Miami, Fl. has a dirty dirt problem

[ensho]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/13/2405640/mounds-of-fill-from-tunnel-project.html


Mounds of fill from tunnel project has environmentalists worried

Miami city officials want the tons of fill from the port tunnel project, but environmentalists are leery of a plan to send it to Virginia Key, which has been a dumping ground for unwanted debris for years.


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City of Miami officials want to use the free material to build a berm to conceal the Virginia Key sewage treatment plant and to fill in an old toxic landfill next door, helping the cash-strapped city advance a plan to turn the island into a natural and recreational showcase.

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The tunnel project also recently received permits for another job that some environmentalists have questioned -- injecting concrete grout into sections of the bottom of Government Cut to shore up the porous limestone in preparation for boring beneath. The grout is mostly Portland cement but may also include chemical bonding agents, though the contractor says the mix is environmentally benign.

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The groups are opposing a separate plan by port administrators to dredge the bay bottom on the other side of Dodge Island from the tunnel dig to accommodate a new generation of supersized cargo ships. That project would require plowing up and moving several acres of coral and risks raising the turbidity of bay waters.

The activists scored one victory when regulators agreed to keep the fill from that dredging project off Virginia Key.

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why do they always want to put recreational areas on top of toxic dumps?

what a mess.

[TygrBright]

1. Dredge spoils are some of the nastiest toxic crap you ever don't want to have anything to do with.

The ocean is a giant filtering mechanism, and the icky stuff has been precipitating downward to those coastal and estuarial bottoms for decades.

The Army Corps of Engineers has had to give up or abandon projects in the Chesapeake Bay area because they couldn't dispose of spoils.

informatively,
Bright