Posted on April 1, 2019
President Donald Trump toured Lake Okeechobee Friday, where he promised to complete repairs to the deteriorated dike that protects coastal towns and threatened to close the border with Mexico if that country failed to stop “caravans” of immigrants.
The president offered no increase in funding for the restoration of the Everglades, despite the hopes of both Democratic and Republican elected officials who said the money in his proposed budget fell far short of what was needed.
The presidential helicopter Marine One landed at 12:49 p.m. near the farming town of Canal Point, separated by about 44 miles of suburbs and sugarcane fields from Trump’s Palm Beach home. Several pro-Trump signs stood on roads into town, including two that read “America’s Sugarcane Farmers Support President Trump.”
From the landing spot, the president was driven to the 143-mile dike, constructed after a catastrophic 1928 hurricane blew the lake over its banks, drowning thousands in a disaster that would become a landmark in Florida history. The barrier of earth and rock fell into decay over the years, and since 2001 the Army Corps of Engineers has been engaged in projects to strengthen the dike and reduce the risk of what the Corps called “catastrophic failure.”
Wearing a dark suit, open-necked shirt and red USA cap, the president walked along the top of the dike with officers of the Army Corps of Engineers, Gov. Ron DeSantis, senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and other officials.
“Great project,” Trump told reporters. He credited then-Gov. Scott for successfully pressing for enough federal money to complete it. The Trump administration has accelerated the repair schedule to complete the work by 2022 rather than 2025 and says the project is fully funded.
“This project was dying until we got involved; this was really dying,” Trump said. “In 1928 over 5,000 people died here. Everything broke and they had a problem that turned out to be a total catastrophe. And we’re making it stronger than it would ever have been, and it’s really in great shape.”
Later, switching to the topic of immigration, the president accused Mexico of failing to take steps to halt caravans of people from Guatemala attempting to cross the border into the United States.
“We right now have two big caravans coming up from Guatemala, massive caravans, walking right through Mexico,” he said. “Mexico is tough. They can stop them. But they chose not to. … If they don’t stop them, we’re closing the border.”
Lake Okeechobee, often described as the liquid heart of Florida, suffers from decades of pollution. It is a source of the toxic algae that threatens swimming, fishing, marine life and tourism on both the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, where water is discharged to lower the lake’s water level. And it is at the north end of the Everglades, site of a multi-billion dollar and years-behind-schedule project to restore the state’s famous wilderness.
Democrats have seized on Trump’s visit to attack the president for a budget that proposes sharp cuts in environmental funding, including the federal share of the joint project with the state to restore the Everglades. The president’s budget proposed $63 million for Everglades restoration, leading to a rebuke from both top Democrats and Republicans, who had urged him to propose $200 million.
“Given Trump’s Everglades budget request, he should be ashamed to even show his face in South Florida,” a statement issued Friday by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said. “On Wednesday, the Chief of Engineers of the Army Corps testified that Everglades restoration projects may need to ‘take a knee’ if Trump’s shabby and abysmal environmental budget were adopted. Unless Trump is visiting South Florida to apologize and burn his proposed budget, he should stay away.”
After Trump’s initial comments at the lake, Republican officials took turns speaking, offering praise to the president.
“Well, we just want to thank you,” Rubio said. “The most important issue in Florida is water right now. And actually the algae blooms and all that that are destroying property values and economically threaten communities. People come to have access to the water, and they can’t go in the water for three or four months a year because of the algae blooms. This actually is related to that.”
Scott said, “We started bugging the president as soon as he got elected, that we had to get the dike fixed, and he came through. He worked with Congress, and we got the money. The dike will be done by 2022. It would not have happened but for what President Trump did.”
Environmentalists say a stronger dike, while necessary to protect coastal towns, will do little to reduce the discharges of fresh water to both coasts that cause algae blooms.
“It’s primarily a public safety thing,” said Diana Umpierre, Everglades restoration organizer for the Sierra Club. “The idea that the lake can hold enough water to not have the discharges is not true. Once the repairs are done, it might be possible to have a little more flexibility in how they operate the lake. It might be able to hold a little more water for a short period of time. But the lake is a living organism. It’s not a reservoir.”
Source: sun-sentinel.com
