The U.S. President Donald Trump toured Lake Okeechobee and the Herbert Hoover Dike last Friday, as part of a major environmental visit.
During his walking tour, President Trump looked at the work being done on the aging dike to improve water quality across South Florida.
Joining him were Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Rick Scott, along with local Congressmen and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials.
During the visit, President Trump said: “It’s a great project for Florida. This project was dying until we got involved.”
In October of 2017, he promised to speed up repairs on the dike and ordered officials to accelerate work. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now says that the repairs are scheduled to be finished in 2022, three years earlier than planned.
Herbert Hoover Dike is a 143-mile earthen dam that surrounds Lake Okeechobee, the heart of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades system. The project reduces impacts from flooding as a result of high lake levels for a large area of south Florida.