Miami-Dade proposes spending $1.5 billion over 15 years to cure sewer system woes

Six months into negotiations with federal regulators over Miami-Dade’s aging sewer system, the county has come up with a $1.5 billion, 15-year plan to rebuild pipes, pumps and sewage treatment plants that in some cases are almost 100 years old.

County leaders devised the proposal in an attempt to fend off a federal lawsuit, and potentially millions of dollars in fines, for not abiding by the federal Clean Water Act. The county also has proposed replacing or repairing a good portion of the 7,500 miles of sewer lines that regularly rupture and spill millions of gallons of raw waste into local waterways and Biscayne Bay.

Before any work is to begin, the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency — which put the county on notice in May — must accept the county’s terms. The plan, referred to as a consent decree, also must be endorsed by a majority of county commissioners. That could come as soon as late January or early February.

One of the largest repair jobs would be a $555 million reconstruction of the controversial wastewater treatment plant on Virginia Key. Entire concrete structures would be rebuilt, and pump stations and electrical systems would be replaced. The plan calls for spending another $394 million on similar fixes to two other wastewater treatment facilities, in Goulds and North Miami.

Another $408 million would be spent replacing and rehabbing the county’s 1,035 pump stations, and miles of transmission lines that run to and from the plants.

The plan has already garnered some criticism.

The Biscayne Bay Waterkeepers, clean-water activists who filed to join the federal action against the county, say spending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild on Virginia Key is a waste, because the spit of land is likely to be under water within 50 years.

The group points to a recent study by the journal Science that showed the polar ice caps in Greenland are melting at three times the rate originally believed. They also say a climate change compact Miami-Dade agreed to with three other counties — which accepted a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study that shows sea levels will rise 3 feet by 2060 — shows the Virginia Key plant could be in peril.

“Doubling down on Virginia Key the way they’re doing it is just stupid,” said environmental attorney Albert J. Slap, representing the Waterkeepers. “There’s not a dime in it for armoring the plant, or raising it. It’s on a barrier island.”

Doug Yoder, deputy director of the county’s water and sewer department, didn’t dispute the Army Corps findings, and said the county could abandon the Virginia Key plant for a new plant on the western edge of the county if federal regulators make such a demand.

“We certainly don’t want to spend a lot of money fixing up a facility we’ll soon abandon,” he said.

Most of the costs for the overall plan will be covered through county revenue bonds, Yoder said, meaning a future increase in water rates and debt service bills. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has been warning for months that rate hikes are in the offing.

To meet demands from the feds, the county also must abandon by 2027 an outflow system it now uses that dumps up to 120 million gallons of sewage each day miles offshore. The county has until July 2013 to come up with an alternate disposal method.

A project cited in the new plan that had not been publicly addressed previously is the installation of 7,660 linear feet of sewer mains in an industrial area just below State Road 112 and between Northwest 27th and 37th avenues, which now depends on septic tanks. The job of hooking up local businesses there to county sewers would cost a little over $2 million.

Federal regulators began talks with Miami-Dade in May after a series of massive raw sewage spills released more than 47 million gallons of untreated human waste throughout the county. DOJ and the EPA, along with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, sketched out the 78-page consent decree.

Four times between October and December 2011, the sewage treatment plant on Virginia Key alone ruptured, spilling more than 19 million gallons.

The county also has agreed to pay a $978,000 fine for past spills within 30 days of the plan being accepted, with about half the money going to the DOJ and the other half to the state.

DOJ spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined to comment Friday.

In October, the county denied 12 permit applications in the Coconut Grove area by businesses that wanted to install sinks, toilets or showers. The county said it was imposing a moratorium on new sewage outflow from a Coconut Grove-serving pump station.

Read More..

Specs surface for alleged low-end $99 Nexus 7

Read More..

Larry Hagman's Dallas Co Stars Bid Emotional Farewell to the Actor at Funeral

Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy eulogized their late Dallas co-star Larry Hagman in an emotional memorial service in Texas on Saturday.

