Florida Gov. Rick Scott last week ordered the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to develop new rules requiring public and private facilities “to provide notification of incidents of pollution within 24 hours to DEP, local governments and the general public through the media.” DEP quickly issued an emergency order increasing notification requirements for pollution incidents, as well as a notice of rulemaking to make it permanent after the emergency expires in 90 days. Under the new rules, facility owners must notify “local broadcast television affiliates and a newspaper of general circulation in the area of the contamination.” The rules significantly change the current “patchwork quilt of notice requirements,” according to an attorney writing in the Daily Business Review (registration required).

Residents of Mt. Judea, Ark., were surprised to learn recently that their peaceful community is about to become host to a hog farm that will house up to 6,503 hogs. Residents of the town, through a coalition of environmental groups, say that while notices about the development of the C&H Hog Farm may have been legally sufficient, few in town knew about the approval processes.

Tennessee newspapers are the most viable medium for public notices in the state, but the citizens cannot be fully informed if the notice requirements for public meetings do not mandate sufficient information to be meaningful, the Public Notice Resource Center (PNRC) told the Tennessee Court of Appeals for the Middle District of Tennessee in February.

PNRC filed an amicus brief in Fisher v. Rutherford County Regional Planning Commission, a review of an appeal by a citizens group, who protested the building of an Islamic Center in a rural area near Murfreesboro, TN. The notice of the Planning Commission’s meeting to review the center’s proposed site plan was published in the Murfreesboro Post, but did not provide an agenda, nor give any indication that the Commission planned to act on the center’s proposal.