Hardworking folks in the heartland should come before deadbeat, worthless, marxist, college dropouts, no??!

A teacher in Madison, Nebraska, has been charged in an arrest warrant with first-degree sexual assault of a student.




Ortiz


Nixel Ortiz, 29, of Madison, was arrested Monday following an investigation by the Nebraska State Patrol. She is accused of having sexual relations with an 18-year-old student on May 6.
According to court documents, the investigator learned that Ortiz and the student began messaging each other around Christmas. Ortiz allegedly told the investigator that she picked the student up and they had a sexual encounter at her apartment. She said she thought the student was 19 years old.

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Another teacher told the investigator it was rumored that a photo of Ortiz had been circulating on social media with the caption "Come pick me up cutie." The affidavit said Ortiz allegedly said to the fellow teacher: "If I don’t get a boyfriend, I feel like I’m going to end up on the news."

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Madison Public Schools Superintendent Justin Frederick said Ortiz has been placed on administrative leave. Ortiz is listed on the Madison Public Schools’ website as an English Language Learners teacher for grades 6 to 8, and an enrichment teacher for grades 7 and 8.

Ortiz is charged with first-degree sexual abuse by a school employee. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison. She has been released from jail and is awaiting her first court hearing.
Madison is a city of about 2,200 residents located approximately 113 miles northwest of Omaha.

“It appears increasingly certain that the Tesla Semi will never see commercial production.”

Just kidding. Delivery event December 1st.

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A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked part of a Florida law that criminalized transporting into the state anyone who lacked lawful immigration status.
The injunction throws into question a key enforcement component of the law, which went into effect last July and was championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis as he ran for the Republican nomination for president.
The law was intended to discourage unauthorized immigrants from living and working in the state, and organizations that work with immigrants say many undocumented workers have left the state in recent months.
The Farmworker Association of Florida sued the state in July 2023, alleging the law was unconstitutional. The organization said that its members would be separated from their families, unable to receive lifesaving medical appointments and prevented from driving to immigration agencies overseeing their cases. They risked jail time if they did so.
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The judge in the case, Roy K. Altman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the law was unconstitutionally vague. But he was persuaded that in criminalizing the transport of undocumented immigrants, the state was usurping federal authority over immigration.

In his ruling, invoking the Immigration and Nationality Act and a previous ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, he wrote that “this framework allows the federal government to retain control over enforcement.”
Judge Altman was confirmed to the federal bench in 2019 after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump.
In recent months, several states have passed bills to crack down on undocumented immigration, including Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa, which are all facing legal challenges.
“This decision on the Florida law is yet another blow to an attempt by states to take over federal immigration enforcement,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

At the end of April, Judge Aileen M. Cannon unsealed a number of documents related to the investigation into Donald Trump’s retention of documents marked as classified after he left the White House. Within hours, a new line of rhetoric emerged among the former president’s most fervent supporters: The whole thing had been a frame-up!



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Julie Kelly, a right-wing writer who specializes in plucking sensational-sounding allegations from legal documents, had plucked a sensational-sounding allegation from the mix. The General Services Administration, she claimed, had stored and shipped material to Mar-a-Lago that included the marked documents — a discovery that she suggested indicated that Trump had been framed.
“These are the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings,’ ” she claimed on social media.


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But this narrative was not true. The team of folks managing Trump’s transition out of the White House leased space from GSA that expired after six months. At that point, all the material from the transition office was sent to Florida, including to Mar-a-Lago. By September 2021, Trump was in possession of those boxes, months before several boxes were sent back to the National Archives and Records Administration and almost a year before the FBI search that uncovered more than 100 documents marked as classified.
Picking through court files, Kelly also claimed that the famous photo of documents on a carpeted Mar-a-Lago floor was a product of an effort to mislead the public. This, too, was incorrect.
On Tuesday, Judge Cannon unsealed a new tranche of documents in the Florida case being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith (and being delayed by Cannon). And there was Kelly, picking out details of the FBI’s documents preparing for the search and casting them in a remarkable light: They showed not standard operating procedure but, instead, that federal law enforcement was ready to draw their weapons on the former president.




“Armed FBI agents were preparing to confront Trump and even engage Secret Service if necessary,” she wrote on social media, following a post quoting a filing from legal team in which the FBI’s authorization to use deadly force was noted. “They were going to go door to door to terrorize [Mar-a-Lago] guests and even pick the locks. Gestapo.”
Later she shared a document titled “Policy Statement Use of Deadly Force.”

