by Naja and Arnaud Girard….. “I am sitting under the huge tiki hut roof and all I can think of is: Am I going to do it or not?” All around him people, hundreds of them, are having dinner, drinking, listening to the band of young local musicians, having a great time. Only the owners of the restaurant know what our man is up to: The Boondocks Restaurant, a few miles from Key West, is, according to our whistleblower, dumping thousands of gallons of wastewater onto [continue reading…]
In recent months the public has sent a clear message to Tallahassee asking the Legislature to purchase land south of Lake Okeechobee to Restore America’s Everglades. The Legislature will consider purchasing this much-needed land under the Florida Water and Land Conservation Amendment [“Amendment 1”] during a special session set for June 1st – June 20th. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] is also updating the management plan for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The final management plan and its implementation will likely shape the [continue reading…]
by Naja and Arnaud Girard In early December when water testing in Key West harbor showed off-the-chart numbers for fecal contaminants, the city rounded up the usual suspects: the boaters. Them again! Certainly they were polluting the harbor by not using mandatory holding tanks and new regulations for offshore liveaboards were swiftly introduced. But the data collected by The Blue Paper tells a very different story. Between November 19 and December 3, the city conducted two weeks of testing in eleven different locations on the west [continue reading…]