Calling Florida Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to the special rescue. Can't forget about the governor locking horns with Disney these days.
The writer/s mixed up the city and county in a few places as many journalists do but no biggie
SUCCESS ·FLORIDA
July 31, 2023 at 10:56 AM EDT
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
JOSE A. IGLESIAS/MIAMI HERALD/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Miami wants to attract even more out-of-state workers and wealthy newcomers like hedge fund tyc00n Ken Griffin. But first, County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava faces a huge environmental problem: overflowing garbage heaps and septic tanks.
Some of greater Miami’s massive landfills, known by clever names like Mount Trashmore, will run out of space by 2026, according to a report from Cava’s office. More urgent are the septic systems that serve the city’s 2.7 million residents. Many of those front-yard sewage tanks overflow when it rains, releasing fecal bacteria and other contaminants that transform patches of tropical paradise into toxic swamps that kill fish and sicken people.
“It’s very critical,” said Cava, who was elected the first woman to lead Miami-Dade County in 2020. “We have to address all of that aggressively.”
It’s all bad news for Miami’s status as a magnet for people fleeing aging cities with failing infrastructure, rising crime, higher taxes and cold weather. No other major American city depends so heavily on septic tanks, a system of treating sewage normally reserved for rural areas. That’s the case for properties all over the county — from the wealthy enclaves of Coral Gables to Miami Beach, and 50 miles southwest, to Homestead, near the Everglades.
“It’s unbelievable, not just to me but to most of the planning and environmental community, that you can have a county as urban as Miami-Dade and not have everybody on water and sewer,” said Howard Nelson, who heads the environmental practice at Bilzin Sumberg.
Ditto for trash. Miami, like many US cities, buries much of its garbage in landfills in far corners of the city, away from the rich. They are smelly, man-made hills rising 130 feet or more, swarming with flies, birds, bulldozers and trucks. By law, the county can’t issue building permits unless it has at least five years of garbage disposal capacity. Cava’s solid waste director, Michael Fernandez, abruptly quit in July, warning that the county won’t have enough space for trash if Cava doesn’t act fast. “At this point, the County will have to issue a moratorium to stop all development,” Fernandez wrote in his resignation letter. (Cava disputes that assessment.)
Cava, a Democrat elected on promises of hardening the city for climate change, says she will come up with a solution soon. She’s proposed piling trash higher atop the landfills and building a $1 billion incinerator and power plant, in part to replace an incinerator used to process 1 million tons of trash a year that burned down over four weeks in February and March.
The writer/s mixed up the city and county in a few places as many journalists do but no biggie
SUCCESS ·FLORIDA
Miami’s ‘Mount Trashmore,’ overflowing septic tanks pose a $4 billion challenge to its efforts to woo America’s financial elite
BY MICHAEL SMITH AND BLOOMBERGJuly 31, 2023 at 10:56 AM EDT
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
JOSE A. IGLESIAS/MIAMI HERALD/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Miami wants to attract even more out-of-state workers and wealthy newcomers like hedge fund tyc00n Ken Griffin. But first, County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava faces a huge environmental problem: overflowing garbage heaps and septic tanks.
Some of greater Miami’s massive landfills, known by clever names like Mount Trashmore, will run out of space by 2026, according to a report from Cava’s office. More urgent are the septic systems that serve the city’s 2.7 million residents. Many of those front-yard sewage tanks overflow when it rains, releasing fecal bacteria and other contaminants that transform patches of tropical paradise into toxic swamps that kill fish and sicken people.
“It’s very critical,” said Cava, who was elected the first woman to lead Miami-Dade County in 2020. “We have to address all of that aggressively.”
It’s all bad news for Miami’s status as a magnet for people fleeing aging cities with failing infrastructure, rising crime, higher taxes and cold weather. No other major American city depends so heavily on septic tanks, a system of treating sewage normally reserved for rural areas. That’s the case for properties all over the county — from the wealthy enclaves of Coral Gables to Miami Beach, and 50 miles southwest, to Homestead, near the Everglades.
“It’s unbelievable, not just to me but to most of the planning and environmental community, that you can have a county as urban as Miami-Dade and not have everybody on water and sewer,” said Howard Nelson, who heads the environmental practice at Bilzin Sumberg.
Ditto for trash. Miami, like many US cities, buries much of its garbage in landfills in far corners of the city, away from the rich. They are smelly, man-made hills rising 130 feet or more, swarming with flies, birds, bulldozers and trucks. By law, the county can’t issue building permits unless it has at least five years of garbage disposal capacity. Cava’s solid waste director, Michael Fernandez, abruptly quit in July, warning that the county won’t have enough space for trash if Cava doesn’t act fast. “At this point, the County will have to issue a moratorium to stop all development,” Fernandez wrote in his resignation letter. (Cava disputes that assessment.)
Cava, a Democrat elected on promises of hardening the city for climate change, says she will come up with a solution soon. She’s proposed piling trash higher atop the landfills and building a $1 billion incinerator and power plant, in part to replace an incinerator used to process 1 million tons of trash a year that burned down over four weeks in February and March.
