Volunteers with Koncious Contractors remove tree branches from a Little Havana home. After Hurricane Irma, many South Florida community groups deployed volunteers to low-income and disabled people with recovery.  NADEGE GREEN / WLRN

wlrn.org - by KATE STEIN & ALEXANDER GONZALEZ - April 23, 2018

Several South Florida nonprofits are launching five meetings to ensure equality in hurricane recovery efforts, continuing work that began after Hurricane Irma.

After the storm, some elderly people went days without ice or water. Some students who rely on free school lunches didn't have a way to eat. Volunteers and community groups stepped up to host barbecues, deliver supplies and help with tree removal.

Now the groups want to create preparedness plans that specifically meet the needs of low-income neighborhoods. They also want to push for more accountability from elected officials.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - GreenPrint: Our Design for a Sustainable Future (200 page .PDF report)

CLICK HERE - Miami-Dade Climate Change Action Plan (20 page .PDF report)

miamidade.gov

Miami-Dade County is pleased to share with you GreenPrint: Our Design for a Sustainable Future. The plans development was a fully collaborative process among the many diverse stakeholders of our community: County staff, community groups, experts from the business community and academia, and a wide range of individual Miami-Dade residents. During the course of the year, nearly 100 public meetings were held, and approximately 360 new and existing initiatives were evaluated.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

cnn.com - by John D. Sutter - additional reporting by Cristian Arroyo - photograph by Jayme Gershen for CNN - April 20, 2018

With no running water, no power and no school for her kids, Carmen "Millie" Santiago fled Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean last fall. Like thousands of evacuees, she landed here in central Florida. And, like hundreds, she's still stuck in a motel.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

At a walkout and rally in Washington Square Park on Friday, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, students called for an end to gun violence. Credit Holly Pickett for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Sarah Maslin Nir - April 20, 2018

Most of them were not yet born when students shot a dozen people to death inside Columbine High School in Colorado, an atrocity that sparked a national debate over guns exactly 19 years ago.

But on Friday, on the anniversary of the April 20, 1999, shooting, the several thousand high school students who walked out of schools across the city and beyond to rally against guns in Manhattan said they felt they lived in a world of near-constant Columbines.

The teenagers spoke angrily of active shooter drills since kindergarten, of backpack and locker searches, of mock lockdowns sitting in silence in classrooms with the lights turned out, as they gathered in protest in Washington Square Park. And they spoke of the numbing barrage of school shootings in America — by some counts more than 200 in the past two decades.

Energy Innovation's Michael O'Boyle and Silvio Marcacci outline the barriers to high-penetration wind and solar in the least-cost era

The following is a viewpoint from Michael O'Boyle, electricity policy manager for Energy Innovation, and Silvio Marcacci, communications director for Energy Innovation

utilitydive.com - by Michael O'Boyle, Silvio Marcacci - March 21, 2018

Wind and solar are now cheaper than virtually anyone predicted, and renewable technologies have reached an inflection point: Rapid cost declines made renewable energy the cheapest available sources of new electricity, even without subsidies, in 2017.  In many locations across America, building new wind energy projects is cheaper than running existing coal-fired power plants.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

South Broward
Monday, April 23, 2018
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
NewFM
C.W. Thomas Park
800 NW 2nd St.
Dania Beach, FL 33004 

North Miami-Dade
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Sant La and New FM
Sant La Neighborhood Center
13390 W Dixie Hwy.
North Miami, FL 33161 

Central Broward
Monday, April 30, 2018
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
NewFM, My Brother"s Keeper
Willie L. Webb, Senior Park
3601 NW 21st St.
Lauderdale Lakes, FL 33311

Central Miami-Dade
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
NewFM, MCA, FANM
Circle of Brotherhood School
5120 NW 24th Ave.
Miami, FL 33147

Central Miami-Dade
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
FANM
100 NE 84th St.
Miami, FL  33138 

South Miami-Dade
Thursday, May 3, 2018
6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
WeCount, Catalyst Miami, NewFM
WeCount
201 N. Krome Ave. #230
Homestead, FL 33030

An artist’s rendering of a deep-sea vehicle designed by Dutch company IHC to harvest polymetallic nodules from the seabed.  Royal IHC

greenbiz.com - by Todd Woody - September 28, 2017

At the International Seabed Authority’s ocean-side headquarters, delegates from dozens of countries strolled through breezeways adorned with the works of Jamaican artists as the United Nations-chartered organization’s annual meeting began its second week. No one, however, was entering a conference room where the seabed authority’s Legal and Technical Commission (LTC) was in session and men in dark suits stood watch. A sign advised that the meeting was "closed."

Behind heavy wood doors, the 30 members of the commission convened in secret to discuss, among other things, confidential contracts issued to corporations and state-backed companies to explore and potentially mine vast, barely explored deep-sea habitats that scientists believe play a key role in the global ecosystem.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Teachers remember high school student day after deadly shooting

miamiherald.com - by MONIQUE O. MADAN, GLENN GARVIN, DAVID J. NEAL AND JOEY FLECHAS - April 8, 2018

A fusillade of bullets fired by somebody who witnesses said “came through like they thought they were Rambo” felled four young men in the crime-blasted Liberty Square area of Liberty City Sunday afternoon, killing two and sending two others to the hospital.

The shootings ended the lives of Rickey Dixon, 18, and Kimson Green, 17, according to Miami police.

