The Development of Regional Impact (DRI) concept was codified in Florida in the Seventies, as a measure aimed at planning for the tremendous growth and development that the State had ben experiencing. The DRI statutes that were enacted stated that any development of a magnitude in excess of certain size thresholds had to go through the DRI process to be approved.The process involves extensive studies of what the DRI's impacts will be upon the both the natural and man-made environments. Many public agencies are involved in reviewing the developer's assessments of his impacts. When these analyses are completed to the agencies' satisfaction, a Development Order is drafted. It details both the magnitude of development that will be allowed within the DRI, and the mitigation that developer will have to perform to allay his impacts upon the environments.This report examines the DRI process through the analysis of a case study. The DRI chosen for the case study was the Tampa Triangle DRI, a large tract of land located in Hillsborough County near Tampa, Florida. / Department of Urban Planning

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This study investigates the development of Plant City, Florida as a railroad town developing on the Southwest Florida frontier from 1885-1940. The study chronicles the town's origins and economic, political, and social development in relationship to the broader historical theories of southern urban development, specifically those put forward in David Goldfield's pioneering work, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region 1607-1980. Goldfield contended that southern cities developed differently than their northern counterparts because they were not economically, politically, philosophically and culturally separated from their rural surroundings. Instead, they displayed and retained the positive and negative attributes of southern society and culture, including a commitment to maintaining a biracial society until the 1960s, an affinity for rural lifestyles and values among urban residents, and an economic dependence on outside markets and capital. Since Goldfield derived his findings from research that centered on the cotton producing regions of the Old South, this study sought to determine whether the tenets of his thesis applied to the urbanization process in the frontier areas of Florida, a region often considered an anomaly to the greater South. In the end analysis it was determined that Goldfield's theory generally fits Plant City with some exceptions derived from regional differences found in Florida.

Multiple linear regression models were developed to calculate lake fluctuation that occurs between 10 percent, 50 percent, and 90 percent of the time lake surface elevation is exceeded. A total of 48 lakes were selected from Hillsborough, Pasco, Highlands and Polk counties, which were identified as natural lakes through the study the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) conducted in 1999 and 2002 to develop the models. "Natural lake" refers to lakes that were not impacted by ground water pumping. Among these 48 lakes, 22 lakes from Hillsborough and Pasco counties sit in the coastal lowlands area. 26 lakes from Highlands and Polk counties are located in the Upland and Highlands Ridge area. In developing multiple regression models, the 48 lakes were divided into two groups, the same group of lakes that SWFWMD used to develop the Reference Lake Water Regime, the method that is used to set the minimum lake levels in the region. Further, these two groups of data were subdivided into four categories based on their physical characteristics. 22 lakes were divided into surface water flow through lakes (SWF) and surface water drainage lakes (SWD). 26 lakes used their county line as the divider to separate them into Highlands County lakes and Polk County lakes. A total of six sets of multiple regression models were developed to predict the lake stage fluctuation for lakes that have no or limited lake stage data. The Polk County date set provides the best model with R2 at 0.9. However, due to the lack of available information on lake basin characteristics, the models that were developed for Hillsborough and Pasco counties do not provide a good prediction.

This thesis is a critical evaluation of the methods of community engagement used by the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission during the creation and implementation of the West Tampa Economic Development Plan. Data for this research was conducted in West Tampa, a neighborhood in Tampa, Florida. In the spring of 2005, the Planning Commission began working with the residents, business and property owners in West Tampa to develop the neighborhood's economic development plan. Using the community engagement methods of surveys, mailed and posted community announcements, community meetings, focus groups and interviews, the Planning Commission created an economic development plan which reflected the needs and concerns of the residents, business and property owners and worked to limit their displacement from the redevelopment of the neighborhood. Although these methods were designed to create avenues of participation for all segments of West Tampa's population, the neighborhood's new immigrant, Spanish speaking residents and business owners were not involved in the Planning Commission's community engagement efforts. By focusing specifically in West Tampa's Latino business district, known as "Boliche Boulevard," a long-time nickname given to the area by Tampa's Cuban immigrants, data from this research identifies the reasons for this population's absence in the creation and implementation of West Tampa's economic development plan. The use of the traditional anthropological methods of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and archival research revealed the history of Boliche Blvd.'s relationship with West Tampa, the neighborhood's civic institutions and Tampa city government and how these relationships impacted the business owners' willingness and ability to participate in West Tampa's economic development plan. The Planning Commission's limited understanding of the social relationships which exist between Boliche Blvd., West Tampa and the larger City of Tampa impaired their ability to successfully reach this population with their existing community engagement methods. This research stresses the need for city-county planning agencies to critically evaluate their community engagement efforts when conducting economic development projects in diverse, multi-lingual urban neighborhoods. Community engagement must be tailored to target different language and culture groups in order to achieve successful participation from the entire neighborhood population.

