[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 55 (Monday, May 9, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 9, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY ACT OF 1993
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the hour
of 3:30 p.m. having arrived, the Senate will now resume S. 978, which
the clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 978) to establish programs to promote
environmental technology, and for other purposes.
The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
Amendment No. 1687
(Purpose: To authorize a rural water sanitation-health technology fund
to make grants for technologies to improve sanitation conditions on
Indian reservations and in Alaska Native villages and in other rural
places, to eliminate the ``honey bucket'' sewage disposal method
through innovative technologies, to develop new technologies to reduce
and eliminate sanitation-related health problems and deaths, and to
help to uphold the national trust responsibility of the United States
to the American Indian and Alaska Native, and for other purposes)
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask
for its immediate consideration.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens], for himself, Mr.
Inouye, and Mr. Murkowski, proposes an amendment numbered
1687.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 18, strike line 1 and insert in lieu thereof the
following:
SEC. 204. NATIVE AMERICAN SANITATION-HEALTH TECHNOLOGY FUND
PROGRAM.
(a) Authorization.--The Administrator is authorized and
encouraged to enter into an agreement to establish a
partnership program to fund grants to research, engineer,
develop, test, and demonstrate innovative water sanitation
technologies for Indian reservations, Alaska Native villages,
and other remote, rural regions. Funds provided pursuant to
this section may be awarded beginning in fiscal year 1995 for
competitively judged proposals that have the potential to
improve health and sanitation conditions in Alaska Native
villages, on Indian reservations, and in other rural areas,
with emphasis on areas with conditions that are not conducive
to utilization of conventional wastewater treatment methods.
(b) Coordination.--The Administrator shall coordinate
disbursements related to Alaska Native village sanitation
authorized by paragraph (a) with appropriate federal agencies
and departments, including any such agency or department
participating in the federal field working group on rural
Alaska sanitation.
SEC. 205. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I would like the record to show that I am
proposing this amendment for myself, for Senator Inouye, and for
Senator Murkowski.
Mr. President, I have had a meeting with the staff of the Public
Works Committee, and I have just had a conversation with the
distinguished chairman of that committee. I want to take the time to
discuss my amendment and explain why I am pursuing it and to hopefully
work out something with my good friend from Montana concerning this
problem.
Let me just state very basically that I believe that this is a good
bill. It is a bill that is going to now centralize environmental
technology and give much more authority to the Administrator of EPA,
and it will really set a different tone for the appropriations that
will be forthcoming to deal with a research in the environmental area.
I believe that one of the critical areas of research in the
environmental area should be to deal with rural water sanitation health
technology. I have some photographs that were taken in my State to
demonstrate. I want to show those to the Chair in just a moment.
This amendment of mine and Senators Inouye and Murkowski really is
not totally an Alaska amendment. I believe that the amendment
specifically provides and covers Indian reservations, Alaska Native
villages, and other remote rural regions of our country.
We have people now as we are approaching the 21st century and dealing
with all sorts of technology and innovations, we have people in this
country that not only do not have flushing toilets and running water,
they do not have the bare necessities for just human dignity in dealing
with sanitation problems.
Last summer I took a trip down the Kuskokwim River. Most of the
pictures I am showing to you here are in that part of Alaska--the west
coast. I have talked to some of my friends who have Indian reservations
in their State, and they say that in many instances the same conditions
prevail. We just have not as a nation developed the concepts we need to
provide for just the rudimentary sanitation facilities that are
necessary to assure the health of our people who live in these areas.
They are literally, Mr. President, the poorest of the poor. It is sad
to say, but it is really true. What took me down the Kuskokwim River
last year was the collapse of what we called the chum salmon run. There
was total devastation in these villages because their basic food source
and their basic resource that was really the foundation of their cash
economy literally collapsed. They had no income and they had no food.
We were going through there to talk to them about their problems. One
village I went to, they wanted to talk to me about sanitation and
health problems which they consider to be even worse than the total
economic problems they face following the collapse of their chum run.
