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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Rubio Backs Budget Rider to Block FL Water Pollution Limits

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Wednesday, March 9, 2011   

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Florida's junior U.S. senator, Republican Marco Rubio, hopes to use the budget debate happening now in the Senate to block new pollution controls for Florida waterways. On Tuesday, Rubio announced his support for a rider to the budget bill that would take away funds for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It would prevent enforcement of new limits on such industrial and farm waste as fertilizers, manure and sewage.

David Guest, who heads the Florida regional office of Earthjustice, warns the result could be an increase in toxic algae outbreaks, like those that have plagued the St. John's, St. Lucie and other rivers.

"Glowing green slime that covered the entire river, killed all the wildlife; so toxic it was unsafe to have human contact. It caused a permanent decline in property values on the St. Lucie River of half a billion dollars."

Rubio says the EPA's new limits cost too much to enforce and would kill jobs in the state. Guest counters that the costs would pale in comparison to the economic damage done by more toxic algae outbreaks closing beaches, wrecking the fishing industry and causing illnesses in people and wildlife. He points out that clean water is a critical component of Florida's tourist economy.

"When tourists come and they go to a place like Siesta Key, or Southwest Florida, and they have red tides that are so toxic that you can't even breathe the air next to them, much less stand the stench of the dead fish, they don't want to come back."

Senior Florida senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, has also been a key player on this issue, according to Guest. He says Nelson was instrumental in bringing the issue to greater public awareness and demanding federal action.



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