South Florida sits atop two gigantic underground stores of water: the Biscayne and Floridan Aquifers. Miamians get most of their drinking water from the upper Biscayne Aquifer, while the government has used the lower portion of the Floridian to dump waste and untreated sewage — despite the fact that multiple studies have warned that waste could one day seep into the drinking water.
In February 2013, thousands of amateur Gladesmen and vitamin D-deprived reporters descended upon the Everglades for Florida’s very first Python Challenge. The goal of the contest, which came with a $1,500 grand prize, was to put a dent in the state’s increasingly frightening Burmese python problem. But when the four-week challenge came to an end, the contest’s participants had captured just 68 of the invasive pythons. The hunt was scrapped until 2016, when participants fared only slightly better.
Mere months ago, environmentalists were concerned that the Florida Legislature was about to take the power to regulate fracking away from local communities and instead force the controversial oil-drilling process onto the state. But after months of protests, state Sen. Garrett Richter’s proposal to outlaw local fracking bans never came to fruition; instead, areas such as Broward and Miami-Dade Counties were inspired to ban fracking themselves in retaliation.
As a plan for improvements on Ocean Drive takes hold, Miami Beach business owners and residents say they didn’t know the city’s prescription included a measure to remove dozens of decades-old palm trees from the sidewalks along the iconic stretch.
Florida Power & Light — the only company legally allowed to give Miamians electricity — has made a series of decisions this year that, at best, have seriously frustrated its customers. It has hiked its rates for no apparent reason, degraded the environment, and actively tried to trick voters into backing a bogus anti-solar amendment.
Miami’s cross-bay bridges are a treasure. Some of the city’s purest joy comes when you’re careening over the Julia Tuttle or Rickenbacker Causeway with the windows down, watching Biscayne Bay sprawling out under you as you laugh maniacally at how cool your life is compared to your college friends’ lives up north. It’s a small joy Miamians get to experience year-round.
For nearly 20 years, Florida has planned to buy back land from Big Sugar companies south of Lake Okeechobee to help restore clean water flow to the Everglades. The plan is nearly universally backed by scientists and climate experts, who blame sugar companies for pumping pollutants into the state water supply, ruining Lake O, and occasionally turning the coasts into green sludge.
Few energy projects in recent memory were more blatantly damaging and offensive than the Dakota Access Pipeline. After regulators worried the pipeline was too dangerous to pass near Bismarck, North Dakota, the pipeline was re-routed — straight into sacred Native American land. After the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe basically stood…
Florida is basically one gigantic hunk of porous limestone with pythons, buildings, and Medicare frauds sunning themselves on top. Underneath is South Florida’s main source of drinking water, the Biscayne Aquifer, a pristine pool of underground liquid that’s become increasingly susceptible to pollution and saltwater intrusion.
The very concept of “Florida” is bad for the environment. America saw the Everglades, shining, glorious, and pristine, and agreed to put people — trash-burning, alligator-punching, Panda Express-eating people — smack in the middle of the area. Florida became a state 172 years ago and has been shoveling vomit and oil runoff into the Everglades for 172 of those years.
On November 12, more than a dozen Americans were arrested for disrupting work at a natural-gas construction site. One man locked himself inside a tanker truck delivering water to the work area, and protesters say law enforcement officers punished a crew of demonstrators and arrested them all.
In 2015, state Rep. Manny Diaz Jr. and state Sen. Rene Garcia tried and failed to persuade the state to crack down on Miami-Dade County’s rock-mining industry. Over the years, the mines, concentrated heavily in Northwest Miami-Dade near Hialeah and Opa-locka, have been blamed for scores of environmental issues…
It takes a preposterous amount of gall to dump a gigantic vat of oil into the ocean. It’s cartoon-level evil, like something Biff Tannen’s toxic-waste company BiffCo from Back to the Future Part II would do. But in real life, that’s exactly what a subsidiary of Miami’s Carnival Corporation has been doing for years.
First, the good news: Bottlenose dolphins still live along the South Florida coast and within the Everglades despite humanity’s century-long quest to murder every creature native to the River of Grass. Now, the bad: Those dolphins are dying, and Florida International University scientists now say the aquatic mammals that live in the Glades have soaked up more mercury than dolphins in any other habitat on Earth.
When Chis Emerson rode his horse Trigger into Miami-Dade County from South Carolina last Wednesday morning, locals were dismayed. The horse was in awful condition. His mouth was pockmarked with sores, one eye was blind, and his back was so raw and abused that he’d bite anyone who tried to touch it…
When volunteers discovered a roost of Florida bonneted bats in the roof of an abandoned million-dollar house in Coral Gables two years ago, it was big news. The critically endangered species numbered in the hundreds, and a roost hadn’t been found in decades.
Much to the dismay of local politicians and business leaders, the Zika virus has not left Miami Beach. Last Friday, the city’s true Zika nightmare became a reality: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said pregnant women should still avoid Miami Beach during Art Basel, one of the city’s biggest economic drivers every year.
When white people first “discovered” the Everglades centuries ago, they figured it wasn’t good for anything. To them, it was just a swamp full of bugs. But the weather was nice, so they just stomped all over everything, ruined the land, and dropped some roads and strip malls on the area.
As a historic supermoon glows over Miami Beach this week, record-breaking king tides boosted by sea-level rise are swamping the barrier island. In what has become an October tradition, residents have to wade through pools of deep standing water on sidewalks and in parking lots to go about their daily lives.
Styrofoam would also be prohibited from public and private waterways in Miami Beach under a proposed resolution.
Labor lawyers warned New Times in September that getting workers’ compensation after you catch the Zika virus would be difficult. But now it appears that applying for Zika-related workers’ compensation with the City of Miami Beach might be straight-up impossible. In a letter sent to the Miami Beach Police union president yesterday, City Manager Jimmy…
Miami Beach Police Sgt. Michelle Sayegh lives in Broward County. So Miami Beach Fraternal Order of Police President Bobby Jenkins says he finds it particularly unlikely she caught the Zika virus sitting at home. But by day, she works on Ocean Drive, in one of the only two Zika “active…