The four were gunned down as they sat on the lawn outside a row of one-floor apartments at Northwest 63 Street and 13th Place.

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miamiwaterkeeper.org

In the first week of March 2016, the Division of Environmental Resource Management (DERM) of Miami-Dade County released a report showing that water from the cooling canals at FPL’s nuclear power plant, located at Turkey Point, is contaminating Biscayne Bay. The canals are also contaminating the Biscayne Aquifer, which is an underground water storage area that is the sole source of drinking water for millions of South Florida residents. Hypersaline (super salty) water laden with tritium (a radioactive isotope), phosphorous, and ammonia is passing through our porous limestone geology and into our water both above and below ground.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

ALSO SEE RELATED INFORMATION WITHIN THE LINK BELOW . . .

http://southflorida.resiliencesystem.org/fpl-nuclear-plant-canals-leaking-biscayne-bay-study-confirms

Recent sampling of water in Biscayne Bay found higher than normal levels of tritium, a rare hydrogen isotope produced by nuclear reactors and used to track water leaking from Turkey Point’s cooling canals. Tim Chapman Miami Herald Staff

CLICK HERE OR SEE ATTACHMENT BELOW - Report on Recent Biscayne Bay Water Quality Observations associated with Florida Power and Light Turkey Point Cooling Canal System Operations - Directive 152884 - (24 page .PDF document)

CLICK HERE OR SEE ATTACHMENT BELOW - Turkey Point’s Cooling Canal System Overview - (69 page .PDF document)

miamiherald.com - by JENNY STALETOVICH - March 7, 2016 - updated May 17, 2016

A radioactive isotope linked to water from power plant cooling canals has been found in high levels in Biscayne Bay, confirming suspicions that Turkey Point’s aging canals are leaking into the nearby national park.

CLICK HERE - NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER TROPICAL CYCLONE REPORT - HURRICANE IRMA (AL112017)  30 August–12 September 2017 - John P. Cangialosi, Andrew S. Latto, and Robbie Berg National Hurricane Center - 9 March 2018 - (111 page .PDF report)

nhc.noaa.gov

Irma was a long-lived Cape Verde hurricane that reached category 5 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. The catastrophic hurricane made seven landfalls, four of which occurred as a category 5 hurricane across the northern Caribbean Islands. Irma made landfall as a category 4 hurricane in the Florida Keys and struck southwestern Florida at category 3 intensity. Irma caused widespread devastation across the affected areas and was one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes on record in the Atlantic basin.

ALSO SEE ADDITIONAL REPORTS HERE - National Hurricane Center - 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season

HEAT ISLANDS  Heat claims more lives than floods, hurricanes and other weather-related disasters. How will cities cope as temperatures rise?  ULTRAFORMA/ISTOCKPHOTO

When days and nights get too hot, city dwellers are the first to run into trouble

sciencenews.org - by AIMEE CUNNINGHAM - April 3, 2018

Since 1986, the first year the National Weather Service reported data on heat-related deaths, more people in the United States have died from heat (3,979) than from any other weather-related disaster — more than floods (2,599), tornadoes (2,116) or hurricanes (1,391). Heat’s victim counts would be even higher, but unless the deceased are found with a fatal body temperature or in a hot room, the fact that heat might have been the cause is often left off of the death certificate, says Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

As greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, heat’s toll is expected to rise. Temperatures will probably keep smashing records as carbon dioxide, methane and other gases continue warming the planet. Heat waves (unusually hot weather lasting two or more days) will probably be longer, hotter and more frequent in the future.

Cape Town, South Africa

meetingoftheminds.org - by Manohar Patole - April 3, 2018

The growth of urban settlements is subject to a range of factors influenced by demographic, economic, political, environmental, cultural, and social factors. Weather variability, or climate change, has recently risen up this list. These two factors: climate change and urban population growth, are dramatically affecting urban water management. On one hand, growing populations increase urban water demand and on the other, climate change has increased water variability (volume, distribution, timing and quality) . . . 

 . . . How will cities adapt? Reframe. Develop new responses.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Microgrid at Princeton University

utilitydive.com - March 20, 2018

The National Academy of Sciences defines “resilience” as the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.  Since the September 2017 DOE NOPR to FERC, the energy industry has been working overtime to better define resilience.  FERC unanimously set aside the “90 days on-site fuel storage” provision espoused by DOE and opened a new docket (AD18-7) to more fully examine the current state of grid resiliency, asking the nation’s seven RTO’s and ISO’s to provide their definition of resiliency relative to the bulk power system by March 9.  Those ISO/RTO comments reflected regional variances as expected while sharing a common thread of the paradigm shift underway from central station power plants to more distributed generation . . . 

Solar panels cover the roof of UCI's Student Center Parking Structure. A new study co-authored by Steven Davis, associate professor of Earth system science, shows that the U.S. can meet 80 percent of its electricity demand with renewable solar and wind resources.  Credit: Steve Zylius / UCI

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the United States

Investment in greater storage, transmission capabilities needed

sciencedaily.com - University of California - Irvine - February 27, 2018

Summary: The United States could reliably meet about 80 percent of its electricity demand with solar and wind power generation, according to scientists.

The United States could reliably meet about 80 percent of its electricity demand with solar and wind power generation, according to scientists at the University of California, Irvine; the California Institute of Technology; and the Carnegie Institution for Science.