The city of South Miami has proposed that Florida be split into two states, allowing a newly created South Florida to take measures aimed at protecting the environment into its own hands.
The proposal came in the form of a resolution passed by South Miami’s city council that explains why it feels the drastic step of creating a new state is necessary to protect achieve the area’s environmental needs, specifically a situation with dangerous nuclear waste.
“North Florida is approximately 120 feet above sea level while the average elevation of South Florida is less than 50 feet, with a very large portion of South Florida averaging less than 15 feet above sea level,” the resolution reads. “This area also includes… the Turkey Point nuclear reactors. These reactors are 42 years old and less than 5 feet above sea level within excess of 2.5 million pounds of nuclear waste buried on the grounds of the nuclear plant.”
The plan would entail drawing up a new Florida state line north of Orlando, Tampa and Clearwater, with South Florida encompassing 24 counties and total about 23,000 square miles – amounting to about 67 percent of the state’s current population.
South Miami officials believe that if the city doesn’t deal directly with the environmental concern, state officials will take no action to protect the area’s interests.
“It’s very apparent that the attitude of the northern part of the state is that they would just love to saw the state in half and just let us float off into the Caribbean,” said South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard. “They’ve made that abundantly clear at every possible opportunity and I would love to give them the opportunity to do that.”
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