Gene Taylor: “Mr. Speaker, one of the best-kept secrets in America is no longer a well-kept secret. The Mississippi coast, with the…”

“Mr. Speaker, one of the best-kept secrets in America is no longer a well-kept secret. The Mississippi coast, with the advent of legalized gaming, has gone from a relatively quiet back-water community to one of the most popular destination resorts in the United States of America. The Gulfport airport that traditionally handled over 200,000 people will board over a million people this year. All that being said, there are a heck of a lot more people using the Mississippi Sound than ever before, a heck of a lot more people living in the vicinity of it. In all of the estuarine area in the Mississippi gulf coast, which is so similar to the Chesapeake Bay in characteristics with the bays and coastal marshes, is facing the same sort of stress that the Chesapeake Bay and other estuarine areas around the country have faced. Although we still have record oyster harvest, we are having a phenomenal shrimp season this year, the bottom line is that, much as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) mentioned, our losses of coastal marshes are not taking place in hundreds of acres or thousands of acres, but truly an acre at a time, just as he mentioned it.”