News Briefs & Follow Through

Divide the Ride

For harried parents with multiple children heading in different directions, carpooling makes perfect sense – but organizing it can be easier said than done. Divide the Ride (www.dividetheride.com) makes it easy to coordinate calendars with participating parents – and then emails or texts participating parents to remind them of their responsibilities.

A carpool manager creates the group through the free online service and then invites other parents to join. The site compiles a schedule of who is driving where and when so parents can easily create carpools. If a last-minute conflict arises, the site will alert the next person on the list until a driver is found or the group is notified that carpooling won’t work for that event.

Personal information is available only to group members with passwords.

The site was created by Bryn Tindall, president and CEO of Tampa-based Horizon Marketing Group, in response to the hectic sports and social schedule of his seven-year-old son. Bryn and his wife, a working mom, became friends with the parents of children they regularly saw at practices, games and an endless stream of birthday parties. Carpooling was the obvious choice, but Tindall thought he could make the process easier by using technology to do the work of figuring out the carpool calendars.

Two new programs are available especially for school administrators and coaches, teachers, instructors or organizers, with interactive maps that make it easy for parents to find carpools to specific events.

Launched in October 2007, Divide the Ride set up nearly 11 million rides, saving 537 million miles and nearly 36 million gallons of gasoline in its first year of operation.

Pooches Program Expands

Beginning Aug. 1, families who adopt a dog through Manatee County Animal Services or the Humane Society of Manatee will receive a Pooches for the Planet adoption kit filled with valuable information and free goodies. Radio messages about why it’s important to clean up doggy doo also will begin airing on WUSF radio beginning July 27.

Pet waste is a significant source of nutrients and fecal coliform bacteria entering Sarasota and Tampa bays. Approximately 26 tons of pet waste is deposited on the ground in Sarasota and Manatee counties every day. Unfortunately, this dog poop does not stay on the grass but gets washed down storm drains and delivered untreated to the closest waterway when it rains.

Just like human waste, dog poop poses a threat to both public health and water quality. It contributes harmful bacteria that can make people ill, as well as excessive nutrients that cause algae blooms that in turn rob the water of oxygen needed to support fish and other marine life.

The Tampa Bay Estuary Program hopes to expand the program to shelters and organizations in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. For more information about Pooches for the Planet, visit www.tbep.org/help/scoop.html.

USGS Identifies Worst Watersheds

For the first time, the U.S. Geological Survey has identified the top 150 polluting watersheds in the Mississippi River basin that cause the annual 8,000 square-mile Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The report shows that commercial fertilizers and animal manure from farmland in nine states – Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi – cause over 70% of the Dead Zone pollution.

Evidence is mounting that the mandated push to increase corn production, one of the most fertilizer-intensive crops, for ethanol exacerbates water quality problems within the states and in the Gulf.

“This report demonstrates that pollution doesn’t respect state boundaries,” said Matt Rota, water resources program director for the Gulf Restoration Network. “Many of the top-polluting river and stream basins occupy multiple states. Downstream states like Louisiana and Mississippi are counting on a multi-state effort to address the Dead Zone.”

Researchers are hopeful that the study will help states and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to increase and target farm conservation funding to help reduce the Dead Zone, which is a major national environmental problem that may be linked to red tide outbreaks off Southwest Florida.

The USGS report, “Incorporating Uncertainty into the Ranking of SPARROW Model Nutrient Yields from the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin Watersheds” is available online at http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/sparrow/nutrient_yields/index.html.

Lakewood Ranch Investigates Lake Bank Plantings

Two grants – from Southwest Florida Water Management District and the Florida Nursery Growers & Landscapers Association – will help researchers determine which plantings most help to improve water quality at Lake Uihlien in Lakewood Ranch, a 48-square-mile master-planned community that stretches across the Manatee-Sarasota county line.

The goal of the project is to improve water quality through Florida-friendly plantings and applying the Green Industries Best Management Practices for maintenance in the landscape, said Ryan Heise, director of operations at Lakewood Ranch.

“Balancing the form and function of stormwater ponds with the aesthetic expectations of lakefront property owners is one of the greatest challenges we face,” Heise said. “We are committed to finding natural and eco-friendly ways to deal with the many ecological changes that are simply part of the nature of Florida’s climate.”
Residents will be encouraged to assist with plant selection and design. They will also be encouraged to cooperate in a comprehensive effort to reduce nutrient loading to lakes. Improper landscape maintenance practices may contribute to the aesthetic lake issues in the community, Heise adds.

“The district has included language in its landscape maintenance contracts prohibiting the use of fertilizers around the lake bank areas and natural areas in the common grounds,” he said. “The district has no control over what maintenance practices homeowners use, and even residents who do not live on lakes should be aware of the effect fertilizer runoff has on the lakes in their community.”

Planning a Vegetable Garden? Start Now for Best Results

With the nation’s economy withering, experts from University of Florida say more people than ever are looking to put food on the table by growing it. And while it’s too hot to grow the most popular vegetables, now is the time to start preparing soil for Florida’s best growing season – the fall and winter months when everything from tomatoes and squash to broccoli and collards thrive in Tampa Bay.

“We’ve been overwhelmed with people interested in growing their own vegetables,” said Sydney Park Brown, a UF extension specialist in Hillsborough County. “It’s really picked up in the last year.”

It takes a little while for some people to get used to planting in the Fall not the Spring, adds Monica Brandies, gardening columnist and author of Florida Gardening: The Newcomer's Survival Manual.

She recommends finding a sunny spot now and covering the area with a layer of newspaper and then a layer of mulch. By September or October, the grass underneath the newspaper will be dead and you can pull back the mulch to plant seeds or plants.

Learn more at the UF website, including a vegetable garden guide at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/VH/VH02100.pdf or at Brandies’ site at www.gardensflorida.com, or revisit the Bay Soundings article on John Starnes’ eco-friendly garden at http://baysoundings.com/fall08/Stories/grow.asp.