Video-Larry Hagman's Son: 'Dallas' Kept Him Alive

Gray, at one point overcome by tears, spoke affectionately of Hagman, her TV husband of many years.

"To work as Sue Ellen Ewing with J.R. was magical," she recalled. "To call him my friend for 35 years, priceless."

Duffy, who played Hagman's on-screen rival in the series, reminisced about his passionate and ever-positive friend.

Video-Matt Damon: Larry Hagman Impacted My Life

"There was never a day that went by that he didn't tell me how lucky we are to be working," said Duffy. "Anything he could do within the realm of his profession was the most exciting thing he could possibly do and he personified that."

According to DallasNews.com, Josh Henderson, Jesse Metcalfe, Brenda Strong, Julie Gonzalo and Sheree Wilson, of Dallas' TNT reboot, were also in attendance.

Video: Larry Hagman Reflects on Cancer Struggle

Hagman, 81, passed away from complications related to chemotherapy November 23. His ashes will be spread all over the world, per the late actor's wishes.

Read More..

Yule-fire rage

The father of the three little Connecticut girls who died in a Christmas Day fire last year was so crazed with grief that he threatened to kill himself and those he deemed responsible for the horror — including his ex-wife and her contractor boyfriend — in the wrenching days after the blaze.

Matthew Badger of Manhattan revealed the depth of his pain in stark new detail in an interview with New York magazine.

He recounted how he recently ran into the builder, Michael Borcina, downtown and the emotionally “struggling’’ man asked for a hug.

Badger refused.

Warzer Jaff

UNSPEAKABLE: Matthew Badger (below) has revealed that his grief over losing twins Grace and Sarah, 7, and 9-year-old Lily filled him with the horrendous urge to kill his ex-wife, Madonna Badger, her boyfriend, Michael Borcina — and himself.

The despondent, chain-smoking Badger — who has yet to return to his job as a commercial director since the fire — also said he’s fighting an uphill battle to get donations for the LilySarahGrace Fund, named after his tragic 9-year-old daughter, Lily, and 7-year-old twins, Grace and Sarah.

At a fund-raiser at a mansion in Norwalk last week attended by 200 people, Badger said, he received a paltry total of $1,200.

“I put my three daughters out there. And this is what they’re worth?’’ the dad said bitterly.

Badger, 47, said he’s spent the days since the tragedy trying to find meaning in his beautiful, spirited daughters’ deaths.

Two months ago, he and his current girlfriend went to India, where he met and cried with the Dalai Lama — and spread some of the girls’ ashes on a hill.

“Afterward, three white dogs came suddenly to sit with [the couple], beautiful, not mangy,’’ the mag says, quoting Badger, who wears a necklace with miniature Himalayan prayer flags.

Badger has also sprinkled some of his daughters’ ashes in the Columbia River in the Rockies — mingling them with those of his older brother, who had died of a heart attack 15 years earlier.

Badger recalled how he learned that all of his children — as well as the elderly parents of Badger’s ex-wife, famed Calvin Klein ad exec Madonna Badger, 48 — died in the Stamford blaze.

He had gotten two calls on his iPhone at around 7 that morning, but he figured he could call back later, thinking it was the girls wanting to talk about what Santa had brought them, the mag says. Shortly afterward, two policemen showed up at his door.

Hours earlier, Madonna and Borcina had been wrapping gifts in Madonna’s 116-year-old Victorian mansion.

Borcina was then in charge of clearing the ashes from that night’s fire from the fireplace. Authorities have said those ashes, put in bags in an outside mudroom, ignited the blaze.

Madonna now lives in Little Rock, Ark. She continues to challenge the official cause of the blaze and is suing Stamford officials for tearing down her house before an investigation could be conducted.

Her ex-husband also has sued Stamford — as well as Borcina.

kate.sheehy@nypost.com

Read More..

The business behind the artist: Miami’s art gallery scene still evolving

This week, thousands of art collectors, museum trustees, artists, journalists and hipsters from around the globe will arrive for the phenomenon known as Art Basel Miami Beach. The centerpiece of the week: works shown at the convention center by more than 260 of the world’s top galleries.

