[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1478 Introduced in House (IH)]

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118th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. RES. 1478

Recognizing access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, 
  broadband communications, and public transportation as basic human 
   rights and public services that must be accessible, safe, justly 
 sourced and sustainable, acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate 
               resilient, and reliable for every person.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 19, 2024

 Ms. Tlaib (for herself, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Omar, Mr. Carson, Ms. 
Lee of California, Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania, Mrs. Ramirez, Mr. Huffman, 
 Ms. Pressley, Mrs. Watson Coleman, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, Ms. Bush, 
and Mr. Bowman) submitted the following resolution; which was referred 
    to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the 
Committees on Natural Resources, and Transportation and Infrastructure, 
for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case 
for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of 
                        the committee concerned

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Recognizing access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, 
  broadband communications, and public transportation as basic human 
   rights and public services that must be accessible, safe, justly 
 sourced and sustainable, acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate 
               resilient, and reliable for every person.

Whereas every person requires access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, 
        cooling, broadband communications, and public transportation to survive 
        and live a life with dignity;
Whereas decades-old infrastructure systems, including centralized utilities, 
        disconnected wells, septic systems, unpiped systems, the electric grid, 
        and related power infrastructure, have reached their breaking points in 
        safety and reliability in the midst of compounding crises of the climate 
        emergency and fossil fuel-driven climate disasters, racial injustices, 
        disinvestment in existing systems, and economic inequities that endanger 
        the public's health and safety;
Whereas these crises are exacerbated by privatization of public goods and 
        utilities by for-profit corporations that prioritize earnings and 
        shareholders over the welfare of people, the planet, and public health, 
        all while readily accepting public funding from Federal infrastructure 
        programs;
Whereas millions of households collectively accrued more than $20,000,000,000 of 
        energy utility debt by 2023, utility bills are growing faster than 
        household incomes, with water prices increasing 56 percent from 2012 to 
        2023 and becoming unaffordable for one in six households nationwide, and 
        broadband prices typically rising faster than the rate of inflation, and 
        utilities have become profoundly unaffordable for millions of people, 
        causing over 34 percent of all households to cut back on basic needs to 
        pay energy bills;
Whereas utilities are engaging in punitive residential customer payment 
        collection practices including mass-scale service shutoffs, shutting off 
        water service to an estimated 15,000,000 people in a typical year and 
        electricity service to households well over 5,700,000 times between 2020 
        and 2022;
Whereas many utilities send overdue water bills and associated late fees to tax 
        authorities to impose liens, which can lead to tax sales of properties, 
        contributing to property foreclosures that can evict people from their 
        homes and lead to bankruptcy;
Whereas investor-owned utilities, fossil-fuel energy companies, and their 
        industry associations fund and coordinate the obstruction of renewable 
        energy policies and programs, including rooftop and community solar 
        requirements and incentives;
Whereas utilities often rely on predatory collection agencies to pursue payment 
        on unaffordable bills and debts that damage credit scores and cause 
        long-term harm to households' ability to access affordable credit;
Whereas utility shutoffs and unaffordable bills have led to increasing numbers 
        of vulnerable people dying from uncontrollable household temperatures 
        and inaccessible water and sanitation after being denied access to 
        utility services, thus posing substantial threats to general public and 
        community health, as exemplified in a paper from Duke University 
        researchers that found a nationwide utility shutoff moratorium could 
        have prevented 15 percent of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, with similar 
        findings in a published study from Cornell University;
Whereas disconnection from water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, and 
        broadband services increases housing and utility insecurity and exposure 
        to eviction, homelessness, and resulting incarceration because of the 
        criminalization of being unhoused;
Whereas disconnection from water, sanitation, electricity, heating, and cooling 
        can expose families to State-enforced separation due to conditioning 
        parental or guardian's ability to care for minor children or 
        incapacitated adults on ensuring access to these essential services 
        while, contradictorily, still allowing these services to be disconnected 
