Wayne Gilchrest: “I would like to invite the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), as this bill passes and the restoration projects…”

“I would like to invite the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), as this bill passes and the restoration projects begin, to take a canoe trip down one of the more beautiful tidal estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay, the Pocomoke River, the ancestral homeland of the gentleman from Mississippi, in a canoe, and we will see what progress is being made. I want to thank the staff on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Resources for working together to blend our concepts and ideas in a unique fashion so that this bill can be signed into law and be successful. We now have the capacity, I think, as human beings to begin the process of understanding the complexities of the dynamics of the mechanics of natural processes. The web of life that sustains all of us is now in the process by us at the beginning early stages of understanding. An Indian philosopher said, I think his name was Chief Seattle, 'Touch a flower, trouble a star.' When human activity interferes in a dull way, not a natural, dynamic way, with the environment, it has a negative, degrading effect. Our estuaries have been degraded over the last especially 100 years. The process of this bill is to make the correction so that we work with the natural processes by understanding their mechanics as to working against them.”