Evidence Ledger · RC2
Every major claim, traced.
One row per major visible claim on this site. Each row lists exactly what is said in public, whether it is measured, modeled, projected, or interpretive, the primary source it traces to, and the date the site owner last verified that source. This is the internal Evidence Ledger required by the RC2 developer package, published so anyone reviewing the site can audit it against the primary record.
How to read this ledger:
- Claim type distinguishes what kind of statement is being made:
- Measured — a directly observed or recorded value (seagrass acreage mapped by remote sensing, NOAA-recorded animal counts, county-published dollar amounts).
- Modeled — a value derived from an engineering or economic model (pounds of nitrogen prevented per project, hedonic home-value effect, ecosystem service values).
- Projected — a value calculated forward under stated assumptions (ten-year revenue estimate, future project completion count).
- Interpretive — a claim that connects, characterizes, or contextualizes underlying data (e.g. that the recovery is fragile, that the tax structure has produced measurable results).
- Source tier follows the reviewer's hierarchy: Tier 1 is official ballot/statutory/audited/agency data or peer-reviewed publications; Tier 2 is university, recognized institution, or established nonprofit technical reports; Tier 3 is reputable secondary and explanatory reporting. Tier 3 sources are not used alone to carry a major numeric claim.
- Verification date is the last date the site owner personally opened the primary source and confirmed the value. Sources are re-verified before any major release.
| Claim ID | Wording as published & page | Type | Source & tier | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B-01 | “Election Day: Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Polls open 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.” — /vote/how/, header, hero eyebrows sitewide. | Measured | Brevard County Supervisor of Elections — Current Elections. Tier 1 (official agency). Cross-cited with WMFE May 19, 2026 (Tier 3, secondary). | 2026-07-26 |
| B-02 | “Registration deadline: Monday, October 5, 2026.” — /vote/how/ | Measured | Brevard SOE current-elections calendar. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| B-03 | “Mail-ballot request deadline: Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 5:00 p.m.” — /vote/how/ | Measured | Brevard SOE Vote-By-Mail page. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| B-04 | “Early voting: Monday, October 19 through Saturday, October 31, 2026.” — /vote/how/ | Measured | Brevard SOE Early Voting page. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| B-05 | Ballot referendum authorized by Brevard County Commission for the November 2026 General Election. — /sources/#ballot | Measured | Brevard County Legistar File #8446. Tier 1 (official commissioner action). | 2026-07-26 |
| B-06 | Florida Statute §212.055(10): reenactment referendum “may appear on the ballot only once within the 48-month period.” — /vote/ | Measured | Florida Statutes §212.055. Tier 1 (statutory). | 2026-07-26 |
| P-01 | “403 projects in the plan, 133 complete, 98 in progress, as of May 14, 2026.” — /projects/, /vote/, /where-it-goes/ | Measured | Brevard County SOIRL Project Plan dashboard. Tier 1 (official county dashboard). | 2026-07-26 |
| P-02 | “$522.1 million collected, $118.3 million spent, $336.7 million tied to work in progress, $115.3 million in additional grant funds, as of May 14, 2026.” — /where-it-goes/ | Measured | Brevard County SOIRL Project Plan dashboard. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| P-03 | Citizen Oversight Committee reviews annual plan, project performance, expenditures, and recommendations; meets monthly in public; county spending is subject to annual independent audit. — /oversight/, /timeline/ | Measured | Brevard County COC page and SOIRL founding ordinance. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| M-01 | “NOAA's closed Atlantic Florida manatee Unusual Mortality Event record lists 1,392 animals from December 1, 2020 through April 30, 2022.” — /science/, /timeline/, /comeback/, / | Measured | NOAA Fisheries — Active and Closed Unusual Mortality Events. Tier 1 (federal agency). | 2026-07-26 |
| M-02 | “Cause identified as malnutrition secondary to ecological factors, including changes in forage.” — /science/, /timeline/ | Interpretive (agency causation summary) | NOAA Fisheries UME closure summary. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| S-01 | “SJRWMD mapped 17,042 hectares of seagrass in 2025 versus 9,924 hectares in 2023 — approximately a 72% increase in mapped extent.” — /comeback/, /science/basin-recovery/, /timeline/, /what-you-get/ | Measured | SJRWMD May 2026 seagrass release. Tier 1 (state water-management district). | 2026-07-26 |
| S-02 | “2025 acreage remains approximately 48% below the 2007 historical high of 32,563 hectares.” — /comeback/ | Measured | SJRWMD historical seagrass mapping. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| E-01 | “$28.3 billion in annual regional economic activity, more than 128,000 jobs, $8.3 billion in wages, seven-county lagoon region.” — /onelagoon/, /timeline/, /what-you-get/ | Modeled (economic valuation) | Balmoral Group 2025 IRL Economic Valuation, Technical Report, and NOAA Fisheries summary. Tier 2 (commissioned technical valuation for IRLNEP) + Tier 1 (federal agency summary). | 2026-07-26 |
