ENVIRONMENT

Senate OKs $2 billion for Glades, $74 million for Kennedy Space Center

Ledyard King
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – The Senate early Saturday morning authorized almost $2 billion for Everglades restoration and approve $74 million to fix Kennedy Space Center structures damaged by Hurricane Matthew.

The senators convened for the final time before leaving Capitol Hill for their holiday break.

Everglades National Park photographed in November 2015.

Both allocations are in measures the House passed Thursday:

  • a water bill to fund dozens of dredging, water-quality and environmental projects nationwide;
  • a temporary spending bill to keep the lights on at federal agencies.

Both have been tied up in the Senate over unrelated disputes lawmakers were able to resolve before the midnight Friday deadline to avoid a government shutdown.

The water bill would authorize $1.95 billion for the Central Everglades Planning Project, as well as money for several other Florida projects, including $113 million for the Picayune Strand Restoration Project in Collier County and $323 million to dredge Port Everglades in Broward County.

The state is partnering with Washington on an ambitious effort to restore the Everglades and send Lake Okeechobee discharges toward Florida Bay, where it flowed before decades of development redirected the water east and west.

The bill would authorize federal aid for half the money. The other half would come from state and local sources.

The push for Everglades funding took on a new sense of urgency this year, after national attention on toxic algae blooms in the St. Lucie Rver and Indian River Lagoon on Florida’s east coast. Presidential candidates weighed in on the problem and members of Congress joined activists in delivering bottles of the contaminated water to Capitol Hill.

The projects are designed to redirect as much as 67 billion gallons of water per year to improve habitat in Florida Bay.

They also would improve water quality in Southwest Florida, where runoff from Lake Okeechobee carried by the Caloosahatchee River fouls local waterways.

South Florida Water Management District Chairman Daniel O’Keefe called passage of the water bill and the funding that still must be approved “vital to complete the Central Everglades Planning Project.”

The Senate’s passage of a separate spending bill that would keep the federal government open through April 28 includes $74 million to repair damage caused by Hurricane Matthew in October. The damage shuttered parts of the Kennedy Space Center for almost a week.

The storm, with sustained winds exceediing 80 mph, blew through pads and processing facilities critical to the nation's space launch capability. A 500-foot tower recorded a gust of 136 mph.

One of the Kennedy Space Center’s most serious failures during the Category 3 storm was the loss of air conditioning throughout the Launch Complex 39 area. A utility building responsible for running an industrial chiller lost a roof, and its equipment became waterlogged and shut down.

There also was roof damage to several structures.

Earlier this week, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $619 billion defense policy bill for next year. Among other things, it would give troops, including about 54,000 stationed in Florida, a 2.1 percent pay raise, the largest in six years.

Also included in the defense bill, which is headed to President Barack Obama’s desk, are several provisions pushed by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a member of the Armed Services Committee. They include:

» preventing consolidation of the nine Combatant Commands, three of which are in Florida — the U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, both at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa; and the U.S. Southern Command in Miami.

» assuring the U.S. has enough rocket engines for launching national security satellites through 2022, when a new domestically made rocket engine is projected to be ready; until then, United Launch Alliance would be allowed to use Russian-made RD-180s to launch its Atlas V rockets carrying military payloads.

» providing full funding for modeling and simulation programs, many of which are developed by businesses based in Central Florida’s Research Park.

“This bill will provide our troops a much-deserved raise in pay, help protect our combatant commands in Tampa and Miami and ensure that our commercial space industry has continued access to space,” Nelson said after the vote.

Contact Ledyard King at lking@gannett.com; Twitter: @ledgeking