Floaters: Surfers and Swimmers Complain Over Lack of Notice of Sewage Release Along Miami Beaches

Swimmers and surfers in Miami are a bit put out this week after they learned that 20 million gallons of raw sewage was released along beaches without adequate notice to the public. It brings a new meaning to the surfer term “floater.”

The spill occurred during repairs to a 72-inch broken sewage pipe in Miami Gardens that sent sewage into the Intracoastal Waterway over the weekend.

The Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer people posted a small notice on their website and put pink notices around public parks. The one obvious thing they did not do was send people down the beach warning people in the water. As a result, people continued to swim in the sewage-laden water. Clearly, those people were not swimming in sewage by choice. It makes you actually long for BP oil.

However, Spokesperson Adriana Lamar stated “I’m confident we did what we needed to do.”

Source: NBC.