millisphere, n. a discrete region populated by roughly one-thousandth of the total world population; a bit over seven million people (but anywhere between 3.5 and 14 million will do); a lens through which to study human geography.
THIS COLUMN is on the millisphere of Pahayokee (Seminole Indian for "grassy water"). Pahayokee (population 6.9 million) covers the southern third of the US state of Florida, is only a few metres above sea level and covered by the Everglades swamp -- actually a shallow and wide river slowly flowing from north to south.
For a century and a half, "developers" have attempted simultaneously to drain the Everglades for agriculture and to build dykes to protect the metropolitan area from flooding. Today, the Everglades are significantly degraded; subject to periodic droughts, fires and floods, salt-water contamination of freshwater aquifers, phosphorus and mercury contamination from agriculture and urbanisation, and the invasion of exotic flora and fauna like the paper-bark (Melaleuca quinquenerria) from Australia, and the Burmese python, which grows over 6m long.
Realising the magnitude of the environmental damage, both the Bush and Obama administrations have approved expensive Everglades environmental repair programmes (US$10 billion to date) and voted to buy out US Sugar's manufacturing and production businesses, but there have been delays in implementation and urbanisation continues creeping in.
Meanwhile, on the coast, the urbanised strip is experiencing "sunny day flooding", where higher-than-normal tides are bubbling up from the stormwater drains, flooding roads, gardens and apartments.
