Miami’s COVID-induced boom — much of it fueled by an exodus from New York — may screech to a halt because of mounting piles of trash and overflowing septic tanks, according to a report.
The public health risk posed to both the residents and the environment has paused construction on new housing and threatens to raise taxes on existing homeowners, Bloomberg News reported.
Higher taxes would be a bitter pill for the hundreds of thousands of transplants — some 65,000 from New York state last year alone — from around the country who decamped to Florida since the pandemic to bask in the Sunshine State’s relaxed COVID regulations.
Those that landed in Miami-Dade County could see their tax bills spike in order to fund the costly transition from the septic tanks used by some 108,000 homes — from the wealthy enclaves of Coral Gables and Miami Beach to middle-class areas south of the city — to a sewer system, according to Bloomberg News.
“It’s unbelievable, not just to me but to most of the planning and environmental community, that you can have a county as urban as Miami-Dade and not have everybody on water and sewer,” Howard Nelson, who heads the environmental practice at Bilzin Sumberg, told Bloomberg
The local government’s inability to solve the sewage crisis faced by a population of 2.7 million has forced a moratorium on new construction in places such as Belle Meade Island, a posh area hugging Biscayne Bay where homes sell for $10 million or more....
....MUCH MORE
Okay, maybe it's not all on the mover-inners. The use of septic tanks in areas where the water table is already close to the surface, combined with land subsidence—think sinkholes—and you end up with stinkholes.
Full of E. coli and other nasty critters
