82 Days Underwater: The Tide Is High, but They're Holding On

KEY LARGO, Fla. — Before he leaves for work, Rick Darden, an accountant with his own firm, stuffs a long-sleeved shirt, slacks and dress shoes in a backpack. Then he heads out, clad in shorts and waders, for the half-mile trek through the seawater that has flooded the streets of his Florida Keys neighborhood for the past 82 days.

A colleague picks him up at the Winn-Dixie grocery store on the main road, Overseas Highway, and drives him to the office to change. In the afternoons, he puts his boots on again and catches another ride back.

“Humiliating,” said Mr. Darden, 54, describing his routine since the sea invaded the Stillwright Point community in Key Largo, leaving him and his neighbors leery of taking out their cars in the corrosive saltwater that now floods the streets. “It just restricts your ability to move out and around.”

Life during the unusually high “king tides” in South Florida this fall has become a maddening logistical task for people along the Blackwater Sound, a scenic but low-lying stretch of the Upper Keys. For nearly three months, the residents of Stillwright Point’s 215 homes have been forced to carefully plan their outings and find temporary workarounds to deal with the smelly, stagnant water — a result not of rain, but a rising sea — that makes their mangrove-lined streets look more like canals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/us/florida-keys-flooding-king-tide.html