Even just Kelly’s summation of the “confrontation” is misleading. The linked document notes that, if Trump (the former president of the United States, or FPOTUS) should show up during the search — he was known to be at his home in New Jersey, which was one reason that the search occurred when it did — that staff from the FBI and the special counsel’s office “will be prepared to engage with FPOTUS” and his Secret Service team.



Kelly’s presentation of “engage” here is in the military, engage-the-enemy sense. The obvious interpretation, however, is that the unexpected arrival of the former president was a contingency for which the bureau needed to be prepared (this document is titled “contingencies”) and that the plan was simply for the FBI and special counsel team to deal with it. If, additionally, the Secret Service made the search difficult, the FBI would engage with the Secret Service … “per existing liaison relationships.” This is phone-call engagement, not bang-bang engagement.
In a statement, the FBI noted that it “followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force.” That point is important: The deadly-force document shared by Kelly constrains how and when firearms might be used. (Kelly wrote that it showed how the “FBI risked the lives of Donald Trump, his family, his staff, and MAL guests for a publicity stunt to make it look like Trump stole national security files.”)
Thanks to her repeated willingness to make sweeping, unsubstantiated allegations of dire malfeasance to an audience utterly uninterested in the validity of those allegations, Kelly has amassed a large audience on social media. So the “the feds wanted to kill Trump” story quickly took off.



The right-wing blog Federalist wrote a story about it. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) shared Kelly’s allegation, asking if the FBI was “going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too???” When Trump himself posted the allegation on Truth Social, Greene took credit for tipping him off that the “Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.”
By Thursday evening, Trump was fundraising off it.


On Fox News, host Jesse Watters — the replacement for former host Tucker Carlson — had no qualms about picking up the story.
“They’re saying Trump’s going to unleash assassination squads on his enemies,” Watters said, “but Biden unleashed armed agents into Trump’s house, authorizing them to use deadly force.” He continued to suggest that the FBI agents conducting the search perhaps wore plain clothes not to reduce the visibility of their hunt for documents but because “maybe they were looking for a little action,” hoping the Secret Service would prompt a confrontation.



Hours later, well after the Kelly-driven narrative had been demonstrated to be unfounded, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo hosted a panel that marveled at President Biden — quickly positioned by Trump supporters as the real driving actor here — “authorizing the FBI, if it came to that and he resisted arrest … to kill Donald Trump,” as she put it.
The idea that opposition to Trump is so fervent among his opponents that they want to see him dead is not new. In a conversation last year, Carlson suggested this possibility to Trump directly. The former president replied that the “savage animals” who were targeting him are “people that are sick.” It’s an appealing bit of rhetoric in that it frames the left as deranged and bloodthirsty and it reinforces a sense of victimization that’s undergirding Trump’s 2024 campaign.
To an objective observer? It is self-evidently ludicrous.



It is a feature of the modern age that people peruse large sets of documents or data and pluck out things that they then misinterpret. Few, however, have Julie Kelly’s combination of audience, devotion to Trump and shamelessness. The result is that her dishonest or incorrect assessments of important issues drive news coverage and spurs the claims made by the former president.
There was another post she offered Tuesday that was not as attention-grabbing. She noted that the new documents again noted the transfer of material to Florida in September 2021.
“[W]ho knows if some of the ‘classified’ docs seized during FBI raid were contained in GSA-packed boxes,” she mused.
And the answer is: She did, back in April — at least according to her initial thread on social media that went viral then.
It’s almost as if her sensational claims don’t hold up over time. Perhaps her allies might be more cautious in elevating them.

On their Top 30 Over 30 list.

George Kittle overtakes Travis Kelce: Kittle turned 30 years old this past season and is on an upward trajectory, giving him the nod over Kelce.

4. TE GEORGE KITTLE, SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS​

While Kittle’s two-year 90.0 PFF grade is not as good as that of Travis Kelce, his trajectory and younger age give him the nod as the top tight end on this list. Kittle was the highest-graded tight end in the NFL in 2023 and has consistently dominated the position despite playing among a plethora of talented pass-catchers contending for targets.

7. TE TRAVIS KELCE, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS​

The best tight end in the NFL for several years, Kelce saw his overall grade in 2023 (83.2) dip to the point of it being the second-lowest-graded season of his career (74.7, 2015). Still, Kelce’s connection with Patrick Mahomes remains one of the best in the NFL.

Clearly its Bubba Jenkins… the only person to show up in March against PSU..

Tell me Im wrong, ass hats.