As I said, I have a series of photographs here that demonstrate the
situation now. This is summertime now in the arctic village with the
human refuge being pulled on a little sled across the playground. That
is the children's playground.
This is what happens when it gets to the destination. These are the
so-called honey buckets which are brought to a community bunker and
dumped in that bunker. But the trouble is there are animals and just
the conditions of the area in the wintertime with the snow and ice
piled up around that bunker, pretty soon all of these bags of human
waste are just out on the ground. Look at the health conditions.
There is the walk for the children through this area. This is going
out to the river. This is where that one village had disposed of their
bags that came from the honey buckets through the winter. It is a
deplorable situation.
The impact from village to village, the boardwalk access to the river
is littered with bags of human waste when the summer thaw really comes.
Here again are the children. That is their access to go to their
playground, go to their own homes. They have no other area that they
can go through. Here again, that is just like a sewage lagoon.
That is a housing project that we put up to assist those people to
have a better way of life. In the wintertime, the honey buckets are
emptied out on the ground because they cannot obviously put them into
the ground. They are just frozen blocks of sewage. That is what caused
those other areas that I showed, where in the springtime when the thaw
comes and those frozen blocks of sewage melt. Here again, these are the
bunkers. The only thing that can happen to those now is there was
supposed to be another transportation system coming along to take those
to a remote sewage area. Unfortunately, the appropriations for that
never developed, so it never got moved.
Those bunkers are surrounded by, again, the normal plastic garbage
sack that we had. There are liners in the system that is used inside
the home that are taken out and put into the honey buckets, and they
are brought to these bunkers, and there is hardly an area that you can
find along the river--Mr. President, these are different villages I am
showing; they are not all the same village. It is the same condition in
every village that I saw.
This is a winter condition now. Again, when you try to empty the
honey buckets they put in the area near the river, even that when the
ice comes, if it breaks up, then the village downstream has the
problem, if the ice moves the honey bucket bags out.
Here, again, this is an overloaded bunker right up against the
housing project. People say, why do you bring those photographs in
here? That is the technology that we have developed. In a country that
can send a man to the Moon and develop the best communications systems
in the world, we are still dealing with honey buckets in Indian and
Alaskan Native villages. I have to tell you, I wish I could get more
people to come up and look at these, and they would get as excited as I
do about why we have that. The reason is that no portion of our
Government has ever settled in on developing new technologies, new
abilities to deal with human waste disposal where there is no running
water.
You can go out in the outhouse in some places in the south 48, I
guess. But in our State, you cannot dig down because it is permafrost
underneath that land. There is no ability to deal with even an outhouse
technique in Alaska. For years now, I have been asking everyone from
NASA to HUD to work on developing some new technology to deal with
this. They came up with the toilets that flush electronically, just
burn up the insides and vaporize everything that is there. Well, that
is wonderful, but they cost about $4-a-flush in my State because of the
cost of electricity. These people cannot do that. They are literally on
welfare to start with.
Last year, I talked to Miss Browner, and she was on our Commerce
Committee. She is a very good Administrator of the EPA. Working with
her and our State commissioner of environmental conservation, Mr.
Sandor, and with the people at HUD and BIA and the Indian Health
Service, we tried to get together a task force to deal with these
problems. The trouble is that there was nobody in that area that has
the authority to deal with literally putting out the contracts to
develop new technology, a technology for the 21st century, to deal with
the disposal of human waste where there is no possibility of running
water and where the climactic conditions make it very difficult to have
any kind of normal waste disposal.
That prevails in some of the reservations of the south 48, and
certainly it prevails in some of the rural areas I have seen in West
Virginia and Kentucky and the Rocky Mountains. Nobody is working with
these people to find some new technology. When I saw this bill come
along, and recognizing what it is--it is a very good bill to start out
with, and I am not opposing the bill; I am supporting the bill. I
wanted to earmark a portion of this money for the development of a
program to try to bring about innovative technologies to deal with this
problem.
