South Florida City Votes to Secede in Last-Ditch Effort to Avoid Being Swallowed by the Sea

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The city commission of South Miami, FL — a city that sits just west of the University of Miami in Coral Gables — passed a resolution this week that calls for Florida to be split into a North Florida and a South Florida, a creation of an additional state that would allow South Florida to take climate change preparation and adaptation into its own hands.

“It’s very apparent that the attitude of the northern part of the state is that they would just love to saw the state in half and just let us float off into the Caribbean,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard said. “They’ve made that abundantly clear every possible opportunity and I would love to give them the opportunity to do that.”

Under the northern border of South Florida would include the counties of Brevard, Polk, Orange, Pinellas, and Hillsborough, which would mean drawing the new state line north of Orlando, Tampa and Clearwater. South Florida would encompass 24 counties and total about 23,000 square miles, an area that houses 67 percent of Florida’s current population.

The resolution — like all other secession attempts in the U.S., apart from the one in 1775 — isn’t likely to make it very far. In order for Florida to actually split into two states, the resolution would have to be approved by Florida’s state legislature and by the U.S. Congress. But the three South Miami councilmembers who voted the resolution into being still think the subject of sea level rise is serious enough to make the secession statement.

The resolution singled out Southeast Florida’s particular vulnerability to sea level rise in its reasons behind its call for secession from the current state of Florida. It noted sea level rise estimates of three to six feet by the end of this century, and stated that, because much of South Florida is low-lying and sits on porous bedrock, even a small amount of sea level rise can easily cause flooding and could pose a threat to the region’s groundwater.

“South Florida’s situation is very precarious and in need of immediate attention,” the resolution states. “Many of the issues facing South Florida are not political, but are now significant safety issues.”