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Charter school at Calesa Township announces principal The Ina A. Colen Academy, a charter school under construction at Calesa Township, announced that Sandra Rocquin of Fleming Island will be its principal. The school is scheduled to open in August 2022. Ocklawaha River economic benefits The Free the Ocklawaha group sent this message last week: "A team of economists, science and tourism experts have jointly outlined the strong economic benefits of breaching the Rodman/Kirkpatrick Dam to create a free-flowing Ocklawaha River, reconnecting Silver Springs and the Ocklawaha and St. Johns rivers."...

NewsSportsEntertainmentLifestyleOpinionUSA TODAYObituariesE-EditionLegals EDITORIALS Let this river run: It's time to finally free the Ocklawaha from the shackles of old folly The Gainesville Sun Editorial Board Fifty years ago this month, President Richard Nixon ordered an end to an environmentally destructive barge canal that would have bisected the Florida peninsula. Yes, Richard Nixon. Before he resigned office in disgrace, Nixon had a respectable environmental record that included creating the Environmental Protection Agency, signing the Clean Air Act into law and canceling funding for t...

It's hard for anyone nowadays to believe that the Cross-Florida Barge Canal was ever seriously contemplated, much less that it was a hot, divisive political fight from the 1960s through the 1980s. Think of it: Digging a massive waterway from Jacksonville west to Yankeetown, a little town north of Tampa, and in the process ripping through Central Florida's network of springs, widening rivers and creeks, smashing through forests, and potentially damaging the aquifer that much of the state depends on for drinking water. A boondoggle of epic proportions. What were they thinking?  When Presiden...

The end of the canal that would have cleaved Florida in two | Column 50 years ago, environmentalists persuaded Nixon to halt construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal.   Published Jan. 15 In January 1971, a forward artillery observer serving with American forces in Cambodia exulted in good news from back home in Florida. “I was excited for my mom,” he remembered in an interview years later. “But nobody in my unit had any idea why I was so happy. I had to explain to them about the Cross Florida Barge Canal.” That observer was Stephen Carr, whose enthusiastic response...