Foulness Island passing of the Ministry of Defence Act 1946 and the subsequent rationalisation of five agencies in 1971, ownership of the island passed from the War Office to the Ministry of Defence. In 2003, a contract to manage the testing of munitions was awarded to the defence contractors QinetiQ, and they also control access to the island. In the 1850s, the South Essex Estuary and Reclamation Company proposed a grand scheme to reclaim around of land on the Essex coast, which would have included most of Foulness Sands and Maplin Sands. The civil engineer Sir John Rennie produced the plans, and
Pine Island (Lee County, Florida) Pine Island (Lee County, Florida) Pine Island is the largest island in the state of Florida in the United States. The island is located in Lee County, on the Gulf of Mexico coast of southwest Florida, it is also the 118th largest island in the United States. The Intracoastal Waterway passes through Pine Island Sound, to the west of the island. Matlacha Pass runs between Pine Island and the mainland. Pine Island lies west of Cape Coral. For many years Pine Island was a major commercial fishing community and many of its full-time residents still commercial fish today. Unlike the