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50 years. So when building a new Stock Island fire station, county authorities went ahead added a foot and a half over federal flood planning directives that the ground floor be built up 9 feet.
• Seasonal tidal flooding that was once a rare inconvenience is now so predictable that some businesses at the end of Key West's famed Duval Street stock sandbags just inside their front doors, ready anytime.
• "It's really easy to see during our spring high tides that the sea level is coming up -- for whatever reason -- and we have to accommodate for that," said Johnnie Yongue, the on-site technician at the fire station for Monroe County's project management department.
• While New York City's mayor was announcing a dramatic multibillion-dollar plan for flood walls and levees to hold back rising water levels there, sea walls like those that encase the Netherlands wouldn't help much in the Keys, as a lack of coastal barriers isn't the island chain's only problem.
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• Chris Paul's answer was brief, just like his time on the free agent market.
• "I'M IN!!!" he wrote Monday on Twitter.
• He will be staying with the Clippers, the longtime losers he helped turned into a division champion in just two seasons.
• Dwight Howard will need more time to think.
• Free agency opened Monday in the NBA with the focus on the pair of Los Angeles All-Stars, though Paul took himself off the market only hours after shopping season started.
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