My staff, meeting with the staff of the committee, was convinced that
an earmark of money was not really going to be too welcome, frankly. On
almost every bill that goes through here now, we earmark a portion of
the money to be used only for American and Alaskan Native basic
problems. I do not care what it is. You can look at housing, sewer
grants, a lot of them, and we have the earmarking. I understand the
committee does not want to earmark it.
Besides that, I have really a basic trust in Miss Browner as the head
of the EPA. I would like for her to have the authority to be authorized
and encouraged to enter into agreements. Those agreements, partnership
kinds of agreements with our State--and, by the way, I hasten to add
that because of Mr. Sandor, the Commissioner of Environmental
Conservation in Alaska, Alaska has increased its appropriations in this
area. The legislature is just closing business in Alaska, and it has
made $25 million availability to deal with this.
We are working on a partnership concept, coming from BIA, Indian
Health Service, HUD, the Corps of Engineers, and EPA, and we hope to
get $25 million from the Federal Government to deal with putting
facilities--there are a few areas in the State where it is possible to
have running water because of the temperature and the soil conditions.
That money will go, first, to those areas where we can put in the
normal kinds of water and sewer projects. But in these other areas, I
would like to have the EPA be the focal point of developing new
technology.
This amendment would authorize a fund to make grants for technologies
to improve these conditions on Indian reservations, Alaskan Native
villages, and other rural places. It is not earmarking any money. I
think anybody that gets in and takes a trip--and I stand ready to take
a trip down those rivers with anybody from the Senate or from the
administration that wants to look, and I made that offer last year.
There is no question of the need.
Incidentally, all of the costs of all of the disease that comes from
the situations I have just shown the Senate, Mr. President, are borne
by the taxpayers of the United States. The health problems are met by
the Indian Health Service. The problems of loss of capability are met,
in the long run, by the BIA. Yet, in order to deal with the basic human
conditions, we cannot seem to get anybody to cooperate and coordinate
this, in order to find a way to develop the new technologies. I
literally took a trip to one of the NASA conventions one time and
talked to each one of the people who are developing facilities for NASA
to put in our shuttles and our space vehicles. They had wonderful new
designs to deal with the disposal of human waste in space. But you
cannot get anybody authorized to deal with it right here on Earth, in
the area where, as I said, the poorest of the poor of our country live.
I know my friend from Montana is a little disturbed with me because I
have proceeded with this amendment, when his staff has said he does not
really want to see this on the bill. I have changed the amendment since
originally drafted, so it will not earmark any money. It does not
direct the Administrator to do anything. It authorizes the
Administrator and encourages the Administrator to enter into agreements
and partnerships to find ways to do the research and develop some new
facilities.
Let me close by saying that I have seen water and sewer facilities go
into several villages, and in some instances, unfortunately, we have
had to replace those. I can think of one place where we replaced the
system three times, and we had to do that primarily because the
technology was so complicated nobody in the village was capable of
maintaining it. That is another problem--the development of technology
that the people of the area can use and maintain, and it will bring
about a change in their lives and get rid of these terrible health and
sanitation problems that exists in the villages of my State.
sanitation-health technology program
Mr. MURKOWSKI. I rise in support of the amendment to authorize a
rural sanitation-health technology fund offered by the senior Senator
from Alaska for himself, Senator Inouye, and myself.
The amendment authorizes and encourages the EPA Administrator to
enter into an agreement to establish a partnership program to fund
grants to develop new innovative sanitation technologies for Indian
reservations, Alaska Native villages, and remote, rural regions, and to
coordinate any disbursements authorized related to Alaska Native
village sanitation with appropriate Federal agencies and departments,
including any such agency or department participating in the Federal
field working group on rural Alaska sanitation.
In Alaska, the rural sanitation problem is clear, Residents of rural
villages in Alaska do not have adequate drinking and human sanitation
facilities in their homes and communities. As a result, sickness and
disease, comparable to many Third World countries, are major problems
for many communities.
According to the Rural Alaska Sanitation Task Force Report, 220 rural
Native villages account for three quarters of Alaska's communities.
