Grant Project Summary:
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
Development of a GIS Project for Franklin County and the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve
July 2005 to December 2007
Project Summary
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve (ANERR) and the NOAA Coastal Services Center entered a cooperative agreement project to develop and implement a geographic information system (GIS) for the Franklin County Planning and Building Department. Franklin County, located in northwestern Florida, has historically been a sparsely populated rural county that depended on the commercial seafood industry for 80 percent of local jobs. In the last 10 years, tourism and real estate development have led to rapid coastal development and have significantly increased the responsibilities of Franklin County planning staff. Environmental impacts associated with new development in Franklin County (e.g., stormwater runoff, septic tank and wastewater effluent) have likely degraded water quality in the adjacent reserve, and the county does not have the capacity to use GIS or other digital data management systems in its planning activities.
In this project, ANERR partnered with the planning department to provide the county with digital data, equipment, GIS software, and training to use GIS in its planning and regulatory activities, to track permits and understand the cumulative impacts of planning decisions, and to allow for a more comprehensive approach to planning future growth. A secondary benefit of the project related to improved protection and management opportunities for ANERR through the spatial analysis of development trends and habitat changes, and water quality monitoring.
NOAA Coastal Services Center's Role
The NOAA Coastal Services Center assisted ANERR by developing a Web-based permitting and GIS display. The Center helped ANERR identify existing GIS data for the region and advise ANERR on metadata development.
Grantee Overview
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) was established in 1993 after the Florida legislature merged the Departments of Regulation and Natural Resources. It is the lead government organization at the state level for managing the environment and its resources. The agency has more than 3,000 full-time employees working in its offices in Tallahassee, two state-of-the-art environmental laboratories, and six regional offices. The mission of FDEP is to work for a cleaner environment by offering more protection and less process. To accomplish this, the department administers regulatory programs and issues permits for air, water, and waste management. It also oversees the state’s land and water conservation program, manages the Florida Park Service, and is the main architect of the $7.8 billion dollar management plan to help restore the Everglades.
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