A patch of water in North Beach has been off-limits to swimmers and kayakers for more than five years, and Miami Beach officials are now pinning their hopes on a cloud of microscopic bubbles to finally fix it. The Miami Beach City Commission has approved a purchase of nanobubble technology from Moleaer Inc. costing more than $1 million, aimed at scrubbing out the fecal bacteria that has made Park View Canal one of the dirtiest waterways in the country.
Park View Canal sits in a park at 73rd Street and Dickens Avenue within the Tatum Waterway, according to the Miami Herald. The canal’s public kayak launch and surrounding waters have been under a no-contact advisory since March 2020, meaning residents have been locked out of the water for roughly six years and seven months while the city searched for a fix. City officials have described lifting that advisory as the single most important goal of the cleanup effort, the outlet reports.
How the Nanobubble System Is Supposed to Work
The technology works by injecting bubbles roughly 2,500 times smaller than a grain of salt into the canal, delivering oxygen and other gases meant to naturally purify the water and eliminate harmful bacteria, per the same report. City officials expect to finalize an agreement with Moleaer by the end of this year, after which the company would need a few months to build and deliver the equipment. If the technology performs as hoped, Miami Beach officials have said people might be swimming, kayaking and otherwise spared the canal’s stench as early as next year.
Officials have pointed to typical results elsewhere, saying nanobubble pumping usually leads to noticeable reductions in muck, fecal indicators, odor and algae within six to 12 months. “People live on the water,” one city official said, underscoring the pressure to get the canal reopened. Independent research on nanobubble water treatment, however, remains limited — a ScienceDirect review notes that comprehensive evaluations of the technology’s full-scale implementation are still scarce, even as separate lab work has examined nanobubble water’s ability to break down E. coli biofilm, according to a study indexed on PubMed.
A Years-Long Pattern of Contamination
The scale of the problem is stark. Park View Kayak Launch has landed on the Surfrider Foundation’s national top 10 beach bacteria hot spots list every year since 2021, and in its most recent annual Clean Water Report the site reached a 92% bacteria rate, the third-highest in the country. A separate 2025 monitoring report from the Miami chapter of Surfrider Foundation found that 92% of samples taken at the Parkview/Kayak Launch site exceeded state health standards that year; the group’s volunteers collected 1,113 water samples from 27 Biscayne Bay sites in 2025 alone.
Miami Waterkeeper’s own monitoring tells a similar story. The nonprofit collected 1,652 samples across 33 sites in 2025 and found elevated bacteria were most common at inland rivers and canals, according to its water quality tracker. Several bay and canal sites across the region continued showing elevated bacteria levels through the year, the Surfrider report adds, suggesting Park View Canal’s troubles are part of a broader pattern rather than an isolated case.
What's Driving the Contamination
Figuring out the source of the bacteria has been its own challenge. A University of Miami study found that untreated stormwater runoff flowing into Parkview Canal is the primary driver of elevated enterococci counts, according to CitizenPortal.ai. Genetic testing cited in the same report identified birds as the dominant contributor to the bacterial load, with detectable human and dog signals also present in the water.
Leigh-Anne Krometis, a professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech, explained that enterococcus bacteria naturally occurs in the intestines of warm-blooded animals, so consistently high levels can suggest fecal contamination from dogs, seagulls, humans and other animals alike, as reported by the Miami Herald. Krometis warned that swimming or kayaking in contaminated water can cause gastrointestinal illnesses, respiratory distress, and ear and skin infections. She pointed to an extreme example from Hurricane Katrina, when some people developed sepsis after wading through sewage-filled waters.
Residents Want Proof, Not Just a New Machine
Miami Beach has already tried other fixes. The city has implemented measures such as relining sewage lines to prevent leaks, but the water-quality issue has persisted regardless, the Herald reports. City staff have also reported statistically significant reductions in enterococci levels in the canal since 2020, and additional longer-term work — including sewer-system lining, stormwater infrastructure retrofits and canal dredging — was detailed in the city’s Operation Clean Water announcement. Construction of hydrodynamic separators meant to filter stormwater is targeted to begin in early 2027, with sampling continuing in the meantime, per CitizenPortal.ai.
Not everyone is convinced the nanobubbles will solve the deeper problem. Omar Jimenez, who lives in North Beach and founded the Park View Island Sustainable Association, worries the technology may amount to a short-term fix that doesn’t address the root causes of the contamination. “I bought a waterfront home because I wanted to enjoy a waterfront-living lifestyle,” Jimenez said. Still, he said he would consider renewed use of the canal a win if the plan actually works.
