Congress Passes Everglades Restoration Bill
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the joint House-Senate conference report on the Everglades Restoration bill. The bill authorizes Florida and the federal government to begin the initial work for restoring the Everglades. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the group responsible for transforming the Everglades to begin with decades ago, along with the South Florida Water Management Authority, will jointly design and construct the 68 projects authorized over the next 30 or 40 years at an estimated cost of $7.8 billion. The first projects planned are designed to capture and store water that currently is being discharged out to sea. The Everglades restoration seeks to reverse years of environmental damage and ensure future water supplies to Central and South Florida.
Environmental Activists Want Reduction In Mississippi River Nitrogen
Farmers throughout the farm belt of the central U.S. are receiving much of the blame for a hypoxia situation that occurs almost every summer in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Hypoxia is a dead zone where swimming life flees and life on the sea floor dies due to a lack of oxygen. Environmentalists, who cite that nutrients and organic matter from 41 percent of the continental U.S. drains into the Mississippi River, which then flows into the Gulf of Mexico, want a 30 percent reduction in nitrogen going into the river system.
Accolades For Maryland’s Smart Growth Policies
Harvard University and the Ford Foundation awarded Maryland’s smart growth initiative a $100,000 award as one of 10 winners of their Innovations in American Government Program. Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening’s anti-sprawl policies were implemented in 1997. They are aimed at encouraging redevelopment of inner cities and established nearby suburbs, therefore helping stop outward suburban sprawl. The governor’s smart growth policies have won him national recognition and support from environmentalists and other growth opponents. At the same time, certain business interests who want to see new roads and highways built to keep up with development have disagreed with much of Glendening’s smart growth programs. Glendening is credited with propelling the “smart growth” term nationally.
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