This week in Congress, the House passed the Coast Guard Authorization Act to strengthen aging infrastructure, invest in cutting-edge tech, and ensure the Coast Guard has what it needs to protect our water—and our people.
Whether it’s ensuring Coasties can secure our shores from external threats, or preventing environmental disaster in our estuaries, protecting water was a major theme this week. Here in Florida’s 21st District, toxic blue-green algae isn’t just an eyesore—it’s a natural disaster and a major public health threat. Right now, there’s an urgent warning for residents: test results show algae levels in Lake Okeechobee near Pahokee Marina are more than six times higher than the EPA’s hazardous threshold.
Thanks to the new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual (LOSOM), required by a law I authored in 2018, the Army Corps has kept lake levels low enough to avoid discharges into our communities for the time being. But that doesn’t mean the fight is over. The goal is zero discharges—period.
I break it all down, plus more on a legislative markup I chaired in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where we considered more than a dozen bipartisan bills. Check it all out in this week’s #WeekinReview:
