Delicate operation

OUR OPINION: Safety is of the utmost importance in sewage-pipeline replacement

By The Miami Herald Editorial

HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com

There is only one chance to get this right. Miami-Dade County and cities along the shore are facing a plumbing job so delicate — and so imperative — that, if botched, could mean economic and environmental disaster. A deteriorating pipeline in Government Cut that carries 25 million gallons of raw sewage a day has deteriorated so much in three places that it could rupture just from continued normal use.

This is the bad news from an inspector’s study commissioned last August. The good news is that the county commissioned the study in the first place. Too bad that it wasn’t done earlier, however — much earlier. The pipe carries waste from Miami Beach, Surfside and Bal Harbour to a treatment plant on Virginia Key. It’s about to be replaced with a pipeline laid much deeper. Now the conduit stands in the path of a massive Port of Miami dredging project to deepen the port so that it can accommodate supersized cargo ships coming from the Panama Canal.