This week the Army Corps of Engineers announced plans to temporarily pause discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie with plans to resume them after a 5-day period at a rate of 1,500 cubic feet per second. In other words, they still plan to dump 969 million gallons per day into our estuary.

The truth is that this is simply unnecessary, which is exactly what I told Colonel Kelly of the Army Corps this week. I made it clear that I will keep fighting for real operational change to end this abuse of our community, and I’m not going to stop until we succeed.

To that end, as you may know, I wrote and passed legislation to mandate the Army Corps fix their Lake Okeechobee Regulation Schedule, which determines when discharges happen. The Army Corps is currently doing the analysis required by that law, and I am continuing to advocate for a regulation schedule that stops toxic discharges.

We know that real operational change is the only way we will be able to stop these discharges! Check out this week’s Week In Review video to learn more.

In case you missed it, here are a few other things that happened this week:

• I helped introduce the bipartisan CATS Act to end cruel, abusive tests on cats and kittens at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
• I was named co-chair of the Air Cargo Caucus, which will play a critical role in the safe and efficient distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.
• The House of Representatives passed a bill to improve monitoring and forecasting of harmful algal blooms and hypoxia in Florida!