[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 134 (Thursday, December 7, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11428-S11429]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Water Resources Development Act

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, in the remaining moments here, 
I want to say one of the things this Senator will address in the next 
Congress is the fact that we did not pass a Water Resources Development 
Act, which has so many important projects for this Nation. We have not 
had a Water Resources Development Act bill since 2000, and we are 
suffering for it.
  As to this great ecological restoration project down in my State, the 
Florida Everglades Restoration Project, there are two critical projects 
in this WRDA bill--the Indian River Lagoon and the Picayune Strand. The 
Indian River Lagoon is a 156-mile-long estuary that I grew up on as a 
boy. It runs from basically just north of Cape Canaveral all the way 
south to Palm Beach County. It has been altered by unnaturally large 
and poorly timed freshwater discharges arising out of the St. Lucie 
Canal. They have altered the water quality and depleted the water 
supplies in the Everglades ecosystem. So that is one project that is 
going to be necessarily addressed in the new Congress. There are many 
components to that project. The Everglades restoration is an $8 billion 
project over 20 years, shared by the Federal and the State governments.
  The other major project--I will close with this--is the Picayune 
Strand restoration project. It is going to remove roads and canals and 
other infrastructure to increase freshwater flows. It encompasses 94 
square miles in Collier

[[Page S11429]]

County, FL, and it includes such things as the Florida Panther National 
Wildlife Refuge, the 10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and many 
others.
  These ecosystem protections and alterations are absolutely necessary 
for the future of keeping this beautiful planet Earth and protecting 
this very fragile ecosystem.