Ormond Beach resident Nika Hosseini knows that the mantra Anyone can make a difference” could easily be a cliche but after working to change the lives of more than 10,000 people, she’s pretty confident that it’s true.
In the past six years, over the course of getting two degrees and working a full-time job, Hosseini has completed four projects focusing on bringing clean, quality water to Ugandan villages that desperately need it.
The 26-year-old associate attorney with Cobb Cole started her first project in 2015, while completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Miami.
“I just got really tired of seeing all the problems going on around the world. There was water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” she said. “I felt the way to make a difference instead of moping was to go ahead and do something.”
In another win for Florida preservation projects, the state recorded its first conservation easement of a special grassland and Stetson University helped give it the final push.
Under the National Resources Conservation Service, the 581-acre property, located in Western Columbia County and within the Santa Fe and Suwannee River watersheds, is now considered a Grassland of Special Environmental Significance.
The finalization of the project was announced last Wednesday by Stetson University, in partnership with the Alachua Conservation Trust and the North Florida Land Trust.
With sandy soil that recharges rainwater seeping through the sand and into the aquifer, the property has been kept and maintained by its owners for more than 50 years for quail hunting. Because of the careful preservation and prescribed, controlled fires, more than 243 native plant species have been recorded.
When 78-year-old Deltona resident Peter Vacarro first heard that the coronavirus had reached Volusia County in March 2020, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
The steadily growing number of cases, the waffling federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines at the beginning of the pandemic, and the lack of knowledge scared him,. As a senior citizen, he was among those most in danger from COVID-19. So he went into self-isolation.
Now, a year later, he still spends his days alone, with only his cat and a weekly cleaning service to keep him company. It’s for his own safety. But it doesn’t come without a price.
At Deltona High School, between walls decorated with literature posters, African face masks and a portrait of a vampiric Mona Lisa, the words of Macbeth rang out.
When not reciting Macbeth’s lines early Wednesday morning, English teacher Dylan Emerick-Brown looked on as his students read the end of the play aloud. He stopped the class when an important moment came up to analyze the lines in their context, to answer a question, and to elicit a round of laughter when pulling the fake severed head of the fictional Scottish General out of a drawer.
And while some students might not care about Shakespearean plot twists or the importance of foreshadowing in literature, the death of Lady Macbeth and the Cesarean section surprise was met with cries of ‘Oh no!’ and gasps from the seven-student audience.
Conservationists, though, oppose the legislation, which they believe will severely impact sea turtle nesting.
Florida’s state Legislature began meeting in session Tuesday.
In an attempt to protect properties from steadily rising sea levels, state Sen. Tom Wright, R-New Smyrna Beach, and Rep. Tom Leek, R-Ormond Beach, filed identical bills, State Bill 1504 and House Bill 1133. Both are titled Coastal Construction and Preservation.
According to the bills, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection would be required, rather than authorized, to issue permits for rigid coastal armoring structures, or seawalls, as long as they meet the qualifications. It’s not something that conservation organizations are happy about.