[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 24 (Tuesday, March 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1210
 
                              EPA OVERKILL

  (Mr. ALLARD asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend in my district, I was 
notified of the EPA's plan to slap the small city of Fort Morgan, CO, 
with a $44 million lawsuit for noncompliance with the Clean Water Act. 
It is absurd to penalize a city of 9,000 citizens for this exorbitant 
amount. This averages out to $5,000 per resident of this agricultural 
city. The EPA has even gone beyond this amount. A $25,000-per-day fine 
is going to be implemented until the issue is resolved. The sewage 
treatment plant in Fort Morgan has never discharged any harmful 
ingredients into the South Platte River. Nor has there been any harm 
done to the people or the environment by the alleged noncompliance 
actions of the plant. The only industry that is allegedly producing the 
waste in noncompliance is the Excel Corp. The violations, the EPA has 
stated, are for pretreatment occurrences which means they do not care 
what comes out of the plant, but what is going into it. What are their 
expectations and priorities? The EPA has stated the fines need to be 
large enough so it is not cheaper to ignore the violations rather than 
fix them. Well, the city of Fort Morgan is trying to rectify the 
problem. They are in the final planning stages to build a $13 million 
waste water facility to remedy the situation the EPA has inquired 
about. But what reasonable bond dealer will invest in a project that 
has a $44 million lawsuit against it? I am asking the EPA to help in 
the clean up. The place to start is to get this issue out of the 
lawyers hands and into the hands of officials who are willing to 
resolve this issue. The point is this, Is the EPA more interested in 
collecting fines, or is it interested in helping rural America solve 
their problems?

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