Waste water treatment facilities in over 190 of these villages have
been assessed by the Federal Government as inadequate.
In 135 villages, honey buckets and pit privies are the sole means of
sewage collection and disposal.
For the record, and those that don't know, a honey bucket is usually
a 5-gallon bucket placed in one's home and used as the household
toilet.
When the bucket is full, it is carried outside and dumped into a open
sewage pit. In many instances, the honey buckets are dumped into ponds
or in close proximity to homes. It is not uncommon for children to play
dangerously close to these sewage dump sites.
Of the existing waste water service levels in rural Alaska: only 37
percent have flushing toilets; 49 percent have pit privies or honey
buckets; and 14 percent have haul systems.
In over half of the villages in Alaska, water is hauled to the home
by hand from washeterias, watering points, are from a creek or river, a
washeteria is a centrally located building within a community where
washing and drying machines are available. Washeterias also contain
public showers.
In many of the homes where water is hauled by hand, a trash can is
used as the water storage tank. Water for drinking, hand washing, and
doing the dishes comes from this household trash can.
The existing water service levels in rural Alaska are abysmal. Only
40 percent of rural Alaskans have piped water to their residence; 30
percent use a washeteria; 20 percent use a year-round watering point; 7
percent have individual wells; and 3 percent have no system.
According to these figures, less than half of the residents living in
rural Alaska villages have the basic water supply system we all take
for granted--piped water to their homes.
Imagine half the residents in Washington, DC living without running
water or toilets that flush. The results of having inadequate water and
sanitation facilities are tragic.
Hepatitis A runs rampant among villages--causing death in some cases.
Hepatitis A is a viral infection causing nausea, vomiting, abdominal
pain, and in some cases a yellowing of the skin or eyes. Deaths from
hepatitis A occur at a rate of approximately 1 to 5 deaths per 1,000
cases.
The water and sanitation conditions in rural Alaska must be
addressed.
The water and sanitation conditions in these rural communities are
considered worse than in many Third World countries.
The Alaska congressional delegation is committed to improving water
and sanitation conditions in rural Alaska.
Last year, on May 5, 1993, the Indian Affairs Committee held a 4\1/
2\-hour hearing on water and sanitation conditions in rural Alaska.
The committee received hundreds of pages of tesimony from Federal
agencies, State agencies, and Alaska Natives which described the
deplorable water and sanitation conditions in rural Alaska.
The lack of basic water and sanitation services in rural Alaska has
been well documented. We have thousands of pages of testimony that
document the unacceptable water and sanitation conditions in rural
Alaska.
As a result of the May 5, 1993, hearing, the Environmental Protection
Agency formed what has become known as the ``Federal Field Work
Group.''
The Federal Field Work Group's goal was to determine methods by which
the Federal Government could work with and assist the State in
addressing the water and sanitation conditions in rural Alaska.
It is my understanding that the Federal Field Work Group has made
significant progress. The Indian Affairs Committee will soon hold a
hearing to receive testimony from Federal agencies, State agencies, and
Native organizations on what progress has been made over the past year
and what will be done in the future to address this problem.
We will continue to work to see that safe drinking water is provided
to the residence of rural Alaska and that the honey bucket is
eliminated from village homes.
As the country moves toward the 21st century, Alaska's rural
residents should not be living in Third World conditions--they should
not experience the disease and inconvenience they face because of
inadequate sewer and water systems.
I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I very much appreciate the comments of the
Senator from Alaska. I have been to Alaska several times, and I have
seen a good bit of the sanitation problems he refers to. There is no
doubt about it. There are sanitation problems for Native Americans in
Alaska just as there are, as we all know, in other parts of the
country. There is no doubt about it. Something has to be done about it.
The more we can address the problem in Alaska and the more quickly we
can address that problem the better off those folks will be, and we
will be better off for it. I do not quarrel with the Senator from
Alaska. There is a great need for that program.
The real question is, is this the proper place to do it and is this
the proper bill in which to fight for this program? And a corollary
question is, is there a better approach and what is that better
approach, if there is one, one that is going to come about quickly or
be interminably delayed as often is the case around here?
