Bill Nelson: “one of the things this Senator will address in the next Congress is the fact that we did not pass a Water Resources…”

“one of the things this Senator will address in the next Congress is the fact that we did not pass a Water Resources Development Act, which has so many important projects for this Nation. We have not had a Water Resources Development Act bill since 2000, and we are suffering for it. As to this great ecological restoration project down in my State, the Florida Everglades Restoration Project, there are two critical projects in this WRDA bill--the Indian River Lagoon and the Picayune Strand. The Indian River Lagoon is a 156-mile-long estuary that I grew up on as a boy. It runs from basically just north of Cape Canaveral all the way south to Palm Beach County. It has been altered by unnaturally large and poorly timed freshwater discharges arising out of the St. Lucie Canal. They have altered the water quality and depleted the water supplies in the Everglades ecosystem. So that is one project that is going to be necessarily addressed in the new Congress. There are many components to that project. The Everglades restoration is an $8 billion project over 20 years, shared by the Federal and the State governments. The other major project--I will close with this--is the Picayune Strand restoration project. It is going to remove roads and canals and other infrastructure to increase freshwater flows.”