Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WEBSTER of Florida. Frankel).

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Mr. WEBSTER of Florida. Mr. Chair, I rise today on behalf of my colleague from Florida, Ms. Lois Frankel, to offer a nonpartisan amendment that Ms. Frankel and I have been working on for some time.

The amendment applies common sense to routine maintenance and dredging in the inland navigational channels. Specifically, this amendment would waive a duplicative requirement for routine maintenance dredging.

When a waterway is initially dredged, the project sponsor has to mitigate for the impact on aquatic vegetation like seagrass. In the Florida Intracoastal Waterway, seagrass grows like a weed and must be routinely dredged to keep it clear. Unfortunately, the project sponsor is required to do costly environmental mitigation every time just to keep the waterway open and operating, instead of using the permit that has already been given and the mitigation that has already happened for that particular area. This additional round of mitigation is unnecessary, since seagrass removal has already been accounted for in the environmental review for the initial dredging.

Florida's Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway requires routine maintenance dredging akin to mowing your grass. The waterway annually transports tons of commercial cargo and is used by more than 500,000 recreational vehicles. It provides $30 billion in economic output, including $3 billion in wages, creates 155,000 jobs, and generates more than $540 million in tax revenues. Without regular maintenance dredging, this powerful economic driver is at risk.

This amendment itself is limited in scope and maintains an existing environmental protection while ensuring that the maintenance dredging mitigation requirements make sense.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. WEBSTER of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I will say this. This is so duplicative and ridiculous. It is typical government regulation.

Here you have an inland waterway, the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The seagrass removal has been already mitigated. That requires maintenance. As you do maintenance, you have to come back and do more mitigation on the exact same piece of property for the same seagrass.

It is ridiculous; it is duplicative; and I submit it is a good amendment.

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Mr. WEBSTER of Florida. I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. WEBSTER of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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