Nominate a Best Restored Shore!
In the midst of last week’s National Coastal Conference in Fort Lauderdale, ASBPA Executive Director, Derek Brockbank, was able to join the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee’s Roundtable in Miami to launch the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) 2018. The Roundtable had nine members of Congress including T&I Committee chair, Bill Shuster, and the chair and ranking member of the Energy & Water Sub-Committee, Reps. Garret Graves and Grace Napolitano, and nine stakeholders.
The Roundtable was, not surprisingly, very Florida-centric, with lots of discussion about Everglades projects, and Southeastern Florida ports (the event was hosted at the Port of Miami). I was able to get in on the act and mention Broward County’s federal shore protection, which had just won ASBPA’s coastal lifetime achievement award, as a great example of flood risk reduction project that also provided habitat and recreation.
With this event, we think T&I Staff will start digging into writing WRDA in the next couple months. ASBPA was happy to represent the beach and “natural coastal infrastructure” community.