"On a postcard-perfect winter morning, harbor pilot Charlie Hand steers his boat up the crowded Seybold Canal, a 2,000-foot stretch of Wagner Creek dredged and straightened a century ago, scooping up discarded plastic bags.

He motors around docked shrimp boats, floating bottles and, gingerly, four manatees. Farther up the creek near the busy Veteran’s Hospital, a man squats near the bank, his pants around his ankles.

Considered one of South Florida’s most polluted waterways, the creek that winds through the heart of Miami-Dade County, past car repair shops, hospitals and jails, has long been used as Miami’s toilet, filled with fish too toxic to eat. Pollution has come in every form, from humans to machines, going back decades."

Jenny Staletovich reports for the Miami Herald February 10, 2015. [2]