Just 14 hours after Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine stood in front of reporters and said there was “no Zika outbreak in Miami Beach,” Gov. Rick Scott announced in a press conference today that five locally transmitted Zika cases had been identified in the city’s highest-traffic tourist area. The Centers…
The Zika virus has been transmitted locally to two people in Miami Beach, Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez told New Times via phone today. The Florida Department of Health had previously assumed active transmissions were just confined to a small area surrounding Wynwood. Reading from a memo sent by City Manager Jimmy…
Last month, Florida’s Environmental Regulation Commission took the alarming step of changing state rules to allow more cancer-causing chemicals in Florida’s water. That change is currently on hold thanks to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which sued the state over the change — and they’re far from alone at being alarmed at…
As a kid, Valencia Gunder was terrified of the pool. But one day when she was around seven years old, an uncle who was a lifeguard threw her right in. He told her not to be afraid, that everything would be fine if she could swim. And that’s how she…
Judd Allison, the owner of 305 Films and the Wynwood event space Toejam Backlot, was already upset about Gov. Rick Scott’s handling of Miami’s Zika outbreak. And then he read about Miami-Dade County Mosquito Control experts spraying naled, a controversial pesticide linked to disorders in fetuses. During a meeting between Wynwood…
Remember in high school when you were supposed to finish Great Expectations for class the next morning but you left it until the last minute and were finally just like, ‘nah’? You could think of more interesting things to do, so you did what scores of sophomores had done before…
When the Centers for Disease Control tried to spray Naled, a controversial pesticide used to kill mosquitoes, over Puerto Rico to stamp out the Zika virus last month, the island’s residents erupted. The city’s streets filled with protesters, and Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro García Padilla forced the CDC to send back…
Humans found the first instance of the Zika virus in Uganda’s Zika Forest in 1947. But, notably, the original Zika carrier wasn’t a person — it was a rhesus monkey. Since then, scientists have found the virus in all sorts of primates, including capuchin monkeys in Zika-affected towns in Brazil…
Zika panic is real, and it’s got Miami in its insect-like pincers. Your boss smells like DEET. Your friends have canceled their trips to come see you. And any pregnant people you know are, understandably, very worried. All this concern has sadly led to some folks spreading serious misinformation about…
As an American, you have a right to know if the food you’re eating or the mosquitoes biting you have been genetically modified. As a Floridian, you also apparently have the right to ignore the opinions of thousands of scientists and scream your dang head off whenever anyone confronts you…
After going door-to-door testing people, spraying the entire neighborhood by air, and demanding as many people as possible drain and cover and sources of standing water in their homes, the Florida Health Department announced today that a 10-block area of northwest Wynwood — a small portion of the “active transmission…
Wynwood’s transformation from scrappy artist haven to full-on tourist attraction has been swift. And one of the surest signs of the switch came when the big, open-air tour buses began stopping outside Wynwood Walls, disgorging hordes of camera-toting visitors to wander the murals. Zika, though, is threatening to bring that…
Miami-Dade County’s Mosquito Control experts are struggling to contain the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which brought the Zika virus to Wynwood this week. Workers are frantically treating open water in the area, and planes will soon drop aerial spray on the neighborhood. Despite all that, a 15th locally transmitted case of…
According to Gov. Rick Scott, 10 more people have caught Zika from Florida mosquitoes. This brings the total caught in Florida so far to 14, and brings something of a panic to the streets of Miami. According to a statement from Scott’s office, the Centers for Disease Control is now…
June marks the official beginning of hurricane season, but most Miamians know August can be prime time for destructive action. Given the fact that we’ve gone a historically long time without a major storm, though, it’s safe to assume most locals aren’t worried about hurricanes this year. However, it appears…
The Florida Department of Health announced today that a grand total of two people in Miami-Dade County and two people in Broward County have contracted Zika virus from native, Florida mosquitoes. This is cause for alarm and for caution, but not, as many folks on the internet are saying, to…
It’s pretty darn clear orca whales shouldn’t be kept alone in small enclosures. We’ve all seen Blackfish by now. And yet, the Miami Seaquarium’s Lolita remains the sole killer whale on the premises, despite years of protests to free her from her relatively tiny tank. Because PETA is PETA, and pretty…
For decades, oil tycoons have had their eyes set on Big Cypress National Preserve, a pristine national park in the Everglades at the western edge of Miami-Dade County. The preserve has been a battlefront since at least 2002, when New Times detailed the U.S. government’s fight to block drilling in Big Cypress…
On the surface, it seems like a pretty easy question to answer: Should Florida allow more cancer-causing chemicals to pollute its water? But then again, this is Gov. Rick Scott’s Sunshine State, where concerns like “public health” often take a back seat to corporate cronyism. Critics say that’s exactly why…
As Kendall’s population has spiked in recent decades to more than 75,000, the suburb’s sprawling fields and swamp lands have disappeared to make way for more single family homes and strip malls. Already facing overcrowding and traffic, residents there are now fighting to keep two of West Kendall’s last green…
Late last month, Anthony Apfelbeck, a fire marshal and building official in the Central Florida city of Altamonte Springs, sent a link to a story about sea-level rise to a listserve for the Building Officials Association of Florida, an email group where contractors, architects, and building officials connect to answer…
In March, state regulators announced that the Turkey Point nuclear power plant had been leaking dangerous saltwater into the Biscayne Bay, and possibly the Biscayne Aquifer, the county’s largest source of drinking water, leaving local politicians were aghast. But environmentalists say outrage isn’t enough when dealing with the powerful Florida…
