Last fall, Miami leaders finally admitted they’d known for years that the long-shuttered Old Smokey trash incinerator in Coconut Grove had poisoned the earth with toxic ash. But they’ve also insisted contamination is contained within a 4.5-acre, fenced-off facility. However, new reports obtained by New Times contradict that claim, revealing…
Listen up, kids. Next time you think science is boring, consider how Thaddeus McRae spent two years of his life: namely, chasing squirrels around the University of Miami campus with a remote-controlled cat on wheels and gliders painted to look like hawks. “We had some very interesting interactions,” McRae tells…
Next Saturday the R.Y.P.E. Community Garden in Buena Vista will host en event. It’s a goodbye party — the garden will soon be demolished so a parking lot can be built in its place. “Pave paradise to put up a parking lot. Sooo sorry,” wrote Atiya Guianese on the event’s…
Yet another park in Miami-Dade has been fenced off today after officials found high levels of arsenic in the soil. This time, it’s the athletic fields at Colonial Drive Park that have been closed. “The closure has been implemented out of an abundance of caution and as a proactive measure,”…
A month ago, state regulators raised the alarm over silt from the Deep Dredge killing Miami corals. Now the feds are stepping in as well. According to documents obtained by New Times, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a scathing set of recommendations for saving endangered coral threatened…
The city of Miami is looking into the idea of banning the sale of puppies. It’s not that the city commission doesn’t like puppies and wants to make the city some sort of dystopian puppy-free police state. They like puppies a lot. In fact, that’s why they’re toying with the…
South Florida may see a run on umbrellas today thanks to a weather system churning off the coast of the Bahamas this morning. But we’ll have to wait another week for our first run on hurricane supplies, as forecasters now say the system isn’t likely to develop into anything more…
In July the news broke that the University of Miami had sold an 88-acre plot of land, near Zoo Miami, to a West Palm Beach developer who planned to build a Walmart. Environmentalists were devastated: The land is comprised of rare pine rockland forest, a savanna-like habitat found only in…
The slumbering 2014 hurricane season is finally coming out of hibernation. Just over a week after Hurricane Cristobal pulled together in the Caribbean, the fourth named storm of the year has become official in the Gulf of Mexico. Miami’s National Hurricane Center this morning named Tropical Storm Dolly, which is…
Pesky ol’ 96L, the awkwardly named system that still needs to organize a bit more before earning the more dignified moniker of Tropical Storm Cristobal, is soaking the Lesser Antilles this morning and turning toward the northwest. The latest prediction from forecasters as of 8 a.m.: The storm will become…
Good rule of thumb: When a storm system hasn’t even morphed into a named tropical storm yet, it’s way too early to raid Publix for vodka, er, emergency water supplies, no matter what the TV news is saying this morning. But if you live in South Florida, it is worth…
Despite the usual muggy drenching every afternoon around 4 p.m., Miami’s had a fairly dry run through hurricane season so far. But that could change early next week thanks to a large lady named Bertha swirling out over the Caribbean this morning. The National Hurricane Center declared Bertha the second…
Two years ago, environmentalists desperately tried to derail the Deep Dredge. They claimed the $2 billion plan to deepen the Port of Miami would kill wildlife in Biscayne Bay, so they sued to stop it. But when a bevy of state agencies lined up against them — threatening dredge opponents…
Invasive pythons have been getting all the credit, but there’s another invasive species wrecking havoc in the Everglades that could end up causing more damage. It’s the red bay ambrosia beetle, a particularly small species native to Asia that first came to the U.S. in 2002, likely through the importation…
Katharine, a 14-foot great white shark that has spent the past several months off the coast of Florida, was back in South Florida last week. Katharine was tagged last August by marine biologists off Cape Cod, and they’ve been tracking her ever since. Earlier this year she headed down south…
The site had been lost to researchers for nearly a century. Tony Pernas had been looking for a decade. His team had logged nearly 100 search hours just this year. But last Monday, deep in the Everglades, miles from any sign of people, Pernas and two other amateur historians found…
Ask any Floridians a Family Feud-style query of “Name things we should protect,” and they’ll instinctually shout back at you “Manatees.” Along with Florida panthers, those plump little sea cows are practically synonymous with endangered species in the state. We’re brought up from a young age with a general sense…
This is not a test. Hide your family. Sell all of your belongings for canned food and weaponry. Prepare yourself for utmost destruction. The year’s first tropical disturbance is churning just off the coast of Florida, and the time has come to PANIC! Wait, what’s that? It’s basically just a…
Miami Beach would like to be known less for odd chemicals in its residents’ bodies and more for banning littering its streets, parks, and beaches with things made from odd chemicals. Following bans on plastic straws and Styrofoam containers on the beach, the city commission seems set to extend the…
Compared to the miles-wide F5 monsters that roar across the Kansas and Nebraska plains, Florida’s tornadoes are usually quaint little dust devils that pop up momentarily and never get the space to grow into city-destroying catastrophes. Yet it’s the Sunshine State’s mini-twisters that are the deadliest in the nation, according…
Don’t worry: It’s just not the raging hangover from those seven rum and Cokes you pounded while sweating through the Heat’s win last night. Your eyes are not fogged over with Monday-morning regret. Miami really has disappeared under a cloud of noxious smoke. A huge wildfire in Broward County is…
Across South Florida, afternoon rainstorms are sprouting over the Everglades and moving inland to drench backyards, where swarms of mosquitos will soon hatch in pools of tepid standing water. It’s summertime in Florida, in other words. Except this year, there’s an increasingly good chance those mosquitoes will soon be infected…