| E-02 | “Approximately $24 in public benefits per dollar invested for the nine selected NOAA-funded restoration projects examined in that analysis.” — /onelagoon/, /vote/#roi | Modeled | NOAA Fisheries: Investing in IRL Restoration Pays Dividends. Tier 1 (federal agency summary of Balmoral analysis). Scope: nine selected projects, not the full SOIRL program. | 2026-07-26 |
| E-03 | Calculator payback multiplier and category values (recreation, water quality, flood mitigation, home-value factor). — /vote/#roi | Modeled (illustrative) | Balmoral Group 2025 hedonic and ecosystem-services analysis. Tier 2. Assumptions and methodology published inline on the /vote/ page next to the calculator. | 2026-07-26 |
| E-04 | “In the study's Indian River County sample, a three-bedroom home within 100 meters of the water was associated with an estimated $660,000 sales premium relative to an otherwise comparable property farther away. That specific estimate should not be assumed for every Brevard property.” — /what-you-get/ | Modeled (hedonic regression) | Balmoral Group 2025 hedonic study, Indian River County sample. Tier 2. Scope: Indian River County only; not empirically established for Brevard properties. | 2026-07-26 |
| N-01 | “The Indian River Lagoon was designated an Estuary of National Significance in 1990 and the IRLNEP was established in 1991.” — /onelagoon/, /timeline/ | Measured | IRLNEP Science 2030 (2024). Tier 1 (agency planning document). | 2026-07-26 |
| N-02 | “The lagoon's watershed spans seven counties; the IRL Council's local-government board represents five lagoon-bordering counties.” — /onelagoon/ | Measured | IRLNEP CCMP Financing Strategy. Tier 1. | 2026-07-26 |
| R-01 | “MRC 2025 basin assessments: Mosquito Lagoon good, North IRL / Banana River / South IRL okay, Central IRL improved from poor to okay; Central IRL water quality remained poor.” — /mrc/, /comeback/ | Interpretive (indicator-based grade) | Marine Resources Council 2025 IRL Report Card. Tier 2 (established nonprofit technical publication using DEP/SFWMD/Florida Tech primary data). | 2026-07-26 |
| A-01 | “The comeback is durable when it is running on that broader institutional stack, not on one funding source. The recovery is multi-driver: sustained nutrient-reduction work, two mild hurricane seasons, and the institutional partners running restoration in the water.” — /comeback/, /timeline/ | Interpretive | Derived by the site editor from the aggregate of primary sources cited elsewhere in this ledger. Tier 3 (editorial interpretation, not a source claim). Presented as reasoned analysis, not as a measured attribution study. | 2026-07-26 |
| O-01 | “An independently funded educational and editorial website. Not affiliated with Brevard County, IRLNEP, the IRL Coalition, any government agency, any candidate campaign, or any political committee. The site advocates renewal of the ballot measure.” — /about/, footer sitewide | Measured (self-disclosure) | Site owner disclosure. No claim of any specific legal or campaign-finance classification is made on the site; any such classification is a determination for Florida election counsel, not site copy. | 2026-07-26 |
Claims currently held from public view
The following categories of numeric or legal claim are intentionally not published or are surfaced only behind the internal preview feature flag, pending independent verification. This list is maintained in parallel with the ledger above.
- Exact certified 2026 ballot title and wording (A-99) — the Brevard County Supervisor of Elections has not yet published the certified 2026 caption; per Brevard County staff direction (Legistar #8446), ballot language must be submitted to the SoE by August 2026. The /vote/how/ ballot-wording block is explicitly labeled “HELD PENDING SoE CERTIFICATION” and shows the 2016 caption for reference only. This row will be moved to Live once the certified 2026 wording is published.
- Exact annual renewal revenue (any specific dollar-per-year figure for the renewed SOIRL half-cent) — pending publication of an official fiscal estimate.
- Specific setback in years if the November 2026 renewal fails — described qualitatively pending case-by-case project data.
- Polling support figures for the renewal — pending publication of sample, field dates, exact question wording, and margin of error.
- Federal or partner leverage ratios such as any specific “6–8×” number — pending a defined project portfolio and public records.
- Kennedy Space Center wastewater amounts or scope — pending an official project/funding source.
- Rocket cadence, launch-growth, or rocket-fuel atmospheric claims — pending independent sourcing and careful scoping; treated as future/do-not-block-RC2 work.
- Government, agency, university, scientist, nonprofit, or individual endorsement language — pending express written authorization from the party, if any.
- Statements originating only in private conversations, including any private discussions with Dr. Duane De Freese — never published or attributed.
- Project costs, dates, modeled reductions, and completion claims that cannot be linked to the official project record are not published individually; the aggregate program figures in P-01 and P-02 come from the county dashboard.
Source hierarchy
Tier 1: Official ballot text, statute, audited financial report, government dataset or report, official project record, peer-reviewed study.
Tier 2: University, recognized scientific institution, or established nonprofit technical report.
Tier 3: Reputable explanatory or secondary source. Tier 3 sources are used to add context, not to carry a major numeric claim alone.
This ledger is maintained by the site editor. Corrections and additions are logged on /corrections/. To report a claim that appears mis-scoped or under-sourced, email hello@irlfacts.org.