South Florida Clean Coastal Waters Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding; I thank the gentlewoman for her support; and I thank the committee for their work on this piece of legislation.

Now, HABHRCA is what we are talking about here. That is what a lot of people know it as.

Since 1998 and the creation of HABHRCA, the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act, this interagency task force has done incredible work in different areas across the country, and they have done incredible work by working collaboratively across a number of different agencies.

Whether you are talking about the Department of Commerce, Interior, HHS, CDC, EPA, and looping in there the Corps of Engineers, the work has been outstanding, and it is what is needed: collaborative efforts to go out there and research and find real results, mitigate the occurrences of these harmful algal blooms and hypoxia, and do this in waterways across our Nation.

Now, H.R. 335, the South Florida Clean Coastal Waters Act of 2019, focuses that interagency capability on the Nation's most devastating example of harmful algal blooms and hypoxia to date: those that have occurred in the south Florida area.

It truly is an environmental emergency that, unfortunately, many have witnessed on the news and seen in other places, and it has been a result of what has happened for almost a century: The U.S. Government has embarked on a piecemeal compilation of infrastructure projects across Florida that really contorted and misshaped the natural waterways of Florida.

Now, decades ago, it was realized that this patchwork of uncoordinated and often very conflicting flows of water design resulted in toxic concentrations of nutrients in one area or the elimination of natural filtration systems that used to purify the waters of Florida. So south Florida, today, is now riddled with environmental catastrophes from north to south, like harmful algal blooms, red tide, and hypoxia, these toxic overgrowths from these ecological disasters.

We have seen far too many of the devastating effects: massive fish kills around the Florida peninsula, carcasses of whale sharks, dolphins, manatee, millions of pounds of sea life washing up on our shores, results of deaths of many other animals, and, unfortunately, unknown health effects to humans that come in contact with this.

Now, a couple important factors that have played into this:

In July, the Corps of Engineers testified that, for decades, it had knowingly discharged enormous quantities of toxic, harmful algal bloom- laden water from the 730-square-mile lake in the middle of south Florida, Lake Okeechobee, and one of those toxins that makes up harmful algal blooms that is so dangerous: cyanobacteria.

After many requests, the EPA, this year, made a report that said harmful algal blooms that had cyanobacteria of over 8 parts per billion, humans should not come in contact with.

To put that into perspective, we were having discharges of these kinds of algal blooms to the tune of 495 parts per billion last summer, so very, very serious health risks going on there.

They crippled the economy. They crippled small businesses. Tourism, fisheries, those things get destroyed. It devastates, obviously, the environment. It creates dying ecosystems.

It is in that that I thank the committee for their support on this because it is very serious to our community.

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