaminant. As your tour guide, I'll instruct you when to don your gas masks and, for you more adventurous folks, when to slip into your moon suits. On our ride today across the Sunshine State, we'll visit five toxic waste sites languishing in the Tampa Bay area and Central Florida, the Panhandle and southeast Florida. These five sites are very special. They are Florida's portion of the 33 Superfund toxic sites nationwide where cleanup work has been either halted or delayed because the Bush administration is holding back funding, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general. You're in luck, folks. The specific names of these 33 sites only became public last week. The administration denies that it is abandoning work on the 33 sites but promises only that their cleanup "will be funded to some extent." For those a bit fuzzy about Superfund, here's a refresher. Congress created a trust fund that became known as Superfund in 1980. The fund paid for cleaning toxic sites called "orphans" -- where the polluter cannot be identified, or is unable or refuses to pay. Money for Superfund came from a tax levied mostly on oil and chemical companies.
Copyright  © 2002  St. Petersburg Times  All rights reserved.

Scientists Surveying Habitat and Species Throughout Florida Keys     

In the crystal blue waters that straddle one of the continent's most remote national park, schools of yellow-tailed snappers and dark chubs mix with yellow and black-striped sergeant majors along the sea grass beds and coral reefs. Scientists studying fish stocks in the Florida Keys say the pinch of overfishing continues to hamper the region and reenforces the need to properly manage the waters, considered some of the most fertile fishing spots in the hemisphere. "The sad story about all of this is that what we've done in the past is serial overfishing," said Jerry Ault, a marine biologist with the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Researchers and crew members aboard the M/V Spree recently completed a monthlong expedition along the coastal shores south of Miami and into the Keys, studying a 5,000 square kilometer region one year after federal officials declared 151 square miles of waters around the Dry Tortugas National Park off-limits to fishing. While the results are preliminary, researchers say they identified about 300 species and gained evidence of something they have long suspected: that areas in the Upper Keys near Key Largo and Miami that are heavily fished contain smaller fish and fewer species while outlying parts of the Keys with the least amount of fishing have larger fish and a greater diversity of species.
Copyright  © 2002  AP  All rights reserved.

One man's crusade    

A sprawling Central Florida retirement community sues its pesky foe,    who won't give up despite losing every round in his eight-year fight    to limit its growth. The most hated man in Sumter County lives on a country road in a concrete-block house that he built himself. On his 55 acres he grows hay for sale. He also raises Cain. T. Daniel Farnsworth is 73, with wavy white hair and horn-rim glasses. He can be as stubborn as a stump, and that has led to his current unpopularity. In the past three months, he has been vilified in dozens of letters sent to the local papers and subjected to threatening phone calls. The head of the local hospice has complained about him. A new civic group held a big rally in a nearby pasture and pointed him out as the kind of person they don't want around. All this because of Farnsworth's personal crusade against a sprawling retirement community that touts itself on billboards as "Florida's Friendliest Hometown." "I don't think they're the friendliest," said Farnsworth, who is being sued by the community -- Central Florida's largest development -- called the Villages. "I wish they'd spend their energy on making it the best community in Florida, instead of the biggest." Launched in the 1980s, the Villages is a retirement community so huge it straddles three counties. Copyright  © 2002  St. Petersburg Times  All rights reserved.

       6-July-02

People part of 'Glades restoration hot issue    

A panel of researchers reviewing the science behind several Everglades restoration projects wants to expand its work beyond the physical and biological realms and into the social arena. These elite scientists, assembled by the National Academy of Sciences to advise the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, want to examine how social and economic patterns affect the restoration work. The task force will have none of it. Task force members, saying the panel has "crossed the line" into policy- making, will not approve research associated with the human dynamics of the restoration. Those issues include changes in land use and development as South Florida's population and economy increase. "Social science is not science," task force member Mike Collins said. "It's a totally subjective review based on somebody's opinion on what benefits society the most. That's not an objective scientific review." Too important to ignore The scientists, however, won't take no for an answer. They agreed at a meeting in Washington last month that the issue is too important to ignore. If the task force won't approve a separate research project focusing on human dynamics, they plan to address the issue in the context of other projects the task force has authorized.
Copyright  © 2002  Stuart News  All rights reserved.

