Political Quotes

“Mr. President, one would naturally ask the question, could we solve this problem in the United States the way the Dutch have solved a lot of the coastal areas of the Netherlands by building dikes? A lot of their land is actually below sea level. You can't do that in a place such as Florida because the substrate underneath the surface soil is a porous limestone, much like Swiss cheese. So that if you try to put up a dike, it is not going to hold any water back because the pressure of the water as it rises is merely going to go underneath the dike into the porous limestone, which is the source under the surface of a lot of Florida's drinking water because that water in that honeycomb limestone is fresh. What happens as a result of the sea level rise? More water and higher water will create more pressure. The pressure then starts to push underneath the surface as well as over the surface of the land, and that causes the intrusion of saltwater into the fresh drinking water. Because Florida is so low--believe it or not, our highest point is right near the Alabama-Florida line, which is actually 356 feet high. But when you get into portions of South Florida, it is very low. Obviously, sea level rise is going to cover a lot of land, but another consequence is that a lot of flood control is now regulated by gravity. You go from a higher position of flood and you flow by gravity through canals to a lower position of the sea level.…”