As Rachel Silverstein stepped off the small boat into the Miami waters, the weight of the scuba tanks lifted. Nearby a dredge ship churned. Silverstein felt the deep vibrations in her chest, overwhelmed by what sounded like “a monster eating cars underwater.”
Visibility was limited. It was the most challenging dive she’d ever made. It was also a turning point, the first dive in a new career that would end up affecting not just Miami’s waters but everything from the American reef system to federal nuclear regulations.
The previous week, on Silverstein’s fourth day in her new job at Miami Waterkeeper, the phone rang. It was The New York Times, hoping for a comment from the citizen-led endeavor on the rumors that a dredging project in Miami was burying protected reefs in sediment. “Let me just check on that,” Silverstein remembers saying before hanging up. But there were no colleagues to check with. She was alone, working as “executive director, chief dishwasher, and everything in between.”
Then 30 years old, Silverstein had recently completed her Ph.D. in Marine Biology and Ecology at the University of Miami. A specialist in coral-reef ecology, she had studied reefs from the Caribbean to Western Australia, then headed north to Washington, D.C., to work on public policy in the U.S. Senate. Now, in the summer of 2014, she had returned to South Florida and applied to fill a vacant position at Miami Waterkeeper. She understood that her salary was only guaranteed for the next four months, long enough for her to find her feet. But here she was, immediately in crisis mode.
The dredge was an initiative of PortMiami, the busiest passenger port in America. The plan was to excavate a deeper channel for the ocean’s newest behemoths, Neo-Panamax container ships, each capable of holding as much cargo as over 40 miles of freight cars. The dredging company had been hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Its work was supposedly being monitored by biologists. Later, the report commissioned by the USACE would indicate that out of the 224 corals tagged for observation, only 6 had died.
As Silverstein continued her dive, her worries grew. The currents near the dredge channel move fast and can be disorientating. A Mercedes that once fell off a local ferry was swept hundreds of yards before lodging on the seabed. Silverstein double-checked her location in the churning waters, cautiously exploring what she’d later refer to as a moonscape. Finally she saw the top part of a sea fan, a relatively common coral, sticking up through silt. That’s when she realized the rosy reports of minimal coral damage were “disingenuous at best.”
There were no colleagues to check with. She was alone, working as “executive director, chief dishwasher, and everything in between.”
Acre after acre of the reef had been buried in fine sediments up to five and a half inches deep, rendering the corals unable to reproduce or even feed. Silverstein’s year-long re-examination of the dredge company’s own data revealed that the true number of dead corals was not six (of the 224 tagged for observation) but more than 560,000. Ross Cunning, a research biologist who analyzed the data alongside Silverstein, calls that figure “an undercount.... We’re probably talking in the millions.”
Water is both Miami’s main attraction and its biggest threat. Roughly 80 percent of the city’s tourists swim, boat, or fish while there. The South Florida Water Management District estimates the economic contribution of Biscayne Bay at $64 billion a year. Yet the reefs are more than an economic asset; they are also home to thousands of marine animals. Additionally, those reefs can absorb as much as 97 percent of wave energy during a hurricane, protecting Miami’s expensive real estate.
Yet one afternoon’s turquoise seas can transform into the next day’s king tides, when water seeps up into city streets through Miami’s limestone foundations. During heavy rainstorms, you might see a Lamborghini float by.
Miami is bounded by two national parks: the Everglades National Park to the north and Biscayne National Park to the south. For most of the past century, USACE decided how those waters flow. There are few bigger opponents to take on, but having seen the waters with her own eyes, Silverstein filed suit within weeks.
That suit would soon reveal the depths of the catastrophe. USACE was supposed to have begun the dredge by collecting baseline data on the number, size, and condition of the corals. Instead, those numbers had been submitted three weeks after the work had started. While even dying staghorn corals can poke up from reefs like deer antlers from heather, other species, such as brain corals, may protrude less than an inch. Whatever had already been buried may never even have been documented.
