Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
A few items we wanted to highlight today:
Council sets mayor salary at $100K. It appears that the Pensacola City Council has finally settled the issue of the salary for the executive mayor under the City’s new mayor-council government. The number that came out of the Committee of the Whole meeting was $100,000, but certain elements in the community were pushing for a higher number, closer to the Charter Review Commission’s recommendation of $145K. Councilman Larry Johnson made a substitute motion…
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Local group Emerald Coastkeeper will host a forum this evening on the recent Environmental Working Group (EWG) study, which ranked the Pensacola area’s drinking water as some of the worst in the country. The forum will be held at Pensacola Junior College’s Hagler Auditorium (Building 2, Room 252), beginning at 6:00 PM this evening.
Representatives from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Department of Health, the ECUA…
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Below is the breakdown of what the Pensacola City Council will consider in the coming week. As always, expenditures are highlighted. Links to the full agendas are included at the bottom of the page. Included in the full agendas are copies of any contracts, agreements, ordinances, or resolutions.
Note: This meeting will take place on Monday, February 8. The meeting begins at 3:15 PM in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room, second floor, City Hall.
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Below is the breakdown of what the Pensacola City Council will consider in the coming week. As always, expenditures are highlighted. Links to the full agendas are included at the bottom of the page. Included in the full agendas are copies of any contracts, agreements, ordinances, or resolutions.
Note: This meeting will take place on Monday, January 11. The meeting begins at 3:15 PM in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room, second floor, City Hall. The Finance Committee and the Community Redevelopment Agency will not meet.
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There’s been some confusion about the recent report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) about tap water quality nationwide. The report claimed that tap water provided by ECUA, which services the City of Pensacola and much of Escambia County, ranked last in quality out of 100 water systems surveyed.
However, ECUA rightly points out that none of the contaminants in ECUA water violate legal limits. According to the standards set by the state and federal governments, ECUA water is safe…
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The Emerald Coast Utilities Authority released a statement on its website yesterday responding to the recent report by the Environmental Working Group which claimed ECUA had the worst tap water among the 100 systems surveyed.
In the statement, ECUA reiterates that its water is “perfectly safe” and “meets all federal and state standards.” ECUA marginalises the EWG report, saying that every water source contains trace amounts of various chemicals, and ECUA’s water is “some of the best in the country despite…
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A new survey released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) says that Pensacola (via the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority) has the worst tap water of the 100 metro areas studied by the group.
EWG found that Pensacola’s tap water contained 21 chemicals which exceeded federal health guidelines, compared to a national average of 4. The group also found 45 different chemical pollutants in Pensacola’s tap water, compared to a national average of 8. None of the 21 chemicals which exceeded health guidelines exceeded…
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Below is the breakdown of what the Pensacola City Council will consider in the coming week. As always, expenditures are highlighted. Links to the full agendas are included at the bottom of the page.
Note: This meeting will take place on Monday, October 19. The meeting begins at 3:15 PM in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room, second floor, City Hall. The Finance Committee will not meet.
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We’ve been meaning to put this up for a while, but have gotten sidetracked. It’s a highlight from last month’s debate about the City’s tree ordinance.
In it, Judy Gund of accounting firm Saltmarsh, Cleaveland & Gund comes before the City Council to stand up for big business and big development, and to call out Council members Diane Mack and Larry B. Johnson for putting forth the crazy idea that big business and big development should follow the same rules as everyone else…
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As a footnote to the whole tree ordinance debate, we are disappointed that several members of the Pensacola City Council failed to, at a minimum, disclose ties with Sacred Heart Health System. Whether or not these ties present conflicts of interest, we certainly feel that it is information which merits disclosure, if only for appearance’s sake. However, no Council member took it upon him or herself to do so.
Without making any judgements, we have published below a list…
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At last night’s City Council meeting, the revised tree ordinance, with the special exemptions for Sacred Heart and Baptist, was passed on the first reading.
This is something we would have expected and accepted without question from the previous Council. So many of us, though, have come to expect that the days of “business as usual” were behind us. So many of us have come to expect better from the new members of Council. To say we are disappointed wouldn’t begin to sum it up.
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Pensacola City Councilwoman Diane Mack has made some comments on her website about this past Monday’s extended debate on the tree ordinance and the eventual concessions granted to Sacred Heart and Baptist hospitals.
Councilwoman Mack sums up Sacred Heart’s stance well. Its parent company, Ascension Health, posted $16 billion in revenue in 2008. They can afford the increased mitigation costs. The idea that Sacred Heart would abandon its $200 million worth of construction projects over $500,000…
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A few items I wanted to highlight today:
On attracting Southwest Airlines. PNJ business reporter Carlton Proctor says “the game is on” regarding the Airport’s campaign to attract Southwest Airlines. As we’ve said, Southwest would be a colossal win for Pensacola and the Airport, and would likely secure the Airport’s place as the dominant regional airport for some time to come.
O’Brien covers Council’s caving on tree ordinance. PNJ columnist Mark O’Brien lets Council members…
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At yesterday’s City Council committee meetings, the tree ordinance moved forward for final approval, albeit with several last-minute concessions to special interests.
The proposed changes to the tree ordinance were designed to promote the preservation of more trees in the City by providing an increased financial disincentive for cutting down large “heritage” trees.
The largest concession was to Sacred Heart and Baptist Hospitals, who will now be exempt…
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Moulton Properties is pushing last-minute changes to the proposed tree ordinance. The current proposal is several years in the making and is the product of many stakeholder meetings and extensive consensus building. It is unfortunate that Moulton Properties has claimed to support the consensus version only to come forward with these changes at the eleventh hour.