Only two of those are from Miami.

While Art Basel has helped transform the city’s reputation from beach-and-party scene to arts destination in the years since its 2002 Miami Beach debut, the region’s gallery identity is still coming into its own.

“Certainly Miami as an art town registers mightily because of the foundations, the collectors who have done an extraordinary job,” said Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America. “I think there’s a definite international awareness there. But the gallery scene probably has a bit of a ways to go. That doesn’t mean it’s not really fascinating and interesting.”

The gallery business, especially where newer artists are concerned, is a game of risk, faith and passion. Once a gallery takes on an artist who shows promise, they become an evangelist on their behalf, showing their work in-house and at fairs, presenting it to museums and curators and potential collectors and bearing the cost of that promotion.

For contemporary artists, most galleries take work on consignment, meaning they get a cut of as much as 50 percent when works sell. While local art galleries have been growing in number and popularity in the last several years — just try to find parking during the monthly art walk in Miami’s hot Wynwood neighborhood — even some of the area’s top art dealers say that while business overall is good, they struggle in the local marketplace.

“Our problem is that we have to do lots of art fairs in order to connect with the market that we need to connect with to sell the work that we have,” said Fredric Snitzer, a Miami-Dade gallery owner for 35 years. “The better the work is, the harder it is to sell in Miami. And that ain’t good.”

A handful of serious collectors call Miami home and store their own collections in Miami, including the Braman, Rubell, Margulies and de la Cruz families. But outside a relatively small local group, many gallerists say, their clients come from other parts of the country and world.

And some gallerists point out the troubling reality that even the powerhouse Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin could not stay open in Miami for more than a few years.

“The fact that big galleries have not been able to sustain their business models in South Florida tells you we’re obviously not at this high established point,” said gallery owner David Castillo. “It’s not like we’ve arrived, let’s sit back and watch Hauser & Wirth open down the street.”

Still, Miami’s gallery business has come a long way since the early 1970s, when a few dealers on Bay Harbor Island’s Kane Concourse were selling high-end pieces but the local scene was hardly embraced.

Virginia Miller, who owns ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, first opened in 1974 to showcase Florida artists, though her focus soon added an international scope. She and other longtime observers credit several factors for Miami’s transformation, including the community’s diversity, the establishment of important museums, the Art Miami fair that started 23 years ago, the presence of major collections and, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach.

Read More..

Wrong turn, then shock and horror at MIA

What began as a day of prayer and fellowship turned into a surreal scene of stunned, bloodied passengers and twisted metal.

There was the sickening sound of crunching metal early Saturday as a busload of Jehovah’s Witnesses was low-bridged by a concrete overpass at Miami International Airport, peeling back the top of the vehicle “like a can of sardines.”

Airport workers running to the scene found shocked passengers thrown into the aisle or trapped in their seats by the wreckage.

Riders in the front rows were crushed — two of them killed, others seriously injured.

The driver of the bus, 47-year-old Ramon Ferreiro, took a wrong turn off LeJeune Road, entering the airport by mistake, then rolled past multiple yellow signs warning tall vehicles. He drove on, approaching an overpass whose sign said “8ft-6in”. The driver either didn’t see it, couldn’t read it, or realized it too late.

The bus stood 11 feet tall.

“The last thing he should have done is to keep going,” said Greg Chin, airport spokesman. “That goes against all logic.”

Ferreiro, whose driver’s seat was lower than those of the passengers, was not injured.

One passenger, 86-year-old Miami resident Serfin Castillo, was killed on impact, and all 31 others were taken by ambulance to local hospitals. Thirteen ended up at Jackson Memorial’s Ryder Trauma Center, where one of them, 56-year-old Francisco Urana of Miami, died shortly after arriving.

Three remained in critical condition Saturday night, and three had been released.

Luis Jimenez, 72, got a few stitches on his lip and hurt his hand. He said the group left the Sweetwater Kingdom Hall about 7 a.m., bound for West Palm Beach.