Disinfection is an essential process in the treatment of municipal wastewater before the treated wastewater can be discharged to the environment. Hillsborough County's Northwest Regional Water Reclamation Facility (NWRWRF) in Tampa, Florida, currently uses ultraviolet (UV) light for disinfection. However, this method has proven expensive to implement and maintain, and may not be effective if the light transmission is poor. For these reasons, Hillsborough County is considering switching from UV light to sodium hypochlorite for disinfection. However, hypochlorite (chlorine) disinfection has disadvantages as well, such as the production of disinfection by-products (DBPs) such as trihalomethanes (THM) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), which may have adverse impacts on the quality of surface waters that receive the treated wastewater. Therefore, the objectives of this research are (1) to compare NWRWRF typical operating conditions and water quality to those of two nearby facilities (River Oaks and Dale Mabry Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plants) that currently employ chlorine disinfection, (2) to determine the chlorine demand of treated effluent from NWRWRF, (3) to quantify the DBP formation potential of treated effluent from NWRWRF, and (4) to determine the effects of temperature, reaction time, and chlorine dose on chlorine demand and THM formation. To inform laboratory experiments, the quality of final effluent was monitored at NWRWRF and at two nearby wastewater treatment plants that currently use hypochlorite for disinfection. At these two facilities, pH of 7.0-8.0, chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 12-26 mg/L, alkalinity of 200-250 mg/L as CaCO3, chlorine residual of 1.5-6.0 mg/L, and total trihalomethanes of 100-190 ix μg/L (mostly chloroform) were observed. Conditions at NWRWRF were similar to those at Dale Mabry and River Oaks AWWTP, suggesting that chlorine demand and THM formation at NWRWRF would be similar to those at the two AWWTP, if chlorination is to be used. THM experimental results agreed with this suggestion. Chlorine dose and temperature effects on the free chlorine residual and THMs production in NWRWRF filtered wastewater effluent were determined. Filtered effluent was collected and transported to USF laboratory where it was tested for 3 different chlorine doses (6 mg/L, 9 mg/L and 12 mg/L as Cl2) and 3 different temperatures (16°C, 23°C, and 30°C) at 7 different contact times (15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, and 120 min) in duplicate. The total number of batches prepared was: 3 different chlorine doses × 3 different temperatures × 7 different reaction times = 126 reactors. According to Florida Administrative code 62-600.440, total chlorine residual should be at least 1 mg/L after a contact time of at least 15 min at peak hourly flow. Also, according to Florida Administrative code 62-600.440, if effluent wastewater has a concentration of fecal coliforms greater than 10,000 per 100 mL before disinfection, FDEP requires that the product of the chlorine concentration C (in mg/L as Cl2) and the contact time t (in minutes) be at least 120. Results showed that free chlorine residual was always above 1 mg/L in 15 min contact time for all chlorine doses and temperatures tested in this thesis. However, to be conservative, thesis conclusions and recommendations were based on the more stringent regulation: C*t ≥ 120 mg.min/L, assuming that the number of fecal coliform in NWRWRF wastewater effluent exceeds 10,000 per 100 mL prior to disinfection. The analysis showed that free chlorine residual for 6 mg/L was below the FDEP standard at all temperatures. At 16 °C and 23 °C, chlorine doses of 9 and 12 mg/L resulted in an appropriate free chlorine residual above the FDEP standard. However, a chlorine dose of 12 mg/L was resulting in high residual, which means high THM would be expected. Therefore, at 16 x and 23°C, 9 mg/L would be preferable. At 30 °C, only the chlorine dose of 12 mg/L met the standard at all contact times. As expected, free chlorine residual decreased with an increase in temperature from 23°C to 30°C. Surprisingly, the residual at 16°C was lower than residual at 23°C. The production of THMs increased with higher contact time in all the experiments completed. Chlorine dose didn't have an effect on THM formation at 23°C, but it did at 30°C and 16°C, where THM concentrations were generally higher with the increase of chlorine dose. Temperature effect was noticed in most of the experiments, where THM production was usually higher at higher temperatures, except some cases where formation was similar for different temperatures. Chloroform, dichlorobromomethane, dibromochloromethane production ranges were respectively: 20-127 μg/L, 18-59 μg/L, and 3-7 μg/L. Bromoform concentrations were not observed in this experiment at any temperature or chlorine dose. According to Florida Administrative code 62-302.530, Criteria for Surface Water Quality Classifications, the Florida Department for Environmental Protection (FDEP) set the following limits for THM concentrations in wastewater effluent to be as the following; 470 μg/L for chloroform, 22 μg/L for dichlorobromomethane, 34 μg/L for dibromochloromethane, and 360 μg/L for bromoform. Experimental results on NWRWRF filtered effluent showed that only dichlorobromomethane exceeded the limits set by FDEP at about 30 min contact time for all temperatures and chlorine doses tested. However, according to Florida Administrative code 62- 302-400, proposed changes to the code have set higher DCBM limit of 57 μg/L. Chlorination would be recommended at NWRWRF if the DCBM regulated limit increases to 57 μg/L. The recommended chlorine dose would be 9 mg/L for water temperatures around 16-23 °C and 12 mg/L for water temperatures around 30 °C

The idea that planners should work toward an equitable society has been part of the profession since the 1960s, largely based on the work of planning theorists like Paul Davidoff, Sherry Arnstein and Norman Krumholz. Transportation planning, however, has been slower than other sectors of the profession, such as housing, to embrace equity planning concepts. That has begun to change as concerns about income inequality, environmental justice and climate change have become more salient. This thesis makes the case that in order to improve social equity outcomes, transportation planners must make social equity an explicit goal and add social equity performance measures and targets to their plans. The study focuses on Hillsborough County, Florida as a case study and analyzes the extent that transportation planning agencies in the county consider social equity in their plans and processes. The data on plans and processes will be compared to data on social equity outcomes related to the distribution of transportation benefits and burdens, and next steps to improve social equity outcomes in the County will be identified in the form of policy recommendations.