Progressive Pensacola wholeheartedly supports the current consensus version of changes to the City’s tree ordinance. It’s apparent to everyone…
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Below is the breakdown of what the Pensacola City Council will consider in the coming week. As always, direct expenditures are highlighted. Links to the full agendas are included at the bottom of the page.
Note: This meeting will take place on Monday, August 24. The meeting begins at 3:15 PM in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room, second floor, City Hall. The Community Redevelopment Agency will not meet.
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A few items I wanted to highlight today:
County Attorney proposes technology rules. County Attorney Allison Rogers has proposed that the County Commission adopt a policy banning the use of cellphones, Blackberries, PDAs, or laptops by commissioners during meetings. The policy would also prohibit commissioners from blogging or using social networking sites like Facebook in relation to County business. Jamie Page of the News Journal is reporting that Commissioners Wilson Robertson, Marie Young, and Kevin White have already…
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Below is the breakdown of what the Pensacola City Council will consider in the coming week. As always, direct expenditures are highlighted. Links to the full agendas are included at the bottom of the page.
Note: This meeting will take place on Monday, August 10. The meeting begins at 9:00 AM in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room, second floor, City Hall. The Community Redevelopment Agency will not meet.
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The Pensacola City Council will meet on Monday to discuss changes to the City’s tree ordinance. The workshop starts at 9:00 AM in the Hagler/Mason Conference Room, second floor, City Hall.
The proposed changes to the ordinance would “improve adminstrative processes and better encourage the preservation of existing trees.”
The preservation of our trees should be paramount in our minds as we develop and redevelop the City, and we should save trees whenever possible, not whenever convenient.
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Local environmental group Emerald Coastkeeper will be hosting a beach clean-up this Saturday, May 30, at Pensacola Beach.
The event is open to the public, and participants can meet at the parking lot on the west end of the beach toward Fort Pickens. Emerald Coastkeeper will supply trash bags, water, and gloves.
Emerald Coastkeeper is a great organisation that does a ton of good work keeping our waterways and public spaces clean. If you can spare some time, come out and help keep our beautiful beaches…
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The Panama City-Bay County International Airport, which is being relocated and enlarged on swampland on West Bay, is having a devastating impact on the adjacent waterways — and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection isn’t performing the oversight and enforcement it ought to be.
The Clean Water Network of Florida fills us in:
“Four-thousand acres of deep swampland, donated by the St. Joe Development Company for the construction of an international airport, is situated at the bottom of an 80,000 acre bowl and was, pre-construction, remarkable for…”
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Some of the rhetoric used by our Florida legislators when arguing in support of oil drilling is just silly.
Northwest Florida’s own Rep. Greg Evers (R-Baker) reportedly said that a vote for the drilling bill “is a vote for our way of life. A vote against it is a vote for OPEC.”
As that doesn’t even make any sense, we can only assume that Rep. Evers doesn’t understand how oil drilling works. We don’t have state sponsored oil companies in the United States. If offshore drilling is allowed, space will be leased off to private oil companies. Then, after five or ten years pass…
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Progressive Pensacola is proud (or ashamed?) to present the latest installment of our weekly feature, Our Crazy Legislature. Each week, we try to round up some of the many, many bad decisions made by the Florida Legislature, and some of the many, many bad ideas proposed by the legislators therein. There are so many that it’s literally hard to keep track.
“House leader says controversial elections bill is dead for this session”
“‘Timing is everything’ in bid to greenlight offshore drilling”
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A few items I wanted to highlight today:
Pensacola News Journal:
“Superfund cleanup to get millions from stimulus”
City of Pensacola:
Budget workshop presentations
Megan Pratt:
“The Maritime Museum”
Rick’s Blog:
“BTW: Consolidation bill passes the House”
And more…
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A few items we wanted to highlight today:
Pensacola News Journal:
“City garage isn’t filled with ‘Cadillac’ pensions”
City employee Michael Faulkner offers a valiant, informed, fair-minded defense of City pensions…
Larry B. Johnson:
“Turtle-Friendly Lighting on Pensacola Beach”
Megan Pratt:
“Marketization: A new approach to government services”
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Progressive Pensacola is proud (or ashamed?) to present the latest installment of our weekly feature, Our Crazy Legislature. Each week, we try to round up some of the many, many bad decisions made by the Florida Legislature, and some of the many, many bad ideas proposed by the legislators therein. There are so many that it’s literally hard to keep track.
“Bill to ease wetlands development advances in Florida House”
“Rep. Cannon and his allies should abandon nonsensical attack on DCA”
“Public notices must be noticed”
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Progressive Pensacola sat down with Pensacola City Councilman Larry B. Johnson this morning to get his thoughts on how to use the $6 million the City has budgeted for a new library.
The bottom line: Councilman Johnson wants to build a green, LEED-certified library that will serve as “another piece of the puzzle to creating a vibrant downtown Pensacola.”
Mr. Johnson proposes using land at Palafox and Gregory Streets, now occupied by an underutilised City-owned parking lot. The land is about two blocks from the current library site…
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For the last few years, Sanders Beach residents have been getting steamrolled by everyone from the City to condo developers. The newest struggle is over the future of the American Creosote Works Superfund site, located south of Main Street between F and L Streets.
The site, at which ACW dumped creosote and other waste into unlined [...]
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For any who didn’t know, UWF is hosting an Earth Day symposium all day tomorrow. Symposium culminates with a keynote address from Mike Papantonio and a screening of the short film Sacred Planet.
More info at earthdaypensacola.org.
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