The defense released by USACE and its dredging company argued that most of the corals had died from other factors. It was certainly true that what Cunning called “the most devastating coral disease ever observed” was first detected nearby, not long after the dredge. It would soon spread through the Florida Keys and out into the Caribbean, killing corals by the millions. Even now, a decade later, little is still known about the disease as it continues to proliferate. “There have been about 120 studies,” says consultant Bill Precht, a director at the firm hired by USACE to assess the damage, “and we still don’t even know if it’s a virus or a bacterium.”
One recent federal study proved that the disease passes particularly rapidly through sediment, which might have been a potential accelerant for a previously contained pathogen. Professor Andrew Baker, the director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab at the University of Miami, calls the timing and location of the outbreak by the dredge “remarkably coincidental.” Precht suggested that other factors, including high water temperatures, pollution, and possible leaks from a nearby sewage plant could also have played a part.
As Silverstein’s investigation continued, more irregularities came to light. Terri Jordan Sellers, USACE’s biologist for the dredge, was making inexplicable decisions. When a federal agency ordered divers to remove endangered corals in the path of the dredge, she refused to move the ship out of their way. Sellers also illegally shared sensitive internal government documents with a dredging company, writing, “You didn’t get this from me.”
The true number of dead corals was not six, but more than 560,000.
A casual manipulator of data, Sellers presented to the public a photograph of healthy coral taken before the dredge and labeled it as post-dredge to assuage the community. Another image of coral that Sellers labeled post-dredge had been taken in the Cayman Islands or Virgin Islands, in 1992. She would end up pleading guilty for lying to law-enforcement officials over accepting work from the environmental contractor she was supposed to be monitoring.
Only in September of 2023 were Silverstein’s arguments, interpretation of data, and conclusions borne out in a federal report. Unfortunately for Miami-Dade County, which had signed off on legal responsibility for the dredge, USACE’s initial $180 million dollar contract had done well over $400 million dollars’ worth of damage.
A Formidable Opponent
By September 2023, Miami Waterkeeper had gone from a one-woman show to a small but growing organization having a big effect with a tiny budget. The staff of 18 had learned how to interpret data, organize coalitions of interest groups, and approach larger environmental organizations for help when necessary. Silverstein, meanwhile, married Roy Altman, a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami who would become the youngest federal judge ever appointed in the Southern District of Florida. The couple had two children, and Silverstein was awarded multiple prizes for her environmental work.
But Miami was changing even more rapidly than her own life. Flooding was becoming so frequent that, in late 2019, one neighborhood that abutted Biscayne Bay had a third of its homes up for sale. Then came the coronavirus. Because of its comparatively lax pandemic restrictions, Miami attracted a surge of newcomers. Houses were purchased sight unseen.
The new owners of Miami’s waterfront properties woke up in August 2020 to the apocalyptic spectacle of tens of thousands of dead fish lapping against their docks. A mixture of excessive heat and pollution had starved pockets of Biscayne Bay of oxygen. Silverstein made a desperate plea to PortMiami to borrow their fireboats, coordinating the use of powerful hoses to re-oxygenate the water.
But the crises kept coming. There were overwhelmed water pumps, heavy storms, mass leakage from septic tanks, chemical runoff of fertilizers that rains carried into the bay. Then, suddenly, Miami Waterkeeper discovered an even greater threat.
In 2018, Turkey Point, a nuclear facility just south of Miami, had lobbied the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (N.R.C.) to extend its license. The plant, which delivers electricity to about a million local homes, sought to continue operating until 2052, which would make it the longest-serving nuclear reactor in America. Turkey Point was completed in the early 1970s, an era, as Silverstein notes, when the best computers had “about as much storage capacity as a Casio watch.”
As Silverstein investigated, her worries grew. Turkey Point had recently had its safety rating downgraded, after three employees forged safety checks. It had suffered unplanned shutdowns four times, just in the previous year. The plant’s aging reactors were at risk of embrittlement, according to an NBC report. Metal tabs were supposed to be regularly inserted during inspections to ensure that the core remained healthy, but that test hadn’t been run in 20 years.
