    [House Hearing, 110 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

     THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET REQUEST

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARINGS

                                   BEFORE THE

              SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS

                                    AND THE

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND AIR QUALITY

                                     OF THE

                        COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   ----------

                              MARCH 1 AND 8, 2007

                                   ----------

                               Serial No. 110-11

          Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

                            energycommerce.house.gov

      THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET REQUEST

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARINGS

                                   BEFORE THE

              SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS

                                    AND THE

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND AIR QUALITY

                                     OF THE

                        COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                              MARCH 1 AND 8, 2007

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 110-11

          Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

                            energycommerce.house.gov

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
    38-829                      WASHINGTON : 2008
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      THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET REQUEST
    ?

                        COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

        JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan,
                 Chairman
    HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
    EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
    RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
    EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
    FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
    BART GORDON, Tennessee
    BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
    ANNA G. ESHOO, California
    BART STUPAK, Michigan
    ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
    ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland
    GENE GREEN, Texas
    DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
        Vice Chairman
    LOIS CAPPS, California
    MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania
    JANE HARMAN, California
    TOM ALLEN, Maine
    JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
    HILDA L. SOLIS, California
    CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas
    JAY INSLEE, Washington
    TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
    MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
    DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
    ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
    JIM MATHESON, Utah
    G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
    CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana
    JOHN BARROW, Georgia
    BARON P. HILL, Indiana               JOE BARTON, Texas
                                             Ranking Member
                                         RALPH M. HALL, Texas
                                         J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois
                                         FRED UPTON, Michigan
                                         CLIFF STEARNS, Florida
                                         NATHAN DEAL, Georgia
                                         ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky
                                         BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming
                                         JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois
                                         HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
                                         JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
                                         CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING,
                                             Mississippi
                                         VITO FOSSELLA, New York
                                         STEVE BUYER, Indiana
                                         GEORGE RADANOVICH, California
                                         JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
                                         MARY BONO, California
                                         GREG WALDEN, Oregon
                                         LEE TERRY, Nebraska
                                         MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey
                                         MIKE ROGERS, Michigan
                                         SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina
                                         JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
                                         TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania
                                         MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
                                         MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
    _________________________________________________________________

                               Professional Staff

     Dennis B. Fitzgibbons, Chief of
                   Staff
    Gregg A. Rothschild, Chief Counsel
       Sharon E. Davis, Chief Clerk
       Bud Albright, Minority Staff
                 Director

                                      (ii)
              Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials

                       ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland, Chairman
    FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey       JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois,
    BART STUPAK, Michigan                     Ranking Member
    LOIS CAPPS, California               CLIFF STEARNS, Florida
    TOM ALLEN, Maine                     NATHAN DEAL, Georgia
    HILDA L. SOLIS, California           HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
        Vice Chairman                    JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
    TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin             VITO FOSELLA, New York
    G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina     GEORGE RADANOVICH, California
    JOHN BARROW, Georgia                 JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
    BARON P. HILL, Indiana               LEE TERRY, Nebraska
    DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado              MIKE ROGERS, Michigan
    ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York          JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
    HENRY A. WAXMAN, California          TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania
    GENE GREEN, Texas
    JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
                                  ----------

                     Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality

                        RICK BOUCHER, Virginia, Chairman
    G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina    J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois,
        Vice Chairman                         Ranking Member
    CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana          RALPH M. HALL, Texas
    JOHN BARROW, Georgia                 FRED UPTON, Michigan
    HENRY A. WAXMAN, California          ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky
    EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts      JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois
    ALBERT RUSSELL WYNN, Maryland        JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
    MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania       CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING,
    JANE HARMAN, California                  Mississippi
    TOM ALLEN, Maine                     STEVE BUYER, Indiana
    CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas           MARY BONO, California
    JAY INSLEE, Washington               GREG WALDEN, Oregon
    TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin             MIKE ROGERS, Michigan
    MIKE ROSS, Arkansas                  SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina
    DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon               JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
    ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York          MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
    JIM MATHESON, Utah

                                 C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                                 MARCH 1, 2007

                                                                       Page
    Hon. Albert R. Wynn, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Maryland, opening statement.................................     1
     Hon. John Shimkus, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Illinois, opening statement.................................     3
    Hon. Tammy Baldwin, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Wisconsin, opening statement................................     5
    Hon. Tim, Murphy, a Representative in Congress from the
      Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, opening statement................     6
    Hon. Diana DeGette, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Colorado, opening statement.................................     7
    Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the
      State of New Jersey, opening statement.........................     8
    Hon. Bart Stupak, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Michigan, opening statement....................................    10
    Hon. Hilda L. Solis, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of California, opening statement...............................    11
    Hon. Gene Green, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Texas, opening statement.......................................    12
    Hon. Joe Barton, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Texas, prepared statement......................................    13

                                   Witnesses

    Bill Roderick, Acting Inspector General, U.S. Environmental
      Protection Agency..............................................    15
        Prepared statement...........................................    17
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   170
    J. Christian Bollwage, mayor, city of Elizabeth, Elizabeth, NJ...    30
        Prepared statement...........................................    32
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   139
    Robert W. King, Jr., president, Environmental Council of the
      States; deputy commissioner, South Carolina Department of
      Health and Environmental Control...............................    45
        Prepared statement...........................................    47
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   144
    Andrew M. Langer, manager, regulatory affairs, Federation of
      Independent Business...........................................    59
        Prepared statement...........................................    62
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   150
    Maurice McTigue, director, government accountability project,
      George Mason University, Fairfax, VA...........................    77
        Prepared statement...........................................    79
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   155
    Patrice Simms, senior attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council    88
        Prepared statement...........................................    90
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   160

                                 MARCH 8, 2007

    Hon. Albert R. Wynn, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Maryland, opening statement.................................   183
    Hon. John Shimkus, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Illinois, opening statement....................................   186
    Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Michigan, opening statement.................................   187
    Hon. Gene Green, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Texas, opening statement.......................................   189
    Hon. Tim Murphy, a Representative in Congress from the
      Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, opening statement................   190
        Prepared statement...........................................   190
    Hon. John Barrow, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Georgia, opening statement.....................................   191
    Hon. G.K. Butterfield, a Representative in Congress from the
      State of North Carolina, opening statement.....................   191
    Hon. Joe Barton, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Texas, opening statement.......................................   192
    Hon. J. Dennis Hastert, a Representative in Congress from the
      State of Illinois, prepared statement..........................   194
    Hon. Michael C. Burgess, a Representative in Congress from the
      State of Texas, prepared statement.............................   195

                                    Witness

    Stephen L. Johnson, Administrator, Environmental Protection
      Agency.........................................................   195
        Prepared statement...........................................   197
        Answers to pre-hearing questions.............................   255
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   271

      THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET REQUEST

                                  ----------

                            THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2007

                    House of Representatives,
                    Subcommittee on Environment
                               and Hazardous Materials,
                              Committee on Energy and Commerce,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:45 a.m., in
    room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Albert R.
    Wynn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Members present: Representatives Pallone, Stupak, Solis,
    Baldwin, Butterfield, Barrow, Hill, DeGette, Green, Shimkus,
    Stearns, Terry, Rogers, Sullivan and Murphy.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ALBERT R. WYNN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

        Mr. Wynn. This is the first of two hearings on the fiscal
    year 2008 budget for the Environmental Protection Agency. Today
    we will hear from a distinguished panel of stakeholders who are
    directly affected by EPA's funding levels, and later on March 8
    we will have the honor and pleasure of hearing from the EPA
    administrator, Mr. Stephen Johnson.
        For purposes of making opening statements, the chairs and
    ranking members of the subcommittee and the full committee will
    each be recognized for 5 minutes. All other members of the
    subcommittee will be recognized for 3 minutes. Those members
    may waive their right to make an opening statement when first
    recognized to raise questions. They may add those 3 minutes to
    their time for questions. Without objections, all Members will
    have 5 legislative days to submit opening statements for the
    record.
        Before I begin my opening statement, I would like to
    recognize the premier of Bermuda who is with us, the Honorable
    Ewart Brown. We are delighted to have you, Mr. Premier.
        Mr. Brown. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. It was just suggested we have an oversight
    hearing in Bermuda. Thank you very much for stopping by.
        Since at least 2003, there has been growing concern about
    the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to fulfill
    its programmatic mission in several critical areas including
    Superfund, Brownfields, Leaking Underground Storage Tanks, the
    Safe Drinking Water Act Revolving Loan Fund and environmental
    justice, among other issues. However, this is the first hearing
    this subcommittee has held on the EPA budget in 6 years and it
    is the first under the current administration. I believe that
    it is part of Congress's institutional and constitutional
    responsibility to hold oversight hearings on the EPA, and
    unlike the last Congress, this subcommittee will
    enthusiastically pursue these responsibilities.
        As we move forward, there are several realities we must
    consider. First, the President's EPA budget request for fiscal
    year 2008, when adjusted for inflation and constant dollars,
    shows a dramatic decline over the last 10 years. Second, the
    Superfund program has seen a precipitous drop in the number of
    sites being completed. And third, the President has expressed
    his opposition to reinstatement of dedicated taxes, resulting
    in all EPA-funded cleanups having to come out of general
    revenues.
        It appears the administration has a less-than-serious
    commitment to environmental protection since the EPA is one of
    only two agencies to see a decline in the President's budget.
    First, in terms of the Superfund, the fiscal year 2008 budget
    request for Superfund is $35 million less than the President's
    fiscal year 2006 budget request. These reductions come at a
    time when progress in completing construction activities of
    Superfund national priority list sites has slowed dramatically.
    EPA has projected completion of 40 sites in fiscal year 2007
    but recently announced that it will achieve only 24
    construction completions this year, a reduction of 40 percent.
    In many instances, EPA has been unable to begin construction
    cleanup on new Superfund sites or more commonly, EPA has been
    unable to move to completion on sites already in the pipeline.
    What this means is that EPA is unable to adequately meet its
    mission of protecting human health and the environment and our
    constituents continue to remain at risk.
        Turning to the Leaking Underground Storage Tanks program,
    leaking underground storage tanks are the leading source of
    groundwater contamination in the United States, posing a risk
    to the Nation's drinking water supply. Congress enacted the
    LUST Trust Fund in order to deal with this growing threat to
    the Nation's health. Interest on the LUST Trust Fund is
    estimated to add an additional $109 million in fiscal year
    2008, bringing the total LUST Fund surplus to $3 billion. The
    President's budget, however, requests just $72.5 million from
    this trust fund for cleanup, slightly less than last year's
    appropriations. Gasoline taxes paid by consumers are not going
    for their specified purpose: the cleanup of spills and releases
    and contaminated water supplies. Using this important trust
    fund to offset other administration spending is quite frankly a
    farce on the American public. But in the meantime, there is a
    backlog of 113,000 cleanups. The longer this contamination is
    left unaddressed, the greater the adverse effect on human
    health, increasing the ultimate cost of the cleanups.
        In terms of Brownfields, the President's fiscal year 2008
    budget request of $89 million for cleanup and assessment grants
    is 26 percent less than his request for 2006. Current law
    provides an authorization of $200 million per year but the
    President's request for 2008 seeks only 56 percent of the
    amount authorized for cleanups and assessment grants. This is
    troublesome when you consider that in 2006 there were 694
    Brownfield project grant proposals but only slightly more than
    a third actually received funding. This is also of concern
    because demand for cleanups has intensified, particularly with
    the increased focus on environmental justice for low-income and
    minority communities.
        In terms of the drinking water revolving loan fund designed
    to support States in helping public water systems finance the
    cost of infrastructure improvements, again we see inadequate
    funding. When adjusted for inflation in 2006 dollars, the
    President's budget request for 2008 is the lowest in the
    history of the revolving loan fund program. These reductions
    lead to shortfalls in State resources and consumers are hurt.
    They either foot the bill or they suffer outbreaks of
    waterborne diseases due to failing infrastructure.
        Overall, there are concerns that EPA's funding is
    insufficient to meet its mission to protect the environment and
    the public health. There are unfunded mandates for States, a
    backlog of polluted sites and spreading contamination. In the
    face of chronic underfunding of EPA's core health programs, I
    am also concerned that EPA is expending significant resources
    on voluntary programs with questionable oversight and
    evaluation.
        I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses, the
    stakeholders who represent the interests of the States, the
    environmental community and the small-business community and
    learning more about their views of our efforts to protect the
    health of our constituents and the environment.
        At this time I would like to recognize my distinguished
    colleague, Mr. Shimkus, the ranking member.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SHIMKUS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to
    congratulate you on your chairmanship and tell you how much I
    look forward to working together. We have already had a couple
    meetings and I think that is very important. I know there will
    be times when we will agree to disagree, and if we do that
    amicably, I think that is going to help us also in the movement
    of public policy. But I am sure we both can agree that
    protecting human health, one of the duties of our jurisdiction
    on this committee, is something members on both sides of the
    aisle want.
        One thing we know is that no real progress occurs on
    environmental issues unless both Democrats and Republicans
    stand behind the same policy. In fact, Chairman Dingell and I
    talked about this prior to the markup that we just left. I also
    want to be very clear that I and the Republican members of this
    committee welcome congressional oversight by this panel and
    want to extend our hand in cooperation to these efforts. We
    want the facts, both the budgetary and the scientific, and we
    support thoughtful, reasoned, deliberate and meaningful
    questioning that advances the needs of our constituents, not
    Republicans or Democrats. It goes without saying that efforts
    outside of these parameters are viewed by myself and my
    colleagues as partisan commercials that should not have a place
    in this committee.
        For this reason, I wanted to share with you my surprise at
    not being asked to join you and other members of this committee
    on a couple letters that were sent to the EPA and the
    Government Accountability Office on waste generated at CAFOS.
    At least give me the chance to say no, I won't sign it. I am
    especially concerned about CAFOS, the Combined Animal Feeding
    Operation Districts, because the three signers of the letter, I
    have as many head of animals, poultry, beef, pork, as you all
    do people, plus 70 percent more in my congressional district,
    so there is a different view of CAFOS in rural America, and I
    think that is why we want to encourage you to come out to
    southern Illinois, but I have already made that invitation to
    you and we can see a part of the country in which some of the
    issues may be a little bit different.
        Certainly long before any pollution from a farm reaches an
    urban setting, it passes through a rural one and we have the
    mayors here or the representatives of mayors and they are
    mayors of small towns that have to deal with these issues. That
    is why I would like to follow up and encourage a visit by you
    and other members if we can arrange it, both to the St. Louis
    metropolitan area and southern Illinois.
        I only think it makes sense to focus our time and
    understanding on the budget of the main Federal agency that our
    committee oversees. I applaud your decision to hold 2 days'
    worth of hearings and I would like to personally thank you for
    allowing the minority two requested witnesses to appear on this
    panel. I made that personal request and you agreed, and I do
    appreciate that. This is a great start to our working together
    as chairman and ranking member.
        I think the budget of the U.S. Environmental Protection
    Agency is not an easy document to understand. I prefer things
    to be simple, and this budget, just like the budget of other
    Federal agencies, is not. What strikes me is that nothing the
    EPA does happens in a vacuum. It has ramifications for Federal,
    State and local regulators. It impacts large, medium and small
    business and it translates into how public health protections
    can and will be carried out. Simply looking at the numbers does
    a disservice to the work of the agency and its partners.
    Rather, we need to step back and ask ourselves if progress is
    happening, are people being protected and how do we know: a
    result-oriented approach. We also need to decide of the money
    we are spending is being spent wisely. Is it sapping resources
    from other potentially more crucial public health needs or it
    is being used as a crutch for programs or stakeholders that no
    longer need it or could do without it? We must admit that it is
    misguided to beat up the Bush administration when all
    appropriations are required by the Constitution to begin in the
    House. So you all are going to have a chance to submit a budget
    and address some of these wrongs and we are going to see how
    well you guys do.
        Mr. Chairman, the Republican members of this committee and
    I pledge to be an honest broker on the issues that lie ahead. I
    welcome the witnesses and yield back the balance of my time.
        Mr. Wynn. I want to thank the gentleman for his opening
    statement. I look forward to working with the gentleman. We
    have had a good and cordial working relationship and had
    several conversations prior to this hearing. I also want to
    indicate that I am sorry if you feel excluded from our
    correspondence. I am sure we will have an opportunity to talk
    about that in the future.
        Mr. Shimkus. If the gentleman would yield, you can always
    say, well, you never signed that letter.
        Mr. Wynn. That was my intent, but I certainly don't want
    you to feel excluded.
        Mr. Shimkus. Mr. Simms wants to make sure that I don't sign
    my letters. He will let me know.
        Mr. Wynn. With respect to the appropriations, I do want to
    note that it was the Congress under the Republican majority
    that was responsible for some of the shortages that we have
    experienced.
        But not to belabor that point, I want to move into the
    opening statements by members of the committee, and at this
    point the Chair would recognize Ms. Baldwin.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TAMMY BALDWIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

        Ms. Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        It is exciting to be here today to finally discuss the
    operation of our Nation's Environment Protection Agency. Too
    many years, in fact, 6 years have passed since our last public
    conversations about EPA's programs and priorities, and this
    body has been lax, perhaps even negligent in its use of
    oversight power and it is certainly time for us to exert our
    constitutional responsibilities and ask difficult but important
    questions about the actions the EPA is taking, and I commend
    the committee and you, Mr. Chairman, for beginning our
    discussions today with testimony from people who see firsthand
    the impact of the EPA's actions and funding decisions. Quite
    frankly, over the last 6 years it has been difficult for the
    EPA to fully meet its mission of protecting human health and
    the environment, given that the administration does not seem to
    place a priority on its proper funding. In fact, the EPA's
    budget has been stuck in a downward spiral for years. The
    result has been that Superfund sites remain dangerous, drinking
    water is threatened and air quality is jeopardized.
        In my home State of Wisconsin, our environment is
    considered precious. Our tradition is of stewardship,
    conservation, preservation and environmental protection, and
    that tradition is long. We rely heavily on groundwater and
    freshwater from lakes. We believe in protecting our wetlands
    and ensuring that our air is fresh to breathe. However, lately
    our efforts to preserve and protect our environment have been
    jeopardized. Our State and local authorities have expressed
    concern about the effects of cuts to programs like the State
    and tribal grants program, the State Drinking Water Revolving
    Fund and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. They are worried
    that as funding levels for programs decrease or remain
    stagnant, States are expected to provide a greater share of the
    funding, and at the same time pick up responsibility for
    implementing new requirements promulgated by the EPA. It is
    simply not fair to place unfunded mandates on our neighbors and
    communities back home.
        Let me also add that in Wisconsin, we are deeply concerned
    about the lack of attention that EPA is placing on efforts to
    reduce mercury pollution. Exposure to and consumption of
    mercury-laden fish can result in severe health effects. The EPA
    recognized this in its 2006 roadmap for mercury and outlined a
    number of promising programs to retire mercury-containing
    devices, address mercury releases to the environment and
    conduct mercury research and monitoring. Unfortunately, the
    administration's budget does not appear to provide the
    appropriate financial support or staffing levels needed to
    implement many of these initiatives. Meanwhile, we continue to
    hear about the dangers of exposure to mercury in our school
    classrooms, our water and our food supply. Mr. Chairman, I am
    hopeful that by holding these EPA budget hearings we will be
    able to able to refocus our attention back to environmental
    protection and show that protecting our environment should not
    solely be a State or interest group responsibility. Rather, the
    Federal Government has a role to play in ensuring that our air
    is clean to breathe, our water is safe to drink and our
    communities are preserved and protected for future generations
    to enjoy.
        I look forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentlelady.
        At this point the Chair would recognize Mr. Terry.
        Mr. Terry. I waive.
        Mr. Shimkus. Mr. Murphy for an opening statement.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TIM MURPHY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
             CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

        Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
    opportunity to speak at this hearing.
        Back in the 1800's, I believe it was Charles Darwin that
    referred to the city of Pittsburgh as ``Hell with the lid
    off.'' Up until the 1940's and 1950's, it was the city that
    when men came to work, they brought with them an extra shirt
    and they would change it at noontime because by then it was
    gray from the soot that was in the air. Pittsburgh, which
    obviously has a legacy of steel, and the region, which has a
    legacy of coal, of which we will have 190 years worth of coal
    long after Saudi Arabia is out of oil, still finds itself in
    making the transition from a century-plus of bad environmental
    policies. We probably have one of the highest numbers of
    environmental engineering companies in the Nation in Pittsburgh
    and they have made some significant progress as we have looked
    at how environment and health has worked to make positive
    changes. This includes such things as coal mine sites and
    continuing coal mines being turned into botanical gardens,
    which will be an economic engine for the region, large steel
    mill Brownfields which have been turned into vital shopping
    centers and housing areas of which the housing demand is so
    high in these areas people can't get them as far as they build
    them.
        Pittsburgh was home to a national bass fishing tournament
    in rivers that used to be ones that people would not even want
    to stand by, let alone see any fish in there. We have gone from
    the smoky city, Hell with the lid off, to an area that really
    as an example of one of the great, beautiful views of America.
    In fact, they say that standing from Mount Washington is
    probably second only to standing out and looking at the rocks
    in Arizona as a view.
        That being said, it has been done by large investments and
    upgrading, incentives for positive change, building
    partnerships for change with business and industries and public
    health, embracing positive solutions and engine for economic
    growth and doing those together, and not just with a heavy hand
    of ones that works to threaten or destroy our local economy as
    moving toward these. We all want, and our primary purpose
    should be looking at public health but that also has to partner
    with making sure we do not destroy our industries and our jobs
    in the meantime. I think all the public can agree on that, and
    sometimes I have questioned if EPA has all those things in mind
    too. I hope it does but I think we do best when we work
    together and we do worse when we work apart.
        So given that case, as we work to recognize that we are
    going to still need coal energy, we are going to still need to
    manufacture in the United States, we should be looking at ways
    to help transition from the legacy as opposed to just shutting
    it down. I suppose we could clean all the air and streams in
    America if we shut down our industry but then we would find
    everyone else struggling to even survive from there. So let us
    hope that all the aspects of this budget and all the working
    towards will be money well spend and money that is multiplied
    by working together with business and industry, communities and
    public health to clean our air, clean our water, cleanup our
    Brownfields by making these positive economic engines in place
    that we can be proud of.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you. As a graduate of the University of
    Pittsburgh, I actually recognize the progress that you cite.
        At this time the Chair would recognize my good friend from
    North Carolina, who represents the district where I grew up,
    Congressman Butterfield.
        Mr. Butterfield. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I don't
    have any prepared remarks. I simply want to thank you for your
    leadership and look forward to working with you on the
    subcommittee. I thank the witnesses for coming forward today.
    This is a very important subject, not only to America but to
    the world. And so thank you for your testimony. I look forward
    to hearing from you and look forward to working with all of you
    including my friends on the other side of the aisle.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Rogers from
    Michigan.
        Mr. Rogers. I waive.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair recognizes Mr. Barrow of Georgia.
        Mr. Barrow. I waive.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair would recognize Ms. DeGette.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DEGETTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

        Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I want to echo Ms. Baldwin's dismay at the fact that this
    is the first hearing this committee has had on the EPA's budget
    since the Clinton administration and I think that is really
    shocking, but what is more shocking is what the administration
    has done to some of our most vital environmental and public
    health programs in that short amount of time. I do appreciate
    the willingness of our panel to come and testify today and tell
    us their views. I am pleased, Mr. Chairman, to see that real
    oversight has returned to Capitol Hill.
        I am also pleased to see Mr. Stupak here because I think
    between the two committees, the Environment and the Oversight
    and the Investigation Subcommittee, both of which I serve on,
    we know that your testimony will be very helpful to us as we
    begin to look and see not only what this budget means but also
    what the administration's environmental programs mean.
        Last fall, I was privileged to attend a ceremony at a site
    in Denver, the Shaddock site, which had been contaminated by
    hazardous waste and which had a Record of Decision where
    everything would be scraped in a big football field-sized area
    and left in the middle of a low-income residential
    neighborhood. I worked with Senator Allard on a bipartisan
    basis to get that Record of Decision reversed and now we are
    developing houses in that area, but while I was at that happy
    event, I got to spend some time talking to my local EPA staff
    in Denver and also to some of the activists and they confirmed
    what I have believed for several years now: we are not
    undertaking environmental enforcement at nearly the pace we
    should be in this country to protect the health and welfare of
    our citizens. There are a number of areas, and I hope to still
    be here to question the panel about these areas of concern that
    I have.
        I am concerned about the lack of reauthorization for the
    Polluter Pays tax into the Superfund. We may have many
    Superfund sites around this country that are not being cleaned
    up because there is not enough money in the Superfund and so I
    think that I am interested in learning either today or later
    what the impact of shifting the burden onto the taxpayer from
    the polluter has been in cleaning up these heavily contaminated
    sites.
        A second issue that I have been working on many years ever
    since I was in the Colorado State Legislature is the issue of
    Brownfields, and I am very concerned in this budget about the
    severe lack of funding for the Brownfields program. In 2005,
    for example, the EPA received 673 requests for funding but it
    only funded a third of the projects.
        And last, Mr. Bilirakis, the senior Mr. Bilirakis and I
    worked hard on the integrity and independence of the EPA
    ombudsman program and I am looking forward to knowing next week
    at the hearing that we have what is going on with the ombudsman
    program and under the current structure at the Inspector
    General's Office is the ombudsman really independent.
        And with that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for having this
    hearing and yield back.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentlelady, who has been a champion
    on environmental issues.
        At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Pallone for an
    opening statement.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE
                IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

        Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first
    congratulate you on becoming the Chair of the subcommittee.
    Having previously been the ranking member, I know the complex
    but critical issues under our jurisdiction here and I look
    forward to working with you. I know that several of us have
    mentioned how little the subcommittee has done over the past
    several years, and just the fact that you are having the EPA
    Administrator in front of us for the first time in his career
    next week I think says a lot about where we are going. In fact,
    I think it was already mentioned, for the first 6 years of the
    Bush administration we didn't even have a hearing on the EPA's
    budget requests, so obviously there are going to be some big
    changes here.
         President Bush's budget request is no different than what
    we have been getting in the past and I frankly think it is
    shameful because it is not going to allow the EPA to do its job
    in protecting human health and the environment, and I am
    particularly upset at the fact that there are cuts in programs
    that are critical to cleaning up the toxic legacy that plagues
    my district and my home State of New Jersey. For example, the
    request for the Superfund program is $7 million less than the
    enacted level, even though the administration lowered its
    target number of site cleanups mid-year and is clearly lagging
    behind in eliminating this most serious of environmental health
    threats. The Inspector General has previously noted the serious
    backlog in funding plaguing the program and I am eagerly
    looking forward to updated figures from Mr. Rogers' office.
        I would also like to note that the more and more we learn
    about funding problems with Superfund, the more urgent it
    becomes that we reinstate the Superfund taxes as Mr. Simms
    indicates in his written testimony, and I intend to reintroduce
    a bill that I have introduced in the past to bring back the
    taxes and put the burden for cleanups on the backs of
    polluters, not taxpayers.
        I am glad to welcome Mayor Bollwage from Elizabeth, New
    Jersey, here representing the U.S. Conference of Mayors. In
    your written testimony, Mayor, you make important points about
    the role of local governments in environmental protection and I
    agree with you about the need to fully fund the Brownfields
    program. I know that has always been a major issue for you. You
    talked about it with me many times. A few years ago when I was
    the ranking member, I helped author the Federal Brownfields
    program so I want you to know that I intend to introduce a
    reauthorization of that program so that we can continue to
    strengthen it.
        And finally, I want to recognize Mr. Langer here from the
    National Federation of Independent Business. In your testimony,
    you discuss your support of the EPA's recent changes that
    undermine the Toxics Release Inventory program. You may know
    that I have introduced a bill with Senator Lautenberg to
    restore this important program and protect communities' right
    to know about what toxic materials are dumped in their
    backyards, and I think TRI is a successful program that has
    gotten companies to voluntarily slash pollution without
    imposing burdensome regulations, and I believe it should be
    kept as it had been before the EPA's changes.
        So again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing.
    Congratulations. This subcommittee has a long history and under
    the Democrats previously was a very significant subcommittee. I
    remember our former Governor, Jim Florio, was once the chairman
    of it and so many things were done and I know that will happen
    again under your tutelage. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. Well, thank you, and I look forward to leading
    the committee to its former grandeur.
        At this time I would like to recognize Mr. Stupak, who is
    also the subcommittee chairman for Oversight and
    Investigations. Mr. Stupak.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BART STUPAK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

        Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        After more than 6 years of little or no oversight of the
    Environmental Protection Agency from this committee, I am
    pleased we are finally holding hearings on EPA's budget
    proposals. As the chairman of Oversight and Investigations, I
    look forward to working to improved congressional oversight
    with this subcommittee on this very critical agency.
        State and local governments face a daunting task in
    protecting public health and providing a clean environment.
    They depend on the assistance on the Federal Government to
    cleanup environmental problems, update their water and
    wastewater infrastructure and protect residents from
    environmental hazards. Unfortunately, rather than helping
    States reach these goals, the President's fiscal year 2008
    budget faces significant burdens on State and local
    governments. By cutting funding for EPA and important programs
    such as the State Drinking Water Act Revolving Loan Fund, the
    Brownfield Revitalization Program, Superfund, Leaking
    Underground Storage Tanks, Beach Protection and others, the
    administration has made it harder for State and local
    governments to protect the public.
        Across the country, communities are struggling to keep up
    with the needs of their residents. Rather than cutting these
    programs, the Federal Government should be increasing the
    assistance so State and local governments can provide the basic
    health and environmental needs. Despite what the administration
    may think, slashing Federal environmental assistance does not
    save us money. Instead, we are merely passing the bucks onto
    States who are already struggling to make ends meet. More often
    than not, the States don't have the resources to fix
    environmental and public health hazards. The end result is the
    American people suffer the side effects, which usually include
    diminished health and poorer quality of life.
        In my district, preventing drinking water contamination is
    a major problem. Communities are having a hard time keeping up
    with the problems, whether they are aging infrastructure or
    polluted areas that are not being cleaned up. The Great Lakes
    is a source of drinking water for more than 30 million people.
    Programs that cleanup the Great Lakes developed by the Great
    Lakes Collaboration have been flat-funded in this budget as
    well as past budgets. This flat funding completely ignores the
    needs outlined by the Great Lakes Collaboration, which has
    recommended that water quality funding should be increased
    exponentially. As a result, we have community health
    departments and municipal water systems in Michigan that are
    attempting to cope with higher bacteria counts, closed beaches
    and sometimes even significant health concerns.
        The American people deserve better. Rather than passing
    hazardous public health and environmental problems onto local
    governments, this administration should take some leadership
    and accept the responsibility it has for protecting public
    health rather than ignoring it.
        I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. I will be
    in and out but I hope to be back to ask questions at the
    appropriate time.
        Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to working
    with you. I must say, I have been on this subcommittee for some
    time, and when Ms. Solis was the ranking chairperson we tried
    many, many times to have hearings on very important matters. We
    never really got too far so I look forward to working with you,
    and in my oversight role I am sure together we can move some
    good environmental legislation to help protect the American
    people and do the job we should be doing for them.
        Mr. Wynn. I want to thank the gentleman, and I concur. I
    look forward to working with him as well. I think we can get
    some real good things done.
        I also want to echo his sentiment in recognizing Ms. Solis,
    the former ranking member, current vice chair, who has been a
    tremendous leader on these issues, and it is with great
    pleasure that I recognize Ms. Solis for an opening statement.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HILDA L. SOLIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                 CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

