The city's carbon footprint could soon be getting bigger. Tampa officials want to increase the amount of methanol they're allowed to use at the Howard F. Curren Wastewater Treatment Plant, a move environmental regulators say will double the level of hazardous air emissions coming from the facility. ...more

November 7, 2009

The city is facing fines of more than $16,000 from environmental regulators for a litany of alleged violations on a fuel storage tank at the Tampa Convention Center. ...more

July 30, 2009

The city is facing fines of more than $16,000 from environmental regulators for a litany of alleged violations on a fuel storage tank at the Tampa Convention Center. ...more

July 29, 2009

Environmental scientists have identified large swaths of algae blooms in Old Tampa Bay, from the Howard Frankland Bridge to north of the Courtney Campbell Causeway. ...more

June 20, 2009

Excuse me, but did I miss the issue where it was discovered that the Gulf of Mexico was suddenly changed into fresh water? ...more

April 22, 2009

In the article "Wetlands Division A Redundancy," Tampa Tribune, March 21, Keith Bricklemyer lays out a case against the Environmental Protection Commission's wetlands protection program, stating there is no documentation of facts showing the program's success. The "absence" of these facts causes Bricklemyer to infer that the longevity of EPC's program is fueled by long-term emotional rhetoric. Our guess is, since the "facts" contained in Bricklemyer's article are, at best, misleading and mostly incorrect, that he himself has been overcome by emotion. ...more

March 31, 2009

With regards to Keith Bricklemyer's (a land use attorney) comments in "Wetlands Division A Redundancy" (Views, March 21): It was Shakespeare who once wrote those immortal words, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Has anyone ever noticed the overwhelming majority of those who write in protest about the Environmental Protection Commission are developers, land use attorneys, and those individuals with large parcels of land that just happen to be predominately composed of wetlands, not uplands? ...more

March 26, 2009

As an attorney who worked for a number of years at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in Tallahassee, I strongly disagree with attorney Keith W. Bricklemyer's assertions ("Other Views," March 21) that Hillsborough County's wetlands division is a "duplication" and that we can get environmental protection from the FDEP, the Southwest Florida Water Management District or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. ...more

March 25, 2009

The emotional rhetoric offered historically and in recent editorials to continue the Environmental Protection Commission's wetlands permitting program is missing one important thing: facts that document that Hillsborough County is more successful in protecting wetlands with EPC than other counties that don't have such a group. ...more

March 21, 2009

For the fifth year in a row, the Florida Legislature is attacking local government control of wetlands permitting, especially aiming at Hillsborough County's Environmental Protection Commission (EPC). In the name of streamlining, legislators maintain that local wetland review duplicates that of other state agencies and is a reason for the state's economic crisis. Ha! ...more

March 19, 2009