[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 131 (Saturday, September 26, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H8975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BEACH CONTAMINATION

  (Mr. BILBRAY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, all over America, children and families 
went to beaches to enjoy summer. But in San Diego County, the children 
showed up to their beaches to find big contamination signs all over 
their community.
  In the City of Imperial Beach where I grew up, my children were 
greeted with this sign. The EPA was outraged. The environmental 
community was outraged.

                              {time}  1230

  You would say, why? Because the pollution that was closing American 
beaches came from Mexico. The pollution from Mexico continues to flow 
across the border.
  The Sierra Club and Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the EPA 
refuse to be as outraged at American beaches being polluted by foreign 
people, foreign governments as they are if it would have been an 
American company.
  I wish those who claim to want to protect the environment would be as 
much against pollution from other countries as they are from our own. I 
think that this desecration of the American community, the desecration 
of our beautiful beaches in Southern California has to stop.
  I call on this administration and people who claim to care about the 
environment to stand up and be as outraged as those of us who showed up 
at the beaches to be greeted with this sign.

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