        Ms. Solis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations.
    Boy, how times have changed. I want to thank also Ranking
    Member Shimkus and I also just want to thank you again, Mr.
    Chairman, for having this hearing. I can tell you that this
    indeed has been a long-awaited time, 6 years in waiting to have
    the EPA come forward so we could have an oversight hearing
    regarding their budget.
        As policymakers and responsible parties, we know the
    importance of how we utilize our taxpayer dollars and it is our
    responsibility to understand what EPA has done in the last 6
    years or has not done, and over the 6 years I am seeing that
    many of the core programs that EPA is supposed to be in charge
    of and implementing have not been diligent in implementing many
    of the laws that they are supposed to be implementing and
    monitoring. In fiscal year 2008 in their budget, which if
    accepted, States will have lost over $1 billion in Federal
    support if you look back over to the year 2004. Under the
    Leaking Underground Storage Tank Program, we see more than $325
    million below authorized levels. The administration has cut its
    request for the Brownfield program from $120 million to $89
    million for a second year in a row, and the proposed budget
    that funds the Safe Drinking Water Act is at its lowest level.
        Despite the 2003 needs survey which was released in 2005
    identifying $263.3 billion in needs, these budget cuts and
    funding decisions have had real impacts on our communities
    across the country. State and local agencies may be forced to
    lay off staff, leave vacancies unfilled, shut down existing air
    monitors and otherwise curtail very important monitoring
    programs. EPA can't be sure that the cleanup at Libby, the
    Superfund site in Montana, sufficiently reduces the risk to
    public health. Regional and contract personnel are making
    judgments at this time about water systems despite not being
    the most qualified, and according to an article dated October
    31, 2006, in the Seattle Times, EPA region 10, which includes
    Hanford Nuclear Reservation and 40 percent of all tribes in the
    Nation, was forced to close its Environmental Justice Office
    because of budget cuts. Two-third of already burdened cities
    who are working to create economic opportunities by
    revitalizing formerly blighted areas are not getting
    Brownfields grants and more than 113,000 leaking underground
    storage tanks will continue to contaminate drinking water
    supplies and become even more costly when we do consider
    cleaning them up.
        I am concerned about the impact that our dereliction of
    oversight duty has had on the culture of the Agency, and
    specifically, I am concerned about the movement from funding
    core programs to funding unauthorized voluntary contractor-
    based programs such as Performance Track, a program which
    currently uses 32 full-time employees and appears to reward
    noncompliant facilities.
        Mr. Chairman, I am eager to address these issues and join
    in that discussion with my colleagues on this committee such as
    the Toxic-Right-to-Know program, the library closures and human
    pesticide testing in our hearings this week and next and I look
    forward to working with all of my colleagues to get our Nation
    back on track.
        I yield back the balance of my time.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentlelady, and we look forward to
    having the benefit of her expertise as we move forward.
        At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Sullivan of
    Oklahoma.
        Mr. Sullivan. I have no opening statement. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you, sir.
        At this time I would recognize Mr. Green of Texas.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GENE GREEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                    CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

        Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the hearing today
    and I welcome our panelists.
        This hearing is the first oversight hearing on the
    Environment Protection Agency's budget in over 6 years and I am
    pleased that we are having this discussion on the issues we are
    facing today. The administration's fiscal year 2008 EPA budget
    request is significantly lower than the previous fiscal year
    budget request. Most people in this room are not surprised. I
    am particularly dismayed by the fact that 13 percent of the
    EPA's fiscal year 2008 budget request has been allocated to
    Clean Air. Of the $7.2 billion, the EPA is requesting only $912
    million be available for one of the most important issues
    facing our communities, air quality.
        In my statement I would like to highlight two important
    issues that did not get enough attention at the EPA or the
    public discussion the EPA's duty, air toxics control and EPA's
    role in accident prevention at chemical plants. In Houston we
    have significant high levels of air toxics and some of the
    highest in the Nation, although all major cities have levels
    that are too high. Many in my district feel that the Texas
    Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates air toxics
    in my State, has failed to focus on the air toxics in Houston.
    The burden of reducing air toxics falls on the local
    communities, which is not the most effective way to solve the
    larger clean air issue. Cities provide water, streets, police,
    firefighters, so they do not have the resources to craft the
    best environmental regulations and to conduct enforcement.
        I believe the EPA needs to show more leadership on the air
    toxics issue, especially after a 2005 Inspector General report
    critical and a 2006 GAO report both found that not enough is
    being done at the Federal level. Some State agencies like our
    Texas Environment Quality with huge responsibilities and
    limited resources are not meeting communities' needs for all
    air toxic improvement so they need more Federal help. The EPA
    has set a bad example by repeatedly missing deadlines for
    setting the maximal achievement control technology standards
    and subsequent residual risk assessments. The EPA has recently
    tried to help out State and local governments on air toxic
    monitoring, which is the least they can do. However, we still
    have urgent needs for more monitoring information in my own
    area in Houston, which like large cities has a high
    concentration of air toxics, and I hope to hear more from the
    Inspector General on the issue.
        In addition, I would like to note that the EPA has a role
    in improving chemical facility risk management plans that
    address accident risk outside the fence line. However, reducing
    risk outside the fence line also reduces risk inside the fence
    line for workers at chemical facilities, many of whom are my
    constituents. Our office has heard that EPA has not fully
    implemented several of the recommendations over the years from
    the Chemical Safety Board. We also understand the EPA is not
    providing the Chemical Safety Board with the documents and
    information they are requesting for their investigation of
    dangerous incidents in refineries and chemical facilities. Most
    people think of OSHA when they think of workplace safety but in
    the area of chemical facilities, the EPA has a significant
    role. Perhaps the Inspector General should look into also
    whether EPA is taking these responsibilities seriously.
        Mr. Chairman, I am glad to be on the subcommittee and I
    look forward to our hearings. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        Does any other Member wish to make an opening statement?
        If not, any other statements will be included in the record
    at this time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Barton follows:]

      Prepared Statement of Hon. Joe Barton, a Representative in Congress
                            from the State of Texas

         Mr. Chairman, I commend you for having two hearings to
    examine EPA's proposed budget for this upcoming fiscal year.
    However, their appropriate sequence is upside down. I think for
    a couple reasons the administration, regardless of party,
    should testify first. It is our responsibility to have a dialog
    with the administration directly, not through the filter of
    special interest groups . It is the custom of this committee to
    afford the administration the courtesy of testifying first,
    regardless of party. Once that testimony is heard and our
    questions have been answered by the administration, then we
    turn to outside witnesses. In the spirit of inter-branch
    comity, I hope we can return to that practice in future
    hearings.
         Although some will want to use these hearings to make
    definitive statements about EPA's programs or spending
    priorities, I find that understanding EPA's efforts and
    priorities is akin to the job of herding cats.
         EPA is not a perfect agency, and our efforts should be to
    achieve an EPA that is competent, effective, and efficient. EPA
    is entering the middle of its fourth decade of existence. Its
    infrastructure and organization is predicated on a collection
    of well-meaning, but disparate laws. We need to ensure that
    EPA's efforts are focused, competent, reasoned, cost-effective,
    and successfully achieving those program goals that further
    public health protections.
        For this reason, I think the most important issue for our
    hearing today is whether, as EPA's mission statement proclaims:
    ``public health'' is being protected and ``a cleaner, healthier
    environment'' is being produced for the American people. Next
    week, I plan to be more specific in my questioning about
    individual programs when the Administrator appears before our
    committee. Mr. Chairman, I hope you will lead us in pledging
    allegiance not to the programs of this Agency for their own
    sake, but rather to its mission and the people it serves.
        I welcome all of our witnesses and thank them for their
    participation. Despite the irregular order of the two hearings,
    I think it is essential that we hear from each of these
    witnesses as they represent an important segment of our public,
    private, and academic sectors. I am pleased to see the State
    and local governments here. They are an important part of our
    Nation's overall environmental strategy and we should welcome
    and encourage that partnership. However, while States and
    localities have special understanding and expertise, in this
    time of tight budgets, we should not hold the Federal Treasury
    out as a fund for pet projects that these levels of Government
    can and should fund themselves. This principle also applies to
    well funded private groups who receive EPA monies. We must
    maximize what we have rather than rely on increased taxes for
    these programs.
         I also appreciate the fact that small, medium, and large
    businesses are being represented on our panel today. EPA's
    budget, whether discussing new regulatory programs or the
    maintenance of existing ones, is a crucial factor for many of
    these groups and their employees. We cannot afford real
    environmental protection without a thriving economy and
    business should not always be seen as the environmental enemy.
    I believe there are productive voluntary programs that show
    American business can create, innovate, and grow as well as be
    good environmental stewards without the hammer of mandatory
    programs hanging over their heads. We should always encourage
    economic freedom when public health is not directly threatened.
         Mr. Chairman, I hope we can bring an engineer's penchant
    for thoughtful analysis and problem solving to these budget
    hearings. Let's focus on making EPA's efforts help people as
    opposed to bean counting, statistical manipulation, and
    political posturing.
         Again, I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses
    and thank the Chair for his kindness.
                                  ----------

        Mr. Wynn. We will turn to our distinguished witnesses. I
    want to welcome each of you and thank you for coming. On our
    panel today, we have with us Mr. Bill Roderick, who is the
    acting Inspector General for EPA. We have Mr. J. Christian
    Bollwage, mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and speaking on
    behalf of the United States Conference of Mayors. We also have
    Mr. Robert King, president of the Environmental Council of the
    States and deputy commissioner of South Carolina's Department
    of Health and Environmental Control. We have Mr. Andrew Langer,
    who is the manager of regulatory affairs for the National
    Federation of Independent Business; Mr. Maurice McTigue,
    director of the Government Accountability Project and vice
    president of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
    and we also have Mr. Patrice Simms, senior attorney at the
    Natural Resources Defense Council. I would like to welcome all
    of you.
        We will now have 5-minute opening statements from the
    witnesses. The prepared statements of the witnesses have been
    submitted and will be made a part of the hearing record.
        At this point I would like to recognize Mr. Roderick for an
    opening statement and wish to express a special appreciation to
    him for accommodating us by appearing on the same panel as
    witnesses who are not representing governmental interests, so
    Mr. Roderick, we thank you for coming.

      STATEMENT OF BILL RODERICK, ACTING INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S.
                    ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

        Mr. Roderick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Mr.
    Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I am Bill Roderick,
    Deputy Inspector General of the EPA. I have been serving as
    acting Inspector General since March 2006. I am pleased to
    testify during this oversight hearing on the EPA's budget. The
    views I express here today are those of the Office of Inspector
    General and do not represent the Environment Protection
    Agency's final position.
        An issue of primary and current concern in the Superfund
    program is whether there is sufficient funding for cleanups.
    Work that we did in 2003 at the request of Chairman Dingell and
    Congresswoman Solis showed a funding shortfall for non-Federal
    Superfund sites. We found that limited funding prevented EPA
    from beginning construction at all sites and providing
    additional funds needed to address sites. We estimated that the
    fiscal year 2003 site-specific funding shortfall was nearly
    $175 million. One of these sites was Libby, Montana. The
    remedial project manager at the time indicated to us that an
    additional $740,000 was needed for sampling and to conduct a
    study to determine the cost-effective method for quantifying
    the amount of asbestos in the soil.
        More recently, funding was again raised as a concern in a
    report we issued in December 2006 that looked at EPA's cleanup
    efforts in Libby. In our limited review, we identified
    significant issues that we believed were critical to the
    successful cleanup. EPA has not completed a toxicity assessment
    necessary to determine the safe level for human exposure to
    asbestos. Therefore, EPA cannot be sure that the Libby cleanup
    sufficiently reduces the risk that humans may become ill. One
    of the reasons provided by OSWER officials for not performing a
    toxicity assessment was that while it was proposed, EPA did not
    approve the budget request. We recommended that EPA fund and
    execute a comprehensive asbestos toxicity assessment to
    determine the effectiveness of the Libby removal actions and to
    determine whether more actions are necessary. EPA responded
    that they are committed to beginning a toxicity assessment
    early this year.
        Superfund mega-sites are taking a financial toll on the
    program because their cleanup is costly, complex and lengthy.
    In 2004 we identified 156 hardrock mining sites nationwide that
    have the potential to cost between $7 and $24 billion to
    cleanup. These costs were over 12 times EPA's total annual
    Superfund budget. Most of these hardrock mining sites are
    located in the western and southeastern United States. These
    sites will impact those States because EPA eventually turns
    over responsibility for long-term response actions to the
    States.
        We noted several organizational and accounting obstacles
    that impact EPA's ability to efficiently and effectively manage
    the Superfund resources. EPA has disbursed responsibilities for
    Superfund management and resources so that no single EPA office
    including OSWER, which is the office accountable for Superfund
    cleanup goals, has full responsibility or control over EPA
    Superfund appropriation.
        Another obstacle we identified is EPA continuing to
    maintain unliquidated Superfund obligations and money in
    special accounts as a hedge against tough financial times. We
    made several recommendations to help address those issues.
        I understand that the subcommittee is concerned about the
    resources being expended on EPA's partnership programs. Some of
    these programs report very small budgets and only a fraction of
    the staff members' time devoted to operating them. Other
    programs report more. We are currently evaluating one of these
    programs, Performance Track. We initiated this review to
    evaluate how the program contributes to EPA's goal of improving
    environmental performance through pollution prevention and
    innovation and how well it accomplishes its program goal of
    recognizing and encouraging top environmental performers. To do
    this, our approach was to analyze a randomly selected sample of
    40 member facilities to determine if they met their Performance
    Track commitments and assess how much progress they have made.
    In order to demonstrate these facilities represent top
    performers, we also sought to compare sample facilities'
    compliance records and toxic release with others in their
    sectors. We are compiling compliance information from EPA
    databases and verifying individual facility data for sample
    members with reasonable enforcement and compliance data
    stewards. Since this work is incomplete, I am unable to report
    on our findings and recommendations at this time. We expect to
    issue a final report in April. I will gladly brief everyone
    that wants to have the details of that audit.
        The OIG's fiscal year 2008 budget request will enable us to
    meet our statutory obligations and other higher priority work.
    However, at these levels we will be challenged to meet every
    demand placed upon us. We will need to make some difficult
    choices in order to ensure the OIG remains a catalyst for
    improving the quality of the environment.
        Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. We view all
    of you on the committee as our customers and we would be
    pleased to answer any questions you have at this time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Roderick follows:]
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        Mr. Wynn. Thank you very much, Mr. Roderick. As you know,
    we have a vote coming up but I think we have time to have
    testimony from Mr. Bollwage, so we will proceed with that. Then
    we will recess until after the vote. Mr. Bollwage.

     STATEMENT OF J. CHRISTIAN BOLLWAGE, MAYOR, CITY OF ELIZABETH,
                             ELIZABETH, NJ

        Mr. Bollwage. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First I
    would like to request a technical correction in my prepared
    testimony on paragraph 4, page 3, changing it from $150 to $200
    million. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. Certainly.
        Mr. Bollwage. Mr. Chairman, ranking member and my friend,
    Congressman Pallone, members of the committee, I am Chris
    Bollwage, the mayor of the city of Elizabeth for the past 15
    years. I also serve as a trustee for the U.S. Conference of
    Mayors and co-chairman of the Mayors Brownfields Task Force.
        Mayors have an interest in broader environmental issues
    including increasing our energy independence in an
    environmentally sound way and protecting our climate, and as
    chief executives of our cities, we are in a unique position. We
    are on the front lines protecting the health of our citizens.
    Unfortunately, however, we are at the end of the line when it
    comes to unfunded mandates. Mayors do not have a problem with
    passing good environmental public policy. We have a problem
    with passing the public policy without providing the necessary
    resources to pay for it. There is no one left at the local
    level that we can pass on these costs except to our
    constituents, which we often have to do.
        So I wanted to take this opportunity as you deliberate the
    various environmental rules and regulations that come before
    you to keep in mind that some costs will be incurred by local
    government and our citizens and I hope that Congress is going
    to take a hard look at where we are spending our money to
    determine what the priorities should be for our Nation if we
    are to remain economically competitive with the rest of the
    world. We need to balance our budget every year and sometimes
    that means deciding the best paths for the future with the
    limitations we have, and on this EPA oversight hearing, I want
    to outline some of the priorities for the Nation's mayors and
    the most useful programs and ask that all of you do your part
    in fully funding these programs.
        Brownfields, which many of you mentioned in your opening
    statements--I have been the co-chair of the U.S. Conference of
    Mayors for 12 years, have had extensive conversations with
    Congressman Pallone about this issue and I want to commend EPA
    for listening to the mayors at that time and establishing the
    EPA Brownfields program. It has been extremely successful in
    cleaning up thousands of acres of sites and turning formerly
    blighted areas into productive pieces of property. There is
    still a lot of unrealized potential. Currently the Brownfields
    law has authorized $250 million. It never received more than
    $162 million. It is estimated there are 400,000 to 600,000
    Brownfield properties in the United States, and as you said,
    Mr. Chairman, currently only one out of three qualifying
    Brownfield applications are funded. The Conference of Mayors
    and members of a Brownfields coalition are pleased to hear that
    Congressman Pallone is going to introduce the reauthorization
    of the Brownfields Law.
        On a related topic, the Superfund program, many properties
    are still in the process of being assessed and cleaned up.
    Mayors who have Superfund sites in their communities are
    anxious to have these sites cleaned up and we urge Congress to
    reinstate the Superfund taxes and assist EPA with its efforts
    to expedite the cleanup of these severely contaminated sites,
    and we thank you, Congressman Pallone, for those comments.
        As this committee debates the issue of climate change,
    mayors would like for you to consider a multilevel approach to
    help deal with this problem. A cap and trade program as well as
    encouragement for alternative energy sources and fuel
    efficiency will be needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at
    the national level. However, there are many solutions that are
    coming from the local level. The conference has held two
    national summits that brought together public and private
    sector to highlight what is currently being done and what can
    be done to increase our Nation's independence. Through the
    conference's work we have determined that much more could be
    done. That is why the mayors of this Nation are proposing the
    formation of an Energy and Environmental Block Grant, EEBG. Our
    proposal would require local governments to determine their
    carbon footprint and create a plan for reducing their
    greenhouse gas emissions. Monies could be used to implement
    this plan.
        The Mayors' Water Council conducted a survey that asked
    cities to identify the most important resources and issues they
    face. The top three: rehabilitating aging water and wastewater
    infrastructure, security protection of water resources and the
    water supply availability. The MWC prepared a report on city
    attitudes about the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund
    program and the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Loan
    program. The findings indicate that cities generally prefer to
    use municipal bonds and pay as you go rather than the SRF
    loans. The primary reason for this is because it is more cost
    efficient due to better finance terms and greater time
    certainty in the finance process. As often cited figures, local
    governments are responsible for 90 percent of the public-
    purpose water investments and the U.S. Bureau of the Census
    reports that combined municipal expenditures for water and
    wastewater infrastructure are second only to educational
    expenses.
        While most mayors are not directly responsible for most
    clean air programs, we have local and State agencies that are,
    and at the city level we are responsible for implementing many
    of the programs that can have tremendous clean air benefits.
        In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I know I could have come here
    today and identified programs at EPA that could be cut in order
    to meet our environmental priorities. However, I hope you
    recognize that the needs of this Nation are great, as all of
    you do, to remain a competitive nation. I know that budgets are
    strained but I hope you will take up the Nation's mayors' offer
    on our offer to work with you in solving a lot of these
    problems.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bollwage follows:]
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        Mr. Wynn. Thank you for your very constructive testimony.
    At this time the committee is going to stand in recess until
    immediately following the last vote of this series of votes.
    Thank you.
        [Recess]
        Mr. Wynn. Mr. King, I believe you have the microphone.

      STATEMENT OF ROBERT W. KING, JR., PRESIDENT, ENVIRONMENTAL
      COUNCIL OF THE STATES; DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, SOUTH CAROLINA
             DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL

        Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
    committee for providing the Environmental Council of States,
    ECOS, the opportunity to present testimony on the U.S.
    Environmental Protection Agency's 2008 budget.
        My name is Robert W. King, Jr., and I am the deputy
    commissioner for Environmental Quality Control at the South
    Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. Today
    I am here representing not only my State but all the
    environmental agencies in the States belonging to our
    organization. Our comments are primarily directed to the STAG
    portion of EPA's budget.
        States are co-regulators with the U.S. EPA and have the
    challenging job of frontline implementation of our Nation's
    environment pollution laws. EPA has delegated most of the work
    on the core environmental responsibilities to us. Today States
    are responsible for managing most of the delegable
    environmental programs and rules, issuing environmental and
    public health standards under Federal laws and for State-
    specific laws, issuing most environmental permits, collecting
    nearly 94 percent of the environmental monitoring data and
    conducting over 90 percent of all enforcement actions.
        Funds have been provided to the States to assist them in
    the implementation of Federal programs. States also provide
    funds for these programs, anywhere from half to 90 percent of
    the costs. Federal funds are important to States because they
    are targeted to specific programs and help States meet Federal
    requirements such as permitting, enforcement, monitoring,
    standards development, rule issuance and reporting, in short,
    all the significant components of our co-regulator agreements
    with the Federal Government.
        In the 2008 budget development cycle, EPA for the first
    time involved the States in the early stages of the budget's
    development and we were very appreciative of this opportunity.
    The ECOS officers presented information to the Agency and
    proposed a tier of priorities shown in figure 2 of our package.
    Our highest priorities included programs mandated by Congress
    in the major environmental statutes. The EPA accepted some of
    these recommendations but the 2008 budget continues a downward
    funding trend as shown in figure 1.
        If Congress accepts the 2008 proposal for STAG, it will
    mean that States will have lost over $1 billion in Federal
    support since 2004. This has come at the same time U.S. EPA has
    promulgated a significant number of new rules for the States to
    implement. From 2000 to 2006, EPA issued and proposed 390 new
    rules with a significant impact on the States. Figure 3
    demonstrates the dilemma States are in with the rising number
    of rules for States to implement while funds decrease.
        While States are reluctant to return Federal programs to
    EPA for many reasons, we have begun to see this happen as well
    as delays in implementation of new rules. This is highlighted
    in additional information I have provided you regarding the
    problems State drinking water and air programs are facing. Time
    does not permit a thorough review of these details but let me
    say this. The proposal in the EPA's budget to cut the air
    programs by $35 million will be particularly difficult for
    States. Many will have to cease operating existing monitors or
    curtail their monitoring programs. It will also affect
    development of State implementations for ozone and particulate
    matter standards, which reduce air pollution and protect public
    health. Declining Federal support and dramatically increased
    workloads in the drinking water program have resulted in about
    half of the States simply unable to take on implementation of
    some portion of these new rules.
        ECOS has again proposed an alternative budget for the STAG
    portion of the EPA 2008 budget that addresses our concern with
    continuing reductions of congressionally-mandated environmental
    statutes. This proposal is based on principles agreed upon by
    the ECOS members which include in times of fiscal crisis when
    the resources are in short supply the core mandated
    environmental programs funded through STAG and infrastructure
    capitalization must be funded first and reductions in EPA
    budget, if they must occur, should be shared proportionately by
    EPA and the States after STAG levels are returned to their 2004
    levels.
        The States are thankful for the opportunity to present our
    views to the committee and hope that Congress can assist us as
    we implement the Nation's environmental statutes as a co-
    regulator with the U.S. EPA.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to testify
    and I will be happy to answer any questions later. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. King follows:]
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        Mr. Wynn. Thank you very much for your testimony, Mr. King.
        Mr. Langer.

      STATEMENT OF ANDREW M. LANGER, MANAGER, REGULATORY AFFAIRS,
              NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS

        Mr. Langer. Chairman Wynn and members of the subcommittee,
    thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning on the
    issue of the EPA's budget.
        I would like to say at the outset that while my prepared
    written and oral remarks represent the collaborative views of
    NFIB, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association
    of Manufacturers, any questions I might answer following my
    testimony will represent the views of NFIB and not the other
    two organizations. I hope that is alright.
        I am here today to talk about the EPA's relationship to
    America's smallest businesses. Businesses with fewer than 20
    employees comprise roughly 90 percent of the universe of
    businesses in America. These businesses want to comply with the
    Nation's environmental laws but invariably they find compliance
    to be a difficult and cumbersome proposition. The EPA's
    proposal is to spend just over a half-billion dollars on
    environmental enforcement this year. Their term is ``compliance
    improvement.'' This number is dwarfed, however, by the mandates
    by EPA. If environmental regulations account for roughly 40
    percent of regulatory costs and regulatory costs last year were
    $1.13 trillion, then Americans spent more than $400 billion in
    complying with Federal environmental regulations alone.
        In the private sector, we have learned that more money does
    not equal more results, and our members constantly strive to
    achieve more and better results with less money and fewer
    resources. EPA's budget does not exist in a vacuum. It
    represents choices, choices between larger priorities in the
    Federal budget including homeland security, worker safety and
    trade promotion. Through that lens we view the EPA budget as
    one that makes tough choices in an environment of limited
    resources, and there are a number of ways one can look at
    regulatory costs both through efforts to reform regulation and
    in looking at ways to streamline the regulatory compliance
    process itself.
        For the purposes of today's testimony, I want to focus on
    that end of the pipeline, compliance assistance efforts. It is
    well established that regulatory agencies get a greater ``bang
    for the buck'' when they promote compliance assistance over
    enforcement. It is more cost-effective than dedicating enormous
    resources towards investigations and prosecutions and gets us
    closer to the goals of more comprehensive environmental
    compliance. In terms of giving people foreknowledge of their
    responsibilities and walking them through how they can fulfill
    their obligations, it is compliance assistance and not
    enforcement that will get us closer to our ultimate goal of 100
    percent compliance with 100 percent of regulations 100 percent
    of the time. The movement away from enforcement as a primary
    tool of compliance improvement is one that will have to be
    driven by Congress, however. Continued oversight, encouragement
    and budgetary prodding are going to be necessary. The Agency
    ought to be rewarded when they decide to shift money away from
    sticks and directed towards blackboards.
        Unfortunately, the regulatory state is so complex, I want
    you to consider for a moment that the Code of Federal
    Regulations itself is thousands upon thousands of pages,
    roughly 19 feet of shelf space that is out there, and what a
    small-business owner needs to do to figure out his
    responsibilities is next to impossible. It is next to
    impossible for them to be in compliance with all the regulatory
    requirements he faces. But imagine a system in which a small-
    business owner can enter simple information about his business,
    then that system takes this information and spits out each and
    every regulation that applies to this business along with
    simple compliance information. Yes, this is an ambitious idea
    but in an era in which huge databases can be accessed from
    thousands of miles away, it is not an impossible task. The
    current iteration of this, the Business Gateway, Business.gov,
    is a solid step in the right direction, but it must do more,
    far more in terms of offering a simple way for businesses to
    determine what their regulatory responsibilities are and to
    make living up to those responsibilities as easy as possible.
    What it will take is leadership from Congress, funding,
    oversight and a political will to see it happen.
        If Congress is serious about environmental compliance, then
    it must do something about making a fully functional, fully
    realized Business Gateway a reality. Once that is established,
    businesses know their responsibilities and compliance is made
    as simple as possible and then businesses will not only have
    the time and resources to devote to helping the Government
    craft smarter regulations, they will have an incentive to be
    invested in the process. And while we believe that Business
    Gateway will be a tremendous tool for truly improving
    compliance, we recognize that there are a number of interim
    steps that must be taken, steps that will also require
    tremendous leadership on the part of Congress. Success of the
    Business Gateway will hinge on the quality of the information
    it provides, simple explanations and easy-to-understand-and-
    follow step-by-step instructions on how to comply. That means a
    wholesale restructuring of the information that is conveyed to
    the public, a comprehensive review of all regulations mandated
    by the Agency, the review of all guidance documents, manuals
    and other publications the citizen uses to determine what their
    obligations are and how to go about complying with them. Then
    the Agency will have to start building from the ground up,
    creating plain-language guides to each of their regulatory
    regimes, guides that are as short as possible, guides that are
    easy to find, guides that take a commonsense approach to
    compliance, walks small-business owners through their
    compliance process and offer them clear suggestions of what
    they ought to be doing to be in compliance with a particular
    regulation.
        There are no two ways about it: this will be a Herculean
    task. Nevertheless, it must be undertaken. Heretofore the
    Agency has balked at such reviews and it is not difficult to
    understand why. They get no credit for it, simply put. Why put
    resources into developing easy-to-understand compliance guides
    when Congress and active stakeholders are going to ask them why
    they didn't spend more resources on investigations and
    prosecutions.
        Thank you very much for allowing me to testify, and I look
    forward to answering any questions you might have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Langer follows:]
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        Mr. Wynn. Thank you very much.
        Mr. McTigue.

