Bill Nelson: “I want to speak on the bill, and I wanted to congratulate Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe for their combined…”

“I want to speak on the bill, and I wanted to congratulate Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe for their combined leadership, their working together to bring this legislation to the floor. It has been a long time coming. We passed it here last year thanks to the leadership of both of them. Senator Inhofe was chairman. Now Senator Boxer is the Chair. It is now time for us to pass it again. It has only been 7 years since we have had a Water Resources and Development Act. We desperately need it for all of these water projects across the country that need to be authorized. Of course, one of the ones I want to speak to not only affects our State of Florida, the Everglades restoration, but it clearly affects a lot of the ecosystems of planet Earth. We violated Mother Nature over the course of the last half century. As a result of massive hurricanes in the early part of the last century, particularly the hurricane of 1928 that killed over 2,000 people in the Lake Okeechobee region--many of them drowned--the emphasis back then was, when the floods came: Get the water off. So over the course of the years, through then, up through the mid- 1900s, you had all of this diking and draining that went on, to the point at which the mindset was: Get the water away when the floods come.”