        from people living in poverty;
Whereas the United States is the largest historical contributor to global 
        greenhouse gas pollution, responsible for approximately 25 percent of 
        cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since 1870, which is accelerating 
        climate disasters and destabilizing ecosystems;
Whereas the climate emergency is causing widespread harm and acts as a 
        multiplier of harmful exposures, and it has already begun to generate 
        more intense storms, sea level rise and extreme weather events that 
        place greater demand on and cause significant harm to the aging 
        infrastructure, including overloading outdated stormwater and wastewater 
        systems and threatening public health through flooding, sewage backups 
        into homes, and sewage spills into public spaces, which 
        disproportionately impact places where Black, Brown, and Indigenous 
        people live, particularly among low-income communities and other groups 
        who are economically vulnerable;
Whereas aging drinking water and wastewater systems need at least 
        $1,279,000,000,000 in improvements over the next 20 years to comply with 
        existing Federal water quality regulations, according to the latest 
        needs assessments from the Environmental Protection Agency;
Whereas 2023 was the hottest year on record and the need for cooling, air 
        filtration, and public water fountains and refill stations will continue 
        to increase as a result of the climate emergency, accelerating the need 
        to assist vulnerable people during heat waves, drought, extreme 
        wildfire, and other heat- and air-quality-related emergencies;
Whereas environmental justice communities experience disparate and cumulative 
        health impacts from climate change, air pollution, soil contamination, 
        unsafe drinking water sources (including lead service lines and 
        contaminated water supplies), and inadequate sanitation systems;
Whereas fossil-fuel energy primarily delivered by centralized utilities is 
        driving the climate crisis and pollution;
Whereas the climate emergency poses a substantial threat to critical utility 
        infrastructure and broadband communications networks vital to 
        connectivity during times of emergency and rebuilding;
Whereas increased electricity rates and dirty electricity sources have 
        disproportionately impacted communities of color;
Whereas the United States has joined a global pledge to transition away from 
        fossil fuels and triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 
        2030; and
Whereas clean, renewable energy, distributed power, energy efficiency, and 
        battery storage present nonpolluting, affordable, climate-resilient 
        energy and opportunities for energy democracy: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) recognizes access to water, sanitation, electricity, 
        heating, cooling, broadband communications, and public 
        transportation as basic human rights and public services that 
        must be accessible, safe, justly sourced and sustainable, 
        acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and 
        reliable for every person;
            (2) affirms that access to utility services should be 
        guaranteed for all people and should not be denied to any 
        person based on ability to pay, housing status, immigration 
        status, race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual 
        orientation or identity, (dis)ability, employment status, 
        credit history, or incarceration status or history, and affirms 
        that all agencies must enforce antidiscrimination language in 
        existing laws and ensure language access through translation 
        and interpretation to provide adequate communication with 
        people in the language they speak at home;
            (3) affirms that utilities should be held under public 
        control, with equitable and transparent asset-management 
        planning systems with policy-setting public involvement and 
        intentional community engagement, based on the public interest 
        and seeking to repair legacies of harm and pollution in 
        environmental justice communities;
            (4) calls for a full ban on water privatization and 
        supports ending privatization contracts and franchises and 
        municipalizing privatized systems;
            (5) commits to the elimination of Federal funding and 
        subsidies for private water corporations;
            (6) commits to the development and expansion of accountable 
        Federal public power providers and Federal support for 
        municipalities, cooperatives, and communities to produce, 
        procure, and deliver clean, renewable energy, storage, and 
        energy efficiency, and meaningful public accountability over 
        any remaining private utilities to deliver the same package of 
        climate-resilient energy;
            (7) calls for public municipalities, cooperatives, and 
        smaller broadband providers to explore public ownership options 
        and other means to provide better, more equitable, and 
        affordable choices than incumbent for-profit companies alone 
        provide;
            (8) affirms that utility services must be affordable for 
        every person based on their ability to pay;
            (9) calls for all public utility commissions to create 
        processes to grant policy-setting powers to community-based 
        organizations representing the most vulnerable populations 
        within the utility service area, and to require racial and 
