Last month, Key West became the second locale in the country to ban sunscreens containing chemicals believed to harm coral reefs. Now, officials in Miami Beach and Surfside are considering passing bans of their own. During their meeting today, Beach commissioners will consider prohibiting the sale of sunscreens…
Glyphosate is a popular ingredient in weed-killing herbicides because it’s extremely effective. It’s also a well-known pollutant — researchers have found the chemical in samples of the air we breathe, the food we eat, and even the beer and wine we buy from the liquor store.
When Miami city officials decided to tear out grass along Brickell Avenue and replace it with artificial turf last fall, residents were not pleased. A days-long protest ensued, complete with “Save me! I will die soon” signs on trees the protesters said would be smothered by the fake sod. Now,…
In theory, Florida’s Constitutional Revision Commission is a useful body: The group convenes every 20 years and considers amendments to the state constitution. But in practice, the CRC lately has been gamed by lawmakers. It’s bundled disparate concepts to produce absolutely weird results: an amendment put up for public vote…
In late November, a woman showed up at the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station with a bizarre find: Two freshwater turtles that had been chained together. Attached to the chain was a bag packed with a cinnamon stick, two red voodoo dolls, and two photos of a couple.
The Florida Everglades sure seem like a place where oil rigs don’t belong. The unique habitat contains tons of endangered species — and humans have demonstrably corrupted it enough already. But today, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee ruled that an investment company in Broward County…
On a cloudy Tuesday morning in South Beach, a man stands on a seawall at the edge of Biscayne Bay. Wind whips through the air, causing the water to ripple. A manatee nuzzles its face against a stormwater outfall pipe, and a plume of black, dirty water washes over it.
You might as well go ahead and buy one of those fancy stainless-steel straws. Over the past year or so, cities across the nation have taken steps to limit plastic straws and stirrers out of concern for the environment. Now Fort Lauderdale and Coral Gables are joining them.
Barbara DeLiberali and her family, thrilled to be trading the cold weather in Pennsylvania for a few days in the Bahamas, boarded the Norwegian Breakaway December 31, 2017. She and her husband, along with her daughter and son-in-law, had booked the cruise as a Christmas present and a surprise for her three young grandchildren.
In a few short weeks, passersby will be able to hold their phones up and and see a video.
Florida’s 800-plus miles of beaches are by far the state’s top tourist attraction. They draw more visitors than all U.S. theme parks and national parks combined. More than 40 percent of tourists head to Florida for its beaches, and beach tourism brings in more than $55 billion in sales annually. So…
In most states, it’s legal for property owners to sell home-generated solar power to other people or to tenants living in their homes. This is usually called a “power-purchase agreement” — your landlord, for example, might put some solar panels on top of your apartment building and charge…
Two years ago, when Miami Beach commissioners wanted to reduce smoking on city beaches, they had only one option: asking nicely. Florida is one of a few states where municipalities cannot regulate tobacco use, so the commission created voluntary smoke-free areas at Fifth Street and 86th Street, where pastel-colored…
Almost two years later, PortMimai dredging records have not been publicly released.
For a brief, weird moment in 2017, the notorious Miami shark hunter Mark “the Shark” Quartiano and conservationists were on the same side. After a couple of local fisher-bros filmed themselves dragging a shark behind a boat until the poor fish was in tatters and then proudly sent the video to Quartiano, the infamous fisherman…
Lizards have even adapted to breathing underwater.
They shouldn’t be deregulated.
The United Nations recently told everyone on Earth to stop emitting carbon dioxide into the air by 2050. Despite this warning, Florida Power & Light (FPL), the largest energy company in the Sunshine State, is now all but definitely building a fracked-gas-burning power plant in Dania Beach. Today, Florida’s Siting Board, a panel consisting of Gov. Rick Scott and his cabinet, unanimously approved FPL’s $888 million plan.
Rick Scott has been a friend to the deadly red tide that has killed millions of fish, fouled beaches in Southwest Florida, and even endangered Miami’s multibillion-dollar tourist industry. He has cut environmental regulation and limited crackdowns on sugar companies that dump fertilizer into the groundwater, which is the root…
A new poop leak is just the latest example of how Miami has destroyed Biscayne Bay.
A late-season storm forming in the Atlantic has a 90 percent chance of evolving into something more serious, the National Hurricane Center reports. “The disturbance is forecast to move westward to west-northwestward for the next few days, passing near or north of the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and…
For months, Rick Scott has faced scorching criticism over Florida’s red tide crisis, which has brought heaps of dead fish to the state’s shorelines and shuttered its beaches because people literally can’t breathe. Thanks to his years of environmental deregulation and budget slashing, the term-limited governor has been branded “Red…
