Word: buffer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Aside from providing homes for fish life and plants, coral reefs also produce billions of dollars in related eco-tourism and thousands of jobs in South Florida. They are also a buffer for beach erosion, a problem exacerbated by each new oceanside high-rise condo, as well as the storms and hurricanes that have battered Florida over the last four years. A joint federal and state study released in 2001 showed the reef-related economy - including money spent by eco-tourists for diving, chartering boats and the like - resulted in a $4 billion industry and more than 35,000 jobs...
Water Quality: The Bush Administration is proposing to weaken one rule that dates back to President Ronald Reagan, no friend of regulation himself. Currently there is a 100-foot buffer zone around streams, designed to protect them from the polluting byproducts of mining operations. The White House would extend that protection to other bodies of water, like lakes and wetlands, but tweak the regulation in way that could allow significantly more water pollution overall, by effectively reclassifying valley fills and other waste from mining as non-pollutants. That's damaging to mountaintop areas, especially in the coal-rich Appalachians...
...Sports do benefit from a buffer against recession. Leagues are in the midst of long-term television-rights deals whose terms are already locked in (baseball, for example, has a contract with Fox, TBS and ESPN that expires in 2013). And there are some positive economic indicators. New York Mets vice president David Howard says the 49 luxury boxes for the team's new stadium, which are priced between $250,000 and $500,000, have already sold out. That's an impressive achievement, given the bad economy and the team's second straight horrific collapse down the stretch...
...some issues adjusting the mask at the bridge of my nose for total darkness. While the two ear "pillows" - both detachable and adjustable - are intended to block sound, I was glad the package came with real ear plugs. The fleece-covered foam cushions did offer a slight additional buffer to noise, however, and they were definitely pillow-like - perfect for those awkward head leans on planes, trains and automobiles. Price: from...
RUSSIA PULLS OUT Russian troops dismantled their checkpoints and camps in Georgia, preparing to withdraw from buffer zones near the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and monitored by E.U. peacekeepers set an Oct. 10 deadline for Russia to return the zones to Georgia. Despite a bomb in South Ossetia's capital that threatened to disrupt the withdrawal, Russian forces continued as planned...