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A screen shot shows the Little River, which forks off the Miami River west of Hialeah and winds across Miami to Biscayne Bay.
As rising seas continue their inland march, neighborhoods up and down the Little River could be among the hardest hit in South Florida.
Chronic flooding has already led insurers to write-off some properties as repetitive losses. Low-lying septic systems regularly flood, pushing bacteria levels in the river to hover around 40% year-round. And the South Florida Water Management District, which operates massive pumps to keep water out, has found pumps would be overwhelmed possibly as soon as this decade.
Saturday, January 9, 2021 by Jenny Staletovich (WLRN )
Photo: Yohann Boyer
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The neighborhoods around the Little River, at the north end of Biscayne Bay are expected to be some of the hardest hit by sea rise driven by climate change in South Florida. For years, planners have been talking about how to deal with it.
Now, on Tuesday and Thursday, they’re hosting two virtual meetings to ask what residents think.
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Erik Stabenau, on left and leaning forward, and Damon Rondeau, driving the park service airboat, are supervisory hydrologists with Everglades National Park. The provided a tour of Shark River Slough, observing Tamiami Trail bridging and water-monitoring stations.
The historic rise of South Florida sugarcane farming turned the giant Lake Okeechobee into a toilet for polluted waters draining from as far as Central Florida and flushing ruinously via canals to coastal estuaries at Fort Myers and Stuart.
Part 4 of Special Series
There is a concrete sign of hope that the imperiled wet prairies, tree islands, mangrove marsh and shallow bay of Everglades National Park won’t become a wasteland as feared.