Topped out at 10.4 in 100M and 21.10 in 200M. His HS career is done and he's off and running to Iowa City.

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Anyone want to try and say this is OK?

I saw a bunch of promos about Steele's long career while watching weather coverage yesterday.
One of his sons used to post here. And, no, not naming him.
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/04/14/ron-steele-50-years-on-the-air-and-firmly-grounded/

it always amazes me when people can pound beer quickly

A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked part of a Florida law that criminalized transporting into the state anyone who lacked lawful immigration status.
The injunction throws into question a key enforcement component of the law, which went into effect last July and was championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis as he ran for the Republican nomination for president.
The law was intended to discourage unauthorized immigrants from living and working in the state, and organizations that work with immigrants say many undocumented workers have left the state in recent months.
The Farmworker Association of Florida sued the state in July 2023, alleging the law was unconstitutional. The organization said that its members would be separated from their families, unable to receive lifesaving medical appointments and prevented from driving to immigration agencies overseeing their cases. They risked jail time if they did so.
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The judge in the case, Roy K. Altman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the law was unconstitutionally vague. But he was persuaded that in criminalizing the transport of undocumented immigrants, the state was usurping federal authority over immigration.

In his ruling, invoking the Immigration and Nationality Act and a previous ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, he wrote that “this framework allows the federal government to retain control over enforcement.”
Judge Altman was confirmed to the federal bench in 2019 after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump.
In recent months, several states have passed bills to crack down on undocumented immigration, including Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa, which are all facing legal challenges.
“This decision on the Florida law is yet another blow to an attempt by states to take over federal immigration enforcement,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

Another domino has fallen within the University of Iowa women’s basketball staff.



Former assistant coach Jenni Fitzgerald — who has served the last four years as an advisor — announced her retirement Wednesday.


Fitzgerald spent the last 32 years on Lisa Bluder’s staff, whether as an assistant, an associate head coach, or “special assistant to the head coach.”




“It’s been a privilege to be a part of the Hawkeye family for the past 24 years,” Fitzgerald said in a release. “(Bluder, Jan Jensen) I had big dreams of filling arenas and hoisting trophies when we first stepped onto campus. Because of the women that came through our program and our Hawkeye community, those dreams became our reality.


“Retiring is bittersweet, but I know I’m one of the few people that can say they had the honor of working alongside their best friends for 32 years. I’m forever grateful for all the memories I’ve made and the people I’ve met along the way.”


Last Monday, Bluder announced her retirement as head coach. Jensen was elevated to the head role.


Fitzgerald spent 38 years in women’s college basketball as a coach and player.





At North Scott High School (she graduated in 1986), Fitzgerald was named Miss Iowa Basketball and the state’s Female Athlete of the Year in 1986. She earned first-team all-state honors in basketball, softball and volleyball, and was a 1995 inductee into the Iowa Girls Basketball Hall of Fame.


At Drake University, Fitzgerald was starting point guard and three-year team captain, earning first-team all-conference recognition as a senior.


She spent two years as a graduate assistant at Southern Illinois before coaching alongside Bluder and Jensen for eight years at Drake.


Fitzgerald helped Iowa to 22 postseason appearances, including five Big Ten tournament championships, two Big Ten regular-season titles, 18 NCAA tournaments, five Sweet 16s, three Elite Eights, two Final Fours, and national championship game appearances in 2023 and 2024.


“I have valued working alongside Jenni the past 32 years,” Bluder said. “She is an amazing strategist and coach, and I am thankful that I get to call her a friend for the rest of our lives.”


Jensen’s staff consists of Raina Harmon, Abby Stamp and Tania Davis. Bluder will work as an advisor.

New YorkCNN —
Some progressives have frequently blamed corporate greed for fueling the high cost of living that Americans are fed up with.

Yet new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco casts doubt on the greedflation theory.

Economists at the SF Fed found that corporate price gouging was not a primary catalyst for the inflation surge of 2021 to 2022.

The Fed researchers did find that some companies exercised pricing power by raising prices above their production costs – a gap known as markups.

For instance, markups spiked for gasoline, cars and other goods in 2021. Likewise, there were increased markups for repair, general merchandise, laundry, personal care and other services, according to the Fed.

‘Not unusual’​

Of course, the inflation crisis was not limited to just a few key sectors. It was economy-wide. (The annual inflation rate fell slightly in April, but it still remains well above the Fed’s 2% target.)

When zooming out and looking at markups across the economy, the SF Fed economists found little evidence that price gouging was the main culprit.

