Environmental
Reports for OKALOOSA COUNTY
Enviromapper
for Okaloosa Watersheds
Find
out how YOUR power consumption impacts the environment
Earth
Crash - Environmental Photography Gallery
Earth
View - A fascinating, real-time look at our home
from above...
December 24 2003 -
Weaker Clean Air Rules Blocked
- Associated Press, WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court on
Wednesday blocked new Bush administration changes to the Clean Air Act
from going into effect, in a challenge from state attorneys general and
cities that argued the changes would harm the environment and public
health. The Environmental Protection Agency rule would have made it
easier for utilities, refineries and other industrial facilities to make
repairs in the name of routine maintenance without installing additional
pollution controls. Today's the Day. A three-judge panel of the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued an order
that blocks the rules from going into effect until the legal challenge
from the states and cities is heard, a process likely to last months...
March 2004 -
National Marine Debris Monitoring Program - Marine debris
pollution—trash and litter on our beaches and in the oceans—is
undoubtedly a problem. A walk on any U.S. beach makes that painfully
clear. But until now, the extent and nature of the problem have
eluded us—due largely to a lack of information.
To address this, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) teamed up with The Ocean Conservancy to create the
National Marine Debris Monitoring Program. Carried out by trained
volunteers, the program is designed to answer two specific questions:
- Is the amount of debris increasing or
decreasing?
- What is the source of the debris?
By answering these questions, The Ocean Conservancy
and the EPA can work together to reduce marine debris and prevent it
from getting into our oceans and onto our beaches...
June 27 2003 -
70 Ph.D. Scientists Urge Higher Environmental Standards
in Beach Dredge and Fill Projects - Environmental Defense,
The existing paradigm for managing
beach systems of the southeast United States using frequent and massive
dredge and fill projects ("renourishments") may have significant
cumulative effects upon coastal habitat quality and fisheries
production. Despite mounting evidence of both direct and indirect
environmental effects on fishes, invertebrates, and turtles in several
marine communities across the shelf, over 100 acres of nearshore reefs
are now proposed for burial by four beach dredging projects in east
Florida. Given the available scientific information and the increased
agency oversight of habitat quality mandated by the Essential Fish
Habitat component of the Sustainable Fisheries Act, and the Presidential
Coral Reef Initiative, we offer the following comments...
May 08 2003 - How
metals can kill or cure - Researchers explore the
double-edged role of trace metals in biology, By Kathleen Wren, MSNBC
Science, WASHINGTON, Metals like arsenic are perhaps best known for
their harmful effects on the body, whether they’re lurking in a
community’s drinking water or in the elderberry wine of an intended
murder victim. In fact, metals are essential for many of life’s basic
processes. This week, a special issue of Science, published by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, reveals the
double-edged nature of metals in living systems...
January
2001 -
AN EVALUATION OF THE SHORT-TERM SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF MARINE
RESERVES ON USER GROUPS IN KEY WEST - TANYA J. DOBRZYNSKI & ELIZABETH E. NICHOLSON, Funded by the Environmental Defense
Fund, Marine reserves, defined for the purposes of this paper as
discrete ocean areas in which at a minimum consumptive uses are
prohibited, may provide benefits to marine ecosystems that other
management tools do not. While much is known about the ecological
benefits that marine reserves yield, little is known about their social
and economic impacts on human communities (Sanchirico 2000a). The lack
of information about their social and economic impacts has been a major
obstacle to marine reserve implementation in the United States, where
only one small planned reserve system exists, in the Florida Keys
National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS). In this paper, we investigate the
short-term social and economic impacts of the FKNMS’ reserve system,
implemented in 1997, on both consumptive (commercial fishers and charter
fishing operators) and non-consumptive (dive/snorkel operators) marine
user groups in Key West. Additionally, we explore the short-term
ecological impacts of reserves on the Key West environment based on user
group perceptions of change in a variety of environmental factors since
the reserves were established. We also investigate user groups’
perceptions of the effectiveness of marine reserve design in the FKNMS
and their attitudes toward marine reserves in general...
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Revisited Archives
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REVISITED June
2002 -
LINKING TOURISM, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND
CONCEPTS OF SUSTAINABILITY: SETTING THE STAGE -
Stephen F. McCool,
The tourism and recreation industry is at a crossroads
in
its development. Now one of the world's largest
industries, it is increasingly confronted with
arguments
about its sustainability and compatibility with
environmental protection and community
development. Consideration of tourism, the
environment, and concepts of sustainability should
consider four key challenges:
(1) a better
understanding
of how tourists value and use natural environments;
(2)
enhancement of the communities dependent on
tourism as an industry;
(3) identification of the
social
and environmental impact of tourism; and (4)
implementation of systems to manage these impacts.
REVISITED
January
11, 2001 -
HOW
CONGRESS FEEDS THE BUILDING FRENZY -
"Virtually all publicly funded convention
centers, stadiums, arenas, and other infrastructure
projects are financed with debt instruments that are
exempt from federal income taxes, and often from state
income taxes if the investor resides in the state that
issued the bonds. Allowing investors in these bonds to
earn interest income that is exempt from federal
income taxes enables the municipalities to borrow at
lower interest rates..."
REVISITED
A 'Dead
Zone' Grows in the Gulf of Mexico - "It can stretch for 7,000 square
miles off the coast of Louisiana, a vast expanse of ocean devoid of the region's usual
rich bounty of fish and shrimp, its bottom littered with the remains of crabs and worms
unable to flee its suffocating grasp. This is the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone,"
which last summer reached the size of the state of New Jersey..."
REVISITED
HYPOXIA IN THE GULF
OF MEXICO - "Nutrient over-enrichment from anthropogenic sources is one
of the major stresses impacting coastal ecosystems. Generally, excess nutrients lead to
increased algal production and increased availability of organic carbon within an
ecosystem, a process known as eutrophication..."
REVISITED
Agency
Cites Growing Danger of Erosion Along U.S. Coasts
- In a report to Congress, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency said yesterday that a quarter or
more of houses within 500 feet of the United
States coast may be lost to erosion in the next 60
years, putting intolerable strain on the federal
Flood Insurance Program...
REVISITED
August
1999
- Dune
Destruction - "Are State, County and Destin City
officials turning their backs on our Dunes and
natural resources while developers destroy
beaches and dunes?"
THE
FLORIDA EVERGLADES: A Model of Destruction - More
recently, the Everglades has become a classic example of
widespread environmental destruction. Although in its 5,000
years of existence, the Everglades has supported an
extraordinary quantity and variety of plant and animal life,
we have taken less than a century to damage seriously or to
alter most of it. The current superintendent of Everglades
National Park calls it the most threatened park in the
country, and one in a state of biological collapse...