Quickly, Mr. President, I say to my very good friend from Alaska that
I am not perturbed with him at all for offering this amendment. I very
much respect his very ardent advocacy for his State's interest, and the
fact is that Alaskans will be very proud at how strongly the Senator
represents the State's interest.
I do believe, however, that when we get to the next bill before this
body, the Safe Drinking Water Act or we get to the Clean Water Act
later on this year, those are two much more appropriate bills to deal
with this problem. After all, we are talking about innovative water and
sanitation technologies. I can say to my good friend from Alaska at
this point that those bills, although they are not yet before us, will
contain provisions that directly address this point he makes.
On the other hand, the bill before us today, the National
Environmental Technology Act, is a bill designed to encourage
environmental technologies generally in this country and on a
competitive bid basis. The bill does not give favoritism or earmarking
or preference to one form of environmental technology over another.
It is somewhat similar to the concept we attempt to use here with
NIH, the National Institutes of Health, and with the National Science
Foundation, that is, on the one hand, all of us want good science and a
competitive bidding process to determine which grants NSF gives to
scientists around the country to develop their scientific studies.
In addition to that use of the competitive bid basis is the
competitive peer review proposal basis to determine which National
Institutes of Health grants are awarded and which ones are not.
There is always a temptation for us here in the Senate and in the
House, for that matter, to say for our State we give preference to this
or for my State preference to that. There is always a temptation here
as to how far to go in the first direction, that is, the solely
competitive bid in the interest of competition and good science on the
one hand, and to state it very crudely, on the other hand,
parochialism, porkbarrel and what not on the other.
I think, Mr. President, that because this is only a modest bill--this
is not a large bill--there are not a lot of dollars in this bill, we
should stick to the former model, that is, keep this competitive, keep
the basis of grants to various entities and developing new
environmental technologies on the basis of competition and on the basis
of what seems to be best and more likely to develop better technologies
and get a bigger bang for our buck. I say that, also, because this bill
is neutral with respect to different environmental technologies.
If we start now offering amendments to give preference or
encouragement to one form of environmental technology at the expense of
the other, then, frankly, we are just back here as Senators just
carving this up, and my honest opinion is the whole will be worse than
the sum of its parts.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield there?
Mr. BAUCUS. In a minute I will yield to the Senator.
On the other hand, I might say this: I can think of many different
environmental technologies that I think deserve at least equal
preference. Take my home State of Montana or other Western States. That
is mine waste technologies. There are a lot of abandoned mines in the
West. I can tell you, Mr. President, that tailings from those abandoned
mines are polluting rivers and streams in the West. Trout streams are
being polluted because of abandoned mines. There are countless
abandoned mines in the West. They number thousands. There are small,
little mines that have been dug into the hillside and abandoned mines.
It is a major problem. This bill does not give preference to
development of environmental technologies to address that problem.
We have smog in the cities. There is a lot of dirty air in this
country. This bill does not give preference to environmental
technologies to help clean up the air by development of a more
efficient, say, electric car.
All I want to say, Mr. President, is I very much understand the
Senator's concern. It would be inappropriate to single out essentially
R&D for Native Americans in Alaska and addressing their water
sanitation problems at the expense of other meritorious problems we
have in this country. They also have to be addressed.
So I urge my good friend from Alaska, frankly, to not press this
amendment, because I do pledge to him there are other opportunities
coming along very quickly--the Safe Drinking Water Act, in particular,
and the Clean Water Act, also, in particular, where I very much hope to
address these concerns.
(Mr. METZENBAUM assumed the chair.)
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a question,
I looked at the Safe Drinking Water Act. It authorizes funds for
research and technical assistance for small systems such as this, but
it works through universities, only universities that serve a region of
States. It does not have a focus on any specific area of need, but more
particularly it funds the Indian Technical Assistance Program at
$280,000 to $300,000 nationally, and that is again for research and
training in technical assistance.
