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Officials propose making 'South Florida' 51st state

Travis Gibson, First Coast News

Corrections &Clarifications: A previous version incorrectly stated in a graphic the number of square miles of the new state proposal.

A group of Southern Florida politicians are tired of being left out to sea when it comes to addressing climate change concerns for the southern part of the state. Their solution? Create a state of their own.

Miami Beach

According to a report from the Sun-Sentinel , a proposal by the Mayor of South Miami and South Miami City Commission calls for the legal separation of Florida into two separate states.

No new state can be created without Florida Congressional approval.

The new state — aptly dubbed "South Florida" — would thus become the 51st state in the Union.

The imposing threat of rising sea levels is behind the proposal.

The proposal would chop off the bottom half of Florida.

"It's very apparent that the attitude of the northern part of the state is that they would just love to saw the state in half and just let us float off into the Caribbean," South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard told the Sun-Sentinel.

Vice Mayor Walter Harris proposed the resolution and it passed with a 3-2 vote at the city commission meeting on Oct. 7. He says Tallahassee, the state capital, isn't doing enough to deal with the problem of global warming.

The proposal would chop off the bottom half of Florida with the northern counties of the new state being Brevard, Orange, Polk, Hillsborough and Pinellas -- roughly from the city of Orlando down. The new state would include 24 counties.

The new state would become the 51st in the USA.

The resolution points out that the average elevation of North Florida is about 120-feet above sea level while the average elevation of South Florida is less than 50 feet. It is estimated that there will be a 3- to 6-foot sea level rise in the next 100 years, according to the resolution.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

Orange County is particularly important because that's where the South Florida Water Management District begins, Harris said. It was even suggested that a Central Florida city could possibly be the state of South Florida's capitol.

The resolution will now go to governments of the newly proposed "South Florida" counties. No new state can be created without Florida Congressional approval, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

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