Selling out to polluters       

There is a simple justice to the concept of making polluters pay for cleaning up their messes. Since its inception in 1980, the Superfund program has worked that way. Chemical plants, refineries and other industries that created toxic wastes were held accountable. And when they couldn't be, the cleanup was funded by a tax on the chemicals and petroleum products that cause much of the pollution. Not anymore. President Bush has sent the Superfund into full retreat. The tax was dropped in 1995, and the Bush administration has indicated it does not favor reauthorizing it. Without the polluting industries' money, the fund has dwindled from $3.8-billion in 1996 to an estimated $28-million next year. Meanwhile, the president cut the financing for 33 toxic waste sites in 18 states, the New York Times reported. And guess who will be picking up more of the cost for cleanups that are completed. Taxpayers. No one should be surprised that Bush is quietly undermining the program. He turned over national energy policy to the oil and electric utility industries. Read more...
Copyright  © 2002  St. Petersburg Times  All rights reserved.

Swiftmud, Basin Board Team To Teach About Watersheds     

 What is a watershed? Regional water managers say most of us don't know, and they are creating a program to teach about the watersheds in which we live and why we should care about them. The Southwest Florida Water Management District, known as Swiftmud, and the Pinellas-Anclote River Basin board plan to spend $100,000 on an education campaign that initially will target southwest Pasco County and northeast Pinellas County. A watershed is an area where all the water bodies, such as lakes, streams and rivers, originate and drain into a common water body.
Copyright  © 2002  Tampa Tribune  All rights reserved.

To fill or not to fill holes is subject of bay study    

Depressions that pockmark the bottom of Tampa Bay are fine, say anglers.  But a watchdog group says some are polluted. Most of Tampa Bay is a shallow bowl, no more than 12 feet deep on average. But scattered on its bottom are more than 20 holes, acres in size and up to 40 feet deep. The holes date back decades, to a time when the bay was seen not as a resource to be protected but as the source of fill dirt. From the 1920s until the '70s, developers gouged the pits in the bay bottom and used the dirt to transform swampy land into dry land that could hold houses. Some of the holes have become repositories for pollution. Their lowest depths are devoid of oxygen and their bottom is covered by muck. But others are a favorite winter hideout for trout and red drum. Now biologists, fishing guides, local officials and other experts are launching a study of whether some of Tampa Bay's holes ought to be filled, and if so, which ones. The study, expected to last two years, will explore a situation that has already prompted some disagreement. "Just because it's a hole doesn't mean it needs to be filled in, necessarily," said Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt, an avid angler. Peter Clark, director of the nonprofit watchdog group Tampa Baywatch, agreed that the holes provide some benefit for the bay, "but I'm not sure that outweighs the problems they cause.
Copyright  © 2002  St. Petersburg Times  All rights reserved.

         Water district sees budget boost    

Soaring property values throughout South and Central Florida will help water managers dramatically  increase spending on the Everglades without increasing their property tax rate, according to a budget proposal set to be unveiled next week. The South Florida Water Management District's $791 million proposal includes an 11 percent increase in the taxes it collects in a 16-county territory from Orlando to Key West. But the district plans no rise in the tax rate it charges homeowners: 69.7 cents for each $1,000 in taxable property value. The proposal covers the 2002-3 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. Bowing to pressure from Gov. Jeb Bush to cut costs, the district proposes shaving 56 people from its 1,872-person workforce. It plans to reduce spending on flood-control maintenance and permit handling, while abolishing some programs such as its in-house well-drilling staff. At the same time, the district proposes spending 55 percent more on the $8.4 billion Everglades restoration. The proposal calls for spending $364.4 million as next year's installment of the four-decade Everglades project. Most of next year's restoration money would go to efforts to buy a Los- Angeles-sized patchwork of land around the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, the Indian River Lagoon and the Caloosahatchee River to create marshes, reservoirs and well fields.
Copyright  © 2002  Palm Beach Post  All rights reserved.

