Miami Waterkeeper’s Rachel Silverstein on making South Florida a model for clean water

Published: June 28, 2023 Listen to the story on WLRN. There’s water all around us in South Florida — so Rachel Silverstein takes it very seriously. We drink it, swim in it, fish in it. Tourists come here to enjoy our hundreds of miles of coasts. It’s the lifeblood of our economy, from tourism to fishing. Rachel is out to make sure this precious resource is safe. Silverstein is the executive director of the Miami Waterkeeper. It’s a non-profit group that advocates for South Florida’s clean water. They stay on top of the latest scientific research, and publish their own, so they can advocate for policies that affect our waterways. This week they received a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation to expand their work. The group works with the Florida Department of Health to sample water weekly throughout South Florida. Miami Waterkeeper publishes the results online and in their free app every week so we know which waterways are safe and which ones might have been affected by recent oil spills and algae blooms, among other things. Miami Waterkeeper also stays on top of how climate change is affecting rising sea levels and our coral reefs. On the June 28 episode of Sundial, Silverstein joined us to tell us about her plan to make Miami the water conservation model for the country to follow.