Jeremiah Smith: “this is the first major piece of environmental legislation debated on the floor since I assumed the chairmanship of this…”

“this is the first major piece of environmental legislation debated on the floor since I assumed the chairmanship of this committee nearly 1 year ago. I am proud to bring the Water Resources Development Act before the Senate, of which a major portion is the Everglades which I will talk about in a moment. This is a good bill. I am very proud of it. It is fiscally responsible. At the same time, it recognizes our obligation to preserve one of the most important and endangered ecosystems in the Nation, if not the world--America's Everglades. This bill gets us back on track toward regular biennial Water Resources Development Act bills. The committee produced a so-called WRDA bill last year, but that bill was 1 year late. I am proud of the WRDA portion of this bill. This is not a bill that includes numerous unnecessary projects. The committee established some tough criteria on which we worked very closely. We evaluated the old criteria and put in new criteria. We scrupulously followed this criteria in an effort to not let projects make their way into this bill that did not belong there. As I noted in my opening statement a few days ago, the committee received requests to authorize more than 300 new projects. By holding firm on our criteria in this WRDA bill, we only authorized 23 new projects. We authorize 40 feasibility studies, and the bill contains 65 project-related provisions or modifications that affect existing projects.”