P.B. County home boom persists 

The residential building boom in Palm Beach County shows no signs of letting up, according to figures this week from the Dodge Report. The value of construction contracts for new homes signed in May nearly tripled compared with a year ago: to $253 million this year from $92.5 million in May 2001. Contracts for commercial construction, however, declined by 9 percent, to $42.3 million from $46.6 million a year ago 
Copyright  © 2002  Palm Beach Post  All rights reserved.

5-July-02

Water permit good idea

It's an unconventional idea, maybe not even legally feasible, but we love the principle behind the Southwest Florida Watershed Council's proposal for a water permit for the Caloosahatchee River. The council is a useful grass-roots organization that, among other things, looks for ways to protect this area's interests in the allocation and management of water. Water-use permits are usually given by the South Florida Water Management District to people, companies or local government agencies - humans or their institutions - not to ecosystems. It's not certain the thing could even be done.
Copyright  © 2002  Fort Meyers News Press  All rights reserved.

 

The Return Of The Succulent Scallop    

Back in the 1970s and '80s, scallops were abundant in West Central Florida's coastal waters. On summer weekends boaters would congregate on the grass flats off Tarpon Springs, Weeki Wachee, Homosassa and other areas, don their snorkel gear and pursue the little bivalve. Then, quickly, the scallops nearly disappeared. Overharvest was a culprit. Pollution also may have been a factor. In 1994 state wildlife officials closed all the waters south of the Suwannee River to scalloping. Residents lost a popular family pastime as well as a tasty quarry. But the scallop has come back - big time. As Tribune outdoors editor Frank Sargeant reported, the scallop population in the Gulf of Mexico off Central Florida has rebounded so well that state officials are reopening the scallop season in waters from the Pinellas-Pasco line to Mexico Beach in the Panhandle. The season runs from July 1 to Sept. 10.
Copyright  © 2002  Tampa Tribune / Associated Press  All rights reserved.

 

Nature Preserve Buys an Additional 80 Acres  

Efforts to preserve some of the vanishing habitat for rare species along the Lake Wales Ridge advanced recently with The Nature Conservancy's purchase of an additional 80 acres for its Saddle Blanket Lakes Preserve. Saddle Blanket Lakes contains 17 species of rare plants -- some of them found only on the Lake Wales Ridge -- as well as uncommon species of wildlife ranging from Florida scrub-jays to sand skinks. Federal and state wildlife officials designate many of these species as endangered or threatened. The Lake Wales Ridge in Polk and Highlands counties has been the focus of preservation efforts for the past decade because of the high concentration of rare species found nowhere else on earth, the fact that 80 percent of the habitat has been developed or converted to agricultural uses, and the growing threat to the remaining habitat from increased growth pressures in the area. For instance, Saddle Blanket Lakes Preserve contains one of only three remaining populations of a rare plant known as Avon Park harebells, a member of the pea family.
Copyright  © 2002  The Ledger  All rights reserved.

Researchers baiting black bears for hairs 

Special to The News-Press A red mesh bag of stale doughnuts hangs from a wire between two trees nestled in a thicket of sabal palms in the Picayune Strand State Forest in Collier County. A few miles away another bag, clawed and torn, sits on the ground, the doughnuts gobbled up earlier by an innovative black bear that climbed a tree and swung its large paws at the food until it dropped. While the bear got the bait, biologists got their prey, too: bear hair. It's the hair of a bear that is the key to a rare study that will teach biologists and transportation officials more about Florida's threatened species. In this unique statewide study, bears are being tracked and identified without ever being caught or seen. In Collier County the study focuses on three areas: Picayune, the Florida Panther Refuge and Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. There are 45 doughnut traps spread out in these three state parks. Here's how it works: Two layers of wire are wrapped around four trees to form a pen. Doughnuts are hung in the middle above a bear's reach. Corn is scattered on the ground. When the bear comes to eat, tufts of hair are snagged by the wire. Scientists collect the hair and send it to a lab in Canada where it is analyzed. The DNA tests determine the bear's sex and identifies it.
Copyright  © 2002  Fort Meyers News Press  All rights reserved.

