Bill Nelson: “I received very good news for Florida this morning. The Army Corps of Engineers has signed off on a long-awaited report…”

“I received very good news for Florida this morning. The Army Corps of Engineers has signed off on a long-awaited report that will allow Congress to authorize a new reservoir project south of Lake Okeechobee in the upcoming Water Resources Development Act--what we refer to as the water bill. Many of us in Florida have been pushing the Army Corps and the Trump administration to approve this project for months and months. Last week I was in the area of Lake Okeechobee visiting with folks affected by the algae blooms on the west coast over in Fort Myers on the Caloosahatchee River and on the east coast in Stuart on the St. Lucie River. They are facing a problem that seems to repeat itself almost every year. The heat of summer and the excess nutrients in the water--put those together, and you get the algae blooms that suck the oxygen out of the river, making it a dead river because there is not enough oxygen in the water for the fish. There was a similarly bad algae bloom back in 2016, in 2013, and many times in years past. The pollution in Lake Okeechobee created a toxic brew of a blue-green algae that blooms and that at one point this summer covered 90 percent of Lake Okeechobee. Because the lake has risen to a 14\1/2\-foot level, the Army Corps will most likely have to resume releasing water to the east in the St. Lucie and to the west in the Caloosahatchee because of the pressure on the dike around Lake Okeechobee.…”