[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 107 (Tuesday, June 26, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H5651]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     STOP POLLUTING TREASURE COAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Mast) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because it is the 24th day that 
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has intentionally discharged toxic 
water from Lake Okeechobee in Florida's interior into the Treasure 
Coast of Florida, which is my community.
  Today, I have a group of warriors with me, the River Kidz. They are 
here in Washington fighting to show that what is happening in our 
community is not okay. It is not right, and it is not just.
  The River Kidz are a group of young people from the Treasure Coast of 
Florida whose health and community have been threatened. While many 
kids across the country right now are gearing up to go to camp this 
summer or spending their days on a boat or at a beach or fishing, our 
kids are doing all that they can to avoid contact with our water 
because every single day our water is being made more and more toxic.
  As we speak, there is a toxic algae bloom over 100 miles in diameter 
laden with cyanobacteria. It is being drained into Florida's east 
coast, and, in fact, as we speak, satellite imagery shows that nearly 
half of the entire lake of Lake Okeechobee is covered in algae. It is a 
threat to the health of every single man, woman, and child who is 
exposed to it.
  The toxic algae blooms are also devastating to threatened species 
like manatee who inhabit our waters but cannot escape from the water. 
The billions of gallons of discharge that is evacuated from Lake 
Okeechobee into the coastal estuary wipes out our entire estuary of 
seagrass the way a wildfire wipes out a forest, leaving no habitat for 
the rest of the sea life that is meant to exist there.
  Mr. Speaker, you might be wondering: Why would anybody in Washington 
care about this beyond to say for a few moments what a sad situation it 
really is? Washington needs to care. Washington needs to care because 
this is a situation that is created by the fact that Florida's water 
system is functioning exactly the way that the U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers designed the system to function.
  In other words, this is happening on purpose. The Lake Okeechobee 
Regulation Schedule, which is what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 
uses to decide when and where water out of Lake Okeechobee will be 
discharged into places it does not belong, is designed to ``share 
adversity.''
  Let me say that again. The Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule is 
designed to share adversity.
  Shared adversity means shared toxic water into a community that did 
not share at all in the polluting of the source of the toxic water. Mr. 
Speaker, let me explain this in a way that people here in Washington, 
people here in the Capitol, can relate to.
  It would be like if a Senator on the other half of this building 
flushed their toilet over there, and instead of sending that sewage 
into pipes that go underneath the street and into a water treatment 
plant, the Corps of Engineers set up a system here where they had a 
pipe that dumped the sewage onto the floor of the House of 
Representatives. That is what shared adversity by the U.S. Army Corps 
of Engineers looks like.
  In the case of my community, it is not just a pipe, though. It is 
millions of gallons a minute that destroys our environment, destroys 
our economy, destroys small businesses, and affects the health, as I 
said already, of every single man, woman, and child who comes in 
contact with the water, and it threatens our entire way of life.
  The Treasure Coast of Florida can no longer be forced to share 
adversity that they played no role in creating. The River Kidz, myself, 
and the entire Treasure Coast of Florida demand that the U.S. Army 
Corps of Engineers stop immediately its willful pollution of our home 
that is done on behalf of others.

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