[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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