[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4599-H4600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          THE CLEAN WATER ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss the Clean Water Act and 
the reauthorization that the House will begin to consider tomorrow and 
for the remainder of this week.
  The Clean Water Act, as we know it, in my opinion, and the resources 
it protects are in jeopardy pursuant to this reauthorization that we 
are about to consider tomorrow.
  In the committee process, waivers and exemptions have been expanded 
while bill-strengthening amendments repeatedly met with defeat, and the 
result of this legislation which we begin with tomorrow, H.R. 961, in 
my opinion, will be deterioration of over 20 years of clean water 
efforts, efforts that have successfully moved us in the direction of 
fishable, swimmable waters.
  With H.R. 961, esoteric costs and benefits will rule the day at the 
expense of human health and safety and protection of invaluable natural 
resources. If H.R. 961, Mr. Speaker, as it now exists, is passed it 
will be more difficult, in my opinion, to explain to my constituents 
and others why they cannot fish in local streams, why they are losing 
business due to beach closings and other reductions in recreation and 
tourism, and why their property values have decreased or why their 
drinking water is not usable.
  I would hope over the next few days, as the number of amendments are 
proposed on the House floor that would seek to strengthen the Clean 
Water Act and reauthorization and bring back, if not improve, the 
existing law, that we would see many of our colleagues join in 
targeting a number of detrimental provisions of H.R. 961, of which I 
would like to list a few.
  One is the existing waivers for combined sewer overflows and 
industrial pretreatment. Another is ocean discharge in place of full 
secondary treatment. Another is the loss of wetlands protection, the 
abolition of the coastal zone nonpoint source program, the erosion of 
the Great Lakes initiative, the elimination of the EPA from dredged 
material disposal decisions, insufficient enforcement and lack of 
citizen rights provisions.
  Mr. Speaker, if I could just read some sections of an article that 
appeared in the New York Times on April 2 which outlines some of the 
problems with H.R. 961. It says, and I am reading from sections, that 
the Clean Water Act of 1972, the existing bill, has done much to make 
America's water fishable and swimmable. Experts in both parties regard 
it as the most successful of the environmental mandates passed in 
Congress since Earth Day 1970. However, the new provision we are about 
to consider tomorrow in H.R. 961 blasts so many holes in this law it is 
hard to know where to begin. Basically, they would demolish the 
underlying strategy of the original act. The 1972 law conceded it was 
impossible to measure the dollar benefits of clean water against the 
costs of cleaning it up. So, in fact, if industry was instructed to use 
the best available technology to control pollution, even though that 
may not be the perfect answer, it has worked.
  The new law, by contrast, would postpone any further improvement in 
water quality unless it could be provided the benefits in health, 
swimmable, fish stocks are worth the cost. That means monetizing the 
value of a cleaner environment, a nearly impossible process.
  The bill that we are going to consider this week would relax national 
water quality standards, provide certain industries with further 
exemptions from whatever laws remain on the books, and make voluntary a 
program that now requires States and cities to control storm water 
pollution. Not least, it would reverse a 25-year effort to preserve 
diminishing wetlands. Scientists now estimate there are 100 million 
acres of wetlands remaining in the United States, doing what the 
wetlands do so well, filtering pollutants an nourishing organisms 
essential to the food chain.
  By drastically narrowing the definition of what a wetland is, the 
bill would make millions of acres available to developers and the oil 
and gas industry.
  In brief, the bill we are about to consider would make it much easier 
for polluters to pollute.
  Mr. Speaker, I have to decry this legislation because I know for the 
last 7 or 
[[Page H4600]] 8 years or so, since I have been in Congress, at the 
Jersey shore we have seen a steady increase in water quality. Beaches 
that in 1988, when I was first elected, were closed and were not 
available for tourism and were basically making almost impossible for 
the Jersey shore to come back economically, those beaches are now open, 
the water quality is improved, my constituents are looking forward to a 
great summer beginning the end of this month. But they can not believe 
that this House or this Congress would seek to gut, if you will, the 
very legislation that has made that possible.
  I hope that many of my colleagues over the next few days will join 
with me in passing some strengthening amendments so that the Clean 
Water Act will continue to be viable into the next century.


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