Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Park superintendent James Sanders has officially notified the promoter that he opposes the day-cruise project for several reasons. A rare sea turtle, the hawksbill, successfully nested on Soldier Key last year for the first time since 1981 .The presence of five hundred carousing beachcombers might discourage future visits from the shy, endangered animals.

Beyond the turtle problem is the impact of cruise parties upon the whole park, one of the most ecologically sensitive marine preserves in the country. Soldier Key is the first link in a delicate necklace of small islands that the National Park Service has been acquiring for preservation. Tom Brown, the park system's associate regional director for planning, says that Soldier Key should be "maintained in its natural condition."

Which doesn't include the concrete swimming pool now planned for construction. Opponents, including Everglades Earth First!, plan a protest regatta to the island Feb. 23.

Recently the government substantially hiked its cash offer for Soldier Key, but the option holders didn't accept. Through congressional channels, they are quietly trying to persuade high officials in Washington, including Secretary of Interior Manuel Lujan, to overrule the park service and allow the island to be developed.

Such a reversal would be unusual, but not unprecedented. Blockbuster Entertainment chairman Wayne Huizenga is a wealthy Republican campaign contributor whose phone calls would probably be swiftly returned, were he to express a personal interest in getting the Soldier Key project approved.

Three and one-half acres isn't much to work with, but promoter Robert F. Lambert hopes to make the most of it. An optimistic brochure for Blockbuster Cruises invites travelers to "our private island in the Bay" for a day of sailing, sunning, swimming, snorkeling and "live calypso music."

Finally! Something to drown out the cries of those pesky seagulls.

The nighttime excursion sounds even more enchanting. I quote from the brochure: "Sailing south through the Biscayne Bay, witness a beautiful sunset as the moon rises over Miami."

That will be a neat trick, getting the moon to come up in the west. We can hardly wait. But there's even more tropical excitement after our ship drops anchor off Soldier Key: "Ashore, guests will be treated to a sumptuous Island luau under the skies and a live native review. Dance to the sounds of our steel drums or see 'how low you can go' in our limbo contest."

How low, indeed. Take a perfectly lovely island and turn it into the Tiki Bar from Hell.

All things considered, we'd rather stay home and rent a movie.

Pipeline crisis could turn Bay into cesspool June 13, 1993

Think what would happen if your toilet somehow started flushing into your swimming pool. Bubble, bubble, bubble—until the pool was up to the brim: 15,000 gallons of you-know-what.

Now picture 6,000 swimming pools full of the rancid stuff, and imagine that much—90 million gallons—pouring into Biscayne Bay every single day.

That's what will happen if the old sewer pipe running underwater from mainland Miami to Virginia Key breaks. The bay will turn from blue to brown, and we're not talking pastels.

Fearing a Chernobyl-under-the-palms, the Environmental Protection Agency has sued to force Dade to rebuild its disintegrating sewers as soon as possible. Local and state agencies belatedly began brainstorming the crisis a few months ago, but the feds aren't waiting. The situation is that dire.

Two good things might come from the lawsuit. First, a new cross-bay pipeline could be built in time to avoid the catastrophe that would result from the old pipe fracturing.

Second, prosecutors could block most new construction while the sewer system is being rebuilt. Theoretically, more hookups wouldn't be permitted until more capacity is added. At least for a while, growth in Dade might slow to a healthier trickle.

A few no-growth years is the best thing that could happen here. Breathing room is what people need, especially the thousands still struggling to rebuild after Andrew.

Reckless, runaway expansion is what caused the system to fail in the first place. Faithful to the developers who bankroll their campaigns, past county commissioners approved one subdivision after another—tens of thousands of new toilets—even as sewers began to burst, literally.

Thanks to a few corrupted bums, we're now facing a septic eruption that will do for Miami's tourism what Exxon did for bird watching in Alaska.

Disaster could strike any time. The 72-inch pipe across Biscayne Bay is aged and perilously overloaded. Hydrogen sulfide gas (an aromatic product of human waste) is aggressively eating the metal from the inside out.

Much of Dade's waste is treated at Virginia Key so it travels silent and deadly across the bay. In 1992, the grand jury said the Biscayne sewer line was "a time bomb."