U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Must Stop Discharging Toxic Water

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I have a great 5-minute speech prepared here, but I am just going to tell you the way it is.

For the last 2 weeks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been using my community as their own personal septic tank. That is not hyperbole. That is the truth.

Now, it hasn't just happened this way for the last 2 weeks. They just started discharging water into my community 2 weeks ago. This has actually been going on for decades where, year after year after year, the Corps of Engineers decides that it is okay to discharge water that they know is toxic into an epicenter of human population.

How do they know this water is toxic? Because the Federal Government sued the State of Florida at one point in history, saying: Listen, we don't want you to send this water down south toward the Florida Everglades because it is killing the Florida Everglades. It is too toxic for what needs to go in there.

So now the Corps of Engineers sends it to people. They send it to the kids who are out at fishing camp. They send it to the fishermen who are trying to pull fish out of the water, and they send it to the beaches where, instead, they have to put up signs that say: No swimming. Don't touch the water. Hazard to human life.

What kind of community is this where this is sent to? This is a community, the treasure coast of Florida. It is an area where beautiful waters from the Atlantic flow in. They make the water crystal clear. It used to be laden with sea grass, with sea life, and with waterfowl, and now you can find next to none of that because the water is no longer blue.

The water no longer has sea grass and thriving fish beds in it because the water is black. It is black because the flowing waters in from the Atlantic Ocean can't keep up with the toxic waters that are discharged into that estuary, into that nationally recognized estuary, by the hand of the Federal Government, by the hand of the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

Where the water isn't black, the water is green, like this, with toxic algae and cyanobacteria, things that no person should ever have to come in contact with.

I will tell you, this body recently did a good job for what has to occur to fix this issue in the long term. We passed the Water Resources Development Act, where we went out there and put a placeholder into that bill for a southern reservoir, a reservoir south of our area to send this water so that they don't have to send this water to the epicenter of human population in our area.

We did a good job of doing something known as asking for a LORS review, a review of the schedule at which level we can keep the Lake Okeechobee water in that lake so that they don't have to discharge that water into our community. We did a good job in making sure that we put resources toward how you can clean up algal blooms.

Those were all very important things for the long term, but it doesn't help the people in my community today and tomorrow, the people who have to worry about their children coming in contact with the water because of the human health risks associated with it.

It doesn't help the business owners, whom I have to see day after day with tears in their eyes because they are closing their doors for the last time because they can't survive because of the way this devastates our economy from top to bottom.

When you destroy the environment in our community, you destroy us. You destroy every one of us in our community. This cannot continue. This has to stop.

I call on the U.S. Corps of Engineers that, until the moment comes where you can say the water you are sending into our area is not toxic whatsoever, until that day comes where you would go into that water yourself or bring your own family members for a vacation and for a swim in our waterways, then don't send one more drop of that water into my community.

I put on the same uniform as the members of the Corps of Engineers. We wore the same Army uniform, and I know that we carry the same passion for how we do things. We had an ethos: You always place the mission first; you never accept defeat; you never quit; and you never leave a fallen comrade. Right now my community is being left behind by the Corps of Engineers, and it is not right.

I could say that not one moment during my time in the military would I have ever considered risking the life of one community in the name of something that may potentially happen in the future. It is not right; it can't occur in our community; and that is why I call on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop their discharging of toxic water immediately.

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