Sunday July 20, 2008
Coast Guard target practice boat. The drawbridges on the Venetian Causeway instantly go up for the Coast Guard boats that cruise the neighborhood regularly, but this was my first time seeing this boat, presumably used for deep-sea target practice.
Tuesday April 22, 2008
The new ginger-bread house bridge in Hollywood.
Tuesday April 8, 2008
Evening air.
Monday March 24, 2008
Back from the Keys. Whole story later, for now, here’s a picture from somewhere around Marathon. Life would be easier if they put mile markers on maps.
Thursday March 13, 2008
A crocodile lives by the Coconut Grove Sailing Club, and that’s where he’s staying, because a “normally acting crocodile under six feet does not pose a threat to people’s safety.” Ahh, man and nature living side by side in perfect harmony.
Tuesday February 26, 2008
Do not go out on the open ocean, dump bloody fish parts in the water to attract sharks, and then jump in the water after them. (Unless you absolutely have to.)
Monday January 28, 2008
“I mean we’re on land and we don’t take it seriously how insane it is out there. You’re at the beach throwing a ball around laughing in the sand and out beneath the waves there is this slaughterhouse, this horror movie. Shark week forever. It’s amazing the ocean doesn’t just run blood all the time.”
Wednesday January 9, 2008
The water situation, she is not good: Lake Okeechobee at historic low levels, and it’s time for the South Florida Water Management District to take some action. Specifically, they’re spending $1.5 million, of a $25 million emergency fund, to purchase pumps to allow the continued draining of the lake for surrounding farm irrigation (and for the few surrounding towns). I guess you do what you have to do, but this sounds pretty bone-headed to me. The rest of the money will go to fixing up the floodgates around the lake in case, you know, the water ever comes back. [Photo from scouttster’s lakeoceechobee tag. Recommend checking out and reading the captions for some crazy details.] Update: This is more like it: a half million to accelerate the opening of a water treatment plant in Palm Beach. Let’s use the water we already have.
Thursday December 13, 2007
The South Florida Water Management District is working on ranking the priorities of various elements of the Everglades restoration project, so that they’ll be ready as the budget of the program gets slashed. How’s that half-full glass looking, there? (And speaking of whom, we have a Rick sighting.)
Thursday November 29, 2007
Quit wasting my water
Well, rainy season is drawing to a close, and suffice it to say that it wasn’t a washout. We’re fine for now, but our water levels are lower then we want them, and there’s trouble ahead. We can wait for panic to set in, and then start frantically talking about forbidding anyone else to move to Southeastern Florida (to recap: it’s a pointless idea because the problem is already severe, and it’s a useless idea because it will never happen). Or we can start talking about some real long-term solutions.
Luckily, we’re not inventing the wheel here. Other parts of the world experience much worse droughts, and have come up with clever ways to deal with the problem. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Australian toilet. A more efficient design, and with two flush buttons. How simple is this: you use a half-flush for pee, a full flush for Well-You-Know™. This alone saves a staggering amount of water (8,500 gallons per household per year (also, btw: no clogs)), but of course there’s a lot more: special shower heads, washing machines, dish washers, strict water restrictions, and yes, expensive water treatment plants (Hiaasen has this exactly right).
It’s all tied together with a progressive pricing system, where water gets more expensive the more you use of it. Use a modest amount, your water bill is low. Waste, and it spikes sharply. All the gadgets in the world don’t help unless the people using them are motivated to save water, right? A lot of this is cultural — once people are constantly reminded of all the ways water can be saved, it becomes the expected behavior, and social pressure brings in line those who, say, can afford to be wasteful. What we need is a cultural shift, but it needs to start with the legislature.
Let’s put the two-flusher into new homes. Let’s make water restrictions permanent, so nobody is ever in doubt about what’s in effect when. And let’s get some of that progressive water pricing going. Because more droughts are on the way, and the future may make this Summer look like a cakewalk. We need to get ready now.
Update: Think about the water you use in a typical day and you’ll realize that the overwhelming majority is for flushing your piss. You just don’t need 3.5 gallons for that. If you go 6 times per day, that’s over 10 gallons saved per person per day. There are 2,400,000 people in Miami Dade. Do the math, and you get something close to 8 billion gallons of water saved per year. Of course it’d take decades to get to universal deployment, but there’s no time like the present to start.
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Wednesday November 21, 2007
Urban Development Boundary update: From information received by Boom or Bust, it appears that there are 4 pending applications to open a total of 178 acres beyond the UDB to development. Only one of those is currently recommended for rejection. Please to attend the Miami-Dade County Commission meeting on Tuesday, November 27, 2007, write your commissioner, or at least customise and submit this action alert.