          STATEMENT OF MAURICE MCTIGUE, DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENT
      ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, FAIRFAX, VA

        Mr. McTigue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
    members of the committee for the invitation to be present here
    today.
        I have now been in the United States for 9 years and I have
    spent those 9 years on the faculty of George Mason University
    and my interest there has been to do research work on
    accountability in government. It is from that perspective that
    I am going to speak to you this morning. Preceding that 9 years
    that I have spent in the United States, I was nearly 4 years in
    Canada as New Zealand's ambassador to Canada and the Caribbean
    and that was preceded by 10 years as an elected member of
    Parliament in the New Zealand Parliament, and some of that
    period of time I spent also as a member of Cabinet where
    Cabinet members under parliamentary system were also members of
    the legislature. But one of my portfolios was associate
    minister of finance and in that portfolio I was responsible for
    controlling the Government's spending and it is from that
    background that I want to make comments to you this morning
    about the process of budgeting.
        Since I have been in America, there have been some
    innovations which I think are important, particularly in terms
    of the quality of the information that they put before
    committees when they make decisions about budgets. One of them
    is GPRA, the fact that it requires results information to be
    produced. The move towards performance budgets as part of the
    President's Management Agenda and the Program Assessment
    Reading Tool are subsequent processes that produce us with
    better information.
        The process of making budget decisions really revolves
    around some very simple tasks and some relatively simple
    questions, the answers to which are often very difficult. A
    department makes a budget request. Congress must then decide
    whether or not to grant the request. What should the committee
    know before it grants the department's request is the piece of
    knowledge that I want to address, and that encompasses four
    major questions. First, how big is the problem; second, what
    progress has been made; third, how much is left to be done;
    fourth, will the current tools and strategies provide the
    remedy; fifth, how quickly can the current tools achieve the
    result; and sixth, is this an acceptable level of progress.
        The answers to these questions are a mix of facts and
    values. The departments should be providing you with the
    necessary facts. The value judgments should be made by the
    political process. In the case of this budget request, the two
    value judgments to be exercised by the political process are:
    should we spend money on this activity, and the second one, is
    this enough money to make acceptable progress.
        Comments on the EPA's information in their budget
    justification are as follows. First, I would like to
    congratulate OMB on the decision to make budget justification
    information readily available to researchers and the public and
    it is from information that I make my comments. When I look at
    EPA's budget request, what I find are two problems, in my view,
    with the EPA's budget information. The first is the lack of
    information to demonstrate the scale of the problem, how big is
    this issue. The second is the lack of information that would
    indicate acceptable progress on resolution of this problem.
        I am now going to quote you something from the EPA's budget
    justification and it is under the strategic objectives for
    clean air and global climate change and it reads as follows.
    ``By 2030, through worldwide action, ozone concentrations in
    the stratosphere will have stopped declining and slowly begun
    the process of recovery and overexposure to ultraviolet
    radiation, particularly among susceptible populations such as
    children, will be reduced.'' That sounds good until you ask the
    following question: So how many people will contract skin
    cancer from this cause over the next 23 years and who will they
    be and from what populations. Without that knowledge, we don't
    know how serious that problem is or whether or not progress is
    rapid enough.
        Now I going to quote from some information that I picked up
    from the science and technology part of EPA's budget, and this
    is about the air toxics program and here is what it actually
    says when it looks at the measures. ``The measure is the
    cumulative percentage reduction in tons of toxicity weighted
    for non-cancer risk emissions of air toxics before using the
    1993 baseline.'' First problem: the data for 2006 will not be
    available until 2009. That is not acceptable. The target for
    2006 was a 58 percent reduction. The target for 2007 was a 58
    percent reduction. The target for 2009 was a 59 percent
    reduction. If zero is the goal, the problem will be eliminated
    by the year 2048. Is that satisfactory progress? And I don't
    think it tells us that because it doesn't tell us whether zero
    is the right target if that is where we need to get to.
        Here is a more serious one, in my view. Same issue, the
    cumulative percentage reduction in tons of toxicity-weighed for
    cancer risk emissions of air toxics from the 1993 baseline.
    Once again, the data for 2006 not available. But the targets
    are 34 percent for 2006, 35 percent for 2007 and 35 percent for
    2008.
        Mr. Chairman, if that is factual information, it means
    their problem never gets fixed. This is the kind of information
    I think should be in front of the committee if it is able to do
    its job well.
        Thank you for the opportunity of being able to present in
    front of you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. McTigue follows:]
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        Mr. Wynn. Thank you, Mr. McTigue.
        Mr. Simms.

    STATEMENT OF PATRICE SIMMS, SENIOR ATTORNEY, NATURAL RESOURCES
                            DEFENSE COUNCIL

        Mr. Simms. Good morning, Chairman Wynn, Ranking Member
    Shimkus, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to
    speak with you today. My name is Patrice Simms. I am a senior
    attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
        I would like to address a few specific concerns that NRDC
    has and I want to start with a couple of concerns that have a
    common theme, and that theme is transparency, accountability
    and oversight. The two issues relate to, one, the outsourcing
    of important functions within the Agency's authority and, two,
    the increasing use of voluntary programs instead of regulatory
    programs within the Agency over the last several years.
        Some clear examples of troubling relationships that
    demonstrably compromise quality of EPA's scientific inquiry,
    and one of those is the Agency's relationship with the
    International Life Sciences Institute. This is an example of
    the situation where the Agency has farmed out some of its
    responsibilities in a particularly troubling way. In 2003, the
    EPA issued some proposed guidelines that were based almost
    entirely on a policy proposal that was drafted by an ILC
    subgroup using EPA funding. Those guidelines addressed how to
    assess the toxicity of certain chemicals, chemicals that are
    used in, for example, Dupont's Teflon. That report was later
    rejected by an independent scientific panel and subsequently in
    2005 Dupont paid more than $16 million to settle charges that
    it had hidden information for two decades about the toxicity of
    Teflon chemicals. And I just cite that as an example of a
    situation that presents serious problems for the Agency in
    terms of its public accountability, the public perception of
    the Agency and the Agency's scientific credibility.
        Congress should ensure that money going to EPA is used in a
    manner that preserves the Agency's scientific integrity and
    that important science activities that the Agency funds are
    conducted with adequate transparency and direct lines of
    accountability.
        Another recent trend, as I mentioned, is voluntary
    programs. While some voluntary programs produce important and
    substantial benefits, NRDC is concerned with others that
    provide few real benefits and give the erroneous impression
    that important environmental issues are being adequately
    addressed.
        The Performance Track program is a fine example of a
    voluntary program that has gone awry. It has as a central
    feature some deregulatory off-ramps that potentially compromise
    the effectiveness and integrity of existing regulatory
    programs. In addition, there is little evidence to suggest that
    this program actually accomplishes better environmental
    results.
        In sum, NRDC is very concerned about EPA's expenditures on
    voluntary programs that are not subject to rigorous oversight,
    allow for so-called regulatory streamlining and cannot
    demonstrate meaningful environmental payoffs, especially where
    those programs appear to take the place of prudent regulatory
    alternatives. I look forward, as I am sure you do, to seeing
    the Inspector General's report on Performance Track and I hope
    it is a rigorous and thorough report.
        I would like to turn to a quick discussion of a few EPA
    programs that are chronically underfunded. Chairman Wynn
    mentioned a few of these at the beginning in his opening
    testimony and I would like to echo some of them. Superfund, the
    Nation's premiere program for cleaning up hazardous waste, has
    paid huge dividends over the years, facilitating the cleanup of
    hundreds of the most contaminated sites in the country yet it
    is currently underfunded and bankrupt. The current budget
    proposal is for $1.24 billion for Superfund, $14 million less
    than requested in 2006. At the same time the fund is dried up,
    cleanups have also slowed. During the 1990's, the number of
    cleanups ranged from 88 cleanups in 1992 to only 61 in 1994.
    However, in 2001 there was a dramatic drop-off from the 2000
    number, being 87 cleanups in 2000 and only 47 in 2001. In 2006,
    only 40 site cleanups were completed and EPA has a target of
    only 24 site cleanups for 2007. Despite the meager request for
    Superfund, there are still hundreds of sites on the national
    priorities list and more being discovered each year.
    Underfunding this program does a material disservice to the
    American public and Congress should fund this program at least
    to the $1.7 billion that is recommended by Resources for the
    Future.
        Another funding concern is the Safe Drinking Water Act,
    State Revolving Fund. There is a tremendous burden on the
    States to improve the infrastructure over the next 20 years,
    $276 billion estimated by the EPA.
        And finally, I would like to touch really quickly on the
    underground storage tank program, 117,000 known leaking
    underground storage tanks now, some 54,000 of which will
    require public funds for cleaning up. A total of $14.5 billion
    will be needed over the next 5 years. Clearly, the funds are
    there to do that, and that should be part of what this Congress
    funds the Agency to do.
        I see my time is up. I have just a couple other things I
    wanted to point to in my written testimony. I wanted to mention
    that reduction in funding for environmental justice is very
    serious and upcoming needs for carbon sequestration framework
    and examination of nanotechnologies.
        Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Simms follows:]
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        Mr. Wynn. Thank you, Mr. Simms.
        I want to thank all the witnesses for their excellent
    testimony. This concludes our witness statements and I will now
    recognize myself for 5 minutes.
        I will begin with you, Mr. Langer. NFIB, I believe,
    represents convenience store owners, gas station owners, truck
    stop owners and they, to my knowledge, have taken a position
    that the Federal LUST Trust Fund should not be used as a
    deficit reduction tool but rather a trust fund, which totals $3
    billion right now, and it should be used for that purpose, that
    is to deal with the 113,000, I believe it is, sites that need
    cleanup. Is that the position of NFIB?
        Mr. Langer. Well, we are a membership-driven organization,
    as you know. We have lots of members, and before we can take a
    position on an issue we have to ballot our members regarding
    it, and I actually went and looked throughout ballot
    initiatives over the last 15, 20 years. We have never balloted
    the issue of underground storage tanks. However, I can say if I
    had to hazard a guess in terms of small businesses, as a rule,
    small businesses, if they are collecting fees, excise taxes, et
    cetera, for a particular Federal program, they are going to
    want those fees to be used for that program and not for
    something else. So if they are collecting fees for underground
    storage tanks, they are going to want it to be used for
    cleaning up underground storage tanks.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Roderick, I believe you referenced the 2002 shortfall
    between cleanup needs and actual spending. It is my information
    that in 2003 the shortfall grew to $174 million and the
    following year, 2004, this committee surveyed EPA regional
    staff and our finding was a shortfall of $263 million in terms
    of the gap in Superfund cleanup needs and actual spending. Have
    you projected the gap for the upcoming year?
        Mr. Roderick. No, sir, we have not.
        Mr. Wynn. Do you have an estimate of the gap?
        Mr. Roderick. No, sir, we have not done any further work
    since the work that was requested in terms of estimating the
    gap.
        Mr. Wynn. Would you in any way disagree with the $263
    million as of 2004?
        Mr. Roderick. I cannot verify that number without actually
    doing work with it, sir.
        Mr. Wynn. OK. Now, you are aware the EPA projected 40
    Superfund completions for 2007?
        Mr. Roderick. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Wynn. They now revised that to 24 completions. Has your
    office done an evaluation of this reassessment by EPA?
        Mr. Roderick. No, sir, we have not done that.
        Mr. Wynn. You did not mention in your testimony that in
    fact this budget contains a 26 percent reduction in your
    budget. How do you plan on completing your mission in light of
    the 26 percent reduction?
        Mr. Roderick. The budget difference is about $5.1 million,
    or 10 percent, and I believe that will be sufficient for us to
    conduct our highest-priority work and I think please most of
    our customers with our products.
        Mr. Wynn. Mr. King, you said the EPA accepted some of the
    things that your organization recommended, some of the State's
    recommendations, but that the budget basically continued the
    pattern of business as usual. Is that a fair assessment?
        Mr. King. That is a fair assessment.
        Mr. Wynn. What do you mean when you say business as usual?
        Mr. King. Well, the concern we have is that a number of the
    programs that are congressionally-mandated are losing dollars
    when other activities are being funded, and we are concerned
    about those things, and as we noted in the written testimony,
    we did set up a priority, high, medium or moderate and low
    priorities so that we could hopefully direct funding to those
    high-priority areas that are congressionally mandated.
        Mr. Wynn. And I believe on page 6, you site those
    priorities as the categorical grants, Brownfields, hazardous
    waste, financial assistance, underground storage tanks, under
    infrastructure, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. Is it
    fair to say that you are not satisfied with those funding
    levels?
        Mr. King. We would like to see more funding in those areas.
    That is correct, sir.
        Mr. Wynn. Mr. Bollwage, you indicated on I think it is page
    8 that about 15 percent of the cities cited red tape,
    burdensome paperwork in the State Revolving Fund. Are there any
    specific recommendations that you would make to us on that
    score?
        Mr. Bollwage. On the revolving loan fund?
        Mr. Wynn. Right.
        Mr. Bollwage. One of the things that we would recommend is
    that the mayors would need more tools and resources to meet
    these costs and the conference recommends fully funding the SRF
    programs, grants, 30-year no-interest loans and a greater use
    of the private activity funds.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        At this time I recognize the ranking member, Mr. Shimkus.
        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I would like to start with, this whole debate on trust
    funds is going to be an interesting dilemma that we have. I
    mean, we do have trust funds. They ought to go for the intended
    purposes, they never do, or at least only portions of it, and
    we have numerous trust funds. So budget reform would be a good
    process. Does anyone on the panel disagree that if you have a
    trust fund, that that money should go for its intended
    purposes? Mr. Roderick, you probably have to be given a request
    to do a review but do you want to mention it or do you want to
    say ``no comment''?
        Mr. Roderick. It would probably be best to say no comment.
        Mr. Shimkus. Mayor?
        Mr. Bollwage. It would be nice to have money.
        Mr. Shimkus. Do you have trust funds in your mayoral
    capacity and do you use some of those funds for other purposes?
        Mr. Bollwage. I do not have trust funds.
        Mr. Shimkus. If we have a trust fund, it is probably the
    Conference of Mayors' position that it ought to go for that
    intended purpose. Wouldn't you agree?
        Mr. Bollwage. I would tend to agree with that.
        Mr. Shimkus. Mr. King?
        Mr. King. In South Carolina, we do have trust funds and the
    expectation is that those funds will be used for----
        Mr. Shimkus. Do they? Are they?
        Mr. King. Yes, they are, and those people who have
    oversight on those funds look at that and----
        Mr. Shimkus. Mr. Langer?
        Mr. Langer. I think it is fairly clear, taxes are a high
    issue for my members and if my members are going to be paying
    taxes, they obviously want them to be going to good Government
    services and the services they are intended to go for.
        Mr. Shimkus. Mr. McTigue?
        Mr. McTigue. Absolutely, sir.
        Mr. Shimkus. And there is some accountability there also.
        Mr. McTigue. Absolutely. If you set up a trust, you should
    abide by the rules of the trust. If you no longer want the
    trust, you should repeal it but you shouldn't leave it there
    and just not honor it.
        Mr. Shimkus. And really use that money to fulfill other
    obligations that are not accountable for the trust itself.
        Mr. McTigue. That is even worse.
        Mr. Shimkus. We do it all the time here.
        Mr. McTigue. You are taking it for the wrong purpose but it
    is actually unethical.
        Mr. Shimkus. I would concur. We are so reliant on trust
    funds here and using that money for other purposes that it does
    distort the whole oversight view and the accountability. Mr.
    Simms?
        Mr. Simms. I agree, it is hard to argue with the general
    principle that when you allocate funding to a trust fund it
    ought to go to what you have allocated it toward. I would add
    to that, when that trust fund is being allocated to something
    that has significant and intangible health impacts, if it is
    well-funded, then that is an even greater reason to make sure
    that that money is spent the way it was intended.
        Mr. Shimkus. Like the nuclear trust fund to make sure we
    dispose adequately of high-level nuclear waste. I mean, nuclear
    power is putting billions of dollars into a fund, right? We are
    using that money for doing other things. So the trust fund is a
    way to address funding and accountability and, well, it is. I
    appreciate my friend letting you come because shouldn't we be
    about cost-benefit analysis and making sure that we get the
    biggest bang for the buck and make sure that we have some
    results from the analysis, Mayor? Wouldn't you like to see
    that? And you probably have to see that in your budgeting.
        Mr. Bollwage. But it is real difficult when the Brownfields
    program, for an example, consistently gets cut and it gets
    lower and lower so whether you call it a trust fund or whatever
    you call it, the resources are just not there.
        Mr. Shimkus. Right. Whether there is a trust fund or
    whether the money gets appropriated out of the trust fund, that
    is the whole debate that we just had. I mean, if you are going
    to have a trust fund, it is ethically imperative to fulfill
    those obligations of that trust fund, and if you have a trust
    fund and you only use a portion of it, then you have a problem
    with that. Wouldn't you agree?
        Mr. Bollwage. I wouldn't disagree.
        Mr. Shimkus. I will take that as an agreement then. My time
    is going to go tremendously fast, and it is unfortunate. Maybe
    we will get a chance to go again since we are so few members
    here. But I also wanted to focus on the 1993 piece of
    legislation that you quoted, Mr. McTigue, which I didn't now
    about, the Government Performance and Results Act which you
    credit as being a good step forward in causing us--of course,
    that was in the old era--it is now the new era here--when the
    Democrats were in control and they passed legislation and said
    we ought to be accountable with the results. Can you talk about
    that one more time?
        Mr. McTigue. The legislation is really very simple and it
    is a first internationally in that you have placed in the
    statute a requirement for government departments to, A,
    identify what public benefits flowed from the actions that they
    took and then to publish an account for those. I think that
    that is an excellent step forward. From there you have now
    started to use some of that information to inform the budget
    decision-making. That is even better. There is a publication
    that we prepare each year as a matter of some of the research
    that we do that looks at that reporting of all of the agencies,
    and from my testimony you will see that EPA sort of falls in
    the middle. It is not better or worse than the others but it is
    certainly not great. But the quality of information being put
    in front of the legislature is dramatically improving as a
    result of this piece of law. It was passed in 1993 but didn't
    become effective until fiscal 1999. So you now are into your
    seventh year of results coming out of that piece of law.
        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        The Chair would recognize Mr. Pallone.
        Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I wanted to ask two questions of Mayor Bollwage, one about
    Brownfields and one about the Energy and Environment Block
    Grant Program that has been proposed by the U.S. Conference of
    Mayors. I don't know how familiar you are with Elizabeth. It
    basically includes most of the port facilities. It is known as
    the Port of Newark and Elizabeth but people think of it as the
    Port of Newark and then it also includes part of the Newark
    Airport and then it has a very dynamic downtown area in a
    traditional city. But in his time as mayor there, it has seen a
    major transformation. A city that a lot of people had left to
    move to other parts of the State has grown and he has used some
    of the Brownfields areas to build new developments and shopping
    centers, and if you go to Elizabeth now at night, you can go
    there 9, 10 o'clock at night. All the stores are open. It is
    dynamic. There is nightlife. It is a major transformation. So
    he really can give us a good example of how to turn things
    around.
        But I want to ask you first, if you could give us, Mayor,
    an example of how Elizabeth or other neighboring communities
    have taken advantage of the Brownfields program to try to
    redevelop blighted industrial sites and maybe some examples of
    how the program could be improved in terms of either funding or
    changes to the underlying law.
        Mr. Bollwage. Thank you, Congressman, for those kind
    comments. I will take the second part first if I can because I
    think we should focus on that and move forward, and one is the
    increase in the cleanup grant amounts would be a good way to
    go, establishing multipurpose Brownfield grants. These grants
    could be used up to $1.5 million. Applicants could be required
    to demonstrate a plan first and a capacity for using this
    multipurpose funding. Most importantly is increase the total
    Brownfield grant program funding, overall EPA funding for
    Brownfields grants beginning with $350 million in fiscal year
    2007 and then maybe increasing $50 million annually to a goal
    of $600 million to fiscal year 2012 and beyond so there is a
    constant attention. Reauthorization of the Brownfield
    legislation that you spoke about in your earlier remarks,
    Brownfield remediation grant sites, facilitate petroleum and
    UST Brownfield cleanups are just some of the issues. We
    prepared a document on that, Congressman, and we can forward it
    to you.
        On the first part of your question, we took a 166-acre
    landfill in the city of Elizabeth that was closed in 1970 and
    capped it and built the Jersey Gardens Mall, which is 2 million
    square feet of retail. We have four hotels on this site. We now
    have a state-of-the-art 21-screen cinemaplex plus restaurants
    working with the Port Authority to, hopefully, have a ferry at
    that location as well into lower Manhattan. We have used
    Brownfield grants and that type of funding for the completion
    of our Hope Six grant which we took 550 units of dilapidated
    public housing, used some turnkey sites with Brownfield
    legislation for new housing. We have used some of it or at
    least tools of it for new schools in our city. We built nine of
    them over the last 3 years, and plus market-rate housing. So
    Brownfield tools and all the programs around it are important
    to urban communities like myself to develop.
        Mr. Pallone. I mean, it is just amazing how the small
    amount of money that comes from the program has been leveraged
    by them to do so many different things.
        Mr. Bollwage. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Pallone. It is just unbelievable, I have to say. I am
    just running out of time so I want to get to the second
    question. The U.S. Conference of Mayors had this idea you
    mentioned of Energy and Environment Block Grant program similar
    to the existing CDBG and I went to the mayors' energy committee
    and they talked to me about this more when they had their
    conference here in DC. But if you could talk a little more
    about that and specifically what types of activities would be
    funded by it.
        Mr. Bollwage. Some of the things we could do is, integrate
    energy management for municipal buildings and municipal fleet
    of automobiles. We could stimulate a discussion in growth,
    especially green building programs and green building
    certification for code enforcement. Replacing traffic lights
    would be key with the LED technology that is existing. Emission
    reductions of the fleet, renewable energy. A new biodiesel
    plant just opened up in the city of Elizabeth--the owners came
    to see me the other day--where they are going to be bringing in
    the product and then shipping out the product. This is a great
    way to reduce emissions as well. And we prepared a book,
    Congressman, that I can forward to you on some of the best
    practices throughout the Nation and how these practices can be
    implemented on even a more broad scale for use in our cities if
    we had such a type of a grant.
        Mr. Pallone. And if I could just tell my colleagues, again,
    this type of thing would be leveraged with State funds too
    because our State, for example, New Jersey, has a lot that they
    are doing now in terms of grants to towns for renewable
    resources and trying to make buildings more energy efficient so
    it is just like a small amount of Federal dollars really go a
    long way. Thank you, Mayor.
        Mr. Bollwage. Thank you.
        Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. I certainly thank you. Mayor Bollwage, I would
    also like to get a copy of that book on best practices, how
    they can be a very useful tool.
        Mr. Bollwage. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. I would like to recognize Mr. Terry of Nebraska
    now.
        Mr. Terry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
        I actually have a unique position from amongst my
    colleagues and our distinguished panel, that I spent 8 years on
    the city council and within those 8 years on the Omaha City
    Council. We did a Brownfield project with the old Asarko Plant
    site of which I was sued, being served in my law office by an
    organization represented here today so that makes me unique
    probably. But also then dealing with a Superfund site for the
    city of Omaha that literally is 25 percent of the land mass of
    Omaha, Nebraska's, city boundaries that does affect children's
    health in particular from lead contamination. So I have been
    through Brownfields and Superfund and I have got to tell you
    that we have been--well, to put it bluntly, the Superfund
    process is not an enjoyable process. It is still going on years
    later when we were designated as such a site. It is a very slow
    process. It is one where the Nebraska delegation comes crawling
    to the EPA every year begging that we remain a priority so they
    don't abandon the project. In comparison, doing it under the
    State DEQ, Department of Environmental Quality, a different
    project, the Asarko property, as a Brownfield where we
    partnered with the city, then partnered with the State with
    oversight from the EPA on an appropriate environmental cleanup,
    it was done in less than a year. We have a great city park back
    to the river. We now have the Gallup University campus there.
    We now have our new Qwest Center on that property, and yet the
    EPA or the Superfund continues to drag out.
        So I would agree with the conclusion of the panel that at
    least on Superfund as well as the other funds that there is a
    funding gap between the needs and what is appropriated. But it
    also begs the question from seeing the process and being
    involved firsthand, I question the efficiency of the spending
    of the dollars and I wonder, Mr. Roderick, if any part of your
    investigation has determined the efficiency of the dollars
    spent, maybe just cursory percentage of dollars appropriated
    versus dollars actually used in cleanup.
        Mr. Roderick. No, sir, I don't believe we have examined
    that in the terms you are speaking of but I think we determined
    in Superfund that more money was going to administrative costs
    and less to programmatic or actually cleanup costs. That was
    one of the conclusions of our most recent reports. But as to
    dollars associated with that, I don't have the numbers.
        Mr. Terry. I think it would be interesting to know because
    the perception is that we use a great deal of the funds
    appropriated, as you said, for administrative overhead,
    defending lawsuits, as opposed to actually cleaning up so I
    wonder if appropriating more dollars really gets to cleaning up
    more properties, and perhaps we could be looking at ways to
    streamline or create efficiencies within the administration
    where we can more effectively use dollars.
        I would like to know this question. Again, the panel seems
    generally in agreement that there is a gap. How do we make up
    that gap then if it is simply appropriating more dollars? You
    may be exempt from answering that question. I will start with
    Mr. Bollwage on down. How do we make up that gap?
        Mr. Bollwage. Well, one of the things that Congressman
    Pallone talked about earlier was doing the polluters' tax and
    reinstituting that again. That is one way you can do it.
        Mr. Terry. The polluter tax was a tax where we taxed
    industry in general to fund the Superfund?
        Mr. Bollwage. Yes, because now it is coming out of the
    general fund but you could reinstate it. You could recoup much
    more dollars. And we had a Superfund site in our city at
    Chemical Control which has been cleaned up in the 1980's.
        Mr. Terry. Mr. King?
        Mr. King. Well, quite truthfully, I can't speak for ECOS.
        Mr. Terry. Mr. Langer, do you have an opinion?
        Mr. Langer. Taxes hit our members disproportionately as do
    environmental regulations so we are loathe to endorse any sort
    of a tax on anything, frankly.
        Mr. Terry. Mr. McTigue?
        Mr. McTigue. Sir, I served on a government where we moved
    dramatically toward user pays and I still support that
    philosophy, that as much as you can move toward user pays, that
    is a good thing to do. There is a second thing though. I think
    in the case of every site you seek to clean, you should look at
    how big is the problem, how quickly can we complete this whole
    operation and at what cost, because if you don't look at how
    quickly, then I don't think that you are going to give pressure
    on how could we more innovatively find ways of solving these
    problems. We are using processes and procedures that many
    instances I believe are old and archaic and there are probably
    better processes and procedures that would be available, and
    they may well be much cheaper than what is being used at the
    moment.
        Mr. Terry. Interesting.
        Mr. Simms?
        Mr. Simms. I would agree with a couple of the points that
    you are making. One is that the Agency's programs including the
    Superfund program do deserve and require some evaluation for
    efficiency in how those programs are managed to make sure that
    we really are getting the best quality that we can be getting
    out of these programs when they go to a site, that that site is
    managed well, it happens quickly and it is done effectively.
        As for the funding question, I would certainly endorse what
    I think I heard one of the other panelists say, that
    reinstating the chemical industry tax, petroleum industry,
    chemical industry tax for Superfund is, in my opinion, the one
    way to resuscitate the monies in order to get this done and it
    ties those monies back to the industries that are creating the
    chemicals. Clearly not all the industries are contaminating but
    it is these chemicals that are ending up in the environment at
    some point and reintegrating those costs at the front end of
    that process is a way that makes sense and has worked clearly
    in the past.
        I wanted to make one other observation. You are not alone
    here in the fact of having been sued by someone on the panel.
    Before I moved to NRDC, I was an attorney in the Office of
    General Counsel at EPA. I worked on several rulemakings that I
    was sued upon by myself.
        Mr. Wynn. Mr. Stearns?
        Mr. Stearns. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        So you were sued by yourself?
        Mr. Simms. In a manner of speaking.
        Mr. Stearns. OK. Mr. McTigue, you are a vice president at
    George Mason, the director of Government Accountability
    Project. Lots of times on EPA projects, we are always talking