 

Battle lines drawn on development site  

 A developer is digging retention ponds and dumping mounds of dirt on the site of what many local historians say is part of Old Fort Jupiter, where hundreds of mounted bedraggled, weather-beaten soldiers battling Seminole Indians set up camp on Jan. 28, 1838. And there's not much historic preservationists can do about it. In two weeks, developer Glenn Goldstein, who's building six multimillion- dollar waterfront homes that will overlook the Loxahatchee River, said his archaeologist will be available to accompany a Palm Beach County archaeologist to the site to see whether historically significant artifacts are found. If they are, more study could be done. "That's the weakness in this law is that we almost depend on the good will and integrity of a developer when he's putting in a development," said local historian Richard Procyk, who sits on the historic board and is the author of the book, Guns Across the Loxahatchee. "If he finds anything, he's to call the county." The dilemma points out the weakness of the county's historic preservation laws, which rely on sometimes sketchy maps and on developers' cooperation. It also has led to calls by the county historic resources review board and others for the county to speed up its revision of the laws before other sites are endangered.
Copyright  © 2002 Palm Beach Post  All rights reserved

Nearly three years since Lee County planned to widen Alico Road  

Nearly three years since Lee County planned to widen Alico Road, county commissioners can't agree why the project continues to be on hold. It was November 1999 when the county first applied for permits to widen 2.8 miles of Alico Road and 2.6 miles of the Briarcliff Ditch. The ditch runs along the southern borders of the Briarcliff and Fiddlesticks communities, draining much of the area south of Fort Myers, including the area between Southwest Florida International Airport and Florida Gulf Coast University, into Ten Mile Canal. Ten Mile Canal empties into Mullock Creek and eventually into Estero Bay. The county has been battling federal agencies for the permits. The feds have been spurred on by local environmental groups who claim the project is designed to promote development around the university and will dump increased pollution into the bay. County commissioners agree that almost three years is too long to wait for permits, but they disagree on why they're still waiting. Commissioner Andy Coy said the "socialistic bureaucracy" of Washington, D.C., has tried to block the project the way it did the extension of Daniels Parkway, a relatively similar project the county wrestled the feds over in 1999.
Copyright  © 2002  Naples News  All rights reserved.

 

Cousteau Foundation Joins, and Films Restoration Efforts


The SFWMD and Florida Atlantic University's Center for Environmental
Studies(FAU) hosted the Philippe Cousteau Foundation at Riverwoods Field Lab on June 14 & 15, 2002.On Saturday, June15, Lou Toth, Chief Scientist in the Kissimmee Division, assisted Philippe Cousteau (seated at center of students pictured above) and the Cousteau Foundation team in filming of the Kissimmee River restoration project for an upcoming, secondary educational video documentary of the restoration of Kissimmee/Okeechobee/Everglades system.The video targets middle and high school students and features Philippe
and his team exploring the greater Everglades watershed, and will be used to
complement the PBC School Board's Everglades Lesson, which was developed
by a team of teachers under the direction of Secondary Science Coordinator,
Fred Barch. "The highlight of the day was the filming of youth from the Real Life
Children's Ranch (a foster care youth home in Okeechobee) planting over
200 cypress and pond apple trees on the recently backfilled canal," said Lou
Toth "The trees were donated by the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation and the
effort was coordinated by staff of Florida Atlantic University's Center for
Environmental Studies (Loisa Kerwin and Alana Edwards)."
Copyright  © 2002  Currents  All rights 

