The city’s new “Leave No Trace” policy targets littering on Miami’s public island getaways. But a far greater and steadier stream of garbage, activists say, arrives with each passing rain.
To much fanfare last spring the City of Miami launched an effort – dubbed “Leave No Trace” – to reduce litter within the 11 city-owned, publicly accessible islands that dot Biscayne Bay.
Under the new policy, the islands’ trash receptables were removed, requiring visitors to cart away anything they bring in. “As citizens we want to make sure we take care of one of our most precious assets,” Mayor Francis Suarez implored boaters during a sun-drenched boat cruise through the islands with other city officials in May.
But sloppy picnickers and overflowing garbage cans are simply the low-hanging fruit of pollution control within our bay islands, say local environmental advocates, especially on Coconut Grove’s string of five public islands that sit barely a stone’s throw from Dinner Key and the adjacent shoreline.
Most of the debris – plastic bags, bottles, cans, syringes, shoes, plastic takeout containers, cigarette butts and so much more – wash ashore after being deposited into the bay from the city’s own stormwater drainage system.
“The principal source of pollution in Biscayne Bay is not from boaters but from the stormwater systems. That’s the conduit,” says Rachel Silverstein, chief executive officer of Miami Waterkeeper, which promotes polices to protect and improve water quality and marine health. The pipes, often tucked beneath seawalls or shrouded by clumps of leggy mangroves (such as within the strip dividing sections of South Bayshore Drive’s popular Kennedy Park), are found throughout the Grove’s roughly five-mile shoreline.
While Silverstein applauds the City’s efforts to address island litter through its Leave No Trace Policy, she notes that the stormwater system is far more difficult to monitor and reengineer, especially in ways that could reduce the discharge of chemicals and other less visible pollutants.
Perhaps the chief polluter in Coconut Grove — through visible inspection, at least — is the drainage pipe near South Bayshore Drive’s Seminole boat ramp, where SW 27 Avenue meets Biscayne Bay. Unlike other stormwater drains this one pumps a steady flow, even during dry winter months, attracting manatees who drink its discharge of fresh water. The flow’s origins have baffled city and county engineers for years.
On a recent visit all manner of detritus clogged the opening, with odd pieces periodically breaking free to float the short distance to the nearby public islands where they wash ashore. Other harmful pollutants – chemicals, fertilizers, oil, pet droppings, yard clippings – are less visible.
Silverstein says she and others have been lobbying city and county officials for more than a decade to stem the steady tide of waste discharge — both seen and unseen — into the bay.
So too has Dave Doebler, co-founder of VolunteerCleanup.org, a group that organizes coastal cleanups along Miami-Dade’s shoreline and lobbies for better pollution control measures.
District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo who inspected the 27th Avenue outfall earlier this year following the grand opening of the adjacent boat ramp, declined to answer questions from the Spotlight about the Miami stormwater system’s contributions to marine pollution and, in particular, the 27th Avenue outfall.
The City’s Director of Capital Improvements, Hector Badia, did not respond to two emails requesting comment. But a City of Miami spokesperson says a possible redesign of the system, with help from the Florida Department of Transportation, is being considered.
Until then, both Silverstein and Doebler say, the city has tools in its municipal arsenal to protect the bay. Noting studies that show roughly 80 percent of ocean trash comes from land-based sources, they say the most efficient and cost-effective measures are those that prevent waste from entering our stormwater system: increasing the frequency of street sweeping, installing street-level grates, and routinely cleaning the system’s underground catch basins before their reach capacity and overflow.
Doebler says city officials have balked at such suggestions, citing the added costs of enhanced maintenance programs.
Until then, he says, volunteer cleanup crews will have no shortage of work within Coconut Grove’s mangrove-rimmed islands. Each year VolunteerCleanup.org works with other groups – such as the nearby Coconut Grove Sailing Club – to organize offshore trips to collect and haul away debris. (A countywide cleanup, with more than 60 locations, is planned for September 21.)
James Grupenhoff, chairman of the club’s community service committee, says he’s encouraged by the community commitment to combat marine pollution, especially among students and young adults. “The number one source of garbage that ends up on the islands got into the system of canals and waterways as trash that was improperly disposed of on land,” he says.
Meanwhile, the City’s Leave No Trace program, which targets boater littering, principally at the more accessible islands north of downtown, has shown mixed results. In early July, city officials temporarily closed its public islands to all boat traffic due to mounting trash deposits.
Chris Evans, director of the City of Miami’s Parks and Recreation Department, which oversees the islands for public use, said the July closures were unfortunate but necessary.
“People are not being responsible. Those are really party islands and I think the culture of some people here is to come and have a good time without regard for the trash they are leaving behind.”
Within Coconut Grove’s five so-called “picnic islands” – created a century ago from the dredged bay bottom that made way for ships and the flying boats of nearby Dinner Key — littering is largely not a concern. For the past decade or so city officials have been working to promote native habitat growth as a hedge against rising sea levels. All remain open for public use
Unlike their north bay cousins, the Grove islands – each designated by a letter, “A” descending south to “E” – have few natural landings or easy access points for boats to dock and unload passengers.
Three of the islands, reached by paddleboard on a recent sunny Saturday morning, revealed no human visitors. And yet a carpet of trash, washed in with the tides, wrapped their shorelines.
Environmental activist Andrew Otazo, who claims to have collected more than 25,000 pounds of trash from Miami-Dade’s marine ecosystem over the past seven years, agrees that indifference to nature’s fragile condition runs deep in Miami.
“You go out to these islands to be in this atmosphere of a tropical paradise,” he says. “It won’t take very long until it’s no longer the same.”