    about more money to get absolute success on these projects
    versus methodology, and I guess my question to you is, how do
    you find the EPA measure, their way of measuring absolute
    success in environmental protection? Do you have your own
    method or thoughts on how goals and measuring of success can
    best be achieved? Is it by throwing more money? Is that always
    the most appropriate way to do it?
        Mr. McTigue. No. Throwing more money at a problem, if you
    don't know what the problem is, how big it is and how it is
    best rectified is not the right thing to do for a start. You
    should identify those things.
        Can I say as a compliment to EPA, from when I first became
    associated with it 9 years ago and looked at their first
    strategic plan to where they are today, they have a much
    clearer view of the world and what they are trying to do so
    they have improved dramatically. Where they are in my view
    still short of good performance is in identifying the scale of
    the problem, how big is this problem. For example, sir, with
    regard to Omaha, how much has the health of people in Omaha
    deteriorated because of the lead problem? What is the increased
    fatality level there compared to other places? What is the
    diminished wellness of the people of Omaha? And the knowledge
    of that would then provide for us some idea of what
    prioritization we would give to fixing that problem and how
    much we might be prepared to invest in it, and in many
    instances in my view, EPA falls short of scooping the problem
    and giving us a good idea of what sound science tells us would
    be the way to fix this problem permanently.
        Can I just finish with this comment? When I was in the
    Cabinet, we had a test for all proposals that came up to us,
    and one of the questions in that test was, what is the problem,
    clearly define it, what will remedy it, what action are you
    going to take, when will we be finished and not have to spend
    money on it. You would be surprised how many times that last
    question sunk all of the proposals because nobody was able to
    say we will be finished in X period of time. If you haven't got
    that answer, I don't think you are properly addressing the
    problem. The EPA does not do that well.
        Mr. Stearns. If you can't define when you are going to be
    finished with a problem, then you can't define how much money
    you are going to spend?
        Mr. McTigue. Exactly.
        Mr. Stearns. Do you have another example where the EPA may
    have fallen short?
        Mr. McTigue. In my view, yes. If I look at the budget
    justification this year, and I think that it is great that we
    have got this information available because it was never
    available before.
        Mr. Stearns. Because what you are saying is, the EPA
    oftentimes wants more money and Congress wants to give them
    more money but there are cases where they haven't defined the
    components you just mentioned and it makes no sense to give
    them more money or to talk about an absolute success until all
    those things have been defined.
        Mr. McTigue. Well, one of the weaknesses in their budget
    presentation this year in my view is the fact that for many of
    places where there are changes, either increases or decreases
    in spending, there is not good rationale to say what is the
    consequence of this change. There is a presumption in many
    cases that this amount of money can be withdrawn and the
    capability of the organization will not be affected one way or
    the other. I think that that is a leap of faith that we
    shouldn't really be prepared to accept.
        Mr. Stearns. Mr. Langer, you are manager of regulatory
    affairs at the NFIB and this question is dealing with voluntary
    programs.
        Mr. Langer. Sure.
        Mr. Stearns. A lot of people have talked about the merits
    or lack thereof. I somehow think there is a lot of merit to
    them. You sort of represent the small-business community. I was
    a member of NFIB when I had my small business. So you have
    real-world experiences, and lots of times in a small business
    you have to comply with a lot of EPA programs and lots of times
    you would like to know if you could do it voluntarily without
    this huge mandate or this threat of fines and everything. So
    how has the voluntary program worked and benefited the
    environment in your view and is it a very useful tool?
        Mr. Langer. Well, I think one of the problems you have to
    look at is, the scope of the burden that is faced by these
    businesses in day-to-day operations. We know that regulations
    cost small businesses about $7,700 per employee per year for
    businesses with fewer than 20 employees, and that is 90 percent
    of the businesses that are out there. So if you are an average
    NFIB member with six employees, you are talking about a roughly
    $50,000-a-year regulatory compliance cost, and that is the cost
    of when you know exactly what you are doing and the amount of
    time you have to spend figuring out what needs to be done.
        Mr. Stearns. Fifty thousand dollars would take some of
    those businesses and put them in bankruptcy.
        Mr. Langer. It does. It does. The bigger problem is, we are
    trying to reach this goal of 100 percent compliance and it is a
    lofty goal. It is a laudable goal. I mean, we need to have
    that. We all want environmental protection. But the problem is
    that these small businesses simply don't know where to go to
    get the information so they spend a considerable amount of time
    having to ferret out what they need to do, whereas if EPA took
    an active role--and I will give you an example, OSHA, for
    instance. OSHA is about as big a bogeyman to small businesses
    as the EPA is and when it comes down to it, OSHA has taken an
    active role. The new director, Ed Folk, is going out and
    proselytizing to small businesses about the importance of
    occupational safety and health in their businesses and he is
    getting a greater bang for the buck in doing it. He is
    investing them in the process, showing them how they can save
    money by being compliant with the regulations that are out
    there and showing them what they need to do in a non-punitive
    manner. You can go out and you get an OSHA consultation, an
    OSHA inspector will come out and review your business and show
    you what you need to be doing.
        Mr. Stearns. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you. Since we don't have too many Members
    here, I think we will probably have a second round of
    questioning and if Members want to stay and do follow-up, they
    can.
        I would like to proceed and I want to ask you, Mr.
    Roderick, it is the Inside EPA reprinted e-mail you sent out on
    February 9, and it said that you anticipate losing about 30
    employees, FTEs. Is that correct?
        Mr. Roderick. Yes, sir, that is correct.
        Mr. Wynn. And it also said that very likely you will have
    to close facilities.
        Mr. Roderick. That is a possibility, sir, yes, sir.
        Mr. Wynn. Your term was ``very likely,'' and your
    characterization was ``unwelcome and disappointing,'' which is
    a little bit different from what you said here.
        Now, you have staffers who work on this voluntarily
    Performance Track program, right?
        Mr. Roderick. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Wynn. And in fact, you studied 30 member companies and
    found less than two out of 30 had fulfilled their commitments;
    93 percent did not fulfill their commitments. Isn't that true?
        Mr. Roderick. Well, sir, I don't want to discuss that
    report until it is actually completely completed. We want to
    complete our process.
        Mr. Wynn. Alright, fine, if you don't want to discuss it,
    but it was characterized as a gold standard, this Performance
    Track program was characterized as a gold standard?
        And also, this was not done by congressional statute, was
    it, these voluntary programs?
        Mr. Roderick. No, sir.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        Mr. Simms, I think at the very end of your testimony you
    were trying to mention a couple points about the voluntary
    programs and also I think environmental justice. If you would
    kind of expand on that, I would appreciate it.
        Mr. Simms. Well, I wanted to mention environmental justice.
    Environmental justice is obviously a very important issue, and
    the budget request reduces funding to the Office of
    Environmental Justice by, I believe it is 28 percent. This is a
    very troubling development, given that it is very clear from
    the data that is readily available that people in low-income
    and minority communities are still disproportionately affected
    by pollution. In addition to that, there are clear indications
    in recent IG reports that EPA is already not living up to its
    obligations under the Environmental Justice Executive order.
    That was one of the issues I wanted to make sure that the panel
    is aware of. That funding is very important to communities that
    in many cases are least able to protect themselves.
        Mr. Wynn. And did you want to comment on the voluntary
    program?
        Mr. Simms. Well, I believe I did comment on the voluntary
    program, and I can expand on that a little bit. One of the
    things I want to make sure that this committee understands is
    that there are a number of voluntary programs that are very
    good and that have demonstrated very good results. There are a
    number of voluntary programs for what that is absolutely not
    the case, and there are voluntary programs that have a
    deregulatory component to them that allow otherwise regulated
    industries to take a regulatory off-ramp that reduce the
    scrutiny of permanent reviews, reduce inspections and to the
    extent that that happens, to the extent that these voluntary
    programs have a central component of the program, an element of
    deregulation. There has to be a heightened level of scrutiny
    and accountability for those programs to absolutely ensure that
    if that program is going to exist and it is going to remove
    otherwise applicable regulatory requirements, that it is going
    to achieve the results that it is intended to achieve and I----
        Mr. Wynn. Can I just interject here? What is the authority
    for a non-statutory program to remove statutorily imposed
    regulations?
        Mr. Simms. Well, the voluntary programs do not remove the
    applicability of the statutory requirements. What they do in
    many cases is provide alternative compliance mechanisms the
    statute itself does not require a certain schedule for
    inspections or a certain depth of process for permanent reviews
    and so the Agency has the authority within its discretion to
    implement the statutory requirements to allow for different
    levels of scrutiny.
        Mr. Wynn. Before my time runs out, let me interject,
    because you make some very good points. Don't you think then if
    they are going to have these programs to create these, I think
    you described them as detours or off-ramps, that they ought to
    be required to submit--that the Agency rather ought to be
    required to submit them to Congress so that we could review
    them before they are implemented?
        Mr. Simms. Absolutely, and I will go back to my three
    themes which are accountability, transparency, and
    accountability--and those things are absolutely important both
    EPA holding accountable the participants in these voluntary
    programs and Congress holding accountable EPA to make sure that
    the benefits of those programs are actually realized.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you. My time is up.
        Mr. Shimkus.
        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I think one thing that we found in the hearing is there is
    a consistency by everyone in the panel, real information, real
    science, evaluation of the response. Even with you, Mr. Simms,
    when you were talking about these voluntary programs, you are
    saying there are some good programs, there may be some bad
    ones, but until we gather up the real information to make value
    judgments, likewise on a cleanup site, the same issue on the
    flip side is, real information, real data, let us see if there
    is a real return on the money we are spending. So Mr. Simms, I
    would encourage you to talk with Mr. McTigue because I think
    some of those responses, it is really the same formula, in
    other words, looking at it from different arenas but it is the
    same formula.
        Let me go to the mayor for a second. As you know, Federal
    Brownfields law does not allow States and municipalities to use
    cleanup funds to pay for administrative costs, and I have been
    surprised by your organization's argument that this provision
    was a technical flaw that Congress did not intend. I noticed in
    your testimony that you are encouraging statutory changes to
    this law that you have previously emphatically considered
    unamendable. Do you consider this change, meaning a reduction
    of cleanup funding grants in favor of municipal and State
    bureaucracy costs, one of those you allude to in your
    testimony?
        Mr. Bollwage. Could you go through that again?
        Mr. Shimkus. Well, yes. I will put it in common language.
    Brownfields funds go to cleanup. Your organization says we have
    some administrative costs that we would like to use some of
    these Brownfield dollars to go. That is really part of the
    basis of this whole debate on how we budget and what kind of
    return on the investment. Do you agree with that position?
        Mr. Bollwage. Well, we were one of the first cities to get
    a $200,000 Brownfields grant in the State. We were able to use
    that grant administratively to characterize what our Brownfield
    sites were, and going to what Mr. McTigue said, it would be a
    little difficult to cleanup a Brownfield if we didn't know what
    it was and that would have to be some type of administrative
    cost to assess that problem.
        Mr. Shimkus. But I am talking about the actual Brownfields
    fund itself. Those monies go to cleanup. We don't want those to
    go to administrative costs, do we?
        Mr. Bollwage. Well, if you agree with Mr. McTigue's
    assessment, you are going to have to figure out what the
    problem is and then know where you are going and that would be
    administrative costs, and then after that if there is a fund
    dedicated for Brownfield cleanup then that should be used for
    cleanup.
        Mr. Shimkus. Going to the Superfund debate, which I have
    been involved with for a long time since I have been on this
    committee and we did small-business relief years ago back in
    1998 through the committee, there was a NCEP study that said 50
    cents on every dollar was spent on litigation in the Superfund.
    Now, if 50 cents of every dollar is going to paperwork,
    bureaucracy and court claims, do we think there would be a
    better use of those dollars in actual cleanup?
        Mr. Bollwage. I can tell you in the city of Elizabeth, we
    had Chemical Control, which blew up in 1980, and Superfund
    dollars to the tune of $50 million were used to clean it up. It
    was not litigated in any way, shape or form. The Superfund
    dollars were used to cleanup what is now a cement slab. So from
    personal experiences, we do not deal with a lot of
    administrative costs on legal bills regarding a cleanup of a
    Superfund site, nor do we deal with it in cleaning up the 166-
    acre site of the Jersey Gardens Mall, which was a Brownfield's
    site. We planned, we prepared and I think if you do the things
    that Mr. McTigue was talking about, you wouldn't deal with
    lawsuits, but there has to be some type of administrative costs
    up front.
        Mr. Shimkus. Let me see if I can get an answer----
        Mr. Bollwage. I answered. You just don't like it.
        Mr. Shimkus. Well, do you want identified cleanup funds to
    go for cleanup or administration costs?
        Mr. Bollwage. Do I want identified cleanup costs----
        Mr. Shimkus. Cleanup funds to go to cleanup or
    administration costs? In other words, bulldozers, workers to
    cleanup the site or litigation, paperwork----
        Mr. Bollwage. Well, if you do the proper planning, the
    proper planning would avoid litigation.
        Mr. Shimkus. Well, why don't you just answer the question?
        Mr. Bollwage. I am.
        Mr. Shimkus. Should cleanup costs go to clean----
        Mr. Bollwage. I am going to answer the question. Cleanup
    costs, Congressman, should go for cleaning up the site. When
    you do public-private partnerships, sometimes you can get other
    people involved in this----
        Mr. Shimkus. I don't have a beef with that. My focus is
    making sure that if we are going to do cost-benefit analysis,
    get a real return on our dollars, cleanup dollars should go to
    cleanup.
        Let me just highlight some of Mr. Langer's testimony in my
    last 10 seconds, is the Business Gateway program is a good
    program to get the small businesses involved and encouraged in
    doing proper compliance and an easy method, and I think that
    would be helpful. I don't have time to receive an answer but I
    wanted to highlight that as a thing that I thought was
    important.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. Certainly. I noted something that is kind of
    interesting. EPA spent about $23 million on administrative
    costs in this budget.
        Mr. Terry.
        Mr. Terry. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
        Just following up a little bit on Mr. Shimkus's comments.
    Mayor, you mentioned something about partnerships and I think
    that is the nice thing about Brownfields as opposed to being
    put on the priority list where you really lose a lot of control
    at the local level. On a Brownfield, you can see a partnership
    between the local community and State and I think that is a
    good way to share those administrative costs. I think it is
    fair that if we have a grant program for Brownfields from the
    Federal Government, that those be used or we could say those
    can be used strictly for the cleanup. So actually my question,
    since Mr. King has been fairly lonely in this discussion about
    the participation of State governments in the Brownfields
    process and how they can lend their level of expertise in the
    administrative parts, the environmental engineering studies,
    for example. Would you care to comment on being a participant
    and the advantage of Brownfields?
        Mr. King. I will do that from my position in South
    Carolina.
        Mr. Terry. Absolutely.
        Mr. King. I think Brownfields has been just tremendous. It
    really has helped in a lot of areas that probably would not
    have been redeveloped or certainly would not be as far along as
    they are today. We are actively engaged at the State level with
    helping communities in the Brownfields area and I think it has
    been a great partnership.
        Mr. Terry. I appreciate that.
        Would you say that too as well, Mayor? Have you worked with
    your State in the Brownfield cleanup that is now a nice mall?
        Mr. Bollwage. Yes, but the Nation's mayors would like to
    see the Brownfields funds naturally directly come to the
    municipalities. As a former councilman, you would understand
    that. But we have very cooperative relationship in the State of
    New Jersey. We would have never been able to build the Jersey
    Gardens Mall because there was legislation to offset bringing
    private dollars to offset the Brownfield dollars.
        Mr. Terry. Well, in all due respect, as one of the people
    that voted to put up funds to do the administrative work, we
    were gladly putting those up to make sure that we didn't get
    EPA and a priorities list on us. I think the little dollars
    that we spent--I shouldn't say little. It was probably a
    million or two.
        Mr. Bollwage. That is why you got sued.
        Mr. Terry. I was personally served by the sheriff at my law
    office. I thought I was being sued for malpractice, which I
    never was. But I want to end with that.
        Mr. McTigue, I will tell you, your comments here I think
    have been the most intriguing of the hearing, and just a little
    bit of editorial comment. I think probably one of the areas
    that we can help the EPA improve on are exactly the criteria
    that you set out. I think on their priority projects, they set
    goals. I think they have the right intent but sometimes they
    don't have it clearly defined what the objectives are, what the
    end game is, and we have seen that just in Omaha where in the
    lead contamination Superfund site, for example, they are still
    doing their research several years later about the health
    impacts within the city and I am not sure they have been able
    to determine what those are yet. In fact, the criteria, parts
    per billion within the soil, has actually changed throughout
    the process, which has led to a great deal of consternation
    within the community that maybe games are being played to save
    dollars. It may be. I don't know. I think it comes from the
    fact that perhaps that sound science hasn't been used at the
    beginning of the process to set the levels of contamination
    that truly affect the health that can all be agreed upon.
        In fact, this is just an editorial, not a comment. My first
    meeting with the EPA was on lead in water in small
    municipalities in Nebraska and we asked if the EPA could be
    more flexible, that the city could take out the old piping and
    put in new piping instead of having to put in a water treatment
    facility and they said no, and then-Senator Kerrey asked the
    EPA representatives how were you able to determine the
    particulate level, that that level affects health; show me the
    study. They said we don't have one but we will get you one.
    Now, that established a great deal of credibility in my mind
    that they just artificially set a level, then produced 90 days
    later a study that wow, backed up that level. And so I do agree
    with your level on sound science and perhaps maybe we can get
    to a point where we work in here not only trying to get more
    dollars but make sure that we set out some criteria to help
    them become more efficient.
        Mr. Chairman, can I just have a few more seconds?
        I want to ask Mayor Bollwage, on the revolving fund, this
    is a fund that many communities in Nebraska, not my district,
    but Nebraska use. My understanding of that revolving fund is
    that it was to go to cities or allow cities that are smaller in
    nature, can't really go into the market with municipal bonds.
    You made a comment in your statement that sounded like your
    city should not have been forced to have to go out into the
    municipal bond market to do your water treatment facilities.
    Did I understand your point correctly there?
        Mr. Bollwage. With clarification, Congressman.
        Mr. Terry. I appreciate that.
        Mr. Bollwage. I rushed through the comments because of the
    time but in my written remarks, the SRF loans, we recognize the
    importance that they are to the small municipality and we would
    like to see it funded with 30-year no-interest loans and other
    things. It was easier for a larger municipality like myself to
    go into the private financing of the bond market but for
    smaller municipalities, that revolving loan fund is direly
    important.
        Mr. Terry. Alright. Because I didn't want to have the
    League of Cities saying that----
        Mr. Bollwage. The U.S. Conference of Mayors.
        Mr. Terry. When that wasn't its----
        Mr. Bollwage. Oh, not at all, and I thank you for the
    opportunity to clarify.
        Mr. Wynn. Mr. Sullivan.
        Mr. Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all
    the panelists for coming today. I appreciate your time you
    spent today here.
        Mr. Simms, as I understand it, the Democrat-authored House
    Resolution 20 only adds money to the Superfund account and the
    Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund. Since your testimony is
    very critical of the Bush budget proposal on area such as LUST
    and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, in light of the
    constitutional mandate on the two branches of government, don't
    you have anything critical to say to Congress about the lost
    opportunity to increase funding for those areas, especially
    considering the weight your testimony gives them?
        Mr. Simms. I am not sure I fully understand. It is a
    relatively long question. I am trying to piece it together.
        Mr. Sullivan. Sure.
        Mr. Simms. Let me give you the gist of my testimony. The
    gist of my testimony is, there is an absolutely critical need.
    The EPA has demonstrated that need through some studies looking
    at the upcoming costs for water infrastructure, the number of
    leaking underground storage tanks and the number of Superfund
    sites yet to be cleaned up. My testimony is about making sure
    that those issues get addressed. What I have before me is the
    budget proposal. That is what I am looking at. That is why I am
    criticizing the budget proposal for its failure to do that. As
    a foundational matter, what I am talking about is getting these
    environmental issues addressed.
        Mr. Sullivan. OK. I have got a couple more, if I got the
    time. Also, Mr. Simms, you mentioned in your testimony that the
    EPA is increasingly reliant on voluntary, as opposed to
    regulatory, programs and yet you acknowledge that less than 2
    percent of the EPA's budget supports these activities. What
    percentage, Mr. Simms, of the Agency's budget would you
    appropriate in your view to support partnership activities?
    What do you think is the proper amount?
        Mr. Simms. Let me clarify.
        Mr. Sullivan. If not 2 percent, what do you think is good?
        Mr. Simms. I understand your question but it is a bit of a
    misnomer in terms of what my testimony says, and let me just
    clarify that for you so it is clear to this committee. I do not
    have a blanket criticism, NRDC does not have a blanket
    criticism of the amount of money going to partnership programs.
    There are some very good partnership programs. The criticism
    is, if money is going to partnership programs, those
    partnership programs have to be transparent and accountable and
    subject to scrutiny both through a functional process within
    EPA and an oversight function from Congress. It is not about
    how much money it is. It is about how those funds are used and
    demonstrating that those funds are used in an appropriate way
    that actually achieves the benefits that are being----
        Mr. Sullivan. Since they are transparent, you would
    advocate more partnership programs and more budget money spent
    on them, right?
        Mr. Simms. Well, I think there may be a point at which
    there is a tension between the Agency's ability to institute
    its core functions effectively and how many voluntary programs
    there are and how effective they are you could have at the same
    time. I don't know what that number is and it is not----
        Mr. Sullivan. But also if it is more transparent like you
    are saying, I agree that it should be, wouldn't you agree that
    it could be more than 2 percent should be spent on those
    programs if they are more transparent? Wouldn't you agree?
        Mr. Simms. I have no categorical objection to 2 percent or
    some level above 2 percent, as long the programs are being
    overseen.
        Mr. Sullivan. Also, I got one more question, sir. You are
    asking for $5 to $10 million per year starting in fiscal year
    2008 for EPA to develop regulations and guidelines appropriate
    for commercial-scale CO2 disposal projects. You say that for
    the EPA to develop some regulatory framework will take several
    years. I understand that a task force put together by the
    Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission is months away from
    developing guidelines for the States in this regard. It is
    almost complete. Before we start spending Federal dollars on
    Federal effort at EPA, would it not make more sense to take a
    close look at what the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact
    Commission task force produces first, and aren't the States
    where this kind of expertise resides?
        Mr. Simms. I would answer that in two parts. The one is,
    even if the EPA starts now with this budget year focusing
    intensely on what it will take to regulate CO\2\ sequestration,
    that feedback between the Interstate Compact and the Agency can
    happen and can happen effectively. So I don't think there is a
    tension between giving the Agency the money to do that and
    having a process that is moving forward providing some
    information about that sort of a guidance within another
    entity. So I don't think that there is a real tension between
    the two and the amount of money we are talking about going to
    EPA to do this stuff is quite small and it is absolutely
    important that this get off the dime really quickly. If it does
    not, we will be already behind the eight ball when we get to
    the point where we really need to start putting the stuff in
    the ground.
        Mr. Sullivan. Well, thank you very much for being here. I
    appreciate it.
        Mr. Simms. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. At this time the Chair would recognize Ms. Solis
    for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Solis. Thank you, and I apologize, Mr. Chairman, for
    being late. I was in another meeting. My question, if I might,
    I would like to pose this to Mr. King. The Congressional
    Research Service recently calculated that the President's
    budget request of $842 million for the Drinking Water State
    Revolving Fund is only, in our estimation, $802 million when
    adjusted for inflation for 2006 dollars. That is the lowest
    amount of purchasing power in the history of the program, and
    at the same time the infrastructure needs of the States, which
    EPA estimates to be at $263 billion in its 2005 report, are
    huge and apparently growing. Your prepared testimony with
    respect to Drinking Water State Revolving Fund identified
    eroding effects of inflation on the DWSRF appropriation. I
    would like to have a clarification on what you mean with
    respect to the effect inflation is having on this critical
    public health program, and I know I don't have enough time so
    if you could please be very brief.
        Mr. King. I can do that. The message there is just the fact
    that the dollar today does not buy the same amount as the
    dollar 5 years ago, and the monies that are allocated are at
    the same level and that is not different than the other
    programs that we receive dollars from EPA. The dollars are the
    same, and as inflation goes on throughout the years, that
    buying power is not there.
        Ms. Solis. But it does appear as though the level amount
    that we are looking at obviously, there is a difference there
    in terms of funding. You will admit that?
        Mr. King. Yes.
        Ms. Solis. OK. Second question for Mr. King. One of the
    ECOS's principles is to first and foremost fund the core
    programs that have been enacted by this Congress such as Safe
    Drinking Water, Leaking Underground Storage Tanks, Air Quality
    Management, Hazardous Waste Management and the State Revolving
    Fund. Last year the ECOS identified a number of EPA contracts
    where contractors were tasked to design and market voluntary
    programs including telemarketing recruiting activities. At the
    same time, EPA cut core Clear Air grants to the States. Can you
    please explain your concerns regarding the growing use of
    contracts for non-core programs that have been specifically
    authorized by Congress?
        Mr. King. We believe that because of the congressionally
    mandated programs that we have an obligation to fulfill those
    requirements, and we just cannot address those requirements
    when dollars go down in those programs that were identified.
        Ms. Solis. And are those competing programs then?
        Mr. King. In some cases they are, and as you will see in
    the testimony, we identified those priorities as a high
    priority and moderate priority and low priority and some of our
    moderate priorities are mandated as well but we had to
    establish some priorities there.
        Ms. Solis. But they would take precedent over, say, perhaps
    statutory priorities?
        Mr. King. No, there are not statutory priorities that are
    in that category.
        Ms. Solis. This is a question for Mr. Roderick. My time is
    coming to a close here. Mr. Roderick, I think that the work
    your office is doing on the voluntary Performance Track program
    is indeed important work. The program is not specifically
    authorized by any statute and is costing at least $5 million
    per year using approximately 30 full-time employees. Last year
    a group at Harvard University reviewed the Performance Track
    program and made these findings: ``It is not clear that
    programs like the Performance Track are encouraging companies
    to do more than they would anyhow.'' That is a quote. We also
    have been unable to find such evidence that Performance Track
    encourages facilities to improve their performance. The
    evaluation report prepared by your office studied whether 30 or
    so member companies fulfilled the commitments they made to
    improve environmental performance at their facilities. Your
    staff found that only two of the 30 member companies met all of
    their commitments; 93 percent did not. Have you made
    Administrator Johnson aware of these extremely disappointing
    results for the program that the Agency claims is a gold
    standard for voluntary environmental programs?
        Mr. Roderick. Well, we do not want to comment or discuss
    anything to do with our ongoing work. We want to wait until it
    is fully complete before we discuss the process that was used
    and the results that were----
        Ms. Solis. Have you spoken to the Administrator about this?
        Mr. Roderick. No.
        Ms. Solis. You have not, for the record?
        Mr. Roderick. For the record.
        Ms. Solis. I want to be clear. The Administrator is not
    aware that there is a report to this effect that I just----
        Mr. Roderick. Well, that is a different question. I am sure
    he is aware that there is a report but we have not had a
    discussion about it in any way.
        Ms. Solis. Is there a statute that specifically authorizes
    EPA to establish and implement Performance Track?
        Mr. Roderick. Not to my knowledge.
        Ms. Solis. There is not. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Wynn. I would like to thank all of our panelists for
    being so generous with their time----
        Mr. Stearns. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that
    Members may have an opportunity to submit written questions for
    the record?
        Mr. Wynn. Without objection.
        Mr. Stearns. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. Again, I thank the panelists for participating.
    Thank you for your time and your testimony. This concludes our
    hearing. I would note that this subcommittee will meet next
    week, Thursday, March 8, at 9 a.m. to hear from the
    Administrator of EPA, Mr. Johnson. Thank you very much.
        [Whereupon, the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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      THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET REQUEST

