Where does Key West get its water?

The island of Key West lies at the end of the Florida Keys, about 150 miles southwest of Miami. The public-water supply for the island is provided by the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority Well Field near Miami.



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The Keys has the longest living coral reef in America, running 221 miles from Key Largo FL and continuing southwest to the Dry Tortugas National Park. The coral reefs protection keeps the waves from crashing ashore, which causes erosion. This also means the water inshore of the coral reefs is shallower, and calmer.

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Our shores have shallow waters often resulting in sandbars, so the sun can reflect off the white sea floors and the surrounding microscopic plankton, which creates the gradient effect of clear-to-emerald-to azure-to-navy waters as you progress further out into the Gulf.

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The Best Beaches In Key West
  • 1) Dry Tortugas & Fort Jefferson. To many, this secluded cluster of islands 70 miles west of Key West is home to the most beautiful beach in the Florida Keys. ...
  • 2) Fort Zachary Taylor. ...
  • 3) Smathers Beach. ...
  • 4) Higgs Beach. ...
  • 5) Bahia Honda State Park.


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As sargassum washes ashore every year in Key West, locals and visitors alike are primarily annoyed by the smell of the sargassum quantity on the beach. This giant blob of seaweed breaks up along the shore to create a mess on public beaches in Monroe County, but there's not too much danger involved.

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The story has it that due to Hurricane Donna in 1960 all types of household debris was scattered across the island and in its waters. In the aftermath on Donna, one toilet seat was found hanging on one of the homemade posts marking this unofficial channel.

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The straight-line distance between North Bimini and the Florida coast is about 60 miles, but Miss Nyad's trainers said that with currents she had to swim farther. She negotiated the powerful Gulf Stream, which frustrated other attempts to swim from the Bahamas to Florida, without difficulty.

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