Perhaps most disturbing, the plant’s operator, Florida Power & Light (F.P.L.), had ignored the federal government’s recommendation to prepare for six feet of sea-level rise by 2100. Even when Silverstein ran the sunniest of all projections, by the mid–21st century, although Turkey Point’s nuclear reactor would be above water, most everything else—from nuclear-waste storage and the backup power system to the roads that allowed staff to enter and exit the facility—would be subject to frequent flooding by around 2040.
Silverstein also discovered that the plant’s cooling system, consisting of unlined canals, had been leaking dense plumes of salt. Those plumes were slowly wending their way down to an aquifer that could affect all potable water in the Florida Keys. And just to round things out, the berms of the canals were favored nesting sites for the American crocodile—at least until the increased salinity started driving some crocodiles north, toward densely populated areas. After a stopgap fix, the crocodiles moved back for a successful nesting season.
Everything from nuclear-waste storage and the back-up power system to the roads that allowed staff to enter and exit the facility would be subject to frequent flooding by the middle of the 21st century.
In December 2019, the N.R.C. granted the license extension. Silverstein appealed, with help from Friends of the Earth and the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council.
F.P.L. was a formidable opponent. In 2020, a leak from a disgruntled partner at Matrix, a political consulting firm used by the power company, revealed that Matrix funded phony candidates to siphon off votes from individuals they viewed as threats to F.P.L.’s bottom line, and placed journalists under surveillance.
In one e-mail, F.P.L.’s C.E.O. had ordered Matrix to make the life of a progressive candidate “a living hell.” The mayor of South Miami, a biologist so concerned about Turkey Point that he had purchased potassium iodide tablets for his entire town, also found himself in their sights. Matrix assigned 10 operatives to wage a dirty-tricks campaign against his re-election, which included robocalls and ads comparing him to Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. Matrix even bought a news Web site, the Capitolist, to quietly promote F.P.L.’s interests.
For 18 months, Miami Waterkeeper and its partners awaited any sort of response from the N.R.C., and considered their options: a second appeal, a hearing before a federal judge. Then, in February 2022, came the news that, for the first time in its history, the N.R.C. was reversing its decision.
The commission would now require an updated environmental review of Turkey Point. In addition, the N.R.C. would reconsider its one-size-fits-all model, which applied the same regulations to all facilities regardless of their location. Now, every license extension would have to be considered against the threat of climate change.
The victory propelled Miami Waterkeeper to new prominence. The Knight Foundation gave the group a $5 million grant in 2023. Raul Moas, a senior director at Knight, called Silverstein “the vessel through which different parts of Miami come together.” None of the larger environmental groups had a big presence in Miami, according to Moas, until Silverstein “filled that void.” Her victories in Miami will affect all of America’s coral reefs and nuclear power plants.
By early 2024, Silverstein had hired six more employees. And she’s going to need them. Last summer saw water temperatures south of Miami reach a staggering 101.1 degrees. Florida’s reefs bleached at record rates. And South Florida faces two huge new dredging projects: one in the same Miami channel, and another in Fort Lauderdale, home to more than a million corals.
Despite Silverstein’s hard-won victories, a recent Miami-Dade County presentation once more referenced the original estimate of six dead corals. “I don’t think the [USACE’s] methods have changed at all,” says Professor Baker.
For her part, Silverstein has come to favor conversation and open arms over acrimony. She hopes that in addition to creating an artificial-reef system, the money owed by the county because of the damage from the dredge will help build an entire coral- restoration industry in Miami. Working alongside USACE instead of against it, she’s also promoting the re-growth of mangroves, leaving open space to absorb flooding, and bolstering the health of the existing reef. Rather than forcing the shutdown of Turkey Point, she wants F.P.L. to consider the use of water towers instead of cooling canals to keep the salt plumes contained.
At a recent public meeting, USACE laid out a multi-layered plan for Miami’s future, using dunes, mangroves, and reefs to mitigate the power of rising seas. Silverstein couldn’t help but smile. They were all ideas she and her team had put forward. Later, a USACE staffer was spotted carrying a Miami Waterkeeper bottle.
Nicholas Griffin is the author of several books, including The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980