Farm Subsidies That Kill

J'accuse! I hate to condemn a colleague this way, but our tax dollars are going to pay an indolent New York journalist for not growing wheat on the West Coast.  Could there be a worse indictment of American agricultural policy, rendered even more scandalous by the new $180 billion farm bill signed by President Bush?  Actually, there is a worse indictment. By inflating farm subsidies even more, Congress and the Bush administration are impoverishing and occasionally killing Africans whom we claim to be trying to help.  Last week at the G-8 summit conference in Canada, Mr. Bush and other world leaders spoke piously about their desire to help Africa help itself. Earlier, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill traveled around Africa with Bono complaining about African governance (but in a compassionate sort of way).  Our compassion may be well meant, but it is also hypocritical. The U.S., Europe and Japan spend $350 billion each year on agricultural subsidies (seven times as much as global aid to poor countries), and this money creates gluts that lower commodity prices and erode the living standard of the world's poorest people.  "These subsidies are crippling Africa's chance to export its way out of poverty," said James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, in a speech last month.  Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations Development Program, estimates that these farm subsidies cost poor countries about $50 billion a year in lost agricultural exports. By coincidence, that's about the same as the total of rich countries' aid to poor countries, so we take back with our left hand every cent we give with our right.  "It's holding down the prosperity of very poor people in Africa and elsewhere for very narrow, selfish interests of their own," Mr. Malloch Brown says of the rich world's agricultural policy.  It also seems a tad hypocritical of us to complain about governance in third-world countries when we allow tiny groups of farmers to hijack billion of dollars out of our taxes.

Copyright  © 2002  NY Times online  All rights reserved.

4-July-02

Fouling Our Own Nest
Do you remember the character Pig-Pen in the "Peanuts" cartoons? He was always covered with dirt and grime. He was cute, but he was a walking sludge heap, filthy and proud of it. He once told Charlie Brown, "I have affixed to me the dirt and dust of countless ages. Who am I to disturb history?" For me, Pig-Pen's attitude embodies President Bush's approach to the environment. We've been trashing, soiling, even destroying the wonders of nature for countless ages. Why stop now? Who is Mr. Bush to step in and curb this venerable orgy of pollution, this grand tradition of fouling our own nest?  Oh, the skies may once have been clear and the waters sparkling and clean. But you can't have that and progress, too. Can you?  This week we learned that the Bush administration plans to cut funding for the cleanup of 33 toxic waste sites in 18 states. As The Times's Katharine Seelye reported, this means "that work is likely to grind to a halt on some of the most seriously polluted sites in the country."  The cuts were ordered because the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program is running out of money. Rather than showing the leadership necessary to replenish the fund, the president plans to reduce its payouts by cleaning up fewer sites. Pig-Pen would have been proud.  This is not a minor matter. The sites targeted by the Superfund program are horribly polluted, in many cases with cancer-causing substances. Millions of Americans live within a few miles of these sites.  The Superfund decision is the kind of environmental move we've come to expect from the Bush administration. Mother Nature has been known to tremble at the sound of the president's approaching footsteps. He's an environmental disaster zone.

Copyright  © 2002  NY Times online  All rights reserved.

 

Two Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-Six Miles

  
No, not all at once collectively, over a lifetime. Here are nine roads
every man should travel.  FLORIDA: The Tamiami Trail
Miami to Naples on Highway 41; 114 miles. Starting in Miami's Little
Havana, Highway 41 passes through the heart of the Everglades, the tall
sawgrass of Big Cypress National Preserve, and Ten Thousand Islands
National Wildlife Refuge. The Steward of the Swamp In 1955, back when the Loop Road was a limestonetrail so rough that travelers had to rig their trucks with airplane tires, 16-year-old Robert Warren hitchhiked to the Everglades. He trapped
coons, snakes, and frogs, and he took a job at a general store where he sold
goods to hunters and shot pool with the local Miccosukees. Later, he took up
surveying and eventually retired in Naples, where he helped the Tamiami
Trail earn a scenic-highway designation. On Warren's recommendation,
check out Shark Valley in Everglades National Park, where there's an overlook
that frames a vista of saw-grass prairie. Or take a detour on the still-
dusty Loop Road out to Gator Hook Swamp and Sweetwater Strand, where the
Spanish moss drips low off the cypress trees and time seems suspended at
the water's edge. Everglades National Park: 305-242-7700.
Copyright  © 2002  Esquire  All rights reserved.

