A few months after Hurricane Sandy bared down on New York, killing over 150 people and wreaking $65 billion in damage, city leaders cried for help to make their city more flood-proof. Dutch expert Henk Ovink answered. Ovink had helped make his homeland, where 55 percent of the country is…
Florida’s finally getting closer to totally eradicating the Giant African land snails that have plagued the state since an outbreak in late 2011. The snails were first found in Coral Gables, a year after a religious leader named Charles L. Stewart of Hialeah smuggled them into the country and made…
Legendary Florida environmentalist Nathaniel Reed has added his voice to the chorus of disapproval for Florida’s legislature, saying their failure to enact key legislation — as the House quit early over a Medicaid funding fight — has made the state “the laughing stock of the country.” Among the many bills…
Miami is a trashy city. That’s not an insult. It’s just a fact. There’s literally trash everywhere. People apparently just love chucking stuff on the side of the roads and only rarely do people bother to pick it up. It’s easy to ignore when you see it everyday and most…
There’s only around 160 Florida panthers left in the wild thanks to us humans have encroached on their territory. We’ve tried our best to make it up to them by listing them as an endangered species, but even then someone occasionally (and presumably not on purpose) hits one with their…
The future’s looking brighter for solar energy at the University of Miami, with a solar-power charging station and bench set to come to campus soon. The technology will allow two people at a time to sit and charge their smartphones and other small devices, both during the day and at…
Florida Gov. Rick Scott was the target of a Presidential dig Wednesday during Obama’s speech in the Everglades. The occasion was Earth Day and Obama didn’t miss the chance to take a whack at a governor who has reportedly forbid staff from even mentioning climate change. “Climate change can’t be…
Today is Earth Day, a holiday that should resonate in a city that takes such pride in its local environmental beauty. Miami is the only metro area in America sandwiched between two National Parks, and in many ways Miami has done a decent job in the green department. Our air…
Ah, Earth Day. A perfect time to put throw some jam band vinyl on the record player, get out those old hemp necklaces and pay a visit to the local farmer’s market. And, if you’re in South Florida, to spend a few moments pondering how mankind’s wanton destruction of its…
Biking along a tranquil, green path in South Miami sounds pretty enjoyable. Next to a series of massive, 10-story nuclear power transmission lines? Perhaps not so much. That’s a real possibility facing the Underline, a project to transform the underutilized land below Miami’s MetroRail from the Miami River to Dadeland…
Hurricane season 2015 starts in just a few weeks and so far, most experts are forecasting another sleepy storm period in the Atlantic. But another study out this week makes it clear that it would only take one monster ‘cane to wreak an insane amount of damage in booming South…
New studies emerge by the week illustrating how Earth’s climate is changing. Sea levels are rising, and the only real question is how quickly and whether low-lying regions — like, you know, the entire state of Florida — will have time enough to react to save themselves. The only significant group…
Just a few paces from busy Brickell Avenue, Ishmael Bermudez crouches behind his little clapboard house and drinks serenely from a hose lowered into the ancient bedrock. Skyscrapers drape his property in shadows. Across the street, a Metrorail train clamors to a stop at an elevated station. All around, construction…
Miami is definitely a city that places a high importance on the body, and apparently most locals are treating theirs like a temple. That’s at least according to Livability.com who ranked Miami as the fourth healthiest city in America. Perhaps that’s not much of a surprise for a place where…
Coral Gables residents have been fighting the city tooth and nail for months to clean up and reopen Merrie Christmas Park, a small green space contaminated with everything from arsenic to cadmium. Amid legal threats, the city caved in October and — with the help of an anonymous donation — agreed…
Florida certainly is a melting pot, and apparently that even holds true for invasive species. Scientists recently discovered that two types of invasive termites have started to interbreed in Florida, an extremely rare occurrence. How could this happen? Well, global warming might be to blame. Formosan subterranean termites and Asian…
The proposals for a new supermall called American Dream Miami have caught international headlines, especially since the mega-project is set to include a roller-coaster, water park and even a ski-slope. The plan has also caught plenty of flak from everyone from politicians to economists. But now a new wave of…
This past October the city commission of South Miami, which for better or worse hardly ever makes local headlines, made national headlines by passing a resolution calling for Florida to be split into two separate states. The idea didn’t go anywhere but viral online, but the commission decided to try…
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has been fighting all month against claims by former state employees that his administration banned the use of “climate change.” With state workers now upping the ante — including news yesterday one state employee was ordered into a mental health exam for demanding to use the…
“Termites thrive in warm, moist environments,” says Doug Webb, a Terminex technical specialist, in a statement touting the company’s rankings of America’s most termite infected cities. From that alone you should be able to determine that Miami made the list, and indeed we did at number six. Terminix released its rankings…
On March 7, off a dirt road 40 miles west of Miami, swamp buggies careened into the thicket and little kids shimmied up a 40-foot wooden pole trying to grab the $50 bill stapled to the top. At a booth, Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee tribe member with a long black…
When New York City opened the first phase of its High Line park in 2010, Miamians naturally said, “Oh, we want something like that.” The High Line is 1.45-mile linear park built atop an abandoned elevated railway. Miami’s answer was to propose a 10-mile linear park underneath an active railway,…
