In a surprise move, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has asked county commissioners to turn over the county’s old jetport, and now home to the Alligator Alcatraz detention center, to Everglades National Park.
In a memo Thursday obtained by WLRN, Levine Cava said the county-owned site in the Big Cypress National Preserve is “no longer operationally or economically optimal for continued County ownership and operation.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan have a press conference at the site scheduled for later this morning.
According to the memo, the county’s environmental chief and head of pollution regulation attempted to inspect the site Wednesday, but were turned away over security concerns.
Levine Cava noted that the administration has consistently voiced concerns over use of parts of the site for the detention center and risks to ongoing efforts to restore the Everglades, a massive years-long project expected to cost more than $23 billion.
The detention center is “fundamentally inconsistent with Miami-Dade County's longstanding commitments to environmental stewardship and sustainable land management,” she wrote.
The facility was originally planned as a regional airport in the 1960s but blocked by environmentalists. All that remains is a single airstrip, where the detention facility now sits. Its “remote location, limited aviation utility, significant maintenance obligations, and increasingly constrained compatibility with surrounding conservation lands warrant consideration of a transition to a permanent conservation and restoration use,” Levine Cava wrote.
In the coming months, Levine Cava said staff would conduct a review on environmental impacts and financials to make a recommendation to county commissioners
This is a developing story.