 

Bumper crop of panther kittens has wildlife experts purring

Like proud parents, wildlife officials are touting a baby boom of Florida panther kittens. Eleven radio-collared females gave birth to 26 kittens from Hendry County to Everglades National Park this year, according to state wildlife officials. Two of those litters were in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. "It is kind of a first for the panther refuge to have that many litters at once," said Ben Nottingham, deputy refuge manager. "We're just 27,000 acres and panther habitat encompasses over 2 million acres. When you have two dens in that space it's kind of noteworthy." Usually, the refuge gets a litter every two or three years, Nottingham said. Last year, some 20 kittens were born in southern Florida, said Darrell Land, Florida panther section leader for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "The population certainly has grown over the last five to eight years," Land said. "But it's not just this wonderful spring where panthers are busting all over. We just happened to have collars on the right cats. "Regardless, we're still pretty pleased." That's because the number of documented newborns outpaces the number of documented deaths. Four panthers have been found dead this year, Land said. Three were hit by cars. "We know that there is enough reproduction going on that they can offset those losses," Land said. "Even if we were to lose half of the kittens, that's still more than the documented losses."
Copyright  © 2002  Fort Meyers News Press  All rights reserved

 

Army Corps Make Plan to Save Endangered Sparrow Official

 
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has signed off on a planto protect the endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow. The plan, signed by the Corps' top officer Wednesday in Atlanta, will
raise the water level several inches in a major canal separating the Everglades marshes from the suburbs and farms of southwestern Miami-Dade. Scientists say about 2,704 of the olive, yellow and white songbirds existin the Everglades. The sparrow is called a Goldilocks bird because it needswater depths "just right" to lay eggs.The Miccosukee Indian Tribe said the plan will flood 88,000 acres of tribal land and threaten another endangered bird, the snail kite.Environmentalists, who have endorsed parts of the plan, said the rerouting of water could bring polluted farm runoff into the Everglades.
Copyright  © 2002  Tampa Tribune / Associated Press  All rights reserved.

Ecologists ready to sue U.S. in off-road vehicle dispute

 A coalition of environmental groups on Wednesday threatened to sue the National Park Service for failing to stop off-road vehicles from damaging Big Cypress National Preserve. The Florida Biodiversity Project, Natural Trails & Waters Coalition and nine other groups served a formal notice letter on the park service, saying it is violating the Clean Water Act by allowing "massive, unmitigated rutting" and churning of "vast amounts of preserve soils and vegetation." The announcement is the latest in a series of legal actions over swamp buggies, sport-utility vehicles and other motorized transport used by hunters to get around the 729,000-acre preserve, located along Interstate 75 and Tamiami Trail just west of Broward County. It threatens to widen the split between environmentalists who hunt and those who don't. Hunters accuse the environmental groups of trying to ban them from a preserve they helped create. Environmentalists say the hunters are trashing a place they claim to love. The preserve's managers attempted to restrict off-road vehicles to designated trails last year. But that plan stalled after it was discovered that the preserve had built 24 miles of gravel trails without obtaining the necessary permits to fill wetlands from the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps ordered work halted and referred the matter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for enforcement.
Copyright  © 2002  Sun-Sentinel  All rights reserved.

Major land owner sues water managers 

Camayen Cattle Company alleges the South Florida Water Management  District used "coercive practices" to force it to sell land.  A company that owns thousands of acres in western Martin County sued the South Florida Water Management District on Wednesday, alleging the district is using "coercive practices" to force it to sell the land at an unfairly low price. In a nine-page complaint, the Camayen Cattle Co. stated the water district targeted the company's 4,700-acre sugar farm, just east of Lake Okeechobee, as the potential site of a 10-foot deep reservoir as part of the Everglades restoration project. The lawsuit, filed in Martin County Circuit court, states that after publicly identifying the land as a prime site for the "C-44 Basin West Reservoir Project," the water management district attempted to "diminish the use and value" of the property to unfairly negotiate a selling price. Camayen's attorney, Toby Prince Brigham of Miami, said the company's property has been in "suspended animation" since the water management district took an interest in the land. "Maybe the district is fighting a battle of attrition hoping that their putting the property in prison is going to cause the owner ruin so they can pick it up for a song," said Brigham. "I hope that's not the case, but it's time for them to say whether or not it is." The water management district sees things differently.