Thursday November 15, 2007
Waterfront parking lot.
Holy crap: “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers refuses to contribute a dime to Florida water projects to reduce high levels of pollution flowing into and out of Lake Okeechobee, according to a memo released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The Corps claims the state is disqualified from federal assistance due to its continuing violation of minimum national water quality standards, noting that the state ‘is not likely to come into compliance for several decades.’” (via EoM)
Tuesday October 30, 2007
Miami Skylift
The Miami Skylift, which, when it opens, will take people on a 15-minute, $15 dollar, 500-foot high tethered balloon “ride” in Bayfront Park. (Here is the rendering of the balloon in operation, and here is the discussion of whether there’ll be anything worth looking up there.) It’s opening in “Fall 2007,” which means “sometime soon, we really don’t know.” Seems like something worth trying once. But I was interested to learn that there is a degree of controversy about the location, the Mildred and Claude Pepper Fountain, designed by the Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi in the late 80s as part of a reworking of Bayfront Park. Michael Lewis laments the decision to shut down the fountain, and provides some history:
Selling the city’s front door to a carnival ride so that the Bayfront Park Management Trust can collect $270,000 a year rent plus a share of ticket and advertising revenues to support the park’s operations reinforces Miami’s pennywise, pound-foolish history. . . .
Designed by world-famous sculptor and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi, the turbulent eye-catcher offered a fantastic computerized show of water plumes — until the city discovered that while it could afford to build the fountain, it hadn’t figured on the cost to operate it, a failure repeated at the nearby Carnival Center for the Performing Arts 15 years later. . . .
To keep water flowing day and night, the trust was told, would cost $544,000 a year, $350,000 more than the total of park revenue from rentals and the paltry $50,000 the chintzy city itself was willing to provide. Even to run the fountain just four hours a day, the trust was told, would cost $61,000 more than the trust could amass. . . .
To save $61,000 a year, the city destroyed the memorial to Claude Pepper, a giant who served Miami for more than 40 years in Congress. It ruined the $20 million Bayfront Park plan by design genius Isamu Noguchi to create a waterfront focal point.
Now the hulk is being commercialized and carnivalized.
Here is a photo of the fountain from the park’s website, obviously in its less glorious, more recent days. (Also, note word: ‘carnivalized’.)
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Tuesday October 23, 2007
Dusktime fishing, Haulover Beach.
Tuesday October 9, 2007
The sea grass of Florida Bay, damaged by boating, is being restored.
Monday October 1, 2007
The Florida Springs blog.
Wednesday September 26, 2007
Swimmers in Sunday’s triathlon.
Thursday September 20, 2007
Aquarius, 9 miles off Key Largo and 60 feet under water, is the only live-in underwater research laboratory in the world. NBC6 did a live report from the station today, the first ever broadcast from there, including info on what it’s like to live on Aquarius, and what they’re studying. People who live underwater are called ‘aquanauts’! [Photo courtesy NOAA and UNC Wilmington]
Friday September 14, 2007
Not good: Lake Okeechobee continues to set records for low water levels. Expect to see even stricter water restrictions next year.
Thursday September 13, 2007
Caution on South Beach
Tuesday September 11, 2007
Dawn over Biscayne Bay.
Wednesday August 22, 2007
Miami Beach is not particularly eco-friendly, but things are changing, slowly. They could start by sending someone to fix this water main, still dripping more then a month later.
Wednesday August 15, 2007
Jonathan’s got a nice photo taken from the Virginia Key bridge. Left to right: Port of Miami, South Beach (tall buildings), Fisher Island (squatter buildings), Virginia Key Beach Park, and the Pusty Relican. The water is the Biscayne Bay aquatic preserve. Don’t miss the link to the big version. Compare also the google map view (the view is roughly East-Northeast).
Thursday August 9, 2007
How to survive a shark attack
“Shark’s teeth face inward, so when a shark doesn’t let go or wiggles its head and the person tries to pull away from the shark, that tissue just gets ripped right out. There are not that many predators under the water that could inflict a bite this size, this extensive.” — Dr. Randy Miller, who performed surgery on a lady who got bitten by a shark on Tuesday.
OK, this happened in the keys, and for whatever reason attacks are much more common there and on the west coast of Florida then on our nice beaches. I direct you to Camilo’s guide to sharks and the nerve-calming links at this post. We can also get some to-the-rescue from a pair of WikiHow articles: Prevent a shark attack and Survive a shark attack. (Short version: punch it in the eyes and gills.) Swim easy.