                                  ----------

                            THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2007

     House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Environment and
     Hazardous Materials joint with Subcommittee on Energy and
                  Air Quality, Committee on Energy and Commerce
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in
    room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Albert R.
    Wynn (chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous
    Materials) presiding.
        Members present: Representatives Stupak, Capps, Allen,
    Solis, Baldwin, Butterfield, Barrow, Green, Dingell, Inslee,
    Markey, Shimkus, Terry, Sullivan, Murphy, Barton, Walden,
    Pitts, Pallone, Hall, Upton, Whitfield, Hastert, Burgess, Deal,
    and Shadegg.
        Staff present: Richard A. Frandsen, Lorie Schmidt, Karen
    Torrent, Ann Strickland, Chris Treanor, Erin Bzymek, Alec
    Gerlach, David McCarthy, Jerry Couri, Tom Hassenboehler, Peter
    Kielty, and Kurt Bilas.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ALBERT R. WYNN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

        Mr. Wynn. Good morning. Today we have a joint hearing on
    the Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials and the
    Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality chaired by Mr. Boucher.
    This morning we are very pleased to have with us the
    Administrator of the EPA, Mr. Stephen Johnson. The subject of
    this hearing will be the Environmental Protection Agency fiscal
    year 2008 budget request.
        For purposes of making opening statements, the chairs and
    ranking members of each subcommittee and the full committee
    will each be recognized for 5 minutes. All other members of the
    subcommittees will be recognized for 3 minutes. Members may
    waive the right to make an opening statement, and then when
    first recognized for questions may add those 3 minutes to their
    time for questions. Without objection, all members have 5
    legislative days to submit opening statements for the record.
        This is a somewhat momentous occasion. It is the first time
    in 6 years that the committee is hearing from the EPA
    Administrator on the EPA's budget submission. The EPA's role as
    our Nation's steward of the environment is critical to
    America's health, safety, and economic growth, and we take our
    constitutional responsibility at oversight very seriously.
        The President's budget requests have declined significantly
    during the last 6 years. This year, the EPA is only one of two
    agencies to see a reduction in the President's budget. This
    request is indicative of the administration's attitude toward
    environmental protection. There is growing alarm about the
    administration's lack of commitment to environment and public
    health protection. We are deeply concerned about whether the
    Environmental Protection Agency can fulfill its mission in
    terms of its core health programs, including Brownfields,
    Superfund, the Safe Drinking Water Revolving Act Loan Fund,
    Leaking Underground Storage Tanks, and Environmental Justice.
        At our first budget hearing last week, we heard from
    several stakeholders, including the Acting Inspector General of
    EPA, the Environmental Council of States (ECOS), United States
    Conference of Mayors and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
    The distressing overall message we received from these
    witnesses was that EPA's core environmental programs have been
    chronically underfunded and that this lack of resources places
    an undue burden on the States and localities and puts our
    constituents' health at risk.
        Mr. Chris Bollwage, the mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey,
    testified on behalf of the United States Conference of Mayors.
    The mayors are facing unfunded mandates such as the Safe
    Drinking Water Act, and as a result, are often forced to pass
    the cost on to their constituents. Ironically, while we heard
    testimony on the difficulties States face trying to protect
    their citizens with less Federal funding, the Inspector General
    testified that EPA has been spending money on voluntary
    programs such as Performance Track, which yield questionable
    results.
        Unfortunately, the EPA has failed to provide this committee
    with complete information on the amount of money and the
    personnel dedicated to these voluntary partnership programs.
    That is unacceptable. The EPA's lack of response raises serious
    questions about the diversion of funds and personnel to some of
    these programs at the expense of the core public health
    programs mandated by Congress.
        In terms of these core programs, of particular concern to
    me is Superfund. The fiscal year 2008 budget request for
    Superfund is $35 million less than the President's fiscal year
    2006 budget request, yet the EPA Inspector General testified
    before this committee last week that limited funding prevented
    EPA from beginning construction at all sites. The short-funding
    appears to have impacted projected completion rates. The EPA
    initially projected it would complete 40 sites in fiscal year
    2007, but recently backtracked on its initial estimate,
    indicating it would only have 24 construction completions in
    fiscal year 2007.
        Not only has the administration underfunded EPA, it has
    also expressed its opposition to the reinstatement of a
    dedicated tax for polluters that would increase revenue for the
    Superfund. Another concern is the Leaking Underground Storage
    Tank Trust Fund. Leaking underground storage tanks are the lead
    source of groundwater contamination in the United States,
    posing a significant risk to the Nation's drinking water
    supply. While the LUST fund surplus is estimated at $3 billion
    in fiscal year 2008, the President's budget requests just $72
    million from this trust fund for cleanup, less than last year's
    appropriation.
        Gasoline taxes are paid by consumers, and these taxes are
    not going for their specified purpose: the cleanup of spills
    and underground contamination. Yet, the President is using the
    taxes designated for this environmental trust fund to offset
    other administration spending, such as the war in Iraq and tax
    cuts for the wealthy. In the meantime, however, there is a
    backlog of 113,000 LUST cleanups. The longer this contamination
    is left unaddressed, the greater the adverse impact on human
    health, increasing the ultimate cost of cleanups.
        The President's fiscal year 2008 budget requests 26 percent
    less than his budget request for fiscal year 2006 for
    Brownfields. Current law provides an authorization of over $200
    million per year, but the President's budget request is only 56
    percent of the amount authorized for cleanup and assessment
    grants. This is troublesome when you consider that in 2006
    there were 694 Brownfield project grant proposals, but only
    slightly more than one-third received funding.
        In terms of the Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund,
    this is yet another core program that has faced cuts. The
    President's budget request is the lowest in the history of the
    State Revolving Loan Fund in real terms. The Environmental
    Council of States testified that declining Federal support has
    caused many States to institute new fees for drinking water
    infrastructure and service. Shortfalls in funding for the SRF
    program leads not only to rate increases, but also increased
    risks of outbreaks of water-born diseases.
        Overall, States are concerned the EPA funding is
    insufficient to meet its mission to protect the environment and
    public health. Superfund and Brownfield cleanups are declining.
    States face increasing pressure to pass costs on to consumers.
    Drinking water infrastructure continues to deteriorate in the
    face of declining funds. The American public continues to face
    health risks from leaking underground storage tanks. All a
    result of chronic underfunding of EPA'S core health programs.
    Meanwhile, EPA, under this administration, is spending
    resources on voluntary programs with low oversight or
    accountability.
        I look forward, as does the committee, to hearing from the
    EPA Administrator today about these and other issues affecting
    the health of our constituents and our environment.
         At this time, I would recognize the ranking member of the
    subcommittee, Mr. Shimkus, for an opening statement.
        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can I go into
    colloquy real quick and ask, the Administrator has got a time
    constraint? Is that true also?
        Mr. Wynn. The Administrator has agreed to be here until
    12:00, which is one of the reasons we began this hearing at
    9:00, to accommodate his need to depart.
        Mr. Shimkus. The only reason I mentioned that is so Members
    understand that the longer we talk, the less questions we get,
    which may be good, but I am still going to use my 5 minutes.
    But just so other people keep that in mind.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SHIMKUS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to
    congratulate you on the success of your first hearing and tell
    you how much I look forward to today's follow-up hearing on the
    EPA budget proposal for fiscal year 2008.
        Our hearing last Thursday on this issue was very
    informative. I was especially pleased to hear the agreement
    voiced by our witnesses that the amount of money allocated to a
    problem does not signify commitment. Instead, we learned that
    clear objectives, transparent actions, and focused resources
    mean more to improving public health than the amount of money
    dolled out to each program. I was especially happy to hear that
    the EPA has improved since 1999 in focusing its resources and
    defining its mission.
        Ultimately the EPA's efforts should not be measured from
    the size of their budget, but whether they are protecting human
    health and the environment, and whether EPA is getting better
    and more efficient at that job with each year.
        Last week helped us set the table for our time with the
    Administrator, and I want to welcome him before our panel. Mr.
    Johnson, our Republican members support congressional oversight
    by this committee because we believe real accountability and
    oversight should not be a partisan issue, and we are looking,
    as are our colleagues on the other side, for facts, both
    budgetary and scientific.
        As a side note, I want to say how pleased I am that our
    Administrator is a scientist who understands the need for sound
    objective science at the EPA. This was a clear thing that we
    heard from our panelists last Thursday.
        I also believe that having great scientific data is only so
    helpful if we don't know how clean we want our air, soil, or
    water to be. We need to be able to place into context how one
    environment improvement fits in with another. This, to me, is
    especially important because it speaks to the very heart of
    being able to prioritize our public health needs, and I would
    guess the States would agree with me after hearing how much
    they are feeling squeezed, trying to meet their own objectives
    as well as trying to implement Federal mandates.
        One last item I want to touch on is the use of trust funds.
    I am a big proponent of using money raised in a dedicated trust
    fund for those activities a trust fund claims to address. I,
    and our witnesses, unanimously agree that once raised, these
    monies should go to their stated purposes. This includes a
    negative implication of having them being unused so they can
    cover deficit spending, a sin committed repeatedly by White
    Houses and Congresses of both parties, and I can bet after the
    budget goes through the process, it will be a sin committed
    again by the budget process here and our appropriators. We need
    to consider ways to make this money work for the purpose it was
    raised, or put the charade of having trust funds in the first
    place.
        Mr. Chairman, I think it makes sense to focus our time on
    comprehensively understanding the budget of the main Federal
    agencies that our committee oversees. EPA's budget has
    ramifications for Federal, State, and local regulators. It
    impacts large, medium, and small businesses, and it translates
    into how public health protections can and will be carried out.
    Simply looking at the numbers does a disservice to the work of
    the Agency and its partners. We must admit that Congress is the
    constitutional home of Federal spending, not the executive
    branch, and that pay-go rules forced priority spending because
    they prohibit free spending without offsets. In this context,
    we need to be responsible and construct solutions that solve
    environmental problems rather than feed political fires.
        Mr. Chairman, the Republican members of this subcommittee
    and I pledge to be honest brokers on the issues that lie ahead.
    Again, I want to welcome Administrator Johnson, and with a
    minute and 32 seconds remaining, yield back my time, Mr.
    Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. I want to thank you for that. Can I claim it?
        Mr. Shimkus. You probably will anyway.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
        I would like to recognize Mr. Dingell, who I believe is
    coming in at this moment, the chairman of the full committee.
    We are very honored to have him here, and without further
    comment, I would recognize the distinguished gentleman from
    Michigan.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. DINGELL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

        Mr. Dingell. Good morning, and good morning to my
    colleagues on the committee. I want to commend you, Mr.
    Chairman Wynn, and you, Mr. Chairman Boucher, for holding this
    hearing on EPA's budget request for fiscal year 2008. This is
    the first time during this administration that the EPA
    Administrator has come before this committee to justify the
    agency's funding requests for environmental protection. I am
    sure we all welcome Administrator Johnson here for this new
    experience.
        EPA plays a vital role in protecting the health of our
    public and the Nation by ensuring that the water we drink is
    safe, the air that we breathe is clean, the waste being
    generated is managed properly, and the legacy of toxic waste
    sites is cleaned up expeditiously. After reviewing the
    President's fiscal year 2008 budget, I can only conclude that
    it fails to meet the administration's professed goal of
    accelerating the pace of environmental protection, and in many
    areas, the budget falls woefully short of the needs previously
    identified by EPA. We look forward to Administrator Johnson
    telling us why EPA was one of only two agencies, the other
    being the Department of Labor, that actually faced decreases in
    the President's budget. Clearly, the President has not made
    environmental protection a priority.
        To cleanup leaking underground storage tanks that are
    polluting the drinking water supplies of the Nation, the
    President's budget requests $72.5 million. In contrast, the
    trust fund to address these matters will receive over $300
    million in annual revenues, and the trust fund surplus
    dedicated to these cleanups is projected to be over $3 billion
    in fiscal year 2008. American consumers then are being taxed,
    but the money is not being used for the specific purposes for
    which it is collected, or which the Congress intended it should
    be spent.
        The Government Accountability Office has recently
    identified a $12 billion public funding need, and EPA has
    acknowledged over 113,000 releases from leaky underground
    storage tanks that have not been addressed. We want to hear why
    that is so.
        For Brownfields grants to help communities with site
    assessments and clean-ups, the President continues his request
    from last year of $89 million, even though the Conference of
    Mayors has testified last week that only one in three
    applications has been funded over the past several years. The
    administration describes the Brownfields program as a vital
    jobs creation and economic program. If that is so, why did the
    President then cut the Brownfields grant budget request by $31
    million or 26 percent from fiscal year 2006 when not only is it
    a job creation program, but it is an urgent environmental
    necessity.
        The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund helps public water
    systems finance the cost of infrastructure improvements needed
    to achieve or maintain compliance and protect the public
    health. EPA's last drinking water infrastructure needs survey
    and assessment identified the total State need as $263.3
    billion. The President's budget request of $842 million is the
    lowest in the history of the program, when it is adjusted for
    inflation.
        In Superfund, the budget requests have been going down
    consistently over the past 5 years. There are numerous toxic
    waste sites on the National Priority List where cleanup has
    been delayed for lack of funds. Large funding shortfalls have
    been identified by the EPA Inspector General and acknowledged
    by senior EPA officials. Rather than expediting the rate at
    which Superfund sites are cleaned up, EPA has failed to meet
    the agency's own 2007 projections and has just recently
    announced that a reduction of 40 percent in construction
    completions. Only 24 Superfund sites will complete construction
    activities this year.
        Now, the States carry out, enforce, and implement most of
    our major environmental statutes. Last week, the Subcommittee
    on Environment and Hazardous Materials was told by senior State
    environmental officials that if Congress accepts the 2008
    proposal for STAG, that is, the State Territorial and Assistant
    Grants, it will mean that the States will have lost more than
    $1 billion in Federal support since 2004. This isn't normal.
    This is an enormous list of forgone opportunities to cleanup
    and better the environment.
        The subcommittee should also examine the extent to which
    EPA has been shifting money away from the States to pay for pet
    projects or programs not specifically authorized by this
    committee or by the Congress. We will look forward to comments
    on this matter from the Administrator.
        The President's budget would cut State and local air
    quality management grants by $35 million, or 15 percent, from
    fiscal year 2006 levels. These grants provide the money needed
    to pay State and local employees' salaries, and other expenses
    to develop and run State core and other local air programs.
    These programs, which are required by Federal law, reduce the
    pollution which causes asthma attacks, premature death, and
    other respiratory and cardiopulmonary problems.
        Serious cuts have also been proposed for EPA's Office of
    Inspector General, which the Acting Inspector General has
    characterized as unwelcome and disappointing. I would declare
    this to be a much more serious matter, and one on which the
    committee will want to have some rather strong answers, either
    here or at some later time. Office of Inspector General
    employees have been told that the President's budget will
    likely result in closed offices and a reduction in force for
    personnel.
        Mr. Chairman, these are important hearings. I commend you
    for having them, and I observe that they are important in
    fulfilling the oversight responsibilities of the committee. I
    look forward to Administrator Johnson's testimony, and I thank
    you for recognizing me.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman.
        At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr. Pitts.
        Mr. Pitts. I will waive.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair would recognize Ms. Baldwin.
        Ms. Baldwin. I, too, will waive.
        Mr. Wynn. Mr. Walden.
        Mr. Walden. I will waive, too, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. Mrs. Capps.
        Mrs. Capps. I will waive.
        Mr. Wynn. Mr. Terry.
        Mr. Terry. I waive.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair recognizes Mr. Green.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GENE GREEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                    CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

        Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask
    unanimous consent to have my statement placed in the record,
    and I did make an opening statement the other day, but I am
    glad the EPA Administrator is here and I just want to mention
    two things.
        One, I have an interest in the Superfund sites. I have a
    very urban district in Houston with petrochemical plants. That
    is our job base and our tax base, and I have been proud, since
    I was a State legislator, that we cleaned up what we thought
    was our last Superfund site. But just recently we noticed one
    that is actually on the border of our district in East Harris
    County with Congressman Poe, and so I am going to become very
    interested in how we get that site on, because it is actually a
    submerged site that is leaking dioxin into the Houston Ship
    Channel and into Galveston Bay and ultimately into the Gulf of
    Mexico.
        But I know there is a concern, Mr. Chairman. I would like
    to also mention that I know this is a joint hearing, so I can
    talk about air quality, because our issues are only water
    quality, but I have also requested a site hearing in Houston
    because some of the issues that we are dealing with with air
    quality, air toxins in our area. So I would hopefully look
    forward that we acknowledge some of the few water problems. We
    also have a few air problems I would like to have address, so I
    yield back my time.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair thanks the gentleman. Also without
    objection, his full statement will be entered into the record.
        At this time, Chair would recognize Mr. Murphy.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TIM MURPHY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
             CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

        Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit the rest
    of my statement for the record, too, but just very briefly I
    would like to thank Administrator Johnson for being here today.
        One of the things that the EPA has done over the years is
    certainly pressure many cities and towns to cleanup their act,
    and many industries to cleanup their act, and has done so with
    success, particularly when there has been cooperative efforts.
    I mentioned in a previous hearing here how Pittsburgh used to
    be such a polluted city that men would come to work with two
    shirts so they could change at noon because it was pretty gray
    and dingy by lunchtime. But we have in our region now beautiful
    views, rivers full of fish, and still, we have a sizable coal
    industry that yields 50,000 related jobs in the Pittsburgh
    region. We no longer have the strength of steel industry that
    we once had, but many other industries have replaced it, and
    what is important as we move forward in anything is to make
    sure we have maintained the high interest for public health
    that the EPA has, and our environment is part of that, but also
    recognizing we need to also keep jobs in our country and remain
    competitive in our marketplace. We have lost so many jobs in
    this Nation from manufacturing sector. Many have gone overseas.
    It is not just a matter of how we handle things in this Nation,
    but very much the competitive nature we see of what happens in
    other nations with little or no environmental concerns and our
    high ones, such that they can manufacture products without any
    of those costs that we see as so important to public health.
        As you continue your position as the Administrator of the
    EPA, I hope you will continue to keep this in mind: that we
    have to keep jobs in this Nation, we have to keep public health
    as high priority as working together and building the
    cooperation of our industries in this Nation, as well as the
    EPA's work in making sure we balance all these things together.
    I hope that as you spend your budget, that is part of what you
    do wisely, to multiply those dollars as we work together
    cooperatively with industry in this Nation to keep our
    manufacturing sector up in a competitive world.
        And with that, I yield back my time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Murphy follows:]

      Prepared Statement of Hon. Tim Murphy, a Representative in Congress
                     from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

        United States Steel Corporation's Clairton Plant, located
    in Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, is the largest coke
    producer in North America producing approximately 4 million
    tons of coke a year. As evidence of U.S. Steel's corporate
    commitment to environmental compliance, Clairton has become the
    first heavy industrial facility in the United States to be
    certified to ISO 14001 standard for environmental management
    systems.
        Integrated steel facilities, coke plants in particular, are
    one of the most heavily regulated industries in the United
    States. Clairton is subject to not only Federal and State
    regulations but also the more stringent Allegheny County
    regulations. Clairton is subject to the Federal standards for
    coke oven topside emissions and for by-product emissions and
    has been in compliance with these requirements since the rules
    were promulgated in the early 1990's. Recently, in 2006,
    Clairton became subject to the Federal standards for coke oven
    emissions from pushing, stacks and quenching and is also in
    compliance with these new requirements. Allegheny County also
    regulates emissions from coke batteries and their standards are
    considerably more stringent than Federal or State. Clairton
    maintains a very high percentage compliance with these
    standards. In addition, Clairton continues to proactively
    develop and implement programs to address environmental
    challenges. U.S. Steel's Clairton Plant has been and continues
    to be a leader in environmental performance and stewardship.
                                  ----------

        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman.
        At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr. Pallone.
        Mr. Pallone. Mr. Chairman, I will waive my statement and
    use the time for questions.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        Chair will recognize Ms. Solis.
        Ms. Solis. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I will waive and also hold my
    time.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair recognizes Mr. Barrow.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARROW, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                   CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA

        Mr. Barrow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Administrator, you may not remember when we met a few
    years ago. Thank you for being with us today. I will make my
    comments very brief.
        As we are looking at your budget, we are kind of looking at
    the business plan for your agency over the course of the next
    year, and I just want to encourage you all to look into the
    area of efficiency standards for heavy duty class A trucks.
    Emission standards without any regard to efficiency can cost us
    in the long run. What we gain in air quality by tightening up
    on emission standards, we can lose if we have trucks running
    consuming a lot more fuel to cover the same distances. So what
    I want to do is encourage you all as you build your business
    plan for this year and for the next, that you look into that
    area because I think that is an area that I am getting a lot
    feedback from folks in my district that focusing on the one
    without focusing on the other, we are losing at one end what we
    are gaining on the other. If you could think about something
    without thinking about the thing to which it relates, you have
    the quality of being a good lawyer. What I want us to do is I
    want us to be thinking about the things to which these things
    relate so we are not thinking of this in a lawyerly fashion,
    but looking at this from a common sense point of view.
        That is all I wanted to share with you. It is good to be
    with you again, and I look forward to hearing your testimony.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman.
        At this time, I recognize the gentleman from North
    Carolina, Mr. Butterfield.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. G.K. BUTTERFIELD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
               CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

        Mr. Butterfield. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First,
    let me thank the witness for coming forward today and
    participating in this hearing. It is long overdue, to say the
    least. I also want to thank Chairman Boucher for coming
    together with Mr. Wynn to have this joint hearing. We need to
    do more of this. It should produce good results.
         I have only been in the Congress now for 3 years, but my
    staff tells me that we have not had congressional oversight
    over EPA appropriations for at least the last 6 years. I hope
    my staff is incorrect about that, but if it is correct, we need
    to make sure that that problem is corrected.
        After reading through the Administrator's testimony, I am
    somewhat alarmed, Mr. Chairman, by his assessment of our
    current situation. His opinion seems to be in line with the
    tenancies that we have come to expect from the administration.
    Our environment is doing better now than it was a generation
    ago, but not as good as it could or should be doing.
        When the EPA's new Clean Air and Mercury rule was released,
    I applauded that step as a step in the right direction.
    Unfortunately, in my State of North Carolina, it took a lawsuit
    from our attorney general and strong rhetoric from the governor
    and the delegation just to get the EPA to enforce existing
    clean air standards on the TVA, who for years has contributed
    to non-attainment in many North Carolina counties. The
    statement that I have before me says that ``the President's
    request continues the administration's commitments to safe
    drinking water.'' Unfortunately, the request is a $14.8 million
    decrease from last year's request, and the lowest it has ever
    been when you account for inflation.
        The President's proposal on land preservation and
    restoration is equally troubling. This year's proposal includes
    $15 million less than last year's, even while EPA budget
    documents say that it will not complete 40 percent of the
    projects that you expect to complete last year. There are a
    number of sites where you acknowledge that remedial projects
    are stalled, but you won't say how many. I hope you will
    mention that today. You point out in your written statement
    that around 1,000 national priority list sites have been
    completed. My concern is with nearly 700 sites where that is
    not the case.
        Are we seeing a pattern here? I hope not, but it appears to
    be. What I am hoping to hear today is less about how great
    things are going, and more about what we can do together to
    make sure that the EPA is properly funded and given adequate
    guidance to make sure that it can carry out its mission of
    serving the environmental interests of the American people.
        Again, I want to thank the Administrator for coming today,
    and thank the chairman for his leadership in this area. I yield
    back my time.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman.
        At this time, the Chair would recognize the distinguished
    ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Barton of Texas.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE BARTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                    CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

        Mr. Barton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this
    hearing this morning. It is good to see our two witnesses here.
        I think it is important that we focus on their budget for
    the upcoming fiscal year. I think it is also important that we
    look at the results that the agency has achieved in its 30-year
    history to measure the environmental progress of the United
    States, in light of the efforts and money that has been spent
    on achieving them. Last week's witnesses raised some important
    issues about priority setting within the agency. Recognizing
    current budgetary limits, few themes arose from those witnesses
    that I hope we can look into a little bit deeper today.
        First, what public benefit has arisen from the expenditures
    that have been made in the past? Many of the witnesses last
    week said that increases in spending do not always directly
    correlate to increases in environmental protection.
        Number 2, I think it is very important that decision making
    should be grounded in the evidence and in science where the
    science exists, and trust funds should be used for their
    intended purposes. Finally, whenever it is appropriate, we
    should use cost-benefit analysis to determine how well the
    money has been spent and where to spend additional funds.
        I understand that overseeing the EPA is something like
    herding a herd of cats, or at least attempting to. The problem
    is that EPA's job is monumental, and we expect on some days
    literally an environmental miracle from our many, many
    dedicated people that work at the EPA. It is not a perfect
    agency. We should help the EPA to make sure that it can be as
    perfect or as competent as possible. It is entering its fourth
    decade of existence. Its infrastructure and its organization is
    predicated on a collection of well-meaning but disparate laws.
    We need to ensure that the EPA's efforts are focused, reasoned,
    cost-effective, and successful in achieving the program goals
    that it is responsible for.
        For this reason, I think that the most important issue for
    our hearing today is whether, as EPA's mission statement
    proclaims, ``public health is being protected and a cleaner,
    healthier environment is being produced for the American
    people.'' The proof is in the pudding. Clean and safe water,
    increased land preservation and restoration, improved research,
    better compliance, and increased corporate stewardship are all
    areas that we should have measurable results, based on what EPA
    has actually done.
        Speaking of air quality, I think this is an area where the
    EPA has done very well. By any objective measurement, the Clean
    Air Act has been a success. We have reduced emissions of most
    of the pollutants that the Act targets, often quite
    substantially. These emission reductions allow Americans to
    live healthier and longer lives, and preventing tens of
    thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of illnesses
    every year. This is a major achievement. The agency can be
    proud of it. Members on both sides of the aisle of this
    committee can also be proud of it. It is important that as we
    move forward, the EPA continue to improve its air quality,
    while at the same time, ensuring that we improve the quality of
    life for all Americans.
        While I have got a little time, I want to comment on
    something that is happening on the floor today that is relevant
    to the EPA. Apparently, we are going to create a Select
    Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. To quote
    my good friend Mr. Dingell of Michigan, that's like setting up
    another committee to study feathers on a fish. I don't believe
    it is going to serve any intended purpose, other than serving
    as a platform for some Members to grandstand and play to the
    politically correct constituencies that are so--I can't say the
    right word without being profane--are so insistent that we
    destroy our economy in the name of political correctness. By
    its own admission, this select committee is going to have no
    legislative jurisdiction. It is only going to exist for 2
    years. It can't report bills. It goes out of existence December
    31, 2008. In my opinion, it is a huge mistake. It is going to
    do nothing but muddy the waters, waste a lot of resources, and
    valuable time of the members that are selected to serve on it.
    I still hope that maybe we will come to our senses and vote
    that particular select committee down.
        With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding the hearing,
    and I look forward to hearing what our witnesses have to say.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman for his opening statement.
        At this time, I would recognize the gentleman from Maine,
    Mr. Allen.
        Mr. Allen. Mr. Chairman, I will waive my opening and ask
    that it be submitted for the record.
        Mr. Wynn. Without objection, so ordered.
        I believe that concludes our opening statements. Any other
    statements for the record may be included at this time.
        [The prepared statements of Mr. Hastert and Mr. Burgess
    follow:]

       Prepared Statement of Hon. J. Dennis Hastert, a Representative in
                      Congress from the State of Illinois

        Thank you, Chairman Wynn.
         I'd like to begin by thanking you, Chairman Boucher and
    Chairman Dingell for calling this hearing. I look forward to
    hearing from Administrator Johnson and working with all three
    of you to conduct appropriate oversight of the Environmental
    Protection Agency to ensure that it continues to protect the
    environment in a manner that looks after the health and well-
    being of all Americans.
         While the focus of this hearing is split between the
    jurisdictions of our two respective subcommittees, I will
    confine my remarks to my subcommittee's jurisdiction and
    discuss air quality. Specifically, I wish to highlight the
    dramatic improvements in air quality seen over the last 37
    years and the manner in which EPA has encouraged that
    improvement.
         To paraphrase a noted economist--things are always getting
    better, but some will always insist they are getting worse. The
    facts speak for themselves, things are getting better. Since
    the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, emissions of the six
    criteria pollutants addressed by the Act have been cut in half.
    Specifically, emissions of lead decreased 98 percent, volatile
    organic compounds 54 percent, carbon monoxide 52 percent,
    sulfur dioxide 49 percent, and nitrogen oxides 24 percent. All
    this was achieved even as the economy has grown by more than
    187 percent, the number of vehicle miles traveled in the United
    States increased by 171 percent, and U.S. energy consumption
    grew by 47 percent. This is a record of success upon which we
    can all share credit and be proud and constitutes the proper
    measure of EPA's success. One cannot accurately measure the
    success of the Clean Air Act by merely looking at the dollars
    appropriated.
         I'm also pleased that EPA's success in the air program
    goes beyond command and control regulation. We have made
    significant progress toward cleaner air using voluntary
    programs developed in concert with stakeholders and State and
    local government. A prime example is Energy Star, a Government-
    backed program that improves the environment through promoting
    and recognizing greater energy efficiency. Through partnerships
    with hundreds of organizations, Energy Star has eliminated
    millions of tons of emissions and saved consumers money at the
    same time.
         As we proceed, I would encourage my colleagues to use
    their time in this hearing to learn about EPA's successes and
    let the Agency know that it should continue to pursue cleaner
    air in a manner that best benefits all Americans. Specifically,
    EPA should continue to combine appropriate regulation with
    voluntary partnerships developed after input from interested
    parties.
         In conclusion, I look forward to hearing from
    Administrator Johnson and to the exchange of ideas at today's
    hearing. I also welcome additional opportunities to work with
    Chairmen Wynn, Boucher, and Chairman Dingell, and Ranking
    Members Shimkus and Barton to ensure that EPA continues to do
    its job in an appropriate manner.
         Thank you Mr. Chairman
                                  ----------

      Prepared Statement of Hon. Michael C. Burgess, a Representative in
                        Congress from the State of Texas

        Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening this hearing today.
        One of my most important responsibilities as a Member of
    Congress is to ensure that my constituents' tax dollars are
    being spent wisely. It is for that reason that I look forward
    to the ongoing debate about our national funding priorities.
        Administrator Johnson, thank you for appearing before us
    this morning. As we begin the fiscal year 2008 appropriations
    cycle, it will be helpful to hear from you about the
    President's budget request for the Environmental Protection
    Agency.
        My district is located in North Texas, and one of my
    region's most important and challenging issues over the next
    decade will be how best to cleanup our air, so I am especially
    interested to hear your testimony on the EPA's air programs.
        Administrator Johnson, thank you again for appearing before
    us this morning. I yield back.
                                  ----------

        Mr. Wynn. Again, I would like to welcome Administrator
    Johnson. We are delighted to have you here. As you can see, we
    have lots of questions. We will allow you a 5-minute opening
    statement, and your prepared testimony will be submitted and
    included in the full record of this hearing.
        At this time, it gives me great pleasure to recognize
    Administrator Johnson.

