Chapter Twenty-Nine

ES Komninos

•Douglas was in her seventies•Sand and limestone roads no more•Construction boom•Miami was compared to LA•One of the first bikeway systems in the country•People feared riding bikes

About the same landmass as Delaware Nearly one million residents in 1960 Twice as many as Delaware Manufacturers of asphalt and cement Still couldn’t repair roads fast enough These manufacturers were polluting the

waterways Local government spent 5 to 10 times

more money on roads than public transportation

Douglas has preached enough She decided to “watch from the

sidelines” A new era of activists and

environmentalists were to step in Most of which Douglas knew

Ludwig Enterprises’ announces plans for Biscayne Bay

Founder: Daniel K. Ludwig Developed the Princess chain of resort

hotels in Mexico, Bermuda, and the Bahamas

Owned three-million acres in Brazil Invested in oil, salt, timber, and iron ore

Twenty-two-hundred acre site Between Everglades National Park and

John Pennekamp Coral Reef Preserve Wanted to cut a forty-foot deep shipping

canal across Biscayne Bay It promised $130 million annual payroll

for 18,540 employees Tourists spent six hundred million dollars

in Dade County annually

Safe Progress Association (SPA) didn’t succeed at the Metro commissioners’ meeting

SPA founder: Lloyd Miller Also the founder of the Mangrove chapter

of the Izaak Walton League SPA argued that the refinery would be

dumping biochemical wastes in the bay SPA claimed not to oppose industry itself,

just “dirty industry”

Two years prior, a 608-foot tanker, owned by Sinclair Refining Company, hit ground some 50 miles off the coast of Rhode Island

Oil entered Narragansett Bay where some two thousand ducks were coated with oil, 300 were washed and relocated to Florida

Oil spills increased as demand increased which caused the tank sizes to increase

The SPA decided to get the information out to the public in such ways as: woman’s clubs, whose networks reached four hundred thousand in Dade and Monroe Counties alone

Metro commissioners adopted a pollution-control ordinance in 1963

Metro commissioners held off on issuing a building permit

Developers looking to build estate homes, a tropical vacation resort, and a 200 boat slip marina, costing about six-million-dollars

Miller’s bright idea: turn Seadade and Islandia into a national park or preserve

Metro commissioners like the idea Eventually, 100,500 acres set aside for

the Biscayne National Monument, of which 96,500 would be underwater

Florida Power and Light Accused of having their toilets flush

directly into Biscayne Bay Couldn’t expand the existing plant in

Cutler Ridge Decided to build on Turkey Point Turkey Point: thirty-two-hundred acre

undisturbed mangrove-trimmed scrub and wetland

FP&L planted coconut palms and mahogany trees and left indigenous mangroves and buttonwood trees virtually untouched

Created beaches for Boy and Girl Scout Camps Milled trees down during Hurricane Betsy

(1965) to construct shelters and picnic areas Blazed hiking trails through the scrubland Set aside saltwater ponds for shrimp-breeding

labs Leased fifteen hundred acres for $1 a year to

Tropical Audubon for a wildlife sanctuary

“if our ecology had not changed, we would not be here today talking about large power plants” – McGregor Smith, FP&L board

Why would FP&L be doing so much? They must be hiding some kind of a problem!

Problem: Hot Water and Expansion Operating 2 oil-fired generating plants Population in service area increased by a

factor of 2.5 since 1950 Consumption of electricity had increased

twelvefold. Thank you air conditioning!

Receives permission from the state and the Atomic Energy Commission to build two Nuclear Plants

Atomic Energy Commission portrayed nuclear power as the space-age answer to safe, efficient energy

Without proper experience, environmentalists supported it over coal and hydroelectric plants

To cool the nuclear generators water must be used and this would heat the water

FP&L was already dumping 1.8 gallons per minute into the bay

Scientists believe that any temperature over 95 degrees would harm marine life (shrimp, crab, and turtle grass)

FP&L argued that Thermal pollution did not exist

They claimed that natural cold spells were harming the bay, not the plants

Plants to start construction in 1971 Governor Kirk, Water Pollution Control

Administration, Interior Department, and scientists step held a conference with FP&L

To keep both sides happy, FP&L built their nuclear plants with the agreement to build a seven-thousand acre closed-cycle cooling system, eliminating discharge into the bay