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Florida, with its large population of transplants from New York and other Northeastern areas used to be thought of as one of the more liberal more Democratic states. But today, it's rapidly turning into a lunatic-fringe Orwellian hellhole.
An employee of Florida’s environmental protection department was forced to take a leave of absence and seek a mental health evaluation for violating governor Rick Scott’s unwritten ban on using the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” under any circumstance, according to a complaint filed against the state.
Longtime employee Barton Bibler reportedly included an explicit mention of climate change in his official notes from a Florida Coastal Managers Forum meeting in late February, during which climate change, rising sea levels and the possible environmental impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline were discussed.
On 9 March, Bibler received a formal reprimand for “misrepresenting that ‘the official meeting agenda included climate change’”, according to a statement from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a nationwide non-profit that champions public employees’ rights and providers resources and guidance to whistleblowers using its network of members across the country.
Bibler was instructed to stay away from the office for two days and told he could return to work only after a mental health evaluation from his doctor verified his “fitness for duty”, the complaint said. In the letter to Florida’s inspector general, Candie Fuller, the state’s Peer director calls for a full investigation to the matter.
Bibler told the Miami Herald that he “didn’t get the memo” about the gag order, so when he introduced himself by congratulating other officials on the call for the “exciting” work they were doing to address climate change, the “reaction was mostly shock”.
Keep in mind, this is Florida we are talking about here.
Of course, South Florida is not the only place that will be devastated by sea-level rise. London, Boston, New York and Shanghai are all vulnerable, as are low-lying underdeveloped nations like Bangladesh. But South Florida is uniquely screwed, in part because about 75 percent of the 5.5 million people in South Florida live along the coast. And unlike many cities, where the wealth congregates in the hills, southern Florida's most valuable real estate is right on the water. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development lists Miami as the number-one most vulnerable city worldwide in terms of property damage, with more than $416 billion in assets at risk to storm-related flooding and sea-level rise.
South Florida has two big problems. The first is its remarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level. Its highest natural elevation, a limestone ridge that runs from Palm Beach to just south of the city, averages a scant 12 feet. With just three feet of sea-level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone; if the seas rise 12 feet, South Florida will be little more than an isolated archipelago surrounded by abandoned buildings and crumbling overpasses. And the waters won't just come in from the east – because the region is so flat, rising seas will come in nearly as fast from the west too, through the Everglades.
Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. "Imagine Swiss cheese, and you'll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like," says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. "Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here," says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas. "Protecting the city, if it is possible, will require innovative solutions."
And it isn't only actual flooding of their homes that South Floridians have to worry about. Quite possibly the worst threat is that of losing their drinking water.
Summer rains can't wash away a growing underground threat to South Florida's water supply.
Saltwater seeping in from the ocean keeps spreading farther west, threatening to foul underground freshwater supplies that provide most of South Florida's drinking water.
"Saltwater intrusion" in South Florida has worsened through the decades as providing water and flood control for a growing population siphons away freshwater and allows more saltwater to seep into aquifers and well fields.
Ninety percent of South Florida gets its drinking water from underground supplies, most from the Biscayne aquifer. Pumping too much water from underground supplies can allow saltwater to push in from the coast.
Droughts can make saltwater intrusion worse as pumping to provide drinking water continues while rains don't come to replenish underground freshwater supplies.
Now South Florida officials are projecting that sea-level rise due to climate change could increase the reach of saltwater that can make water from community wells undrinkable.
That has city and county utilities along the southeast Florida coast exploring expensive alternatives, with costs passed along to ratepayers, to avoid getting cut off from freshwater.
"It is still progressing westward," Hector Castro, Hallandale Beach public works and utilities director, said. "Eventually all coastal communities will deal with this in some way, shape or form."
Hallandale Beach, Pompano Beach, Dania Beach, Lantana and Lake Worth are among local cities that in recent years have been most at risk from saltwater intrusion.
But the line of saltwater spreading inland comes close to or reaches cities from Jupiter to Florida City, including West Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Miami, according to theU.S. Geological Survey.
Reducing well-field pumping, moving well fields farther inland and requiring utilities to pursue alternative water supplies have helped hold the line of saltwater intrusion in some areas and even push it back east.
"It's a serious threat," said Pete Kwiatkowski, South Florida Water Management District water-shortage incident commander. "That saltwater front is very dynamic (and) it does shift."
Six of the eight wells that Hallandale Beach relies on have been closed through the years due to saltwater intrusion.
That's because 85 percent of the city is within the area where saltwater has seeped in, Castro said. As a result, the city pays to get half of its water from Broward County's western well fields and is working on a deal for new western wells of its own.
Jupiter to Florida City, huh. No biggie. That's just...all these people.
As the Rolling Stone article mentions, 'The conventional solution to this was simple: Drill new drinking wells farther west, away from the salty water. The trouble is, engineers have done that already and can't move any farther west without running into the Everglades.'
I was intending to end with some snark here, but I just can't.
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