         STATEMENT OF HON. STEPHEN L. JOHNSON, ADMINISTRATOR,
                    ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

        Mr. Johnson. Thank you very much, Chairman Dingell and
    Chairman Boucher and Chairman Wynn, members of the committee. I
    am very pleased to be here to discuss the President's fiscal
    year 2008 budget request for the U.S. Environmental Protection
    Agency.
        The President' $7.2 billion request builds upon EPA's
    record of accomplishments and funds its role as our Nation
    enters the next phase of environmental progress. Over our 36
    years, EPA has laid a strong foundation to shift America to a
    green culture. Our citizens are embracing the fact that
    environmental responsibility is everyone's responsibility. So
    today, instead of only having 17,000 EPA employees working to
    protect the environment, we now have 300 million Americans as
    environmental partners.
        These are exciting times. Our air, water, and land are
    cleaner today than a generation ago, and with this budget, our
    progress will continue.
        The evolution of environmental progress has come about in
    part because we have proven that a healthy environment and a
    healthy economy can, in fact, go hand in hand. But as the
    economy continues to grow, so do our energy needs. In order to
    meet the President's ambitious clean energy and air goals,
    EPA's budget requests over $82 million to support our Energy
    Policy Act responsibilities. This includes $8.4 million to
    implement the renewable fuel standards and $35 million for
    grants to cut diesel emissions from trucks and school buses.
        EPA also plays a vital role in advancing the
    administration's aggressive, yet practical, strategy for
    reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The President has requested
    $117.9 million for EPA's climate change programs, including $44
    million for the successful Energy Star program, $5 million for
    the Asia Pacific Partnership Initiative, and $4.4 million for
    Methane to Markets Program.
        The evolution of environmental progress requires EPA to
    work effectively with our State and local partners. The
    President's budget builds on this cooperation by providing $2.7
    billion to help our partners improve their water quality. We
    are also promoting the use of innovative tax exempt private
    activity bonds for capital investments and drinking water and
    waste water projects.
        Additionally, collaboration is the key to protecting
    America's great water bodies. In order to strengthen the
    efforts of EPA and our partners, the President is requesting
    $28.8 million for the Chesapeake Bay, $56.8 million for the
    Great Lakes, $4.5 million for the Gulf of Mexico, and $1
    million for Puget Sound.
        At EPA, we are working productively with our partners to
    deliver a healthier, more prosperous future. The President's
    budget provides $1.2 billion for the Superfund program to
    continue transforming hazardous waste sites back into community
    assets.
        After highlighting some of our cooperative initiatives, we
    also must recognize the necessity of vigorously enforcing our
    Nation's environmental laws. The proposed fiscal year 2008
    enforcement budget, $549.5 million is the highest enforcement
    budget ever.
        As EPA helps shape America's green culture, we understand
    the need to advance environmental science. The President's
    commitment to sound science is reflected in his $134 million
    request, an increase of $9.4 million, to fund human health
    risk, clean air, and nanotechnology research.
        Finally, I must also mention EPA's evolving role from being
    guardians of the environment to also guardians of our homeland.
    The President has requested $152 million for homeland security
    responsibilities in water security and decontamination.
        While the Nation's environmental progress continues to
    evolve, so too does EPA's role. This budget will fulfill EPA's
    responsibilities of being good stewards of our environment, and
    good stewards of our Nation's tax dollars. By making smart uses
    of our resources, we are not only building on our Nation's
    environmental accomplishments, we are creating a lasting legacy
    for future generations of Americans.
        Thank you, and I look forward to addressing your questions.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
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        Mr. Wynn. Thank you very much for your statement, and also
    for the very positive attitude you have had about EPA.
        However, I do have some concerns. I looked at your Web site
    and it says ``President Bush has charged EPA with accelerating
    the pace of environmental protection while maintaining our
    Nation's economic competitiveness, and I am committed to this
    challenge.'' That was your quote, but if you look at 5 years of
    decreasing budget request for Superfund, $31 million less for
    Brownfields, and basically the lowest funding in history for
    the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, and being only one of
    two agencies with a budget decrease, I have to ask you to
    explain to the committee how we are going to do this
    acceleration that you referred to.
        Mr. Johnson. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Our fiscal year 2008 budget the President has proposed
    continues to deliver results while meeting a balanced budget.
        As part of our budget, we are leveraging tax dollars for
    the environment. Examples of that is our Brownfields program.
    Leveraging our Energy Star program, helping us deal with both
    energy security as well as greenhouse gas emissions. We have
    numerous examples of where our limited tax dollars are being
    used wisely to leverage other dollars.
        Mr. Wynn. Well, despite this leveraging, on the subject of
    Brownfields, you are doing only about one-third, maybe a little
    bit more than one-third--you are responding to slightly more
    than one-third of the actual requests, and this is according to
    the National Conference of Mayors. So how do you characterize
    that as an acceleration of the Brownfields program?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, sir, our goal for Brownfields program is
    to turn those community eyesores into community assets, and the
    President's budget, which is $138.6 million of State and tribal
    assistance grants, does that. What does that mean? We, in 2008,
    are focusing on delivering results. In 2008, that means we
    project we will assess 1,000 properties. We expect that to
    leverage 5,000 new jobs, and also result in leverage funds of
    $900 million.
        Mr. Wynn. Can I just interject and ask a question?
        Mr. Johnson. Sure.
        Mr. Wynn. How many more Brownfields applications will you
    be able to do in 2008, because that is what the mayors are
    asking?
        Mr. Johnson. Generally speaking, we get quite a few
    applications. For those that work through the screening
    process, I would say generally twice the number of applications
    for the funds available.
        Mr. Wynn. But how many more in 2008 than in 2007, because
    that is basically my definition of acceleration.
        Mr. Johnson. Again, my focus is given the funding that is
    available for Brownfields, we are focusing on the--and I gave
    you the statistics. I think it is important to point out that
    over the past number of years since Brownfields, in fact, the
    level of funding has remained relatively constant, even though,
    in fact, in years past the President has asked for more money
    for Brownfields, Congress has chosen not to give us additional
    funds. And in fact, for the 2008 budget, I should say, this
    budget request is in alignment with what Congress has been
    doing.
        Mr. Wynn. Let me move on to Superfund briefly. You
    projected 40 completions and you now have adjusted that
    projection to substantially fewer. How do you account for that
    and how do you characterize that again as an acceleration in
    environmental protection?
        Mr. Johnson. Well again, our focus on Superfund is turning
    those problem properties back into community assets, and for
    construction completions, it is important to note that these
    are long-term construction projects taking 10 to 15 years.
        Mr. Wynn. I understand that. You projected 40 at the
    beginning of the year. You are now readjusting that to say
    well, now we'll only do 24, and my question is, No. 1, why
    less, and 2, could you have not anticipated whatever problem it
    is you are going tell me caused you to adjust downward?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, what we have found is the sites of today
    are significantly more complex than they were yesterday, and as
    we were projecting 40, we were assuming that the number of
    remedies per site and the pace of construction was going to be
    far greater than what it----
        Mr. Wynn. Are you suggesting they are more complex than
    Love Canal, which was one of the major cleanup efforts, and I
    guess the other follow-up question is why didn't you anticipate
    that they would be more difficult when you told Congress you
    would do 40?
        Mr. Johnson. You mentioned Love Canal. That is a great
    example. Congressman Terry from Nebraska is dealing with a
    Superfund site called Omaha Lead, and the Love Canal site was
    about 70 acres. The site in Mr. Terry's home State is nearly
    9,000 acres, and so in terms of size, complexity, the
    measurements that we have--and Mr. Chairman, if you would, I
    would love to present this for the record. I apologize that I
    don't have any bigger chart, but what it shows is that from
    1993 to 2000, the number of remedies per site, which a measure
    of complexity, was 1.7. From 2001 to 2006, the remedies per
    site was 2.5. For those sites that are currently under
    construction, that is, constructions are not complete, the
    remedies per site are 4.3 remedies per site. So we are seeing
    very complex sites. The resources remain the same, the sites
    are more complex.
        Mr. Wynn. My time is up. I would only comment that I cannot
    believe that you could not have anticipated, and did not, in
    fact, anticipate the higher level of complexity when you
    projected the 40 completions. I don't understand what happened
    in mid-year that caused you to conclude, oh my goodness, these
    are more complex than we thought.
        That concludes my questions. I turn the questioning over to
    my colleague, Mr. Shimkus.
        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will just start
    by saying I know that Superfund remediation is a 10 to 15-year
    program that goes back many years. I dealt with one up in
    Quincy, IL, an issue.
        But let me start with my questions. Some of my colleagues
    are criticizing the Bush administration because during the 8
    years of the Clinton administration, the average number of
    Superfund sites completing remedy construction was 76, but in
    the past 6 years, that average number of sites has declined to
    41.5, and you are projecting only 24 construction completions
    in fiscal year 2007. This is kind of in addition to what we
    were just talking about. What caused the increase in
    construction completions during the 1990's and the drop off in
    2001?
        Mr. Johnson. In fact, in the first 12 years there were
    1,251 sites that were identified, and it was acknowledged that
    these were long-term construction projects of 10 to 15 years.
    In fact, it wasn't until 1993 that the agency put in place a
    new measure because there was no interim measure of success,
    and so a new measure was put in place in 1993 called
    construction completion, which means when all immediate threats
    have been eliminated and no further on-site physical
    construction is needed. It doesn't mean that it is safe for
    complete reuse. As the agency began its effort--I shared with
    you statistics from 1993 to 2000, and 2001 to 2006, and what we
    are dealing with today. These are considerably more complex
    sites.
        Mr. Shimkus. With regard to how we know or don't know, what
    we find is we get into the sites and we find that we discover
    the site conditions change. We discover at a new site new
    contaminants, the extent of the contamination is sometimes
    found to be greater, so in spite of our best efforts of
    planning and forecasting, these are unknown sites and it is not
    until we physically get in there looking at the groundwater or
    looking at the dirt until we fully understand the extent and
    the complexity. Our construction completion adjustment reflects
    the complexity and what we have learned as we have begun to
    cleanup these sites.
        Mr. Shimkus. And I know you showed this chart earlier, and
    I don't know if my colleagues have that, and I would want to
    make sure that we share this with the minority. You talked
    about the remediation issue, because he raised it up. I think
    that remediation issue is key. Earlier sites were less
    difficult than sites that were held over, and that is part of
    the reason why it is more challenging.
        Second question is my colleagues think simply increasing
    revenues into the Superfund is the answer to speeding up
    cleanups. In fact, many strongly support reinstating the
    Superfund taxes. Tell me, would this help EPA cleanup Superfund
    sites?
        Mr. Johnson. In our judgment, no. The Superfund tax expired
    December 1995. It was never a tax on pollution, it was a tax on
    the sale of chemicals and petroleum, and the amount of funds
    appropriated by Congress never matched the amount of funds
    coming in for the tax. Again, I apologize, but I do have
    another chart that shows the tax revenue coming in, and it
    shows the appropriation level, and as you can see from the
    chart, the appropriation level has remained relatively constant
    since 1992.
        Mr. Shimkus. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask that be
    distributed. I think you all would probably want to see that,
    too.
        Mr. Wynn. Without objection, we will include that.
        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. I stepped on your punch line on that chart.
        Mr. Johnson. Well, as you can see the congressional
    appropriations that remained relatively constant while tax
    revenue has gone way up in the early days, then gone down.
        Mr. Shimkus. Thank you.
        Let me just, for my final 20 seconds, let me just go to
    your bio. You have been in EPA for over 20 years. You are a
    career service employee. You have a bachelor's in biology, and
    an M.S. in pathology. I want to recognize the fact that you are
    not a political appointee--you are, but you have come through
    the ranks in EPA service and we appreciate the work that you.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you very much, sir.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        At this time, the Chair would recognize the distinguished
    chairman of the full committee for questions, Mr. Dingell.
        Mr. Dingell. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your courtesy.
    Mr. Johnson, welcome to the committee.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Dingell. Mr. Johnson, we note that you are late in
    issuing the fine particulate implementation rules that provide
    State guidance on air quality plans that they must submit in
    April 2008. We have been in some correspondence on this matter.
    On January 19, I wrote you requesting that you produce the
    following documents. The letter said this. ``All documents
    relating to this rulemaking that contain or reflect discussions
    with, or comments from OMB, or other parts of the executive
    branch as a part of formal or informal review of the proposed
    final rule.'' Have you received that letter?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Dingell. I believe you have responded to it, and on
    February 9, you said that you did not meet the deadline that I
    had sent, but you would keep working on the response.
        On March 1, Mr. Stupak and I requested you deliver these
    documents by March 7, yesterday. Were they delivered?
        Mr. Johnson. We have committed to have a full response to
    you by, I believe the date is April 2.
        Mr. Dingell. Now, let me try and understand, and let me
    know whether you understand what we had requested. We simply
    requested through the committee the delivery of certain
    documents, is that right?
        Mr. Johnson. You asked for certain documents, that is
    correct, sir.
        Mr. Dingell. Yes. Now, is there a reason why you cannot
    deliver those documents to the committee?
        Mr. Johnson. As is always the case, and certainly my 26-
    year history with EPA, documents that are deemed deliberative
    need to be reviewed before being released.
        Mr. Dingell. No, no, no, Mr. Administrator. Deliberative
    documents are within the purview of the responsibility of this
    committee.
        Do you assert any privilege on the refusal to deliver these
    documents, and if so, what privilege do you assert?
        Mr. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, the volume of documents that you
    requested has not allowed us to complete our search and review
    process by this time, and that is why the vast----
        Mr. Dingell. So you are telling us then, Mr. Administrator,
    that the reason that you have not been able to deliver these is
    that you have not completed your search. Is that correct?
        Mr. Johnson. That is correct, sir.
        Mr. Dingell. Alright. Now, have you found any of the
    documents that we are referring to?
        Mr. Johnson. Because I am not conducting the actual
    document search myself, I would have to talk to one of our
    staff.
        Mr. Dingell. Well, the question here is very simple.
        Mr. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, as I understand, we have found
    some, yes.
        Mr. Dingell. Alright. What is there that precludes you from
    making a partial delivery of the documents? Is there any reason
    why you cannot deliver some and then make available the balance
    of them?
        Mr. Johnson. I would be happy to provide a partial
    response.
        Mr. Dingell. Then I will expect by the conclusion of
    business today that those documents will be delivered in
    response to the request through the committee, those which you
    have. And I expect that you will pursue with great vigor the
    balance of the documents which you are still trying to find.
    Can you deliver those documents which you've already identified
    as being in compliance with the request of the committee?
        Mr. Johnson. My staff is advising me that in order to
    physically get the documents to make sure that they are all
    together, I would respectfully ask for tomorrow.
        Mr. Dingell. Alright, tomorrow will be a fine day.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Dingell. We look forward to them by the conclusion of
    business.
        Now, is there any claim of privilege of any kind which
    would foreclose you from delivery, any of these documents,
    including those not currently identified, as being in
    compliance with the request of the committee?
        Mr. Johnson. I am not aware of any at this time.
        Mr. Dingell. Very good.
        Have you been instructed by any person that you are not to
    deliver these documents to the committee or that you are
    instructed in any way to delay or to in any way foreclose the
    committee from the timely delivery of these documents by any
    person in the administration?
        Mr. Johnson. No.
        Mr. Dingell. Very good.
        Then how long will it take you now, Mr. Johnson, to
    identify the balance of the documents to be submitted to this
    committee, if you please?
        Mr. Johnson. In my March 7 letter to you, Mr. Chairman, I
    respectfully asked that we respond to your full request by
    April 2.
        Mr. Dingell. Is there a reason why April 2 is the date by
    which we would receive them? Is there any reason why they could
    not be delivered sooner?
        Mr. Johnson. It is my understanding, sir, just given the
    volume of documents that you are requesting that it takes us
    time to try to find them, research, and provide them to you. We
    want to be complete in responding to your request.
        Mr. Dingell. Then, Mr. Johnson, I think I am to assume that
    you are giving this committee the assurance that all of those
    documents will be made available to us by April 2, is that
    correct?
        Mr. Johnson. That is correct.
        Mr. Dingell. Very good.
        It is always the hope of this committee that we may deal in
    a most friendly and a collegial and cooperative means and
    method with our dear friends in the executive branch, and we
    hope that you have the same good feeling towards us, that you
    share this kind of feeling and this kind of cooperation does
    obviate a lot of unpleasantness which could otherwise occur. I
    hope as events go forward that you will keep these thoughts in
    mind.
        Mr. Johnson. I am fully in support of that, too, sir.
        Mr. Dingell. I note that my time is expired. I thank you,
    Mr. Johnson.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Dingell. We will withhold our request until April 2. I
    know that we will see those documents here, to the pleasure and
    appreciation of us all, on that date.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. At this time, I recognize the distinguished
    ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Barton of Texas.
        Mr. Barton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Before I ask my questions, I want the Administrator to know
    document requests that are legitimate, the minority totally
    supports the majority in getting those documents. If for some
    reason there is a request that you consider to be not
    legitimate, if you would contact myself we will work with you
    and Mr. Dingell to alleviate it. But in general terms, this
    committee requests official documents we expect them to be
    tendered in the timeframe that is appropriate.
        I would like to ask you about the CAIR Act.
        Mr. Johnson. Yes.
        Mr. Barton. The mercury rule that was promulgated and
    implemented, I think, several years ago, could you expound on
    how you think implementation of that Act is going and what the
    results have been to date?
        Mr. Johnson. The Clean Air Interstate Rules are actually
    the first regulations I signed as Administrator, and it will
    achieve close to a 70 percent reduction of both SO\2\ and NOx
    emissions over the coming years from coal fire power plants.
    This results in literally, over time, hundreds of billions of
    dollars of human health benefits to American citizens. This
    rule was put in place. States are in the process of
    implementing it, some through State implementation plans, some
    through partial State implementation plans, some through
    adopting the Federal implementation plan. But we are seeing
    good progress and certainly want that to continue.
        With regard to the Clean Air Mercury Rule, again, we are
    the first Nation in the entire world to regulate mercury from
    coal-fired power plants. We want to eliminate mercury as a
    health hazard from the citizens of the United States. In fact,
    we are one of the world leaders in taking on that challenge of
    dealing with the global problem of mercury, and of course, the
    Clean Air Mercury Rule is one of those examples of things we
    put in place.
        Mr. Barton. Are we actually in the stage where it has been
    implemented anywhere and reductions are occurring, or is it
    still in the implementation stage?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, it requires technology and it is my
    understanding that companies are beginning to install the
    technology. I will turn to Bob. Do we have any specifics of a
    company?
        Mr. Barton. Can you identify yourself?
        Mr. Myers. Bob Myers, Office of Air and Radiation.
        We can provide specifics for the record. We are obviously
    at the beginning of a program in two phases. The first phase is
    2010, so investments are made now to meet that degree to which
    equipment is on the ground now specifically for that 2010 date.
    We will try and provide some information.
        Mr. Johnson. So far we are still kind of ramping up. There
    is not an actual cleanup or mercury reduction that has occurred
    yet.
        Mr. Myers. There could be some reductions. It is a matter
    of assessment to try to see how exactly what the rule has
    produced. We also have, obviously, the investments associated
    with CAIR and the first 2010 date is the co-benefit level for
    mercury, so the investments in CAIR essentially get the mercury
    reduction. What I can provide right now with specificity is
    exactly how many in the ground in the plant investments are
    operating right now, but we will try to do that shortly.
        Mr. Barton. It seems to me you ought to be up here instead
    of down there, but that is a different story.
        You said we are the first Nation. Have any other nations
    adopted a similar rule on mercury since we have?
        Mr. Johnson. Not that I am aware of, but that is an
    excellent question. Bob, are you aware of any other countries?
        Mr. Myers. Not at this point in time that I'm aware of.
        Mr. Barton. The United States of America, it is routinely
    pilloried in international media for dragging our feet on
    environmental issues. Not only leading the way, we are the only
    Nation even attempting to control mercury, is that correct?
        Mr. Johnson. I would have to check the record to see what
    other countries, because we have been aggressively pushing
    other countries as part of our international effort to deal
    with mercury from a variety of sources, including air,
    including stocks of mercury, as well as things including
    mercury that is included in little switches of older cars that
    we have taken a very aggressive stance on here in the United
    States.
        Mr. Barton. My time is expired. I will have some questions
    in writing, Mr. Chairman, for EPA on the funding of the leaking
    underground storage tank program. I am dismayed that we have--
    the trust fund is growing and expenditures for actual cleanup
    seem to be declining, and I hope that is area on a bipartisan
    basis we can work with the administration to increase funding,
    because we do have many localities that have leaking
    underground storage tanks, and that was one of the priorities
    in the Energy Policy Act, to beef that fund up and to get the
    States doing inspections and actually cleaning it up. So we
    will have some questions for the record for that.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman. I concur that that is a
    likely area for bipartisan cooperation. The trust fund is
    clearly being underutilized and that is of detriment to our
    citizens. At this time, the Chair would recognize Ms. Baldwin
    for a total of 8 minutes.
        Ms. Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Administrator, are you familiar with the Supreme Court
    case Cooper Industries, Incorporated v. Aviall Services,
    Incorporated ?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, I am familiar with it.
        Ms. Baldwin. In that case, the Court held that a private
    party may not obtain contribution from other liable parties
    under CERCLA section 113(f)(1) unless the private party has
    been the subject of an administrative order or enforcement
    action by the EPA. This holding is very important because it
    challenges the previous practices of parties initiating
    voluntary cleanups without EPA intervention or involvement.
        I am wondering if you could tell us what effect this case
    has had on voluntary cleanups throughout the United States?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, we are currently monitoring the Aviall
    decision, because as you point out, in fact the Circuit Court
    split in January 2007 and the Supreme Court has granted cert.
    So at this point, we are monitoring the situation and I am
    unaware, at this point, of specific impacts on particular
    Brownfield sites, but as I said, we are currently monitoring.
        One of the things that I would like to note, that is a
    program very much akin to Brownfields and one that certainly
    urge members of Congress to pass, and that is our Good
    Samaritan legislation. There are over 500,000 abandoned hard
    rock mines in the United States, key word abandoned. And we
    have Good Samaritans who want to go in and cleanup, but because
    of liability provisions associated with our Clean Water Act and
    CERCLA, they don't want to become the liable party for the
    entire site. And so we think it is a good thing to allow Good
    Samaritans to get in and help these sites, and so here is a
    great opportunity to accelerate environmental progress. And so
    I urge Members of Congress to help us move forward.
        Ms. Baldwin. I want to continue speaking a little bit about
    Aviall. Of course, my understanding is it goes beyond
    Brownfields in terms of its impact. Attorneys in the field have
    described the impact of the case as having created a needless
    policy crisis, so I am not sure that I am hearing from you the
    same level of concern about the impact of this.
        I guess since it has been over 2 years since the original
    Supreme Court decision in December 2004, and you certainly
    responded to, I think it is Chairman Dingell's inquiries about
    the impact of the Aviall decision. Have you made any real
    effort in the EPA to collect data on the impact that this might
    be having on voluntary cleanups? Again, I would hope that the
    EPA is encouraging this type of activity with regard to the
    113(f)(1) section.
        Mr. Johnson. We definitely want to encourage continued
    cleanup through Brownfields. It is a highly successful program,
    and as I said, want to extend it to hard rock mines.
        Let me ask my staff.
        Ms. Buhl. Good morning. I am Lynn Buhl and I am in the
    Enforcement Program at EPA.
        Yes, we were concerned by the ruling Aviall, and we have
    asked our regional offices repeatedly if they are getting phone
    calls, if they are getting a number of parties coming in and
    asking to enter into an agreement with us when they may not
    otherwise have done so, and the answer is not really. A couple
    of States have expressed concern. It is very hard for us,
    though, to know what is not happening in the private sector
    that we simply are not a part of.
        So we are worried about it. We are a little suspicious that
    a lot of things may not be happening that we would like to see
    happening, but we just don't have the anecdotal evidence.
        Ms. Baldwin. OK.
        I am curious. The EPA has consistently said that the Agency
    supports voluntary cleanups. Even in your testimony, Mr.
    Administrator, you talked about having 300 million partners in
    your efforts to protect the environment.
        Mr. Johnson. Yes.
        Ms. Baldwin. Does the EPA support the Fifth Circuit Court
    of Appeals decision in Aviall, and as you may recall, when it
    was at the Fifth circuit, the decision would have encouraged
    voluntary cleanups and subsequent contribution actions by
    allowing parties performing cleanups to recover some of their
    costs without EPA's involvement through an enforcement action
    order. I am wondering what posture you took at the 5th circuit.
        Ms. Buhl. I believe we took the position that you need to
    take a very strict interpretation of the statute.
        Ms. Baldwin. Did your agency, when DoJ was taking the
    position on behalf of the U.S. Government, did you express
    concerns about the path they were taking in terms of the impact
    on voluntary cleanup, again, something I hope that you would
    want to encourage?
        Ms. Buhl. I apologize. I was not there at the time and not
    present in the discussions, but I am happy to inquire and
    follow up on your question.
        Ms. Baldwin. I want to switch to the issue of mercury. Last
    July, the EPA issued its first ever comprehensive overview of
    the Agency's activities surrounding mercury. EPA's roadmap for
    mercury focused on six key areas where the goal is to reduce
    health risks associated with mercury exposure. Among them are
    research and monitoring. The roadmap states that the Office of
    Research and Development will continue to pursue its long-term
    goals to reduce health risks associated with mercury and to
    better understand the transport and fate of mercury in the
    environment. I am wondering what is the Office of Research and
    Development's current budget for mercury research specifically?
        Mr. Johnson. I will ask Dr. George Gray to come up to the
    microphone, who heads up our office's research and development,
    but in the meantime, as I mentioned to Mr. Barton, that mercury
    really is a global challenge and EPA and the United States are
    leading the way. I mentioned our Clean Air Mercury Rule, we
    have now a partnership program for getting the mercury out of
    those old automobiles. That is 75 tons of mercury that would
    have gone into the environment, either the air, water, or land,
    that we have eliminated through this agreement.
        Ms. Baldwin. But I am sure you are interested in this issue
    and, in fact, have legislation of my own on this specific
    issue.
        What I am really interested in, though, is knowing the
    budget level for the Office of Research and Development with
    regard to mercury research.
        Mr. Gray. I am George Gray, the Assistant Administrator for
    the Office of Research and Development.
        This year's presidential budget helps us accelerate our
    efforts on mercury and increases our budget to $4.3 million for
    our research on mercury. That research ranges from looking at
    ways to further implement the Clean Air Mercury Rule, looking
    at technologies for removing mercury from power plant gases, to
    understanding the way in which it moves around in geochemical
    cycles. We have a strong program that has, as I said, an
    increase of about $500,000 in this year's presidential budget.
        Ms. Baldwin. And then the roadmap also looks at----
        Mr. Wynn. Excuse me, the gentlelady's time is expired.
        Ms. Baldwin. Oh, I will submit my final question in
    writing. Thank you.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentlelady.
        At this time, the Chair would recognize former Speaker, the
    distinguished gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Hastert.
        Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is interesting,
    because what I found that the EPA probably does some of its
    best work when it works together with other Government
    agencies. In my home district in Illinois, the town of West
    Chicago, at one time we had 13 billion cubic feet of fluorium
    tailings, and it was through the cooperative efforts of the
    Illinois EPA, the U.S. EPA, not only did we get those fluorium
    tailings moved to a safe place--these were just dumped in the
    middle of a town, radioactive material, but a lot of the other
    material that was produced during the 1950's, nobody really
    knew about radiation then. It was taken for people to use in
    sandboxes and dumped as fill and found its way into Crest Creek
    and then the Dupage River, and a cooperative effort of the U.S.
    EPA, the Illinois EPA and some lucrative regulatory agencies,
    we have been able to clean this up, and we are almost there. It
    has only taken us almost 22 years. I think that type of
    cooperation when your agency doesn't stand alone as an entity
    by itself, it really reaches out to State and local agencies to
    work together, you have been, at least in my view, the most
    successful.
        Which takes me to another issue. In the area of Missouri
    and Wisconsin and Illinois, we end up every spring with an
    issue of biofuels, and biofuels are a result of trying to meet
    clean air standards in changing climates. Of course, the winter
    blend of gasoline is different than the summer blend of
    gasoline. But every year, we see a spike in the cost of
    gasoline in those areas, especially the metropolitan areas of
    Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Madison, the areas of Chicago and East
    St. Louis, and St. Louis area. And so it has been a frustration
    for us to try to get some type of accommodation for transition.
    Can you give us an idea of how that might be implemented?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, sir, I can.
        Of course, our goal with our fuel program is to both meet
    our air quality standards as well as to make sure that we have
    an abundant and affordable fuel supply. The President asked me
    shortly after our situation with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,
    and concern over gasoline shortage to work with our States, our
    governors, to evaluate biofuels and to see whether there was a
    problem both in availability and impact on price. Working with
    our State partners--and thank you for the great comments about
    our partnership--we looked at the issue of biofuels and I would
    be happy to provide a copy of that to you and for the record,
    because what it indicated was is that while on occasion there
    might be an issue with availability of biofuels, by and large
    it was a tool that States, particularly governors, wanted and
    needed to be able to manage both air quality issues as well as
    fuel supply.
        So I would be happy to supply----
        Mr. Hastert. I think probably the issue is not the biofuels
    themselves, it is the transition periods, and the peripheral
    vision of blending those fuels, trying to get them in empty
    tanks and move through the availability of pipelines to move
    this, stuff has to be flushed, and there is a transition time
    where it is not really winter, it is not really summer, I see a
    possibility of at least a leniency at least blending these
    fuels so they are not completely separate, and then moving into
    the complete fuel line as temperatures get warmer. So it is a
    consideration, it something we have talked about for a long
    time. I appreciate your attention to it.
        One last thing I would like to cover. You have the new
    diesel standards coming into effect this year and I wonder,
    what kind of cost analysis have you done as far as increased
    costs? What is the increased cost to engines and operation, do
    you know at all?
        Mr. Johnson. We have done extensive cost analysis on diesel
    engines, both on road, off road, and a proposed regulation that
    I just proposed last Friday dealing with marine engines and
    locomotives. I would be happy for the record to give you the
    specifics and our detailed analysis.
        Locomotives, for example, I do know that it is somewhere
    between about 2 percent of the cost of moving to a clean diesel
    locomotive and of course, the requirement is a number of years
    away because we are in the process of----
        Mr. Hastert. Is that about the same for truck engines?
        Mr. Johnson. Truck engines, Bob, do you recall? I don't
    have the specifics off the top of my head.
        Mr. Myers. Yes, we did perform a detailed regulatory impact
    analysis associated with the cost increases in truck engines.
    It depends on the technology. Again, I would like to verify for
    the record, but I think in terms of the high end of the range
    was along the lines of roughly $1,500 and hundreds of dollars
    at the low end of the range. That would be not necessarily the
    increase of costs if somebody might price it. We do our
    analysis based on what we think the actual cost to the
    manufacturer would be.
        Mr. Hastert. Alright, I appreciate it. I just want to say I
    think that is a giant step in cleaning up air, and of course,
    diesel is one of the most intrusive pieces of clean air. But on
    the other hand, that cost is passed on to consumers and the
    consumers then pick up that cost, whether it is the cost of
    freight, cost of buying a truck or a diesel mower or whatever
    it happens to be, so I appreciate what you have done. I
    appreciate your service. I would like to have those cost
    analyses for the record.
        Thank you very much.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you. If I could, Mr. Chairman, just to
    add to that, the cost for the diesel locomotive and marine
    would be about $600 million is what our estimate shows. The
    public health benefits, 20 times that, $12 billion per year,
    and so we see that kind of significant ratio of cost and
    benefit throughout all of our diesel, and of course, just to
    lastly add, we look at all of our diesel regulations that we
    put in place and add that to the Clean Air Interstate Rule, in
    fact, short of getting lead out of gasoline, these are the most
    health protective and health beneficial standards to our air in
    the history of the United States.
        Mr. Hastert. I thank the gentleman, and I yield back.
        Mr. Wynn. At this time, the Chair would recognize Mrs.
    Capps for 8 minutes.
        Mrs. Capps. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr. Johnson.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mrs. Capps. I am going to be putting up a chart that is
    entitled ``Hazardous Substance Superfund Account'' and this is
    provided by the Congressional Research Service.
        [The chart follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8829.299

