Bill Nelson: “this is the bottle. This is a glass of clean water that is put on our desk to drink. This is the bottle of water that I…”

“this is the bottle. This is a glass of clean water that is put on our desk to drink. This is the bottle of water that I scooped up out of the Saint Lucie River which is one of the estuaries that will be dealt with in this Water Resources Development Act that we are now considering. You can see the dramatic difference between the two. This one is laden with algae and with all kinds of particulates. This is the kind of clean water that we would like our rivers and estuaries to be. Thank goodness we have this bill and we are going to pass it. It is going to address these kinds of problems. Specifically in this bill is the Everglades restoration and two important projects, the Indian River Lagoon, from which this water came. It is the Saint Lucie River estuary that leads into the Indian River. You can see why that estuary is messed up. When I went out there and scooped up this bottle of water, it was a dead river. That river, the Saint Lucie, flows into the Indian River, which is not a river, it is a lagoon. It is a bay. This Senator grew up on the banks of the Indian River. Where I grew up, there are the pelicans diving for fish because there are plenty of fish. There is Mr. Osprey up there swooping down and getting his dinner. You look up in that dead pine tree and there is old Mr. Eagle. He is up there waiting for Mr. Osprey to go down and scoop up and get his dinner. Then Mr. Eagle is going to take off after Mr. Osprey, and Mr.…”