“I was sitting in the back when it happened,” Jimenez said. “We were on our way to an assembly and lost a brother today. I’m very sad.”

Delvis Lazo, 15, a neighbor and member of the same congregation, described Castillo as a “nice, old man.” He often saw Castillo at religious gatherings, and their families have known each other for more than 15 years.

The last time Lazo saw him was about two months ago, as he prepped for a talk before his congregation.

“He gave me a thumbs up, told me that everything was going to be all right,” he said.

The bus, one of three traveling to the Spanish-language general assembly on Saturday, had been contracted by the congregation, which has fewer than 150 members.

According to public records, the bus belongs to Miami Bus Service Corporation, a Miami company owned by Mayling and Alberto Hernandez that offers regularly scheduled service between South Florida and Gainesville, often used by University of Florida students. At the home address listed for the company and the owners, Mayling Hernandez told The Miami Herald that passenger safety is her primary concern.

“At this time I’m worried about the driver and the families of the victims. I’m praying for them,” she said. “My job is to worry about the safety of the passengers who are our clients. What we do requires a lot of responsibility. I didn’t know the passengers but that doesn’t mean I’m not suffering.”

Neighbor Armando Bacigalupi described the owners as “caring people” and said he had seen buses park briefly in front of the house.

Read More..

Zynga stock falls after Facebook terms change

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Zynga slumped Friday after it disclosed with its partner Facebook that they have loosened their close ties to one another.

THE SPARK: The companies said in regulatory filings Thursday that they have amended their 2010 contract to say Zynga will no longer have to display Facebook ads or use Facebook payments on its own properties, such as Zynga.com.

In addition, Zynga, which makes the games “FarmVille” and “CityVille,” will no longer be required to use Facebook as the exclusive social site for its games, or to grant Facebook exclusive games. Any social game Zynga launches will also be available on Facebook either at the same time or shortly after it launches elsewhere.

Facebook, meanwhile, will be able to develop its own games after the end of March, though it said it has no plans to do so. Its deal with Zynga previously prohibited Facebook from developing games.

THE BIG PICTURE: While it’s not exactly splitsville, the original 2010 contract gave Zynga special status among Facebook game developers. Zynga relies on Facebook for most of the revenue it generates even as it works to establish its independence.

Facebook also makes money from Zynga, though the portion of its revenue that the game maker accounts for has declined. In the third quarter, Facebook said that 7 percent of its total revenue came from Zynga, down from 12 percent in the third quarter of 2011.

ANALYSIS: Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said while Zynga investors reacted badly to the news, he sees the changes as a long-term positive for both companies.

“Zynga now has an incentive to expand the reach of its most popular social games beyond Facebook and Zynga.com and be able to offer additional payment options, likely resulting in additional payers who are not Facebook users,” the analyst wrote in a note to investors.

Pachter rates Zynga “Outperform” with a target price of $ 4.

STOCK ACTION: Shares of San Francisco’S Zynga Inc. fell 19 cents, or 7.3 percent, to $ 2.43 in afternoon trading. Zynga went public in December 2011 at a price of $ 10 per share but its stock have fallen sharply amid concerns about its ability to keep growing quickly.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Bachelorette Ashley Hebert and JP Rosenbaum are Married

Ashley Hebert is a bachelorette no more!

The 28-year-old dentist and her construction manager fiancé J.P. Rosenbaum, 35, walked down the aisle on Saturday in Pasadena, California, reports People Magazine.

The ceremony, officiated by Bachelor and Bachelorette host Chris Harrison, was attended by familiar faces from the series including Ali Fedotowsky, Emily Maynard, and Jason and Molly Mesnick.

Video: 'Bachelorette' Ashley Hebert and Fiance J.P.'s Passionate PDA

Ashley and J.P.'s exchanging of vows will be televised December 16 on a two-hour special on ABC.

The season seven sweeties will be the second Bachelorette couple ever to televise their walk down the aisle, following in the footsteps of Trista and Ryan Sutter, who married in December 2003.