The bill before us now funds $80 million for 1995 and $120 million
for 1996. If we are looking for a larger pool of money that could have
just a small part set aside, originally, as I said, I was seeking to
set aside 2.5 percent of the national budget for environmental
technology development to meet this need on Indian reservations and
Native villages. In my judgment safe drinking water does not have any
relevance to this.
I would like to ask my friend--incidentally, does my friend know that
the Safe Drinking Water Act was sponsored by Senator Kennedy and myself
following a village-to-village trip in 1969, and it became a national
act--and only two projects I know of were established in Alaska--but
the program became national and still continues on a national basis but
only authorizes research on a regional basis? How could I look to the
concept of trying to meet the State and local government and BIA and
other agencies' funding having some sort of a partnership program?
Mr. BAUCUS. If I may say to the Senator----
Mr. STEVENS. Let me finish. There is no better place for it to be
than in EPA. How can I get it to EPA and get some money unless it is in
this bill?
Mr. BAUCUS. I think the answer is the Clean Water Act, not the Safe
Drinking Water Act, but the Clean Water Act. The fact is that the Clean
Water Act is on the calendar, I think, today--it was out over the
weekend. If not today it will be on the calendar tomorrow. It doubles
the amount of money available for Native Americans for building
sanitation systems.
Mr. STEVENS. Yes.
Mr. BAUCUS. The total is $25 million.
Mr. STEVENS. That is to build them. There is no basic research. We
will build more systems under that law and they will be built with off-
the-shelf technology, and once again they will not work. How can we get
a research program going on that will develop site-specific type of
technology that will work?
Mr. BAUCUS. By utilizing another title in the Clean Water Act that is
dedicated to research; $20 million, I might say to the Senator.
Mr. STEVENS. Is the Senator unwilling to earmark that, too?
Mr. BAUCUS. The Senator is willing to look at the Senator's amendment
when we get to the Clean Water Act.
Mr. STEVENS. That is the problem.
Mr. BAUCUS. Also, it seems to me that because of the very strong
argument that the Senator makes as to the need, certainly, when the
Native Americans of Alaska compete with other technologies in
developing new environmental technologies, the EPA, which the Senator
has a lot of faith in, is more likely to award the grant to Native
American cleanup rather than to some other technology.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, let me call the attention of the Senator
from Montana to the study made by the Office of Technology Assessment,
which, as you know, is an agency of the Congress, on the Alaska
Challenge of Native Village Sanitation. Just this year one of the basic
recommendations they made was to establish a research and development
demonstration program for innovative sanitation technologies.
I appreciate what the Senator says. Incidentally, the money that is
available in the clean water program is about one-tenth of what is
going to be available annually under this program. The national
environmental technology is going to be developed under this program.
And to my knowledge, there is no way they are going to turn to that
with the very basic problems that you have mentioned in terms of smog
and the problems of mine tailings.
Mr. BAUCUS. Smog is another matter. We are talking about the Clean
Water Act, not to clean up the smog act.
Mr. STEVENS. I thought you were talking about the Safe Drinking Water
Act.
Mr. BAUCUS. No, I am talking about the Clean Water Act.
Mr. STEVENS. There, again, you are talking about $20 million
nationally to deal with the whole problem.
Mr. BAUCUS. Let me say this to the Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. May I point out to the Senators that the rule
of the Senate requires Senators to address the Chair.
Mr. BAUCUS. I apologize to the Chair.
Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. I might say to the Senator, there is a good chance, much
above 50-50, when we come to the Clean Water Act that we could accept
the Senator's amendment.
I cannot guarantee it, but in hearing the Senator and listening to
the Senator and, frankly, consulting with my staff, I think there is a
very good chance that we could accept that amendment; a very good
chance.
I know the Senator will remind me of the statement I am now making
when we get to that act, in the event that is how we resolve this
issue.
Mr. STEVENS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator desire to ask for
recognition?
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I do not think I have any time left.
