U.S. Senator Bill Nelson was in town Thursday joined by fellow U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and U.S. Rep. Corinne Brown to talk climate change and present a few alarming local statistics.
“With a two or three-foot sea-level rise, most of Florida—75 percent of its population—will be underwater. That’s how serious this is,” Nelson said.
Nelson said he’d been at a Senate Commerce Committee meeting in Miami Beach earlier this week discussing the data.
“Seventy-five percent of our population lives along the coast,” he said. “The projections are one to two feet by the middle of the century and by the end of the century, it could be as much as three feet sea-level rise unless we get ahead of it.”
Whitehouse joined Thursday’s press conference at Friendship Fountain, as part of his east coast “climate change road trip.” The senator has been touring coastal cities in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas in an effort to boost public support to curb the effects of climate change.
“At the national level, people need to be rooting for reducing the amount of carbon pollution we emit because it is absolutely direct that the carbon pollution goes into atmosphere, it warms up the planet…those are the battles that we have to fight,” he said.
During his visit, Whitehouse took a ride on Jacksonville University’s floating classroom on St. John’s River to tour the city’s coastal preserves.
Nelson also took the opportunity to discuss $600 million JAXPORT project to deepen a portion of the river for larger ships.
The plan, which has been championed by Mayor Alvin Brown and a number of Northeast Florida legislators, was approved last week from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and will go before Congress next month.
“We just got it in the authorization in the new Water Resources Development bill which should pass in the House fairly soon,” he said. “We will have our authorization then over the course of the next five years to get the appropriations.”
The project has been met with criticism from some environmentalists who worry about its impact on the river, including increasing the amount of salt in the river. Thursday, Nelson glossed over those concerns, stating the increased salt levels are due to rising sea-levels which send saltwater into Florida’s honeycomb-like surface.
“When the sea level rises, that’s greater water pressure. It starts then pushing into the fresh water in the lyme stone honeycomb and the water sources that we now depend on are turning salty because of that,” he said.
Rep. Corinne Brown said the issue is finding a balance.
"We want to economic development," she said. "We want to do jobs, but we want to leave this environment for the future of the Earth. We only have one Earth."
You can follow Rhema Thompson on Twitter @RhemaThompson
