Bill Nelson warns that Florida faces plague-like conditions from toxic algae blooms

Democratic Florida Sen. Bill Nelson says his state is facing plague-like conditions from a harmful algal bloom that has the Sunshine State coated in a green slime.

“Most people have seen the dead fish, the dead mammals, of which has been an additional plague on Florida this year,” Nelson said Tuesday at a Commerce Committee hearing on the toxic bloom crisis. “The harmful algae blooms have suddenly enveloped Florida to a green slime.”

Nelson submitted dozens of letters to the committee from Florida residents detailing the devastation that has closed beaches, has made Floridians physically ill, and is harming all segments of the fishing industry and anything ocean-related.

“Florida is facing an environmental and economic harm, where toxic algae is coating – is coating – both coasts,” Nelson said. He added that life guards on the beaches are now tasked with preventing swimmers from entering the water, rather than their normal duty of protecting swimmers from drowning.

“You can stay on the beach, on the sand, but you can’t go into the water,” Nelson said.

The algal bloom hearing was led by Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, the chairman of the committee’s oceans and fisheries panel, who said algal blooms in his state are harming commercial fishing and the seafood industry, while threatening public health.

“Almost every state in the country now experiences some kind of HAB [harmful algal bloom] event, including my home state of Alaska,” Sullivan said.

“Over the last 80 years, HABs have killed 15 people and sickened hundreds,” he added. Poisonous algae can kill at very low levels, primarily by humans ingesting contaminated shell fish.

The geoduck clam harvest, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Alaska, is currently being hurt by an unexplained outbreak of algae contamination, resulting in significant economic losses, Sullivan noted.

He also used the hearing to raise the need for legislation to address the problem.

He co-sponsored a bill introduced by Nelson last year to address the blooms, called the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act of 2017. The legislation passed the Senate last year, but continues to be bogged down in the House.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the subcommittee’s top Democrat, said the legislation is meant to reauthorize and update the algal bloom research and prevention program before it expires on Sept. 30. She said there isn’t much time to move the measure.

Baldwin said that increasing algae blooms are affecting her state’s waterways and even nearby Lake Superior. She said her state is experiencing the worst algae blooms in nearly a decade, displaying a photo of Lake Winnebago, where the water looked like green paint lapping onto the lake’s beaches.

“These stinky, toxic, persistent blooms are on the rise in Wisconsin and the rest of the United States,” Baldwin said. “They’re increasing in frequency and duration and extent.”

The problem is being exacerbated by climate change by creating more favorable conditions for the blooms, she said.

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