I will say this. Between now and Wednesday, I would like to confer
with my friend from Montana, Mr. President, to see whether or not I
should press forward with the agreement that is already in place to
have 10 minutes to explain the amendment to the Senate before we vote
on Wednesday.
I have high confidence in the Senator from Montana. But it was 25
years ago that I stood here with the Senator from Massachusetts and
thought that we had a bill passed that would help us try to meet this
problem. Year in and year out, we have had funding for projects and
they have always come off the shelf. No one spent any money at all to
develop new technology. We are now 25 years along the line and they are
still talking about doing the same thing.
Do you know that they take new, prefabricated HUD homes to Alaska and
they have the flushing toilets and the sinks and all the pipes and all
you have to do is connect them? But, guess what? There is no running
water in the village. There is no ability to use those flushing
toilets. They are a monument to our capability to buy things in bulk
and to think that off-the-shelf technology solves every one's
problems--one size fits all.
The only trouble is, there is nothing to hook those toilets up to. I
bet we spend more money sending toilets to places that do not have any
systems than we would need to develop new technology.
Somehow or other, I would like to have just a little bit more of an
assurance than ``likely or not.''
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I can give the Senator enough assurance
which in my judgment would warrant him not pressing the amendment on
this bill.
Mr. STEVENS. That is a different sound I just heard.
Mr. President, I withdraw the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's amendment is withdrawn.
The amendment (No. 1687) was withdrawn.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am very pleased to be an
original cosponsor of S. 978, the National Environmental Technology Act
of 1994. I would like to thank the chairman for his outstanding
leadership and extraordinary hard work on this bill. Senator Baucus
made passage of this legislation one of his top priorities and he has
followed through with enormous perseverance and creativity. I also
commend Senator Chafee for his hard work on this bill, in particular
his strong efforts on provisions to assist small businesses in
pollution prevention and environmental compliance. Finally, Senator
Mikulski also has been one of the true leaders in this field. Both
Senator Mikulski and I had originally introduced separate environmental
technology bills. Under Senator Baucus's leadership, these original
bills have been combined with his legislation to develop a
comprehensive environmental technology bill that will help make America
a leader in environmental technology. By combining our efforts, the
whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
This bill will address two big concerns of the American people--the
environment and the economy. Innovative technologies can save American
companies money, increase U.S. exports, create jobs and help ensure a
healthy, productive environment. These are benefits that will help
Americans, but the fact is that the benefits of American leadership in
environmental technology would be global. As we seek to meet the needs
of a rapidly growing world population, while maintaining the health of
the planet, technological advances will be critical.
We need to act quickly. The worldwide demand for consumer goods is
increasingly shaped by American environmental concerns. Likewise, the
demand for pollution control and environmental cleanup equipment is
growing. The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment estimates
that the global market for environmental goods and services will reach
$300 billion by the year 2000. Although the OTA has found that U.S.
companies remain competitive in most environmental technology sectors,
it has also found that the U.S. position has eroded in some areas, such
as air, water, and some waste technologies. As the global market
expands, U.S. companies must capture their fair share of this market.
There is a consensus among industry, Government and environmental
groups about the need to act quickly to improve environmental
technology. There is a pressing need for better and more cost-effective
clean-up technologies. For example, we currently cannot clean-up
certain types of contamination--like soils contaminated with heavy
metals and ground water polluted with oily wastes. Improvements in
pollution prevention technology may prove even more significant. They
will improve our environment and save companies money in lower material
usage, treatment and disposal costs, reduced paperwork and lower
liability and insurance costs. As one business executive testified
before my subcommittee, ``We view pollution today as waste, as a sign
of inefficiency. And to the degree that we can eliminate that waste, we
are diminishing inefficiency and also reducing our costs.''
This bill will help make America a leader in environmental
technology. It is carefully structured to substantially increase
Government support of environmental technology without increasing
Government bureaucracy. First, the bill requires the Government to
coordinate existing programs designed to stimulate the development of
innovative environmental technologies--both for remediation and
pollution prevention. Over $4 billion is currently being spent annually
by Government agencies on research and development of technologies that
could be classified as environmental technologies. A coordinated
approach among these agencies is critical for cost-effective use of
these funds. This bill accomplishes this and will improve Government
accountability and efficiency. It is full consistent with our efforts
to reinvent Government.
