The photos and videos are startling. They show clouds forming in Biscayne Bay where the city of Miami Beach pumps water out to keep the streets dry.
Activists say that the the thousands of gallons of storm water are accompanied by plastic bags, Styrofoam, construction debris and other pollutants — creating a
cloudy and sometimes oily sludge that can’t possibly be good for the environment or our beaches.
While some have been documenting this since last Fall, recent photos and videos posted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by one of the commission candidates has created a bit of a shit storm at City Hall as administrators, Ladra was told, scramble to address what could be a small scandal just before the election time.
“The city has spent hundreds of millions on these pumping stations and they are not working,” said commission candidate Michael DeFilippi, a real estate agent who has also created the Clean Up Miami Beach group. “They are not blocking trash and debris out properly, the way they should be.”
“There is a major lack of oversight,” he told Ladra Tuesday. “And they’re going to be expanding this all over the city, pumping more water at high speed into the ocean, taking with it more debris and more pollutants.”
See? The pumping stations we are talking about, on West Avenue at 10th and 14th streets, are only two of perhaps as many as 60 or 70 that officials are prepared to install 
citywide over the next three years at a cost of about $300 million.
It is the same “new anti-flooding pump” featured prominently in one of the recent TV ads where Mayor Philip Levine touts his freshman administration. “Streets that were once flooded are now dry, because we installed new pumps that returned the water to the sea,” the mayor says in the 30-second spot.
City Manager Jimmy Morales did not respond to a message left on his voice mail. But an apparent rash of complaints prompted him to write the mayor and commissioners Tuesday, admitting that there is some material in the discharge. While he tried to make little of it, it looks like there is enough a problem to install “turbidity barriers” and get the water tested.
“I know there have been some complaints raised about the discharge from the outflow valve at 10th street. Let me first say that at no point have we been ignoring this,” Morales wrote, adding that he spent an hour Tuesday morning personally watching the valve and the discharge. He had the contractor turn on both pumps and said he did not see ann oily sludge. “There was no
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