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| central biscayne bay photo jacob katel |
Death comes running like an oil slick.
In a sluice of poison that washes off the green grass of Kendall, Pinecrest, Coral Gables, Homestead, Goulds, Naranja, Perrine, Florida City, Leisure City, Cutler Bay, and Palmetto Bay like the grim reaper's shampoo every time the clouds cry rain.
All those lush suburban lawns are kept up with more chemical warfare and shrub-roids than a caustic face peel and a round of HGH at a health spa on South Beach.
Especially with the all new managed communities popping up down south. The corporations who own them must buy wholesale poison by the barrel.
The logical solution increasingly looks like Phytoremediation, or the use of known local plants that soak up pesticide and fertilizer before they flood into Biscayne Bay when it storms, which is usually once a day in the summer.
Maybe Mycoremediation as well. Using mushroom fungi to absorb ground toxins.
Bioswales, shallow ditches full of plant-based toxin filters, may be swell for some places, like public property, highway offramps, and empty lots, but what about all the private property producing paralyzing proportions of putrid pesticide with every puddle of precipitation.
Toxin absorbing greenery around lawn areas could be designed at scale to stop those deathstamp labeled products from doing so much damage to the watery lifeblood of this waterfront state.
Absorbent Cat Tail plant is already a cornerstone of environmental detox through Stormwater Treatment Areas, but those plants only grow in water.
Plants with similar toxin absorbing properties that can grow on dry land in Miami include:
Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata)
Duck Potato (Sagittaria lancifolia)
Fakahatchee grass (Tripsacum dactyloides)
Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
Blue Flag Iris (Iris virginica)
Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis)
Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris)
Miami Dade County gotta apply a significant portion of funding for Biscayne Bay Restoration to encourage overland phytoremediation on private property across the whole county. Maybe through a series of RFP’s or open Bidding Opportunities to local entrepreneurs or the agricultural community for wholesale plant production and a rebate or tax advantage program for private property owners who install toxin and nutrient absorbing plants on their lawns and yards.
Strategically in known problem areas.
Enough is enough with all the non profits. It's time to create a monetary value incentive for the community at large to actively participate in restoration and conservation, and for small business entrepreneurs to compete for the dollars to do the jobs right, which all the foundation spending continually seems to miss with its obsession with pr, optics, central committees, and private networks.
Biscayne
Bay depends on a significant county wide
overland effort as part of a multi play against toxic
waste hitting it over, through, and under the ground. What's good for the bay is good for the beach and the glades