“Aggregate markups – the more relevant measure for overall inflation – have stayed essentially flat since the start of the recovery,” the paper concluded. “Rising markups have not been a main driver of the recent surge and subsequent decline in inflation during the current recovery.”

In fact, the SF Fed found that the path of collective markups over the past three years “is not unusual compared with previous recoveries.”

‘It angers them and angers me’​

This runs counters to the argument from some progressives including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who for years has refocused the inflation argument on corporate greed.

“Right now prices are up at the pump, at the supermarket, and online. At the same time, energy companies, grocery companies, and online retailers are reporting record profits,” Warren said in December 2021. “That’s not simply a pandemic issue. It’s not simply some inevitable economic force of nature. It’s greed—and in some cases, it is flatly illegal.”

More recently, President Joe Biden has called out corporate greed as a reason prices remain high.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/05/08/joe-biden-preview-sot-ebof-intv-lead-digvid.cnn
“If you take a look at what people have, they have the money to spend. It angers them and angers me that you have to spend more,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett, pointing to the shrinking size of Snickers bars and other food products. “It’s like 20% less for the same price. That’s corporate greed. That’s corporate greed. And we have got to deal with it. And that’s what I’m working on.”

In February, Biden said there are “still too many corporations in America ripping people off. Price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation.”

“America – we’re tired of being played for suckers!” Biden said.

Although the paper did not directly mention corporate greed, shrinkflation or Biden, the research undercuts the argument that greedflation drove the early inflation.

White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards told CNN in a statement that the study supports Biden’s argument that “record profits are increasing inflation in some sectors, such as gas and general merchandise.”

“These markups should have reversed as we recovered from the pandemic—the fact that they haven’t means prices can come down if corporate profits come back to earth,” Edwards said. “President Biden has repeatedly called on large corporations to pass their record profits along to their customers by lowering prices. And he is taking on corporate rip-offs like hidden junk fees that costs families billions of dollars a year. The President will continue to call out corporate rip-offs and fight to keep money in Americans’ pockets.”

‘Looking for scapegoats’​

The debate comes as inflation remains a major frustration for Americans – and a significant political liability for Biden ahead of the November election.

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Mainly because it has transformed into entertainment politics and disinformation platforms that shape viewers / readers reality vs simply reporting the true news.

Not sure how you unwind this.

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can gft !!! Holy hell, was out at a couple nature areas recently and came back with a shit ton of bites. I'm scratchin' them until they bleed. Of course, instead of going to my pcp, I'm seeking more qualified help from GIAOT/HROT. Those of you unfortunate to have similar experiences, what are my options? Do I need to fap more?

In the distant and innocent year of 2002, lawmakers really thought they could cut back on negative and corrosive political advertising with one simple trick: Making candidates personally stand behind their ads. Within a year of passage of the McCain-Feingold Act, politicians started appearing at the end of their ads mouthing much-mocked platitudes like, “I’m John Kerry, and I approve this message!”

Though the requirement is technically still in effect, it seems fantastically quaint now. The law never applied to independent or super PAC ads, which drenched the airwaves in mud, and the “stand by your ad” requirements never applied to internet ads, which would soon become one of the dominant ways in which candidates misled voters.

More crucially, the requirement apparently had little effect on the era of Donald Trump. That was evident as recently as Monday, when Trump reposted a video in which he precelebrated his 2024 victory and answered the question of “what’s next for America?” with an image containing the words: “the creation of a unified Reich.”

It was clear in Trump’s first presidential campaign that this level of cartoonish outrageousness would help him get the attention he craved. As Jim Rutenberg of The Times wrote in 2018, the campaign law never stopped Trump or other Republican candidates from advertising blatant lies and overt racism; being crudely aggressive and openly authoritarian, in fact, had become a useful tool.
Former Representative David Price of North Carolina, an architect of the “stand by your ad” provision in 2002, summed up the new attitude this way 16 years later: “I’m the baddest, meanest, most politically incorrect guy in town and will say whatever pops into my head and I regard that as a political virtue.”
The “stand by your ad” law couldn’t prevent this attitude, but if it had been more effective, it might at least have spared the country the embarrassing spectacle of blaming bad ads on some low-level staff member somewhere. In 2015, when Trump retweeted a dumb post mocking Iowa voters for preferring Ben Carson, he later deleted the tweet and put full responsibility on an intern, who he said had apologized. (Trump himself, of course, almost never apologizes.)
In the case of the Reich video, the campaign said it was created by a “random account online” and reposted “by a staffer,” though the posting was done in Trump’s own name. (The campaign took it down the next day, after the inevitable outcry.) Too bad Congress didn’t prohibit blaming the help for a candidate’s deeply offensive messages.