Read More..

SI man torched in cooking accident, neighbors put out flames: sources

A cooking accident turned a Staten Island man into a human torch who staggered in flames onto his front lawn, where horrified neighbors tried to extinguish him with blankets, sources said.

Louis Gloria, 60, was cooking in the kitchen of his Eltingville home at about 4:30 p.m. today when a grease fire erupted, engulfing his entire body, fire officials and neighbors said.

The desperate man first tried to douse the flames with water, but that only made the fire worse. In agony, he stumbled out of his Winchester Avenue home.

“He was burning alive,” said neighbor Edward Leavy Jr., 43. “It was a pretty horrific sight.”

Edward’s brother Matthew Leavy, 46, called 911 and then quickly ran over to aid the burning man, but the flames wouldn’t go down.

“The problem was you would try to smother the flames but it would just reignite, Leavy said. “His screams were just nightmarish. When the flame didn’t go down after two or three minutes, we all thought he was going to die.

Neighbors and relatives did their best to keep the flames under control until firefighters showed up on scene. Gloria was transported to Staten Island University Hospital in stable condition. His wife, who was home at the time, was also transported and is being treated for shock.

Read More..

Boat Show may block Miami’s 2016 Super Bowl bid

This winter, the biggest NFL match-up in South Florida might be Super Bowl versus Boat Show.

As South Florida readies a bid for the 2016 Super Bowl, it must contend with a major potential conflict on the tourism calendar. The National Football League may move the Super Bowl to Presidents’ Day weekend, already home to the five-day Miami International Boat Show since the 1940s.

It’s a significant enough conflict that, in the past, local tourism officials have declined to pursue a Super Bowl if it fell on boat show weekend. But this time around they may have no choice. For the first time, the NFL is requiring that potential host cities agree to a Presidents’ Day weekend Super Bowl if they want to pursue the big game at all, said two people who have seen the NFL request for Super Bowl bids.

The NFL “invited South Florida [to bid] knowing there was going to be an issue with Presidents’ Day weekend and the boat show,” said Nicki Grossman, Broward’s tourism director. “In the past, South Florida has not responded to a Super Bowl date that included Presidents’ Day weekend. This package is different.”

South Florida vies with New Orleans as the top Super Bowl host, with government and tourism leaders touting the game as both a boon to the economy and a publicity bonanza. But the notion of accommodating both Super Bowl and boat show — not to mention a major arts festival in Coconut Grove — strikes some top tourism officials as a bad idea.

“There is not sufficient hotel inventory available in Miami that weekend to host a Super Bowl,” said William Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We have taken a close look at that weekend, and it’s not physically possible in Miami to host Super Bowl during the Presidents’ Day weekend because of the boat show and the Coconut Grove Arts Festival. The hotel inventory is all being used for these two great events.”

His comments are at odds with the region’s top Super Bowl organizer and reflect the burden that the boat show may be to South Florida’s Super Bowl hopes for 2016 and 2017. The NFL invited Miami and San Francisco to bid for the 2016 Super Bowl by April 1, with the loser vying with Houston for the 2017 game. Talbert said the bid package states both decisions will be made in May.

For now, South Florida’s Super Bowl organizers face a largely hypothetical challenge, because the current NFL schedule has the Super Bowl occurring two weeks before Presidents’ Day weekend. The bid requirements for the ’16 and ’17 Super Bowls include three consecutive weekends as possibilities for the game, with the latest falling on the Presidents’ Day holiday.

Still, possible logistical hurdles may combine with political obstacles if the Miami Dolphins resume their push for a tax-funded renovation of Sun Life Stadium, the Super Bowl’s South Florida home.

Last year, the Dolphins proposed that Broward and Miami-Dade counties subsidize a $225 million renovation at Sun Life as a way to keep the region competitive for Super Bowls and other large events. The renovation includes a partial roof that would prevent the kind of drenching Super Bowl spectators suffered in 2007 when a rare February downpour hit Miami Gardens.

Read More..