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A sampling of published articles
What a cringe-inducing image: dark, sooty pollution tainting the blue-green waters of Biscayne Bay. It turns out, Miami Beach’s new powerful pumps, part of the seaside municipality’s $400 million sea level rise resilience plan, are dumping tainted water directly into the bay.
It all came to blows at a recent City of Miami Beach commission meeting, when the results of a study on the contents of those dark waters were discussed. And dismissed as “sloppy science.”
The “Case Study of Miami Beach with Implications for Sea Level Rise and Public Health,” conducted by FIU, NOAA, UM, and Nova Southeastern University, revealed that the water discharged during the 2014 and 2015 king tides included live fecal bacteria, sometimes as high as 600 times above the state limit.
This inconvenient truth may just be the starting point for a statewide catastrophe when it comes to our near-shore waters. So far, Miami Beach only has 4 out of 70 pumps operating. With Florida’s 1200 miles of coastline, if pumping becomes typical, the entire state could potentially be ringed in a cesspool.
The Miami Beach pumps were installed to remove flood waters caused when seawater burbles up from storm sewers or overtops seawalls during high tides.
With “nuisance” floods expected to come with much more frequency as seas rise, accelerated by the rapid melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, those pumps will be working very hard in the years to come. (NOAA reports the number of nuisance flood days in the United States has increased 50 percent in past year alone.)
The impacts of rising seas are already seen in degraded storm water systems, contaminated freshwater supplies, and infiltration of wastewater. In Miami Beach and other cities, the demise of aging infrastructure -- sewage pipes and septic tanks -- could accelerate as pipes and tanks come into contact with rising seawater, allowing sewage to flow into nearby waterways.
“The world is looking to Miami Beach to help provide answers to a problem that affects people across the planet, and we are committed to creating a blueprint for others to follow,” wrote Mayor Philip Levine and city manager Jimmy Morales in an open letter to residents, assuring them the city is committed to protecting Biscayne Bay and the beaches.
While not disputing the results of the study, which showed elevated levels of indicator bacteria found in human waste, they stressed that the polluted water is quickly diluted in the bay.
But this glitch can’t be ignored.
“We’re writing the rulebook on how to keep the city dry,” says Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who praises the city for its aggressive and ground-breaking approach to fighting sea level rise. But she is very concerned about the unintended consequences, like discharged polluted waters into Biscayne Bay.
Gonzalez wants to know: Is there a better way to discharge the storm water that won’t directly contaminate the surrounding waters? Should Miami Beach reassess?
“The deterioration of the bay is going to affect all of us,” she commented in a recent radio interview on Grant Stern’s Only in Miami show. “If Miami Beach kills the bay, we won’t have any economy.”
From the high perch of condo balconies and along the shoreline, there are eyes on the bay, watching the murky waters flow into what is essentially a marine sanctuary.
This shallow tropical lagoon laps around the multimillion-dollar waterfront villas and cruise ships, along our waterfront parks, and under our fishing piers, like an aquamarine jewel in liquid form.
It’s painful to hear elected officials dismiss the contamination report as insignificant or unsubstantial or unreliable -- when our own eyes tells us otherwise. Or that we should be mollified by the fact that the discharged waters flowing dark at the source will eventually dissipate.
Miami Beach should not expect free rein in the battle to keep streets dry. And neither should any other municipality. Officials need to understand that they cannot intimidate and threaten scientists by impugning their reputations. They also cannot hold back the tide of information reported by the media any more than they can control rising seas.
Eventually the seas that will rise up to swallow this sliver of a barrier island, whose majestic mangroves were ripped up more than a century ago and packed with dirt to create a landscape of high-rises that juts out of the ocean like a mirage or a miracle or a mistake.
Only time will tell.
But until that day comes, Miami Beach and every other coastal city owes it to residents and the surrounding environment to be honest, and to be cooperative and collaborative with the scientists who bring the facts and the data needed for all of us to be good stewards.
They really have no choice. As Neil deGrasse Tyson reminds us: “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.”
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com