FAR-REACHING LAW ENFORCEMENT EFFORT IN MIAMI TO GET RID OF THE DRUG TRADE

BOB EDWARDS, host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.

Think of Miami's waterfront and images of luxury cruise ships and expensive
yachts come to mind. Just around the bend from the glitter of Biscayne Bay
and South Beach is another waterfront, the Miami River. It's a working
river, filled with grimy freighters carrying every cargo imaginable,
including most of the cocaine smuggled into Florida. State and federal
officials have launched an ambitious plan to clean up the Miami
River. NPR's Phillip Davis reports on Operation Riverwalk.

(Soundbite of ships)

PHILLIP DAVIS reporting:

At a steerage company hard by the Miami River, US Customs special agent
Zach Mann(ph) strolls past cargo ships loading everything from used
bicycles to mattresses. He stops at a little nook in the river where some
beaten-up freighters from Haiti are tied up side-by-side.

Mr. ZACH MANN (US Customs Special Agent): You've got the Brandy I(ph) with
cocaine on it; the Danforth, cocaine on it; the Lienda(ph), cocaine on it.
Since the operation has started, we've seized 10 vessels with either drugs
actually on the ship, in the ship or the ship itself was somehow outfitted
for smuggling, meaning that there were compartments inside the ship that
were clearly designed and manufactured to hide drugs.

DAVIS: The Miami River is, in some respects, a smuggler's paradise and has
been for centuries say local historians, who recently discovered abandoned
pirate caves carved underneath several old buildings along the river. Its
five-mile length is crowded with docking companies that will take in almost
any ship, no questions asked. Authorities say they had long known that the
river was a key transshipment point for Colombian cocaine coming over a
loosely patrolled sea route from Haiti. But last year when random
inspections resulted in the seizure of more than 6,000 pounds of the drug,
the state went on alert. In February, Governor Jeb Bush announced that a
task force named Operation Riverwalk would search every ship entering the
river.

On a recent afternoon, just a few hundred yards from the seized freighters,
a team from Customs, state police and the National Guard is swarming over
the Prentemp(ph), an old cargo ship out of Cap-Haitien, Haiti.

Unidentified Woman: They didn't do no drilling in there, and we only
drilled in the cargo hold the two places I mentioned, OK. Thank you very
much, Captain.

DAVIS: Senior inspector Juan Allende(ph) emerges from the hole, his
disposable overalls covered in grease and grime.

Mr. JUAN ALLENDE: You've got to be really meticulous in your search. It
could be anywhere from like behind the wall, there might be dead space so
you have to open it up. There's hatches, oil--contains oil, contains
diesel, so you've got to wear certain equipment like masks and breathing
apparatus. So it's a long process. Sometimes ships, we can search it for
two or three days.

DAVIS: The captain of the Prentemp, who won't give his name, maintains his
ship is clean. He smokes a cigarette, a polite smile fixed on his face as
he watches Customs agents poke around his vessel. He says he knows they're
just doing their job. But, he says, he's been running the river for years
and doubts anyone can clean it up.

Unidentified Captain: I've been running the river a long time. I've been
running all over the water. This is about the worst part I will
see. They've cut it down, but if they clean it right up, too much money
and work in it.

DAVIS: But Florida Governor Jeb Bush says the operation has been a success.
So far in the operation's first three months, government agents seized more
than 3,400 pounds of cocaine. But by this month the amounts have trailed
off dramatically, along with the number of freighters coming in from the
Caribbean. At a briefing earlier this month on the riverfront, Governor
Bush said that's a sign that trafficking routes have been disrupted.

Governor JEB BUSH (Florida): These freighters actually are now being found
in places like Cape Canaveral and in Tampa. There's a sighting in
Savannah. So the impact, though, is the cost of doing business goes up
each time that you make it a little bit harder.

DAVIS: Bush and other officials hope the cleanup of the river will solidify
a renaissance that's just beginning along this long-neglected area. Miami
politicians want to put a baseball stadium along the riverbank downtown.
Property values are rising and trendy riverside restaurants are beginning
to pop up. At Big Fish, one of the first, you can dock your boat right by
your table. Dino Bottiglieri, the restaurant's owner, said part of the
area's charm is that it still is a working river.

(Soundbite of ambient noise)

Mr. DINO BOTTIGLIERI: It's the magic, it's the magic of the place. People
love to see that. People will pay to sit down, have a glass of water and
see the freighters go back and forth.

DAVIS: There's a long way to go. The view from the restaurant includes a
vacant lot and a rusting blue tanker seized in a drug bust. Hundreds of
tons of cocaine still come through Florida every year, but businesspeople
and government officials hope that within a few years, Chardonnay will have
replaced cocaine as the intoxicant of choice along the Miami
River. Phillip Davis, NPR News, Miami.