Francis Rooney: House Speaker Paul Ryan has promised bill on Florida offshore drilling ban

House Speaker Paul Ryan has promised U.S. Rep. Francis Rooney that he would bring forward legislation to permanently extend a moratorium that bans offshore drilling from Florida’s Gulf Coast, Rooney said Tuesday night.

The moratorium is set to expire in 2022.

“I got a commitment out of him to do it,” Rooney said. “We’ll see if they honor that commitment.”

Rooney, R-Naples, spoke before a friendly crowd of about 50 people at a water protection panel hosted by FineMark National Bank & Trust in North Naples. He was joined by Eric Eikenberg, CEO of the Everglades Foundation, and Rob Moher, president and CEO of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

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The Trump administration revealed plans to expand offshore drilling throughout the U.S. over the next five years. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced on Twitter in January that the Florida coast would not be included in the expansion. But Florida has not officially been taken off the table.

“Republicans used to be stewards of the environment as well,” Rooney said. “I’m just going to keep fighting hard for right now.”

Rooney pledged to fight for dollars to speed up several billion-dollar projects to restore the Everglades, including reconstructing the Herbert Hoover Dike on Lake Okeechobee and building a massive reservoir south of the lake.

The federal government has fallen about $1 billion behind the state of Florida on efforts to restore the natural flow of the Everglades and help end toxic algae blooms that have haunted both east and west coasts of Florida in recent years, Rooney said.

The reservoir would be able to hold billions of gallons of water, filtering it and redirecting it south, through Everglades National Park, rather than shooting the polluted water down manmade canals to the Treasure Coast and to the Cape Coral and Fort Myers Beach area.

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Funding needs to be made available to speed up the construction of it, so it is built in the 2020s rather than the 2030s or beyond, Eikenberg said.

“It’s been 18 years, and how many toxic events that close businesses and close beaches do we need before we roll up our sleeves and take care of this?” he said. “This is polluted water that kills everything in its sights, including business.”

The reservoir would cost an estimated $1.6 billion, half of which would be paid by the state and half by the federal government. Everglades restoration began in 2000 with 68 major projects. The total tab for those projects is estimated at $17 billion.

The top priorities, Rooney said, are to fund the reservoir, repair the dike and elevate parts of U.S. 41 to allow water to flow underneath. All three efforts are needed to drastically reduce red tide and algae blooms, he said.