Research

In “To Court Without the Corps? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Florida v. Georgia,” Tyler McCreary, Ph.D., and Frank Schmitz, Ph.D., examine the role of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a recent Supreme Court case about water allocation in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin. 

The authors review the arguments and findings from the US Supreme Court decision “Florida v. Georgia.” This judicial case began with allegations of ecological damage due to upstream water overconsumption in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin. However, the case ultimately revolved around the technical practices and regulation manuals of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who operates the system of federal dams that impacts the flow of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers. Dr. McCreary and Dr. Schmitz examine the evidence and arguments presented in the Florida v. Georgia case and argue that the ecological disturbances and damages occurred in the Apalachicola watershed cannot be understood nor remedied without considering the history and management practices of the Corps in the ACF basin. 

The authors’ analysis of the Florida v. Georgia case highlights the importance to water governance of the policies, technical practices, and production of knowledge by engineers and other experts. More generally, the authors’ article suggest that Florida v. Georgia is a more general invitation for geographers to develop political ecologies that critically engage with the practices of engineers and experts in other transboundary river basins.

In “Assessment of Disparities in Spatial Accessibility to Vaccination Sites in Florida,” Kyusik Kim and Mark Horner, Ph.D., examined whether during the early COVID-19 vaccination stage, access to vaccination sites for older Floridians varied across individuals’ race, ethnicity, and income level.  

To examine potential disparities in accessibility to vaccine distribution sites, the authors identified vaccination sites as of March 2021 and geocoded their addresses. The authors also employed census tract level data from the American Community Survey 5-year estimates to identify people 65 and older in the state of Florida as well as their race, ethnicity, and income levels. 

Moreover, to calculate the distance between older subpopulation groups and vaccination sites, the authors employed hexagon-based spatial accessibility using Uber’s Hexagonal Hierarchical Spatial Index. This approach allowed the authors to compute highly disaggregated spatial accessibility to vaccination sites, since the size of the hexagon is smaller than the census block. Using this method, the authors calculated two accessibility measures: travel time to the nearest vaccination facility (nearest opportunity) and the number of facilities within a 15-minute travel time (cumulative opportunities).