        Mrs. Capps. If you have a chance to notice, the President's
    request for 2008 is at the bottom of the chart. You see that it
    is actually less in terms of real dollars for cleanup than any
    of the previous 10 years, I will give you a minute to find it,
    but is this not correct? The President's request for 2008, the
    bottom of that middle column----
        Mr. Johnson. The President's request is $1.2 billion.
        Mrs. Capps. Yes, which is, if you look at all of the
    numbers on the right column, it is actually less in terms of
    real dollars for cleanup than any of the previous 10 years. Is
    this correct?
        Mr. Johnson. I don't know how this was----
        Mrs. Capps. This was provided by CRS.
        Mr. Johnson. Taking it at its root then it is what it is.
        Mrs. Capps. Alright. Then my first question out of several,
    can you explain to me what is going on here? Why is the
    President's request not keeping up with inflation?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, the President's request is focusing on,
    again, for Superfund of turning problem properties into
    community assets, and the President's budget helps achieve--in
    fact, it achieves what our goals and objectives are for----
        Mrs. Capps. I don't want to interrupt you, but I want to
    get on to something more specific. It is true, though, that it
    is a decrease in funding?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, let me also point out that I think it is
    also important that if you look at Superfund, it is not just
    EPA, but when you look at across the Federal Government,
    Department of Defense, it is actually $8.5 billion.
        Mrs. Capps. You are on the witness stand here today, sir,
    with all due respect, and I am looking at this portion of the
    funding.
        Now I want to turn to a more specific local situation in my
    district, but it appears to me that without funding, the pace
    of cleanups will be adversely affected. Two years ago, the
    Acting Assistant Administrator, Mr. Dunn, commented that
    effects of the funding shortfall--and this is his quote ``For
    the last 3 years, EPA hasn't started cleanup at some new sites.
    If we assume that EPA's budget will remain flat for the
    foreseeable future, construction funding could be delayed at
    more and more sites.'' Another quote more recently from
    Assistant Administrator Ms. Bodine, announcing that EPA would
    only achieve 24 Superfund construction cleanups as opposed to
    the 40 cleanups cited in the President's proposed budget.
        Yesterday EPA proposed the Halaco Engineering Company in my
    district in California for listing on the National Priorities
    List. Your proposal identifies to the surrounding communities
    that this is, indeed, a dangerous place, would be probably
    hazardous to one's health, and yet, there is going to be a time
    lag by all of the facts that we have. I want you to give me
    assurances to my constituents that the Halaco site is going to
    be remediated anytime soon, given that this EPA Superfund
    levels are effectively decreasing.
        Mr. Johnson. Yes. With regard to the specific site, I will
    ask Susan Bodine if she would come to the table. We will say
    for those sites that we have identified that there is an
    imminent hazard, then we aggressively pursue, making sure that
    we bring an interim answer to a point so that we are
    eliminating that imminent hazard.
        Mrs. Capps. Thank you. Could I ask if you would please, I
    would like to have these documents in writing so that I can
    convey them, because I do want to go--well, go ahead and give
    me a brief answer, but I would like something more lengthy that
    I can share with my constituents.
        Ms. Bodine. Susan Bodine, Assistant Administrator for
    Emergency Response.
        You quoted former Acting Administrator on the concern that
    we had unfunded new starts. In 2005, we had nine unfunded new
    starts, in 2006 there were six unfunded new starts.
        Mrs. Capps. Is this not a correct quote or a statement by
    you that you would be achieving 24?
        Ms. Bodine. Yes, that is accurate. We have actually
    provided information to Chairman Wynn and Chairman Dingell with
    respect to the reasons as to why----
        Mrs. Capps. Right, well, I would like to have those reasons
    as well. I would like to get that in writing.
        Ms. Bodine. I can provide that to you.
        And then with respect to the Halaco site, yes, it has been
    proposed to the national list. We will take comment on that
    proposal and presumably in due course it will be listed. As we
    have talked about and as other members have discussed,
    Superfund is a long-term process so we would be proceeding with
    the investigation and picking the remedy for that site. Those
    are not high-cost activities, and at the point of that we would
    get to construction, it, of course, would then be--if there are
    responsible parties, we would be asking them to cleanup. The
    fund lead, at that point, it would go through our
    prioritization process where we have our experts prioritize
    sites based on their level of risk.
        Mrs. Capps. Thank you.
        Ms. Bodine. At the beginning of the process----
        Mrs. Capps. Exactly, but there is now a delay, because
    there is a backlog of sites.
        Ms. Bodine. No, there is no delay in moving forward with
    listing or with doing investigation or with picking remedies
    and I can't tell you what would happen 5 or 6 years from now
    when this would be ready for funding.
        Mrs. Capps. OK, thank you.
        I do have another topic to bring up, since this time with
    Mr. Johnson is very important to me. Turning to clean air, the
    EPA finally issued standards for ozone and fine particle
    pollution requirements, which now means that the State and
    local governments need to meet these responsibilities. At the
    same time, in this budget you are proposing $35 million in
    budget cuts. Does this mean a decrease in grants to State and
    local air pollution control agencies who are charged with
    meeting these standards?
        Mr. Johnson. What it means is that we certainly value the
    work of our States and this is a shift of the monitoring
    network to the States. It was never envisioned that the Federal
    Government would continually pay for monitoring networks, so
    this represents a shift of a portion of that to the States.
        Mrs. Capps. So this would be a burden for States and local
    agencies to meet these standards?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, with regard to the standards, we were
    just talking earlier about the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which
    was the Federal Government's role in dealing with that trans-
    state boundary air pollution, but yes, the States for their
    local air provinces would need to develop appropriate
    mitigation for the issues in their State.
        Mrs. Capps. And they will do this now with these new
    standards being published? They have been in effect for several
    years but they have now been published so that they now have
    new requirements to meet.
        Mr. Johnson. There are new requirements to meet, that is
    correct, and they have to go through----
        Mrs. Capps. It is hard for me to justify these cuts at a
    time when States are right in the middle of developing and
    implementing their own strategies for ozone fine particulate
    and many other programs, and I wish I had more time, because as
    a public health nurse, I find the President's budget so
    unacceptable. In times of rising rates of childhood asthma,
    cancer, neurological and developmental disorders, decreasing
    funding for environmental programs--I don't see how we can
    justify decreasing them. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that we have
    a lot of work ahead of us to restore funding in these very
    critical areas.
        I have no more time, but I would love to have a response
    from you.
        Mr. Johnson. Well, if the chairman would allow, in fact,
    there are a number of items in our budget, for example, one
    that I want to point out is that we--actually as part of the
    President's budget, there is an increase of $6 million to fund
    children's health research centers, so we are going from seven
    to nine to help in that. As I mentioned in my opening
    testimony, for research and development we have additional
    funds in there to help particularly air research for children
    by way of roads, because of the concern over asthma.
        So there are a number of very specific programs in our
    budget which are designed to help us better understand and
    better protect our most sensitive subpopulations.
        Mrs. Capps. But in this area, which is your responsibility,
    there are cuts.
        Mr. Johnson. In air monitoring, it is a shift to where
    responsibility to the State, which was always something that
    the Federal Government would never pay for all State
    monitoring, but that was a responsibility that was shared by
    the States and the Federal Government----
        Mrs. Capps. So it is a shared responsibility.
        Mr. Johnson. It is a shared responsibility.
        Mr. Wynn. The gentlelady's time is expired.
        Mrs. Capps. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair would recognize Mr. Pitts for 8
    minutes.
        Mr. Pitts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Administrator, there appears to be some confusing
    regarding the Agency's efforts to address climate change. Could
    you describe the Agency's efforts in this regard?
        Mr. Johnson. If I could, sir, I would like to put in the
    context of the administration, in fact, our Nation's commitment
    to--we have an unparalleled commitment, international
    commitment in the United States to address climate change. From
    2001 through 2006, we as a Nation have spent $29 billion to
    fund science, technology, and even providing some tax
    incentives to address climate change. At EPA, we have a part of
    the program which deals with issues such as Energy Star,
    Methane to Markets, climate leaders, Asia Pacific Partnership.
    We are an active participant, and as an administration, we have
    an aggressive program to address climate change.
        If I might, Energy Star, for example, in 2005 by consumers
    buying products with the little Energy Star label, they saved
    $12 billion in energy costs. If you want to put that in terms
    of greenhouse gas emissions, they reduced greenhouse gas
    emissions equivalent to 23 million automobiles.
        And so what we are finding is our programs are working. Of
    course, the President in his State of the Union has now put two
    charges before you members of Congress, and that is to pass the
    alternative fuel standard, as well as the CAFE standard, both
    of which help not only energy security, but also help us on the
    environment, particularly greenhouse gas.
        Mr. Pitts. Thank you.
        Another line of questioning, Brownfields. Brownfields
    funding is an important program to many of us on this
    committee, and I have a couple of questions based on the
    testimony our committee received last week from the U.S.
    Conference of Mayors.
        First, Mayor Bollwage seemed to suggest that anyone who
    sends a Brownfields application to EPA should automatically get
    a Federal grant. The first question is, is it the Agency's
    experience that every grant application it receives is worthy
    of funding?
        Second, Mayor Bollwage claimed that EPA denied two-thirds
    of the Brownfields applications because it did not have the
    funding, and the mayor suggested that if EPA had more money,
    these sites that were denied Brownfields grants would be able
    to obtain Federal grants. Is it true, second, that EPA denied
    funding to these sites solely due to the lack of Brownfields
    funding?
        And lastly, Mayor Bollwage suggested that Federal
    Brownfields cleanup grants should be used to help fund cities
    applications for Brownfields grants, as well as the
    administration of the grants once received. This is not an
    allowable use under the law, and cities, especially those that
    tap the success of the existing Brownfields program have
    willingly put up their money for these purposes. Do you support
    changing the statute to allow cleanup grant dollars to be
    siphoned away from cleanup, and instead allowed to go to
    administrative costs?
        Mr. Johnson. Alright, yes, sir. Let me try to take each of
    your questions in turn.
        First, to make sure that everyone is aware that the fiscal
    year 2008 budget request is actually higher than what the
    President's budget request was for Brownfields last year. In
    fact, as I already mentioned, as you look through the history
    of Brownfields, in fact that in spite of the President's
    request for much larger sums, Congress has chosen to keep this
    program relatively stable. We think it is a great program. It
    leverages dollars, it converts those eyesores into sources of
    pride.
        With regard to administrative costs, we do not support. In
    fact, as you are well aware, the current legislation prohibits
    those administrative costs from--being able to use the funds
    for administrative costs. The reason why we don't support it is
    that we want to see those dollars not go to administrative
    costs, but we want to see them go to cleanups. And, in fact, as
    you appropriately point out, what we are finding is that people
    are willing to invest in the administrative costs to be able to
    get a grant to go forward with.
        With regard to the grants that we receive, we receive a
    great number of grant applications. Not every one of them is
    worthy for funding. I don't have the statistics, but I would be
    happy to share with you for the record what information we have
    as to the numbers and which ones have been evaluated and found
    to be worthy or not.
        Mr. Pitts. Thank you, I appreciate you providing that
    information.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Pitts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. Does the gentleman relinquish the balance of his
    time?
        Mr. Pitts. Yes, I yield back.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman.
        At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr. Pallone of New
    Jersey for 8 minutes.
        Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I just want to quickly go back to the Brownfields issue,
    and then move on to Superfund.
        My own interpretation of history here, because I was
    involved in the authorization of the Brownfields program, and
    it was really the first and maybe the only pro-environment bill
    that the President signed. So I am a little sympathetic to the
    fact that the President does support the Brownfields program. I
    am not going to disagree with you. But it is true, of course,
    that the Republican majority in the last few years since it
    went into effect has not been funding it adequately. So I guess
    my point I am trying to make to the Administrator is if it was
    possible to get significantly more money for some of these
    applications that Mr. Pitts mentioned, you clearly would fund
    more of these. In other words, these applications have merit,
    they are just not being funded because you only have limited
    resources.
        If you could just answer that question.
        Mr. Johnson. Again, there is a lot of work to be done and
    there are a number of potential Brownfield sites, and again,
    the President's 2008 budget continues the progress and we are
    looking forward to having the budget passed so we continue that
    progress.
        Mr. Pallone. I know you can't say you want more money, so
    all I am asking is a lot of these applications that are not
    being funded clearly do have merit, is that true?
        Mr. Johnson. I don't know what the statistics are, but
    again, we will be happy to provide it for the record. I do know
    that a number of applications come in that have not been
    completely well-thought through, if will, and others that have
    merit. But I would be happy to provide that information for the
    record.
        Mr. Pallone. OK. I mean, I would point out that when it
    comes to the assessment and there are these other grants, so
    these assessments and another kind of grants where the
    President's budget actually is less. I mean, in that category
    there was $120.5 million in 2006 but in 2007, the budget
    request was only $89 million, and now it is $89 million again.
    So that account has gone down.
        But I am not looking to criticize the administration on
    this. I think more of the blame rests with the Republican
    majority in not providing more funding and actually limiting
    some of the funding, as you suggest.
        With regard to Superfund, my concern is that according to
    your own site managers, there are 15 Superfund sites in New
    Jersey where human exposure is not, I stress not, under
    control, more than any other State. But there are a number of
    these sites around the country where the human exposure is not
    under control. My concern is that I would think that protecting
    human health is probably the most important issue when it comes
    to these Superfund sites, and yet it seems like controlling
    exposure to people has not been a top priority.
        So I just wanted to ask you, isn't it time that you get
    human exposure under control? If you had, again, more funding,
    would you do more to get human exposure under control in New
    Jersey and across the country? Why isn't that seemingly a
    priority? Is it because of the money, or is there another
    reason?
        Mr. Johnson. No, it is a priority. I think that it would be
    helpful and beneficial to have Susan Bodine come up and explain
    what we mean by Superfund sites that are not under control.
        Mr. Pallone. That would be helpful, if you would. I know my
    time is running out, but----
        Ms. Bodine. Again, beginning in about 1993 we identified
    sites as where there was a complete exposure pathway. It
    doesn't mean that there is actual exposure, because of course,
    we are not going to go in and test people to see if they have
    actually been exposed, but where we find a complete exposure
    pathway and we have identified all of those as human exposure
    not under control.
        We do take everything possible to take steps to cut off
    that exposure, but for example, if we put up a fence and we see
    evidence that someone is cutting through a hole in the fence
    and getting on the site, we will list that as exposure not
    under control.
        For example, if we put a community on bottled water, or if
    they are all on a community water system but one person
    refuses, at this point we will say that is not under control
    because we have this one outlier.
        So there are a variety of reasons why a site may be not
    under control. Where we have immediate acute exposures, we take
    action right away through our emergency removals, our time
    critical removal programs. That doesn't mean there may still be
    long-term risks----
        Mr. Pallone. I appreciate that and I appreciate your
    response, but I just want to give you one example. One of these
    sites is the Ringwood Mines Landfill site in New Jersey, this
    is in my opinion one of the biggest Environmental Justice
    tragedies in the country, and I use Environmental Justice. It
    involves a minority low-income community, actually Native
    American, in our State of New Jersey, that has toxic paint
    sludge dumped on them by the Ford Motor Company, and the Agency
    came in and said they have conducted an Environmental Justice
    assessment, and said that the site is ``an adversely impacted
    area'', but really nothing was meaningfully done, in my
    opinion, to do anything about the human exposure, other than to
    say OK, it is adversely impacted from the Environmental Justice
    point of view.
         I just want to use that as an example. Do you plan to do
    more work and comprehensively address the injustices, and in
    this case, the human exposure? I could go through all 15, but I
    think this is one of the worst. As you know, this is one where
    you did relist the site and I do appreciate that. It was off
    the list and now it is on the list, but now that it is back on
    the list, something has got to be done about the human
    exposure, because everything that she described is true. I
    mean, there are immediate problems, there are long-term
    problems, but I don't really feel that any of them are really
    being significantly addressed at this time. I don't know if you
    can comment on this.
        Ms. Bodine. Yes. Ford Motor Company is taking actions at
    that site under an administrative order issued by EPA. I have
    statistics which I have provided for the record on the
    thousands of cubic yards of sludge, and yes, this is a problem.
    There is paint sludge and other materials that were on the site
    and that have been removed as part of the administrative order
    actions, as part of these emergency actions, and we are
    continuing to do more site characterization at some of the
    mined areas around it. But all of that work is proceeding and
    it is a priority.
        Mr. Pallone. Alright. Let me just ask one more thing. I
    only have a minute left.
        This goes back to the Toxics Release Inventory Program. You
    know that myself and the two New Jersey Senators introduced a
    bill, and Ms. Solis also playing a major role in trying to go
    back to the original regulation as opposed to the changes that
    the EPA promulgated.
        I was concerned because the GAO found that the EPA did not
    adhere to all aspects of its rulemaking guidelines when they
    developed a new TRI reporting requirements. What is your answer
    to the GAO report on that? I mean, it seems to confirm the fact
    that not everything was done properly in this rulemaking, which
    obviously we now want to overturn.
        Mr. Johnson. Well, the GAO also points out in the report
    that the Administrator and Assistant Administrators have
    flexibility in the rulemaking process, and in fact, we did
    follow the Agency process. There is flexibility and we went
    through the appropriate notice and comment rulemaking. We
    certainly had an active program in the Agency to come to the
    final recommendation and my final decision on TRI.
        I should note that since this is a budget hearing, that TRI
    is an important program. This year's 2008 request is $15.7
    million, which is the highest request in 5 years. So it is a
    program we certainly support and believe in, and certainly is
    reflected in the President's 2008 budget.
        Mr. Pallone. Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wynn. Thank you.
        The Chair would recognize Mr. Terry for 8 minutes.
        Mr. Terry. Thank you. I do appreciate that opportunity, Mr.
    Chairman, and like a couple of my colleagues on this committee,
    I want to focus on Superfund in my district, and I do
    appreciate that you brought it up in our discussion or answer
    to the chairman, considering the complexity of it.
        I will make one comment that I think is shared amongst all
    of us on this committee that have Superfund or other
    environmental issues, and this is we want it done yesterday. We
    don't like it done over a 10-year or like the Speaker said, 22
    years. We want it done in 1 day and we want it done perfectly,
    and ours should be the priority over everybody else's. I
    realize you have those political complexities on top of the
    scientific complexities.
        I am generally pleased with the dedication of the EPA to
    the Superfund site in my district. As you mentioned,
    Administrator Johnson, it is 9,000 acres and makes up, I think,
    almost about 15 percent of the geographic area of my district.
    It is a changing area. It is mostly African American. There are
    a lot of young families in that area. I appreciate that you
    have made those households with children the priority and
    cleaning those properties first.
        So I appreciate your dedication. I will, with every one of
    my colleagues in the delegation, continue to hound you to make
    sure that it stays on track and isn't diverted for political
    purposes because some other district becomes a political
    hotspot or something. So you have been above that political
    fray and I appreciate that, because it really is a safety issue
    within my district.
        Now, with funding, I would support additional funding
    within the Superfund so that you don't have to make as many
    priority choices between projects. But I am a little bit unsure
    how your budget works. I just want to ask a couple of questions
    within the Superfund fund.
        There has been discussions with the panel we had up here
    last week that suggested that the tax on chemicals and
    petroleum should be reinstated to bring the amount of your
    budget up to past. Well, you have proven that it is at least
    equal using general funds as it was in the past. So I
    appreciate you showing that.
        So my follow-up would be the other part of making industry
    just levy a tax on industry because they exist, the alternative
    is what is currently written in the law, and I know firsthand
    because of my district that you have been very aggressive in
    making polluters pay, and in my view, you have even gone so
    far, it is like if you brush by one of the potential
    responsible parties on the street, you would then become
    another potential responsible party. It is down to the point
    where I think you have gone way beyond what we think of
    polluters.
        My question then is in that regard about how aggressive you
    have become or the administration has become on making sure
    that the polluters are paying the full cost of remediation in a
    Superfund site, is that reflected, those dollars that come in,
    are those reflected in your budget or is that just the
    Government dollars? And how effective is your aggressiveness in
    making polluters pay in? Now, certainly in our blood sight you
    have an issue of the SARCO leaving the country and folding and
    defaulting on their obligations, so I just wonder how effective
    that has been, whether that is on budget or off budget, how are
    those dollars accounted for?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, we have been very successful and we do
    aggressively go after the polluter, because we do believe that
    polluters should be the ones paying. On average, we are
    achieving about 70 percent polluter pays, we have a responsible
    party. Certainly the law charges us to seek that responsible
    party and have them pay, and that is what we do.
        Having said that, we also try to be reasonable,
    particularly for those that are, if you will, the small
    contributors to it. Is there a diminimus threshold? We
    certainly prefer to settle. As I have often said, the air and
    the water and our land get any cleaner when we are sitting in a
    courtroom, and so we continue to try to negotiate settlement.
        With regard to numbers, let me ask Marcus, my deputy, to
    share with you the number that we now----
        Mr. Peacock. Just to get a sense of how large the breadbox
    is here, Congressman, the total PRP commitments for cleanups
    from fiscal year 2001 through 2006 was almost $6 billion, so
    those dollars are not reflected in the President's request. In
    fact, PRP spends money on PRP lead sites, we never find out
    what that amount of money is, and that is most certainly in the
    billions as well.
        Mr. Terry. Very good. So actually, there is more investment
    in cleanups than what we are discussing here today within the
    budget?
        Mr. Johnson. That is correct, and as I pointed out that
    that is what is in EPA's budget. The PRP lead is another pot of
    money which Marcus Peacock just went over, and then when you
    look at our other Federal partners, it is $8.5 billion. So as a
    government, between our $1.2 billion in Superfund and then our
    other Federal partners, $8.5 billion, we as a Nation are
    investing a great deal of money in cleaning up these hazardous
    waste sites.
        Mr. Terry. I appreciate that. Certainly, in my particular
    version of justice, I think you should go after those that
    cause the pollution. The polluters should pay for the
    remediation, and I appreciate your aggressiveness.
        I will just make a quick editorial comment on Brownfields,
    because Omaha--and I was involved in the City Council, as I
    mentioned, when one of the authorities on our panel last week
    actually sued me personally and in my capacity as a City
    Council member, which I will never forget, but the Brownfields
    that we cleaned up really was a partnership between the State
    and the city, and both of us put up some money as well as the
    polluter. And that was done and cleaned up within about 2 years
    from beginning to end. So there are times, at least in my view,
    that when the local communities take control of a site, and no
    offense, but leave the EPA out except for being advisory, it
    actually works better. And so when we pound our chest about
    more Federal involvement in the Brownfields, I sit there and
    cringe. No offense to that, but sometimes the local folks when
    they want to step up can actually do a darn good job of making
    a Brownfield useful for the community.
        And that ends my time.
        Mr. Johnson. That is one of the reasons it is one of the
    most complicated sites.
        Mr. Wynn. At this time, the Chair would recognize
    distinguished vice chair of the subcommittee and a leading
    advocate on environmental issues, the gentlelady from
    California, Ms. Solis.
        Ms. Solis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, Mr.
    Johnson.
        Mr. Johnson. Good morning.
        Ms. Solis. I just want to go straight into a line of
    questioning and hopefully, you will be able to respond yes or
    no on some of these questions.
        When were you first informed by the Inspector General about
    his draft evaluation of Performance Track?
        Mr. Johnson. My recollection of the first discussion that I
    had with regard to Performance Track was actually with the head
    of my policy office, who said that he had had a discussion with
    the Inspector General with regard to Performance Track.
        Ms. Solis. But you have not had that particular
    conversation with the Inspector General yourself?
        Mr. Johnson. No, following that conversation, I did meet
    with the Acting Inspector General and talked about Performance
    Track, but really more in the sense of as the Inspector General
    performs program evaluations. By the way, I believe are very
    valuable to the Agency and are very appropriate, and
    encouraging our Inspector General to do more, that in the
    program evaluations what is helpful for me as a senior manager
    is to not only know and understand what is wrong or what areas
    need to be fixed, but also highlight those things that are
    going extraordinarily well so we continue to do those things.
        Ms. Solis. Did you think that the evaluation was fair and
    balanced?
        Mr. Johnson. I didn't see the evaluation, so----
        Ms. Solis. But when you spoke to the Inspector--what date
    was that?
        Mr. Johnson. I don't know, I would have to go back and look
    at a calendar.
        Ms. Solis. Can you get me that information?
        Mr. Johnson. I would be happy to.
        Ms. Solis. OK.
        Moving on, my next question. Mr. Johnson, as I understand
    the eligibility for Performance Track, a facility supposedly is
    not allowed to be a member if it or its parent company is under
    investigation or has convicted an environmentally related crime
    within the last 5 years. If that is true, how are three
    Monsanto facilities members, despite their parent company
    having paid $1 million in fines as a result of criminal
    indictment by the Department of Justice? How are they then
    eligible for this program?
        Mr. Johnson. On the specifics, I would have to defer to
    Brian Mannix, the head of our policy shop. Let me say, the
    Performance Track which was launched in the year 2000 now has
    470 members. It was recognized by Harvard University in 2006 as
    one of the top innovations in Government.
        I think it is important to put it in perspective. It is an
    outstanding program. It is beyond compliance, and the
    specifics, Brian?
        Mr. Mannix. I wouldn't want to comment on the enforcement
    record of a particular company without a chance to review it,
    so I would be happy to answer that for the record, but I don't
    know the answer.
        Ms. Solis. But they did remain a part of the performance
    track program, in spite of the fact that according to your old
    standards they would have been outside of the bounds of the
    program?
        Mr. Mannix. Some facilities are part of the Performance
    Track program, yes.
        Ms. Solis. That fall out of the restrictions that you place
    on them for being a part of it, that is what I am trying to get
    at.
        Mr. Mannix. I am sorry?
        Ms. Solis. For example, in the case of Monsanto, they have
    been convicted of environmentally related crimes in the last 5
    years, and yet they are a part of this program.
        Mr. Mannix. Again, there are facilities in the program as
    to what the enforcement record is at other sites in the
    company, I would have to review that before----
        Ms. Solis. OK, and you could give us that information?
        Mr. Mannix. Yes.
        Ms. Solis. OK.
        This week, EPA announced new members with a press release
    stating that Performance Track facilities must meet all
    environmental regulatory requirements, and you praised Members
    as environmental leaders, because they go beyond what is
    expected or required by law. I have a chart that I would like
    to share with you.
        [The chart follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8829.300

        My chart shows one example of a facility which is a member
    of the Performance Track despite compliance problems. The
    company, U.S. Steel/Clairton Coke Works has paid over $140,250
    in fines for 10 separate Clean Air Act violations in just the
    past 3 years. Is this the kind of compliance history that a
    company is allowed to have and still qualify to be a part of
    the Performance Track program? Yes or no.
        Mr. Mannix. Again, I would have to review the record of the
    company before commenting on the specifics.
        Ms. Solis. Please provide the committee that information.
        My next question, in your testimony, the Agency is
    supposedly a good steward of taxpayer dollars, but my
    understanding is that EPA has awarded contractors millions of
    dollars to support Government employees implementing this
    program Performance Track. Contractors run telemarketing call
    centers to recruit applicants for this program. They draft
    press releases, templates, and articles to promote Fortune 500
    companies and design advertising and motivational posters to
    hang at Performance Track workplaces, such as these that are
    noted here before the committee.
        Are you spending the taxpayer's dollars to pay contractors
    to do public relations work for corporations?
        Mr. Mannix. In part, Performance Track is a recognition
    program, and yes, we do provide posters to companies so that
    they can proudly display their membership and their
    accomplishments.
        Ms. Solis. Even when those same groups are found in
    violation of the law?
        Mr. Mannix. We don't tolerate violations of the law.
        Ms. Solis. OK, next question.
        The California Air Resources Board estimates that each year
    there are about 5,400 premature deaths and 2,400
    hospitalizations and about 140,000 cases of asthma. This is a
    filter that I would like to demonstrate to the committee that
    is currently being used, a filter that is a monitor located
    near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in a residential
    neighborhood that is predominantly low income minority. The
    filter was white, white as this paper, and now it looks like
    this, and there are three little dots to show you what it
    looked like when it was placed at the facility. Twenty-four
    hours later, which is equal to the amount of a typical human
    would breathe in 2\1/2\ half months, this is what it would look
    like, that accumulation in just that one cycle of 24 hours. The
    black color is largely diesel exhaust, and a toxic air
    contaminant in California, due to its carcinogenic risk.
        While I am pleased that EPA proposed a rule for locomotives
    and marine vessels, I am very concerned that it will not
    protect the health and well-being of minority and low income
    communities. My staff has reviewed this new rule that you just
    issued, and for the life of me, we can't find any discussion
    that would speak to the issue of Environmental Justice for
    review under this proposed rule. So could you please speak to
    that? Is there any mention at all?
        Mr. Johnson. I am pleased to, because this rule applies to
    all Americans, and in fact, the good news is because of our
    aggressive stance on diesel, on road, off road, and the
    proposal that I just signed on a week ago Friday, we will see
    significant health benefits across the population, particularly
    those sensitive subpopulations near or around port cities.
        Ms. Solis. But is there an exact area in the 800-page
    document where that is cited? That is what we want to know.
        Mr. Johnson. I would have to look. As I said, I know that
    it applies to all Americans, and in fact, anyone who is close
    to a port or to where locomotives are will benefit even greater
    than those that live further away.
        Ms. Solis. Well, this is a very, very critically important
    issue for many of us across the country, but in particular, in
    Long Beach and the Wilmington area, and as just noted, this
    filter is quite alarming to know that just in the course of 24
    hours, this is the same impact that is occurring with those
    young families that reside around the area. Many of them, I
    have to tell you, are military families.
        Mr. Johnson. That is why we have been aggressively going
    after diesel and in fact, urge you to support the President's
    2008 budget request, because there is $35 million in that
    budget to help deal with legacy engines, whether they be from
    trucks, school buses, or construction equipment.
        Our goal is to have that black puff of smoke which you see
    evidenced on that filter something you only read about in a
    history book.
        Ms. Solis. Very deadly carcinogenic.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. The gentlelady's time is expired. I thank the
    gentlelady.
        Next speaker will be the distinguished gentleman from
    Pennsylvania, Mr. Murphy.
        Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I want to get back to the issue of Clairton Coke Works,
    because it is a Pittsburgh company, in a moment, but first I
    want to ask a couple questions.
        First, how does the EPA work with industry when your are
    implementing some new standards that may impact upon them
    financially and also impact upon our job and manufacturing
    base? How do you go about that?
        Mr. Johnson. We have a number of programs that range from
    enforcement to compliance assistance to education, training,
    outreach, to partnership, and my experience after 26 years of
    being at EPA is that when we can come together to work
    collaboratively to address environmental challenge with our
    partners, it works a lot better. In fact, the results are
    cheaper, faster, and better results.
        We do have, as part of that effort, we have identified 13
    sectors in our business community where we have been
    aggressively reaching out to them to help and to work with them
    to achieve greater environmental results while maintaining
    economic competitiveness.
        Mr. Murphy. Thank you.
        Also, earlier you were referring to the mercury issue and
    the work that the United States has done as a Nation to really
    work at eradicating mercury through automobiles, air, et
    cetera. I know it is a significant concern for coal companies
    in trying to eliminate and reduce that, and yet, my
    understanding of the science of mercury is that it floats in
    the atmosphere, such as China, which is opening up a power
    plant every week, does not have controls on that, and the
    mercury that they produce--correct me if I am wrong on this,
    but even if we eliminate all of it from our factories we would
    still see a significant amount of mercury coming in, drifting
    in from other places around the world that do not scrub out or
    eliminate their mercury. Am I correct on that?
        Mr. Johnson. That is correct. There is trans-boundary air
    pollution. Pollution knows no political or geographic
    boundaries; that is precisely why the President asked a number
    of us, myself included, to be part of the strategic economic
    dialog with China. In my case, to work with them to help
    address the pollution, which obviously affects their citizens,
    but also creates trans-boundary air pollution.
        One of the initiatives of the President's 2008 budget is
    the Asia Pacific Partnership, which our $5 million is part of
    the President's overall $50 million request, to help in this
    very effort, so it is a critical effort that we work with our
    international trading partners, particularly China, India,
    South Korea in particular.
        Mr. Murphy. I hope that continues because I know it
    concerns me that when we are taking measurement samples of our
    air to compute in there, a lot of what is measured is not even
    coming from the continental United States.
        On the issue of so much that we are working on with air
    pollution, it is so important we work together on this. We
    still have to recognize 50 to 55 percent of our energy comes
    from coal. The Pennsylvania seam may have had more of an
    economic impact in the United States than almost any other
    geological formation on Earth, and we continue to be dependent
    upon it. I know there are forces who are trying to shut down
    coal's role, but we need it, especially in manufacturing, one
    of those being coke, and I am sorry that the gentlelady from
    California has left, because I wanted to ask--my understanding
    is the Clairton Coke Works that U.S. Steel owns, which is
    actually in Mr. Doyle's district, and many of the employees are
    from mine and many from U.S. Steel Works are also in my
    district as well. My understanding is that they are in
    compliance. They worked for several years with the EPA on this.
    I hope that is something you can get back to us and----
        Mr. Johnson. We have to get back to you on that.
        Mr. Murphy. Because it should be one of those things we
    have to find out if working together with the EPA has yielded a
    positive outcome, which we all want to see, but we also want to
    make sure we are not shutting down an industry. The steel
    industry in Pittsburgh is obviously important, and this
    Clairton Coke Works has been around for a long time, working
    and producing a vital element to make steel. So I hope that is
    something you can get back to us on and see. Because if there
    is some good news of how the compliance and working together
    has yielded some positive results, we would like to know about
    that and see how money is spent on that.
        Thank you very much. I yield back.
        Mr. Wynn. I thank the gentleman.
        Next we will hear from Mr. Allen, distinguished gentleman
    from Maine for 8 minutes.
        Mr. Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr.
    Johnson, for being here.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Allen. I want to begin by going back--your testimony is
    that the budget request for the Drinking Water State Revolving
    Fund is essentially the same as the 2007 level, but it doesn't
    appear that any of your budget considerations have taken into
    account the concerns expressed by the State environmental
    directors last week. Their basic point was that a dollar today
    doesn't buy as much as a dollar 5 years ago.
        We have a chart, and I would like that to be put up.
        [The chart follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8829.301