Remarking that it’s not feasible to jail the Iowa Department of Corrections for deliberately violating a court order, a Polk County judge has fined the state agency $1,500 for contempt of court.



The penalty stems from a lawsuit that 13 prison inmates, then housed at the Anamosa State Penitentiary, filed against the Corrections Department in 2018. The inmates alleged the state was violating their constitutional rights by denying them access to magazines or other materials with nudity or sexually explicit content.


The lawsuit was triggered by the Iowa Legislature’s 2018 revision of the state law that restricts inmate access to adult content. After the revisions, the law barred any commercially published material that contained not only sexually explicit content but also nudity.




A judge in the case concluded the law and the department policies that sprang from it were potentially too broad and could infringe on the inmates’ First Amendment rights. The court issued an injunction that stated the department “shall not prevent the distribution of materials to (the plaintiffs) and other inmates similarly situated that features mere non-sexually explicit nudity.”


In 2022, with the injunction still in place, one of the plaintiffs sought to hold the Corrections Department in contempt of court, alleging it was violating the 2019 order by denying his request to purchase lingerie magazines. The inmate later testified he had filed a complaint with the Iowa Office of Ombudsman on the issue. Court exhibits show that in October 2020, the ombudsman’s office told the inmate it questioned the department’s “dubious interpretation and application of the court injunction” — indicating it had been put on notice that it was violating the court order.


At about that same time, another plaintiff complained the department had taken away his copy of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue — a magazine that’s commonly available at grocery stores and other retailers.


During the trial, Dee Radeke, an inmate and prison librarian, testified that after the Legislature amended the law, a prison security director asked him to pull from circulation any pictures of pinup girls, graphic novels or novels containing strong sexual content such as “Shades of Grey.”





Corrections Department Executive Officer Rebecca Bowker testified that she followed the court’s order “to a T,” but also testified that she wasn’t sure if she had even seen the order. In addition, Bowker testified she believed the policy prohibited photos of women in thong bikinis on the grounds that their genitalia would not be “substantially” covered.


The inmates lost their case, with Polk County District Court Judge Jeffrey Farrell concluding they did not have a First Amendment right to possess materials containing nudity. Farrell then turned to the issue of whether the Corrections Department had violated the 2019 injunction while the case was still pending.


The department, Farrell concluded, had “violated this order in multiple ways,” in part by amending its own policies in 2022 — long after the inmates had sued.


“The injunction had been in place for three years at the time DOC changed its policy in 2022,” Farrell noted. “This action shows DOC acted willfully in denying nude content despite the injunction. The DOC denied (one plaintiff’s) request for three editions of Playboy that had been approved under the prior policy.”


Because there were three separate magazines the inmate was denied, Farrell found there were three separate instances of contempt. In determining what sanctions to impose, the judge observed the court “does not consider jail as a real option …”


Adding there was no individual who could or should be jailed as a result of the “institutional” violations of the court’s order, Farrell imposed the maximum penalty.


He wrote that he considered awarding the $1,500 to the inmate who pursued the contempt action “so he could receive some remuneration for the unlawful denial of the publications he requested.” The law, however, stipulates the fines are punitive, Farrell noted, and are intended for “the benefit of the state” — the same entity that will be paying the fine.


The Corrections Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Last week, the inmates filed a motion for a new trial and an appeal of Farrell’s decision.


Editor’s note: Reporter Clark Kauffman worked for the Iowa Office of Ombudsman from October 2018 through November 2019. This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

Just a gut punch to every non-biden supporting American!

Their ownership group embarrasses me. Both as a supporter and as an American.

Just let Poch go after they bought a whole new exceedingly young team selling off the more experienced team and he still managed to get things together to finish 6th in the League and qualify for European competition.

Not only are they letting a coach go when he was clearly posting a very upward trend line in terms of results which is bad enough, but they are making themselves a toxic choice to any manager with options.

How these bozos got their hands on so much money I have no idea but they seem bound and determined to lose it all.

On the worst days, when the backyard would flood and the toilet would gurgle and the smell of sewage hung thick in the air, Monica Arenas would flee to her mother-in-law’s home to use the bathroom or wash laundry.

“It was a nightmare,” Arenas, 41, recalled one evening in the modest house she shares with her husband and teenage daughter several miles north of downtown Miami.