        economic equity impact assessments to determine project 
        prioritization;
            (10) commits to a full ban on all punitive collection 
        practices for unpaid household utility bills including--
                    (A) disconnections of water, wastewater, 
                stormwater, electricity, heating, cooling, and 
                broadband service;
                    (B) the use of property or tax foreclosures or 
                evictions;
                    (C) the sale of any uncollected household debt to 
                collection agencies; and
                    (D) the filing of an adverse report with a credit-
                reporting agency;
            (11) commits to provide and prioritize direct payments to 
        environmental justice and impacted frontline communities for 
        water, sanitation, distributed solar, and broadband projects;
            (12) commits to eliminate policies that criminalize a 
        person's inability to afford utility services, including 
        unauthorized utility reconnections and a person's inability to 
        improve home septic systems and other utility infrastructure;
            (13) commits to provide utility access to unhoused people 
        for a basic level of service for the public good, including 
        water for drinking, bathing, and sanitation, shelter from 
        inclement weather, wildfire, floods, and extreme temperatures, 
        access to public transportation, and access to internet 
        communication;
            (14) affirms that utility services should be safe for all 
        people, providing high-quality drinking water free from lead, 
        arsenic, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and 
        other contaminants, safe heating and cooling sources that do 
        not rely on fuel oil, propane, or dangerous methane gas, and 
        safe situating of lines and infrastructure that protects 
        workers and communities;
            (15) affirms that policies facilitating the commodification 
        and financialization of water resources, services, and systems 
        such as private water bottling, interbasin diversions, and 
        water futures trading should be banned;
            (16) recognizes that, while short-term water access must be 
        maintained in instances of public health risk, including 
        through the distribution of prepackaged water, such a project 
        is neither a long-term or sustainable solution to 
        infrastructure-related public health crises;
            (17) commits to direct Federal grants to support capital 
        improvements and operations, including the compensation 
        packages necessary to attract and retain a qualified unionized 
        workforce, forgive outstanding municipal utility debt and 
        household utility bill debt, and otherwise scale up the 
        capacity of publicly-controlled utility services such as 
        drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems;
            (18) commits to requiring climate adaptation planning to 
        reduce risk and cost burden on taxpayers and climate-resilient 
        utility solutions, including--
                    (A) enhanced clean, renewable energy and energy 
                efficiency technologies (including rooftop and 
                community solar, storage, microgrids, weatherization 
                technologies, heat pumps, and other efficient cooling 
                and heating technologies); and
                    (B) updated indoor air-quality standards and 
                expanded water conservation measures (including green 
                infrastructure and stormwater management);
            (19) affirms that investments in new and existing 
        infrastructure should prioritize local, responsibly sourced, 
        and clean, renewable energy while divesting from all global 
        extractive and fossil-fuel processes that harm local 
        communities, economies, and cultures in the United States, in 
        the Global South, and across Tribal communities, which 
        disproportionately bear the climate burdens and consequences of 
        extractive capitalism of Western nations;
            (20) commits to provide direct grant investments in 
        environmental justice and frontline communities that have been 
        historically burdened to increase the availability, 
        affordability, safety, reliability, and accessibility of 
        electricity, broadband, water, wastewater, stormwater, 
        sanitation, heating, and cooling needs, while supporting high-
        quality, family-sustaining union jobs and requiring community 
        benefit agreements and local hiring and job training for 
        residents in affected communities, project labor agreements, 
        labor peace agreements, and living wages;
            (21) commits to upholding Tribal treaties for self-
        governance and self-determination;
            (22) commits to creating a Federal database that requires 
        utilities to standardize regularly issued reports for water 
        quality, noncompliance events, disruptions, disconnections, and 
        includes data on length of disconnections, amount of 
        arrearages, demographics, and income levels of affected 
        communities; and
            (23) commits to establishing an interagency task force 
        composed of relevant experts to develop and submit to Congress, 
        and publish publicly, a plan, including timelines, for 
        implementation of the activities committed to under paragraphs 
        (5), (6), (10), (11), (12), (13), (17), (18), (20), (21), and 
        (22).
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