        This chart is prepared by the Congressional Research
    Service, and what it shows is that when you look at the fiscal
    year 2008 budget request, adjusted for inflation, and this
    looks at the last 10 years of funding for this particular
    program, adjusted for inflation in 2006 dollars. When you look
    at that, your budget requests to $802 million, or the lowest in
    the history of the program.
        Mr. Johnson. Correct.
        Mr. Allen. Do you agree with that?
        Mr. Johnson. It meets the President's commitment for a
    sustainable infrastructure and remember, this is a revolving
    loan fund and so as time goes on, that account continues to be
    built. The President's commitment was for drinking water
    between the years 2004 and 2018 that there be $12 billion
    revolving at $1.2 billion per year. The President's request of
    $842.2 million, which I believe is a $5 million increase, helps
    achieve the President's commitment.
        And may I also add, I think one of the important things
    that I would certainly urge Members of Congress to take a look
    at is the notion of private activity bonds. We have an outside
    group of financial advisors as well as a number of others,
    including mayors and others, have said if you could fix the
    private activity bond issue on the revolving loan fund, we
    believe we will get more investment.
        Mr. Allen. But we haven't fixed that yet, have we?
        Mr. Johnson. We haven't fixed it yet and that is part of
    the President's 2008 budget request is to fix that is actually
    amending section 146 of Internal Revenue Tax Code, so it would
    eliminate that cap.
        Mr. Allen. Right. I understand that, but you wouldn't
    disagree that the amount of money requested because of the
    factor of inflation is--the amount of money that can be put
    through this program buys less each year. That is what the
    chart says.
        Mr. Johnson. Having not seen the chart, just taking it by
    its face value, that is what the chart indicates. However,
    again, what the 2008 budget does do is it meets the President's
    commitment of revolving at $1.2 billion a year, and that is----
        Mr. Allen. But the only point I am trying to make, and I
    don't think you disagree with this, is if you have a flat
    commitment year after year after year, you can do less each
    year because everything costs more. That is the basic point. I
    think that is pretty simple, isn't it?
        Mr. Johnson. The point I was trying to reach is that in the
    case of our water infrastructure, this is another case where
    environmental responsibility is everyone's responsibility. The
    Federal Government has a role. Certainly rate payers have a
    role, and we have been looking for innovative ways to help
    accelerate the pace of dealing with our infrastructure. Private
    activity bonds is one.
        The other one which I just want to mention is a partnership
    program which we have initiated called Water Sense, and it is
    modeled after Energy Star. In fact, I just launched it this
    past year because I thought that it was important for consumers
    to be made aware of and to have a certification process so that
    consumers could make the preferential purchase that they are
    more efficient, and so we see a number of efforts to help
    ensure that our infrastructures----
        Mr. Allen. I understand those programs are fine, but my
    understanding is if you look at overall water infrastructure
    funding by the Federal Government, it has declined over the
    last 4 years by about 50 percent overall. Your Agency did a
    need survey and assessment in 2005 and concluded the total
    drinking water infrastructure needs stood at more than $263
    billion. In Maine, it is $300 million alone. I mean, I think
    what you are saying is somebody else has to pay for that. It
    can't be the Federal Government because we are going to keep
    our commitment flat. That seems to be what the President's
    commitment is and what you are suggesting the Agency should do.
        Mr. Johnson. What I am saying is I agree that the needs are
    great and in the range of $300 billion. Also, pointing out that
    it is not just the Federal Government's responsibility, but
    from individuals to----
        Mr. Allen. I hear you.
        Let me ask you another question before my time runs out.
        The Department of Defense, I understand, in contrast to
    previous BRAC grounds, has decided to withdraw funding to EPA
    for oversight of the 2005 round of BRAC cleanups.
    Traditionally, DoD has funded oversight by reimbursing EPA for
    full-time equivalent staff. For example, in fiscal year 2006,
    EPA had 75.5 FTEs dedicated to oversight work at 73 sites from
    the first four rounds of BRAC, and most of that was allocated
    to the regional offices. The DoD's intention in the 2005 BRAC
    ground is not to fund these FTEs.
        Now, if that is the case, the burden of paying for
    oversight of BRAC related cleanups moves to you, and given the
    meager EPA budget request, it is hard for me to see how that
    occurs, which means those costs would now be born by States or
    localities, making property transfer and disposal much more
    difficult, and in many cases, endangering people who live near
    those sites. My basic question is, were you consulted? Do you
    agree? Is this a good thing for DoD to pass those costs on to
    you?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, we at EPA continue to participate and
    seek reimbursement from Department of Defense, and Susan, if
    you would have some additional comments to provide?
        Ms. Bodine. Yes. As the Congressman pointed out, we have
    reimbursable FTEs for BRAC 1 through 4, and not for BRAC 5. We
    did consult with our regional offices as to the impacts of BRAC
    5 and were told that the additional resources, the reimbursable
    FTEs wouldn't be necessary, but that we are going to continue
    to monitor the situation so if it turns out that we do need
    additional resources, then we will go to DoD and seek
    reimbursement. But we were told, based on our review, that it
    wasn't necessary.
        Mr. Allen. So but if they are not necessary, does that mean
    that you are just taking people who are doing other things for
    EPA and moving them into that work? I mean, the work doesn't go
    away, I don't think.
        Ms. Bodine. No, but it is much--the BRAC 5 have many fewer
    NPL sites, national priority list sites. The work is much less
    and it is work that we can do within our existing resource
    base.
        Mr. Allen. OK. Do the States agree with that conclusion?
        Ms. Bodine. I believe the States expect us to still
    participate in the BRAC process, and we will continue to
    participate in the BRAC process.
        Mr. Allen. Thank you. My time is expired.
        Mr. Wynn. The gentleman's time has expired.
        Next we go to the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Sullivan.
        Mr. Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being
    here today.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Johnson, as you may be aware, the
    attorney general of my State of Oklahoma, has sued a number of
    poultry companies for the natural resource damages under
    CERCLA. Because of the downstream liability concerns for
    smaller contract poultry producers, this case has caused many
    in my State to question whether manure is really a hazardous
    substance within the definition of pollutant or contaminant
    under CERCLA. I personally think we should see if there are
    ways to ensure environmental protection without the default
    assumption being that the courthouse is the first stop in these
    efforts.
        I have two questions for you, sir.
        First, I understand that you testified before the House
    Appropriations Committee about an administrative effort the EPA
    was undertaking in regard to animal waste and CERCLA. Could you
    please explain that effort and its scope for me?
        Second, if my State of Oklahoma is successful in its suit
    and other parties use the courts to establish that manure is
    the constituent or contaminant under CERCLA, could you please
    explain the enforcement predicament that this would place on
    the Agency. How much would EPA have to increase enforcement
    staffing and funding to patrol farms that EPA has historically,
    as a group, not considered an environmental threat?
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you. Again, our interest is to make sure
    we are providing environmental protection while at the same
    time supporting agriculture.
        In the case of the comment that I made is yes, we will be
    proposing a regulation that would exempt air releases from
    animal waste from CERCLA emergency notification requirements.
    We have heard from our 26-State emergency planning commissions
    that they believe that it is a waste of their time to hear a
    report from an emergency because there is a farm, if you will,
    nearby. And so we are going to be proposing a regulation that
    does not exempt farms from regulation under CERCLA. It does not
    exempt farms from regulation under the Clean Air Act, and of
    course, we have an ongoing science process to better understand
    what the air emissions may or may not be from agriculture. We
    are looking to try to have effective regulations that are
    efficient, while at the same time, focusing on where problems
    may be and not where they are not.
        And so, soon we will be having that draft regulation coming
    out for public comment.
        Mr. Sullivan. I will tell you, what I am really interested
    in--and for 5 years I have been here, is we have a problem with
    the poultry industry. We are downstream from them and they have
    been dumping litter and runoff and all that, and we have had
    mismanagement practices at the State which haven't really
    helped that much.
        I will tell you what is frustrating, sir, is that EPA will
    come down in our area if someone has--let us say a developer
    has some silt fences that aren't working and someone calls.
    Well, the region 6 people come up and find those builders, but
    they will not get involved. And this thing, I think the EPA is
    the Environmental Protection Agency for the entire United
    States. What they say is that you need to work this out. Well,
    you wouldn't tell a developer and someone complaining about
    those silt fences failing, you would come and find them. Well,
    how come the EPA has not gotten involved in this effort? Why
    don't they step in and try to do something about this, because
    my city of Tulsa is looking at changing and redoing their water
    supply. It is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to
    do that. Our lakes and streams are terrible. I don't know if
    you have seen them, but you can't even see your foot if you are
    standing in four inches of water, and it is just absolutely
    atrocious that nothing has been done.
        Can you answer that, why the EPA will not get involved?
    They say you guys figure it out.
        Mr. Johnson. Let me ask Ben Grumbles, who is the head of
    our water program. He can give you a good up-to-date report.
        Mr. Sullivan. Is the problem too big for the EPA?
        Mr. Grumbles. The problem, particularly when in an
    interstate context, it involves a great deal of collaboration.
    EPA, as I know you know when you first came to Congress and I
    met with you to respond to and address various concerns, we
    have a couple of key areas where we are involved and
    Congressman, we commit to continue to stay involved and to help
    work out the water quality standards issue, for one, about when
    there are different standards for different States upstream,
    downstream, it is important for EPA to be involved in that.
        In the context of runoff or non-point source pollution, the
    way the Clean Water Act is written, it really does put a
    greater role for the States. There is not a Federal EPA
    regulatory role, but that doesn't mean we don't step up and
    help, through science and a collaborative process. There is
    also the watershed approach, the planning that I know is a
    focus for us to work with you and your constituents, and the
    upstream constituencies.
        I also would say that when there are large CAFOs, it is
    important to regulate them, and that is why we are committed to
    finalizing a regulation on nitrogen and phosphorus under the
    Clean Water Act for concentrated animal feeding operations,
    including poultry.
        Mr. Wynn. The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Sullivan. Well, we really need your help.
        Mr. Wynn. At this time, the Chair would recognize Mr.
    Stupak, the gentleman from Michigan, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I believe it would
    be 8 minutes.
        Mr. Wynn. Did you waive originally? You claimed the time
    you sat in the chair.
        Mr. Stupak. No, I didn't give an opening statement, but I
    will take 2 minutes for sitting in the chair, so I should be up
    to 10 minutes.
        Mr. Wynn. I think we are going in the wrong direction, Mr.
    Stupak.
        The gentleman is recognized for 8 minutes.
        Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Johnson, thanks for being here.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Stupak. Two weeks ago, the General Accounting Office
    reported that it would cost $12 billion in public funds to
    cleanup half of the 54,000 leaking underground storage tanks.
    Michigan's share would be $1.64 billion. American motorists are
    being taxed on every gallon of gasoline to pay for the leaking
    underground storage tank trust fund to cleanup petroleum and
    MTBE leaks from these tanks. The trust fund will have a surplus
    of over $3 billion in fiscal year 2008.
        I want to direct your attention to the chart here, and I
    believe they are just handing you a copy right now.
        [The chart follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8829.302

        Mr. Johnson. Yes, thank you.
        Mr. Stupak. It was prepared by the Congressional Research
    Service, using EPA budget numbers. It shows annual revenues of
    $300 million to the trust fund, $200 million from tax revenues
    and over $100 million from interest on existing trust fund
    corpus. With over $300 million in annual revenues, why is the
    EPA only seeking $72.5 million from the LUST fund when there
    are over 113,000 cleanups not completed? Why wouldn't you ask
    for $300 million?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, this is a prime example of why we don't
    want the Superfund tax, because while the tax revenue has come
    in, as you look even----
        Mr. Stupak. Well, this about LUST.
        Mr. Johnson. Exactly precisely the point is that this is
    exactly what has happened with the Superfund tax, as is what is
    happening with the underground storage tank tax is that while
    the revenues have gone up, Congress has appropriated
    considerably less money.
        Mr. Stupak. What did you ask for? You only asked for $72.5
    million. Have you ever asked for $300 million?
        Mr. Johnson. We continue to ask for and align ourselves----
        Mr. Stupak. Asked for how much? How much did you ask for?
        Mr. Johnson. We asked for $72.4 million. That is for
    cleanups, and $22.3 million for inspections.
        Mr. Stupak. You asked for $94 million.
        Mr. Johnson. We are urging Congress to take a look at the
    requirement for inspections every 3 years, and in fact, what we
    have heard from the States is that it would be much more
    efficient to allow self certification----
        Mr. Stupak. But you have all this money here to cleanups.
    We have over 113,000 leaking underground storage tanks. How
    come we are not asking for the money to cleanup when the money
    is there?
        Mr. Johnson. We don't have the money. Congress has the
    money. What we have asked for is--and what the President has
    asked for continues the steady progress towards addressing
    underground--leaking underground storage tanks.
        Mr. Stupak. It doesn't look like any steady progress to me
    on that chart, it looks pretty flat or actually going
    backwards. I mean, the frustration of American people is they
    are paying for every gallon of gas and putting $200 million in
    this fund, and we still can't get the leaking underground
    storage tanks cleared up. So why don't you just ask for the
    $200 million, and we'll leave $100 million in for interest. Why
    don't you just ask for that so we can get this program done?
        Mr. Johnson. We want to continue to make steady progress
    while achieving a balanced budget. We estimate that 350,000 of
    the leaking underground storage tanks have already----
        Mr. Stupak. Well, you believe it is proper to place a
    gasoline tax on the public, but instead, use those funds as a
    Federal deficit reduction device rather than cleaning up
    contaminated leaking underground storage tanks?
        Mr. Johnson. Again, that is a decision for Congress, and
    what I can say is even before 2003 and 2001, Congress has
    chosen to appropriate a relatively level of source. Let me just
    give you another statistic, if I could----
        Mr. Stupak. I don't want you filibustering here. I have 8
    minutes. I'm trying to get 2 more from the chairman and he
    won't give it to me, so I can't let you filibuster.
        Mr. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, please.
        Mr. Stupak. The EPA decelerated the pace of environmental
    protection by dropping the Agency's annual cleanup performance
    goal of leaking underground storage tanks from 22,000, that is
    what it was in 2003. You were going to do 22,500. Now, you went
    down to 13,000 in 2008. That is a 42 percent drop. It seems
    like the Agency is not making any progress. You are going
    backwards. The goal is 22,500 in 2003, now you are down to
    13,000 in 2008. That is a 42 percent drop over 6 years. Why?
        Mr. Johnson. I have to ask. Susan, do you want to come up?
        While Susan is coming up, the one I wanted to point out was
    this President's budget is higher than any amount appropriated
    in all but 6 years since 1987.
        Mr. Stupak. No, my question, sir, is fiscal year 2003,
    22,500 were targeted for cleanup. Fiscal year 2008, the budget
    year we are in, it is 13,000. That is a 42 percent drop. Why?
        Ms. Bodine. Thank you, Congressman.
        The underground storage tank program is a State run
    program, and----
        Mr. Stupak. I am very familiar with it. Just answer the
    question. Why is it going down 42 percent in 6 years? No
    filibustering, please.
        Ms. Bodine. We rely on the States to tell us how many tanks
    they are going to be cleaning up, and they are telling us that
    they will cleanup fewer because the ones that are left----
        Mr. Stupak. So if the States ask for more money, you will
    give them more money?
        Ms. Bodine. They are telling us that with States----
        Mr. Stupak. Have the States asked for more money? Yes or
    no.
        Ms. Bodine. I would have to get back to you on that. I
    don't know that, but I can get back to you on that.
        Mr. Stupak. Alright. Let me ask this question. In 1992,
    there was an agreement between Michigan and Canada, solid
    municipal waste moving from Canada into the United States. In
    1982, the EPA was going to put forth a proper framework for
    notice and consent of the movement of waste and the flow of
    trash between our two countries. EPA has never done it. In 1993
    in a question to Mr. Dingell, when asked when those rules and
    regulations would be put out, the EPA said ``shortly''. It is
    now 14 years. We still do not have a program. And everybody who
    came from EPA--and over the last 6 years we haven't had many
    EPA hearings, but each time I ask and each time I use the word
    shortly, and each time I get back these nice letters saying we
    are working on it. We have the pilot program. We will have this
    completed shortly. It is 14 years. We still don't have the
    rules or regulations.
        Mr. Johnson. We lack the authority to ban municipal waste
    imports.
        Mr. Stupak. Yes, I have heard that before so I asked for
    language, and we never get any language from the EPA. If you
    lack authority, how could you do a pilot program if you didn't
    have authority?
        Mr. Johnson. Our pilot program went to look at to see
    whether, in fact, they were----
        Mr. Stupak. Moving trash?
        Mr. Johnson. Well, what the movement was and did it contain
    any hazardous waste, or was it indeed municipal solid waste as
    it was. And we concluded that the report inspections was
    completed in fiscal year 2006, and I would be happy to provide
    another copy of that for the record, if you would like.
        Mr. Stupak. Well, when are you going to put forth the rules
    and regulations, 14 years?
        Mr. Johnson. Again, we lack the authority to ban municipal
    solid waste imports.
        Mr. Stupak. But do you support Mr. Dingell's bill, then,
    H.R. 518?
        Mr. Johnson. We have taken no position on that bill.
        Mr. Stupak. You haven't taken a position on any one of the
    bills we have introduced for the last 6 years on this issue.
    Will you take a position on Mr. Dingell's bill, H.R. 518, which
    is a bipartisan bill signed by Great Lakes members who want to
    see the flow of Canadian trash greatly curtailed into this
    country?
        Mr. Johnson. We have not taken a position.
        Mr. Stupak. Will you take a position? Six years you have
    been trying to take a position. We change the numbers every 2
    years, the same bill. Will you take a position on that bill?
        Mr. Johnson. I will be happy to get back to you for the
    record.
        Mr. Wynn. The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Stupak. Fourteen more years I am going to have to wait?
    I don't know if I will be here that long.
        Mr. Wynn. The Chair recognizes Mr. Deal of Georgia.
        Mr. Deal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would yield to Mr.
    Murphy briefly.
        Mr. Murphy. I thank the gentleman.
        I just want to clarify. I have been checking this issue
    about the Clairton Coke Works, because they have been around
    for many years. The Clairton Coke Works is operated by U.S.
    Steel and is actually in full compliance with the EPA and full
    compliance with the National Emissions Standards. Not only
    that, it actually operates under stricter standards than the
    EPA or the National Emissions Standards, because the State of
    Pennsylvania has stricter standards and Allegheny County has
    even stricter standards than the State of Pennsylvania, and it
    is operating under strict standards for all of those.
        Mr. Chairman, I would like with unanimous consent to be
    able to provide all this information, as well ask the
    gentlelady from California to provide her information, because
    it may be an example of how the EPA and industry can work
    together to make sure they are working for the public health
    and achieve the things that we wish.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Wynn. Since the gentlelady from California is not here,
    for her I am happy to include without objection, and I will
    certainly ask her if she would like her information included.
        Mr. Deal. Mr. Johnson, thank you for being here today.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
        Mr. Deal. Very briefly, since the issue of poultry waste
    and CERCLA has come up, as a representative from perhaps one of
    the largest broiler producing districts in the entire United
    States, my communities have serious concerns about the
    expansion of authority, regulation or otherwise, under CERCLA,
    which we do not think was initially intended to address this
    issue.
        So a little bit different perspective than perhaps what you
    have heard earlier references made to that, but moving on to
    another consideration. And it would be primarily observation,
    followed by a very brief question or two. We have heard from
    many of my colleagues, many on the Democratic side of the
    aisle, about issues that relate to Superfund, relate to
    Brownfields, et cetera, and it has been with criticism that
    enough money is not being spent, actions are not being taken
    fast enough, and then, of course, criticism of existing
    industries, such as Mr. Murphy has already tried to clarify,
    the issue about alleged continuing pollution.
        I would point out that in this concept that we have heard
    of Environmental Justice, I would like to insert another term
    for your consideration, and that is geographic justice. My
    constituents in rural areas don't really complain about
    spending Federal dollars to cleanup these sites, but I would
    point out that in most instances, those are sites that are the
    result of industrialization in this country, and they provided,
    even though they polluted in hindsight, they provided good
    paying jobs for those parts of the country that benefited
    richly from those job sites. Just as the jobs that are now
    being complained about industries that they don't particularly
    like, many of my constituents would welcome them to the rural
    parts because they need those kind of jobs. We are not
    complaining about spending money for these geographical sites
    that have benefited in the past but now have pollution
    problems.
        But there is an issue of geographic justice that I don't
    think is being paid much attention to. For example, I think we
    ought to, in our environmental policies, not promote further
    concentrations of population, further concentrations of
    industry in areas that are already polluted, but I am afraid
    that many of the policies that we have in place are doing
    exactly that. Instead of dispersing, we are promoting further
    concentration. Let me give you specific examples of that.
        My congressional district in the northwest corner borders
    Alabama and Tennessee. That portion is in the Chattanooga
    metropolitan statistical area. Several of my rural counties are
    now in non-compliance under air quality. They have very good
    information that it is not because of things that are coming
    within their area or things they have any control over. In
    fact, they had a study from NASA that showed that one of their
    non-compliances was because they were burning wheat fields in
    the Midwest and it was simply blowing there.
        My time is running out.
        My question is this. You indicated that there is going to
    be a shift of responsibility for air monitoring to the States.
    Many of those counties, the one in particular that is in non-
    compliance, has no testing site within the county. They have
    testing sites in another State, Alabama and Tennessee, and they
    are concerned. They feel like if you want to get a good
    reading, get one from them and not penalize readings coming
    from somewhere else. In fact, one of the readings in my State
    is in the middle of a national forest, and it is in non-
    compliance because of pollen in the air.
        Who has the authority to determine the location of air
    monitoring sites? Is it the State or is the Federal Government?
    Whose approval has to be obtained?
        Mr. Johnson. It is done in cooperation. Again, we work with
    our State partners to make sure these we are trying to achieve
    national----
        Mr. Wynn. The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Deal. Mr. Chairman, let him answer my question, my only
    question.
        Mr. Wynn. Because of the pending vote, I am trying to get
    another Member recognized. I am sure he would be happy to
    submit his answer to you or give you an answer in private.
        Mr. Johnson. I would be happy to have my staff also sit
    down with you. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. I would like to recognize the gentleman from
    Massachusetts, Mr. Markey.
        Mr. Markey. Administrator Johnson, the Intergovernmental
    Panel on Climate Change has determined that the planet is
    warming as a result of carbon dioxide pollution and other
    emissions of greenhouse gases, by mankind, and that we could
    face a potential environmental catastrophe of severe hurricanes
    and other storms, droughts, rising sea levels, and massive
    species extinction if we do not reverse current trends.
        Do you agree with the IPCC's findings?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, we do. In fact, and because of investment
    by the United States and----
        Mr. Markey. Do you do agree?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes.
        Mr. Markey. Do you support a mandatory cap and trade
    program to curb carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions?
        Mr. Johnson. Sir, what I do support is what the President
    announced at the State of the Union, and that is an aggressive
    yet practical strategy----
        Mr. Markey. No, you support a mandatory program to?
        Mr. Johnson. Yes, in fact, support a mandatory program in
    the sense of CAFE standard, as well as a mandatory----
        Mr. Markey. Do you support a mandatory 4 percent annual
    increase in CAFE standards over the next decade?
        Mr. Johnson. Support an increase in CAFE standards----
        Mr. Markey. Mandatory.
        Mr. Johnson. Mandatory increase in CAFE standards, yes.
        Mr. Markey. So you support a mandatory 4 percent?
        Mr. Johnson. Four percent.
        Mr. Markey. That is what the President used in his State of
    the Union address. So you support a mandatory 4 percent
    increase?
        Mr. Johnson. That is what I support.
        Mr. Markey. OK. And that is very helpful to me.
        So do you support a mandatory cap and trade system?
        Mr. Johnson. No, I do not.
        Mr. Markey. No, you do not, OK.
        Would you support a Federal renewable portfolio standard to
    mandate that electric utilities get 20 percent of their
    generation from clean renewable sources, such as wind, solar,
    geothermal or biomass by 2020?
        Mr. Johnson. Let me just make clear on the CAFE. The
    proposal from the President is to ask Congress to defer to
    Department of Transportation to actually----
        Mr. Markey. So you don't support mandatory----
        Mr. Johnson. The President identified is part of a 20
    percent in 10 years, the 5 percent would come from CAFE----
        Mr. Markey. So you don't support----
        Mr. Johnson. I just want to make it clear----
        Mr. Markey. No, you are not clear. You don't support a
    mandatory 4 percent increase in CAFE, is that correct?
        Mr. Johnson. I support what the President asked for.
        Mr. Markey. Is that mandatory or not mandatory?
        Mr. Johnson. It is a mandatory CAFE standard through the
    Department of Transportation to determine the percentage to
    achieve what the President has outlined----
        Mr. Markey. Alright. I can't let you go on. The answer is
    either mandatory or non-mandatory, not mandatory except that
    the Department of Transportation decides it is not mandatory.
    Which is it for you, sir, mandatory or not?
        Mr. Johnson. For me, I support the President.
        Mr. Markey. OK. That's all we need to know.
        Would you support mandating a 10 percent increase in
    overall electric power sector efficiency and a 5 percent
    increase in natural gas utility efficiency by 2020 to be
    achieved by demand reduction programs, more efficient power
    generation, transmission, and distribution systems,
    accelerating introduction of more energy efficient buildings
    and appliances? Would you support that?
        Mr. Johnson. I support increased energy efficiency.
        Mr. Markey. But again, we need goals. Everyone supports it.
    Is it a goal that will deal with catastrophe or is it----
        Mr. Johnson. I support energy efficiency.
        Mr. Markey. Well, that doesn't help us again.
        What you are telling me, again, Mr. Administrator, is that
    the Bush administration's policy of denial and delay is
    continuing as you sit there today. It is little wonder that
    today is the first time in nearly 6 years that the EPA
    Administrator has actually appeared before this committee. The
    FBI does not have as good a witness protection program as the
    Bush administration and the Republican Congress has had to keep
    the EPA from actually testifying on these issues.
        Today we can see why. You really don't have a policy to
    deal with the number one environmental challenge now facing the
    planet, the threat of global warming. I can only hope that this
    policy soon comes to an end and that your administration, Mr.
    Administrator, becomes serious about working for mandatory
    goals that are set in each one of those areas rather than this
    non-specific, completely useless testimony in terms of helping
    Congress understand what the goals of this administration are.
        You also have a requirement to set standards for the
    underground sequestration of emissions from coal-fired plants.
    When do you plan on providing those specific guidelines?
        Mr. Johnson. With regard to geologic carbon sequestration,
    EPA and Department of Energy have been working on guidance that
    would guide the pilot projects so that we can evaluate the
    technical aspects for these class 5 experimental technology
    wells. We have started the public dialog. This is an issue for
    underground injection----
        Mr. Markey. How many years before you can give a----
        Mr. Wynn. The gentleman's time is expired.
        Mr. Markey. Can you provide the answer so the committee has
    it?
        Mr. Johnson. I would be happy to provide one for the
    record.
        Mr. Markey. Thank you.
        Mr. Wynn. The subcommittee has no further members seeking
    questions.
         I remind members if they have additional questions, they
    can submit them for the record to be answered by the witness.
    The questions should be submitted to the committee clerk in
    electronic form within the next 10 days. The clerk will notify
    your offices of the procedures.
        I want to thank the Administrator, Mr. Johnson, and his
    team for appearing before us today, and without objection, this
    hearing is now adjourned.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        [Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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