Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
15 Florida cities made a 'Clean Water Declaration' and began a campaign of both prevent-
ing and cleaning water pollution.
Residential development continues almost unabated. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West
Palm Beach corridor (the USA's sixth-largest urban area) is, as developers say, 'built out'.
Every day, Miami and Homestead's urban (and in the case of Homestead, agricultural)
footprint grows deeper into the west, on the edge of the Everglades. While conservation
laws protect the national park itself, the run-off and by-product of such a huge urban area
inevitably has an impact in the incredibly fragile Glades.
Then there's the coming looming disaster: rising seas due to global warming. Here, the
low-lying Florida Keys are a 'canary in a coalmine' that's being watched worldwide for
impacts. In another century, some quip, South Florida's coastline could be a modern-day
Atlantis, with its most expensive real estate underwater.
On the subject of real estate, the Keys happen to be governed by a labyrinthine set of
zoning regulations. Getting permission to build on the land that remains is an arduous pro-
cess, although many Keys law firms are solely dedicated to navigating this paper trail; as
such, the Keys are not immune to overdevelopment, but are also better protected than
much of the rest of Florida.
The Florida chapter of the Nature Conservancy (
www.nature.org
) has been instrumental
in the Florida Forever legislation. Check the web for updates and conservation issues.
