NATCHEZ &045; The topics that made the biggest headlines in 2002 ran the gamut from business and politics to education, the environment and crime.

In no particular order, the top 10 stories for the year in Natchez and Adams County included the following:

4After months of testimony and debate and with Mississippi doctors’ malpractice insurance on the rise, the state Legislature passed tort reform legislation. The medical tort reform legislation, which takes effect Wednesday, includes a $500,000 cap on non-economic damages, although damages for physical disfigurement cannot be capped.

Joint and several liability was limited. Also under the bill Insurance Commissioner George Dale was directed to conduct a study of the insurance risk pool and report his findings to the Legislature.

Most local doctors and legislators said that, while the bill wasn’t perfect, they supported it. After all, a survey taken earlier in the year showed 80 percent or more of Natchez doctors were willing to move to Louisiana if tort reform wasn’t enacted.

4The breaking, in September, of ground for a 8.7-mile extension of the Natchez Trace Parkway, which will take it from its current starting point in Washington to Liberty Road.

Efforts to build the parkway along the old Natchez Trace Indian trail started with the signing of legislation in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since then, both government agencies and organizations worked long hours to make the project come to fruition.

&uot;This symbolizes a lot of hard work by a lot of people in the past,&uot; Mayor F.L. &uot;Hank&uot; Smith said at the groundbreaking ceremony. The project, set to be finished by 2005 at a cost of $26.4 million, could bring millions of tourist dollars into the local economy, said local officials.

The project also includes construction of a new interchange at Liberty Road and Seargent S. Prentiss Drive, which would take about $9.5 million and four-and-a-half years to finish. The interchange &045; opposed by some due to the possible displacement of a dozen businesses &045; would replace an aging overpass that needs to be replaced anyway, said state Transportation Director Larry L. &uot;Butch&uot; Brown.

4The almost $13 million Natchez Convention Center opened its doors in mid-April and held its grand opening event in early May.

&uot;It has been the dream of the city to have a modern, up-to-date facility like this,&uot; said Alderman Theodore &uot;Bubber&uot; West, one of more than 200 people who attended the grand opening reception.

Among other features, the center includes an 18,000-square-foot exhibit hall, second-floor breakout rooms, a $300,000 audio-visual center, a 3,000-square-foot kitchen, conference rooms and offices for the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

4After two weeks of rumors, Johns Manville announced in early September that it would close its Natchez plant in about 60 days due to a poor market for the roofing material it produced. That left 121 hourly and 17 salaried workers out of work.

Severance packages were worked out in meetings with the plant’s unions, and state Rapid Response workers soon visited to explain state benefits and programs for displaced workers.

4Southwest Mississippi got a new representative in Congress with the November reelection of U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., to the Third Congressional District post.

In Adams County, however, then-Fourth District Rep. Ronnie Shows won by 5,569 votes to Pickering’s 4,826 votes &045; not a bad showing in the longtime Democratic stronghold, said local Republican leaders. Previously, the region had been included in the Fourth Congressional District, which was represented by Shows.

4City Hall experienced a turnover in department directors during 2002, although all but one of the positions has since been filled.

In October, aldermen appointed James Coleman as the Natchez-Adams School Board’s newest member, replacing Camille Jackson, who resigned earlier in the year.

They voted in November to appoint Interim Fire Chief Paul Johnson as fire chief, replacing former chief Gary Winborne, who retired in June.

In early December, the city hired Robert Jackson, tribal planner and grant writer for the Colorado River Indian Tribes, as its city planner. He will replace David Preziosi, who left in July to become executive director of the Mississippi Heritage Trust.

City officials are still working to fill the position of police chief. Former Chief Willie Huff resigned the post May 31 to accept a job as chief of law enforcement with the state Department of Transportation.

4An Adams County jury on Dec. 18 found Jeffery Keith Havard guilty of murdering and sexually assaulting 6-month-old Chloe Madison Britt and sentenced him to death.

After two days of graphic testimony, the jury took a little more than half an hour to return the verdict.

But they took a night and the next morning to decide whether Havard should receive the death penalty or life in prison. Their decision made Havard the first person to receive the death penalty in Adams County in more than 10 years.

4Former Natchez-Adams School District Superintendent Dr. Carl Davis left the district June 30 and later took a job with a school system near Atlanta.

Despite a debate with school board members over contract terms earlier in the year, Davis expressed no hard feelings in his announcement. Instead, he said an &uot;atmosphere of trust&uot; had been created among him, district employees and board members.

The district’s school board then hired Cass Pennington of Delta State University as consultants for the search at a cost of $8,000 plus expenses.

4Adams County supervisors voted in September to withdraw the county’s application to the state Commission on Environmental Quality for changes to the county’s solid waste plan.

&uot;Praise the Lord,&uot; Eleanor Niven, a spokesperson for Adams Coalition for the Environment, which opposed the changes, said after the vote.

Supervisors voted in January to ask the CEQ to approve changes to allow a rubbish site to take in waste from throughout the nation and allow a transfer station to be built at the Natchez-Adams Port to handle the debris. The changes would have allowed Triad Disposal to expand its rubbish site on Old U.S. Highway 84, several counties and parishes.

4 Historic properties had their ups and downs in 2002. Local officials earlier this week said they will pursue eminent domain to obtain land at the Forks of the Road site. The city got a $200,000 state grant to buy the land, but the grant will expire Tuesday. Supporters hope a monument or interpretive center will be erected at the former slave market site.

In November, crews began to clear debris from the house where William Johnson, &uot;the Barber of Natchez,&uot; once lived. A National Park Service interpretive site, offices and an information desk will be located there and in the adjacent McCallum House. Earlier this month, the historic Ritz Theater was donated to the Historic Natchez Foundation.

A Sept. 15 blaze, apparently started by an electrical short, destroyed the attic of the antebellum house Arlington and caused smoke and water damage throughout the 184-year-old house. However, the roof has since been replaced.