She worried about what pathogens might lurk in the tainted waters, what it might cost to fix the persistent problems and whether the ever-present anxiety would ever subside.

Residents in neighborhoods around Arenas’s have similar tales to share — of out-of-commission toilets, of groundwater rising through cracks in their garage floors, of worries about their own waste running through the streets and ultimately polluting nearby Biscayne Bay.


SEPTICTANKS: Little River to Biscayne Bay
0:26

For all the obvious challenges facing South Florida as sea levels surge, one serious threat to public health and the environment remains largely out of sight, but everywhere:

Septic tanks.

Millions of them dot the American South, a region grappling with some of the planet’s fastest-rising seas, according to a Washington Post analysis. At more than a dozen tide gauges from Texas to North Carolina, sea levels have risen at least 6 inches since 2010 — a change similar to what occurred over the previous five decades.

This image is a key for the following image which is a map. The map is titled "One village’s risk" with a description: "Officials worry about the threat of rising groundwater along the Little River in and around El Portal, where many homes rely on septic systems"







Officials worry about the threat of rising groundwater along the Little River in and around El Portal, where many homes rely on septic systems





A map showing septic systems along the Little River in an area of Miami-Dade county that includes El Portal and portions of Miami and Miami Shores.



King tide shown is the highest observed tide at Virginia Key on Oct. 28, 2023 (1.96 ft.)




Along those coastlines, swelling seas are driving water tables higher and creating worries in places where septic systems abound, but where officials often lack reliable data about their location or how many might already be compromised.

“These are ticking time bombs under the ground that, when they fail, will pollute,” said Andrew Wunderley, executive director of the nonprofit Charleston Waterkeeper, which monitors water quality in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

Story continues below advertisement

To work properly, septic systems need to sit above an adequate amount of dry soil that can filter contaminants from wastewater before it reaches local waterways and underground drinking water sources. But in many communities, that buffer is vanishing.

A diagram titled "How rising waters threaten septic systems" The most common type of septic systems rely on gravity to move sewage through a tank where solids settle and liquid waste is slowly released into the soil through a series of perforated pipes called a drain field. The soil acts as a natural filter, neutralizing germs and pollutants before they can contaminate groundwater. Sea level rise and extreme rainfall are raising groundwater levels, resulting in more shallow buffers of soil that help protect local waterways and underground aquifers. If a conventional septic system becomes submerged, wastewater will not be properly treated. Toilets can stop working and sewage can flood yards.



How rising waters threaten septic systems



The most common type of septic systems rely on gravity to move sewage through a tank where solids settle and liquid waste is slowly released into the soil through a series of perforated pipes called a drain field.







The soil acts as a natural filter, neutralizing germs and pollutants before they can contaminate groundwater.



Sea level rise and extreme rainfall are raising groundwater levels, resulting in more shallow buffers of soil that help protect local waterways and underground aquifers.



If a conventional septic system becomes submerged, wastewater will not be properly treated. Toilets can stop working and sewage can flood yards.


An estimated 120,000 septic systems remain in Miami-Dade County, their subterranean concrete boxes and drain fields a relic of the area’s feverish growth generations ago. Of those, the county estimated in 2018, about half are at risk of being “periodically compromised” during severe storms or particularly wet years.

Miami, where seas have risen six inches since 2010, offers a high-profile example of a predicament that parts of the southeast Atlantic and Gulf coasts are confronting — and one scientists say will become only more pervasive — as waters continue to rise.
A chart showing annual average sea levels at Virginia Key, Biscayne Bay, Florida where according to Post analysis, seas have risen 6.0 inches since 2010. The chart shows linear trends for two periods: 1932-2009 where the trend is 0.1 inches per year and 2010 to 2023 where the trend is 0.4 inches per year.










here, expensive repairs afflict homeowners as septic systems falter. Fetid water increases the risk of gastrointestinal diseases and other health hazards as floodwaters fill yards and streets. Profound worries persist about the environmental toll — which, researchers in Miami say, means submerged septic tanks are leaking nutrients into the porous limestone, potentially fueling algae blooms that kill fish.

“It’s really pretty gross,” said Michael Sukop, a hydrogeologist at Florida International University.

Rising seas will only exacerbate the problem, he added. “As the water table gets higher, all bets are off.”

Miami-Dade County is racing to replace as many septic tanks as possible, as quickly as possible. But it is a tedious, expensive and daunting task, one that officials say will ultimately cost billions of dollars they don’t yet have.

Incidentally, this multi-million dollar boondoggle has already been abandoned post completion >