Second, the bill will spur technology development by having the EPA
provide seed money, through cost-sharing partnerships, to early stage
projects in the private sector. Third, the bill establishes a program
for technology development modeled on the highly successful Small
Business Innovative Research Program [SBIR]. The SBIR program funds
development toward commercially viable technology in a staged, multi-
phased program and has enjoyed widespread, bi-partisan support. Until
title III of the bill, a small portion--1.25 percent--of the EPA's
budget for environmental cleanup would be authorized for private sector
development of more efficient technologies contributions to the cleanup
objectives. Like SBIR, this program uses a structured, three phase
approach to review and grant awards to technology developers. It also
requires EPA to consider commercial potential as well as scientific and
technical merit in award decisions. This approach will help ensure that
government-supported technology development leads to commercially
viable technologies and creates new, high paying jobs.
Allocating a small portion of our cleanup funds for technology
development should result in a significant reduction in the vast cost--
estimated by one study at a ``best estimate'' of $752 billion in 1990
dollars over the next 30 years--to the Federal Government, private
industry and others of cleaning up contaminated sites, and will improve
cleanup results.
Fourth, the bill has several important provisions to reduce the
barriers for the market for environmental technology development. Up to
now, even if new environmental technologies were developed, many
companies have had difficulty finding adequate testing facilities for
their technologies. The bill would expand the Federal facilities that
could be used as environmental technology test areas. It also
establishes programs to verify the cost and performance characteristics
relative to Federal regulations. These provisions will lower the market
barriers created by preference within regulations for specific
technologies and thurs stimulate competition and innovation.
Fifth, the bill direct's EPA, the Commerce Department and the heads
of other executive agencies to work together to provide environmental
services to small businesses including information and technical
assistance on new environmental technologies, environmental compliance,
methods for achieving compliance and pollution prevention. This would
work through the Manufacturing Technology Centers administrated by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] and other
technology assistance programs for small businesses, as appropriate.
Small businesses have limited access to legal and technical staff.
They often need assistance in identifying the requirements of the law
and cost-effective approaches available to achieve compliance.
Environmental technical assistance programs can make small businesses
more competitive by saving them money while improving their
environmental performance. Successful pollution prevention programs can
help businesses avoid regulation altogether.
Some of the Commerce Department's Manufacturing Technology Center's
[MTC's], such as the Great Lakes center, are beginning to integrate
environmental technical assistance into their small business mission.
The MTC's and other industry extension centers are well-positioned to
integrate environmental technical assistance with other manufacturing
concerns such as productivity, quality and worker training. As a recent
OTA report, ``Industry, Technology and the Environmental'' notes:
Separate programs make it hard for programs to market their
services to industry. Moreover, it becomes more difficult for
programs to establish the long-term working relationships so
important to instituting both pollution prevention and
manufacturing modernization as a continuous process.
The administration has proposed to dramatically increase the number
of MTC's over the next 4 years. This legislation would build
environmental considerations into the centers as the outset of this
expansion.
This cooperative effort between EPA and the Department of Commerce
and other agencies is an important opportunity to improve Government's
response to both economic and environmental concerns. EPA can identify
existing and pending compliance requirements, and has broad expertise
in alternative compliance strategies. But EPA has limited capacity to
reach out to and assist small businesses in their communities. Working
together, the agencies can provide user friendly, one--stop service
centers to best serve small business needs while improving
environmental protection.
Mr. President, I believe this bill will help make America a leader in
environmental technology. We need innovative environmental technologies
now. This bill will help Government serve as a catalyst to promote
private sector development of innovative technologies without
increasing Government bureaucracy. It will also increase U.S.
competitiveness in this important field. The United States is a leader
in environmental protection--it also needs to be the leader in
environmental technology.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President I ask for the yeas and nays on final
passage.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a
sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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