CLOSING OFF BISCAYNE BAY WITH MASSIVE GATES? New ideas to protect Miami from storms

inlets, including potentially blocking off most of the currently open ocean under one bridge along the Rickenbacker Causeway.

This is the county’s second goround with the Army Corps of Engineers, which has been tasked with coming up with a comprehensive solution to a complex problem: Protect people and property in the vulnerable coastal county without breaking the bank, hurting the environment or upsetting residents. At least too many of them.

Last time, after three years of studies and public meetings, the Corps ended up suggesting a strategy that involved elevating thousands of homes, flood-proofing important buildings like fire stations and hospitals, planting more mangroves in South Dade and building a tall steel and concrete wall along the county’s coast — cutting through the bay bottom in places and cutting residential neighborhoods in half in other spots.

That last part didn’t fly. MiamiDade rejected the plan and sent the Corps back to the drawing board, with a promise to consider more naturebased solutions and hold more public meetings for its coastal storm risk management study, also known as the back bay study.

Now, the county has some new ideas for a plan it could consider supporting and it’s asking residents to weigh in at a public meeting on Feb 23.

In a public presentation on Friday, county Chief Resilience Officer Jim Murley presented two concepts for consideration that he said appeared to be supported by the community.

“We started to see consensus on two options, two options that move us forward from where we were in

2021,” he said.

One, called the “nonstructural option” in Corps parlance, looked very similar to the final product the Corps delivered in 2021. It called for elevating thousands of homes, protecting