November 21, 2001 -
Threat from Below - By John M. Dunn, Florida Trend,
Fertilizer-related nutrients and diminished water flow are
threatening Florida’s once-pristine springs. Few people know
Silver Springs like Guy Marwick. After all, he and his buddies
spearheaded the grass-roots effort to persuade state officials
to buy 1,200 acres at the headwaters of the springs to protect
it from development. Ten years ago, he was the prime
mover in getting the Silver River Museum and Environmental
Education Center built — a facility at the Silver River State
Park near the springs. As the museum’s director, Marwick has
guided thousands of school kids on boat trips down the
crystalline Silver River, which flows from Silver Springs...
November 21, 2001 -
The Church's Ranch - By Cynthia Barnett, Florida
Trend, The Mormon church runs one of the biggest and most
profitable cattle operations in the U.S. on a 300,000-acre
ranch covering parts of Orange, Brevard and Osceola counties.
Just after a September dawn on the Deseret Ranch in central
Florida, cowboys on horseback crack long leather whips to set
hundreds of calves charging toward a sprawling complex of pens
and runs. Once corralled, the animals let loose a cacophony of
moos and bays. The cowboys, too, holler out as they position
themselves along a tall, wooden maze to sort calves by size
and type into one of five pens...
November 21, 2001 -
Sprawling Contradiction - By Mike Vogel, Florida
Trend, Its 1980s-suburban layout violates current thinking
on how best to build community, yet it achieved a sense of
place; it’s a marketing triumph whose investors didn’t make
much money; it’s a booming city, but has almost no city
employees. Sometime this month, a buyer — probably a family
with young kids, perhaps from Colombia — will sit down in
Arvida’s sales center in Weston and sign a contract to buy the
last available new home in this sprawling, 10,500-acre
community in west Broward County. The home will be the nearly
16,000th new home sold on Weston’s palm tree-lined streets in
just 16 years; the project has sold out in about half the time
originally projected. “In terms of family-oriented
master-planned communities,” says real estate consultant Brad
Hunter of American Metro/Study Corp. in Boca Raton, “it does
stand as an icon.”
Archive
of Environmental News - November
2001