Florida
Death
Row Fact Sheet - The case of
Furman vs. Georgia was decided by the
U.S. Supreme Court in June 1972. In that
case, the Court held that capital
punishment was unconstitutional and
struck down state death penalty laws
nationwide. As a result, the death
sentences of 95 men and one woman on
Florida's Death Row were commuted to
life in prison. However, after the
Furman decision, the Florida Legislature
revised the death penalty statutes in
case the Court reinstated capital
punishment in the future. In 1976 the
Supreme Court overturned its ruling in
Furman and upheld the constitutionality
of the death penalty in the case of
Gregg vs. Georgia. Executions resumed in
Florida in 1979 when John Spenkelink
became the first Death Row inmate to be
executed under the new statutes...
Yellow
River Reservoir Project - Life’s
most precious resource for plant, animal and human
survival is Water! Question
is, “Is there
enough water? Is
this a local problem, or is it a state wide problem?
We first begin to hear about a drought, this
year, as area farmers and media brought it to our
attention through newspaper and television. News articles appeared about how our
‘County
Officials were looking into ways to lessen the
hurting pain for potential flood victims who live
along the Yellow River Flood Plain and how restoring
the natural resources of the river are priorities for
Okaloosa county’. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management
Agency) currently is discouraging urban growth along
the Yellow River...
ACT/ACF
TRI-STATE WATER BASIN COMPACTS
- "The Compacts", as they are
known, are the congressionally
authorized negotiation processes for
Georgia, Alabama and Florida to
negotiate water allocation formulas for
the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF)
and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT)
river basins. Negotiations for the two
compacts have been in progress for two
years and recently the three states
agreed to extend them to May 1, 2000.
The negotiations will end at that time
unless agreements have been reached or
the states agree to additional
extensions...
Tri-state settlement on water
between Florida, Georgia & Alabama
- - Efforts to reach a tri-state
settlement on water sharing appear to be
headed for failure, President Clinton's
appointee to the process said.
Negotiators from Georgia, Alabama and
Florida have been trying for almost two
years to craft a regional
water-management plan to divide up the
waters of the
Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river
basin and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa
river basin. The headwaters of both
systems are in Georgia, and they pass
through the explosive growth area of
metro Atlanta...
Okaloosa, FL Watershed
Index and Quality Reports - The overall IWI
score below describes the health of the aquatic
resources for this watershed. A score of 1 indicates Low
Vulnerability to stressors such as pollutant loadings.
Get a description of the latest overall score (October
1999, Version 1.3) and find out how your watershed
scores are calculated. See the Condition and
Vulnerability Indicator Graphs link below for the
individual scores used in the overall score calculation...
Water
Resource Issues in Northwest Florida
Annual Report 1999 - While formed along
hydrologic boundaries, Florida's water
management districts were established as
regional entities by the Florida
Legislature so that water resource issues
could be addressed more effectively.
Regional approaches to water management
require looking beyond city limits, county
lines and even state borders. The
Northwest Florida Water Management
District, in turn, focuses on smaller
areas or sub-regions within its 16-county
area of responsibility to identify
regional solutions...
Groundwater
& Surface Water: Understanding the
Interaction - Water. It's vital
for all of us. We depend on its good
quality-and quantity-for drinking,
recreation, use in industry and growing
crops. It also is vital to sustaining
the natural systems on and under the
earth's surface. Groundwater is a hidden
resource. At one time, its purity and
availability were taken for granted. Now
contamination and availability are
serious issues. Some interesting facts
to consider...
U.S.
Sewage Systems Going Down the Drain
- An estimated $1 trillion over 20 years
is needed to fix the problems. The
sewage infrastructure in the United
States is old and getting older. In some
cities, the failure of aging sewer pipes
has created a crisis characterized by
sewer backups, pipeline collapses and
sewage spills...
LANDFILLS:
Hazardous to the Environment - The earth
is a limited space. Creating waste is unsustainable. If
we continue to build landfills, we will eventually run
out of land - although it may take thousands of years,
it is inevitable. Even today, we are drinking water that
is filtered through landfills full of household
hazardous and industrial wastes. To protect our health
and the environment we must meet the challenge to safely
recycle all materials...
Tourism
- a taxing issue Revisited:
The danger of relying on travelers
to sustain tourism, of course, is that the numbers do
fluctuate, and the condition of the overall economy affects
tourism perhaps more than other industries because it
involves discretionary spending. And a state could end
up in a "Catch-22" situation: less money to
spend on promotions, fewer travelers are lured to vacation
sites, resulting in less money to spend on promotions...
ECONOMIC
IMPACT OF CONVENTION AND CONFERENCE CENTERS
Revisited:
"In many communities throughout North America today,
development or expansion of a meeting facility is being
considered as a means of creating positive economic impacts
to achieve the economic development goal... But
what if they don't come?"
Convention
Center Follies - Yet for all of the public
dollars spent, few cities appear to have been saved by
larger convention centers. For all of the persistent
rhetoric of new jobs, new spending, and "economic
multipliers," much of the evidence suggests that
convention centers deliver far less than promised.
Indeed, in a number of cases, the expenditure of
hundreds of millions of public dollars appears to have
had almost no impact on individual communities...
Developing
Downtown - In spite of
this, many governmental
facilities, corporate offices and
entertainment areas have remained
in or near the core of many cities
of all sizes. Over the past few
decades there have been efforts by
landscape architects to deal with
reversing the decline and
deterioration of the center city...
