FYI Miami: January 13, 2022

Below are some of the FYIs in this week’s edition. The entire content of this week’s FYIs and Insider sections is available by subscription only. To subscribe click here.

HEADED TO ORLANDO: Brightline rail service is taking the next step to begin rail service linking Miami and Orlando in early 2023 by running being trains without passengers between West Palm Beach and Cocoa starting next week and continuing throughout 2022. The trains in that new 130-mile stretch will be training engineers and conductors on the territory, going round trip once daily. Speeds are to top out at 60 miles per hour, which is below the speed that is anticipated once the railroad carries passengers north of West Palm Beach. The railroad says these round trips are a federally approved approach to familiarize engineers and conductors with new rail territory. Brightline passenger trains now run between Miami Central Station downtown and West Palm Beach, with an intermediate stop in Fort Lauderdale.

COVID-19 IN WASTEWATER: Since 2020 the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department (WASD) has been sampling wastewater in county treatment plants. The department sends samples to a laboratory that can extract the RNA and determine the concentration of covid, and based on that concentration extrapolate that into a projected number of covid new cases. The department is seeing millions of copies of RNA of the virus per sample while in the third week of December, prior to the new wave to the omicron variant cases, the department saw around 100,000 copies per sample. “We are seeing exactly in our wastewater the exponential jump as you’re hearing in the news,” said Roy Coley, department director.

SURFSIDE IMPACT: After the deadly collapse last year of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, a proposal filed last week in the Florida Senate would require “milestone” inspections of multifamily residential buildings higher than three stories. Such buildings within three miles of a coastline would have to be inspected in their 20th year and every seven years thereafter by architects or engineers. Other such buildings would have to be inspected in their 30th year and every 10 years thereafter. When the buildings are condominiums or cooperatives, copies of inspection reports would be required, in part, to be distributed to unit owners. 

SCHOOLS FUNDS RELEASED: The US Department of Education has approved Florida’s plan for how the state intends to spend billions in federal aid for schools, after withholding one-third because of a delay in the state submitting the proposal for use of funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, a stimulus passed last year. About $2.35 billion was released to the state last week. The federal government released the initial two-thirds in March, with Florida receiving just shy of $4.7 billion. Under federal guidelines, the state Department of Education gets control over 10% of the money for Florida, with the remaining 90% going directly to school districts.