4 December 2017 Currents
same location for 19 years • “ s . FL ’ s finest & friendliest PGA / LPGA instruction right in your back yard ”.
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After Irma , Florida reps . are pushing anew to allow Florida counties to buy sand from the Bahamas . Sen . Marco Rubio actually introduced the SAND Act ( Sand Acquisition , Nourishment , and Development ) at the start of 2017 , shortly after a different federal law permitted the study of sand imports . Every member of Congress from South Florida is a co-sponsor . They also have the support of Sandy Cay Development , a Bahamian company that mines sand and aragonite , a calcium carbonate that ’ s already dropped off at the Port of Miami to make cement and glass in the U . S .
Sand Mafias
The profits of this easy-to-get , hard-to-regulate material , whose trade is valued at $ 70 billion annually , have lured organized crime . In India and Bangladesh , “ sand mafias ” have been implicated in the murder of hundreds of people in recent years . In Indonesia , more than 20 islands have vanished since 2005 because of illegal sand mining for developments in Singapore . Illegal sand mining in Sri Lanka is thought to have worsened the effects of the 2004 tsunami . In addition to coastal erosion , sand mining is also fueling habitat destruction , water scarcity , and crop failures .
Gene Suppell Editor & Publisher