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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMiami will be underwater soon. Its drinking water could go first
One morning in June, Douglas Yoder climbed into a white government SUV on the edge of Miami and headed northwest, away from the glittering coastline and into the maze of water infrastructure that makes this city possible. He drove past drainage canals that sever backyards and industrial lots, ancient water-treatment plants peeking out from behind run-down bungalows, and immense rectangular pools tracing the outlines of limestone quarries. Finally, he reached a locked gate at the edge of the Everglades. Once through, he pointed out the row of 15 wells that make up the Northwest Wellfield, Miami-Dade Countys clean water source of last resort.
Yoder, 71, is deputy director of the countys water and sewer department; his job is to think about how to defend the countys fresh drinking water against the effects of climate change. A large man with an ambling gait, Yoder exudes the calm of somebody whos lived with bad news for a long time.
We have a very delicate balance in a highly managed system, he said in his rumbly voice. That balance is very likely to get upset by sea-level rise. What nobody knows is when that will happen, or what happens next.
From ground level, greater Miami looks like any American megacitya mostly dry expanse of buildings, roads, and lawns, sprinkled with the occasional canal or ornamental lake. But from above, the proportions of water and land are reversed. The glimmering metropolis between Biscayne Bay and the Everglades reveals itself to be a thin lattice of earth and concrete laid across a puddle that never stops forming. Water seeps up through the gravel under construction sites, nibbles at the edges of fresh subdivisions, and shimmers through the cracks and in-between places of the city above it.
Miami-Dade is built on the Biscayne Aquifer, 4,000 square miles of unusually shallow and porous limestone whose tiny air pockets are filled with rainwater and rivers running from the swamp to the ocean. The aquifer and the infrastructure that draws from it, cleans its water, and keeps it from overrunning the city combine to form a giant but fragile machine. Without this abundant source of fresh water, made cheap by its proximity to the surface, this hot, remote city could become uninhabitable.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/miami-will-be-underwater-soon-its-drinking-water-could-go-first/ar-BBMB2kP?ocid=spartanntp
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Miami will be underwater soon. Its drinking water could go first (Original Post)
yortsed snacilbuper
Oct 2018
OP
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)1. Denial
that's what the GOPers do so well.
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)2. "There will always be drinking water here,"
says Virginia Walsh, a hydrogeologist with Yoders department. Its just a question of how much you want to pay for it.
In other words, "You want to live? Pay up"
yortsed snacilbuper
(7,939 posts)3. The trump$ter wil get all the water he wants, at a dicount!
UTUSN
(70,740 posts)4. Not to worry, Yellowstone is due to blow.