[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 28, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1979]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE CHILDREN'S PROTECTION AND COMMUNITY CLEANUP ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 28, 1999

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to 
support H.R. 2956, the Children's Protection and Community Cleanup Act, 
which challenges the whole premise of Superfund reform. Too many bills 
have been written on the premise that we have been doing too much to 
clean up our environment. Today, we make clear that we think we're 
doing too little.
  Are people worried that their water is too clean, or too dirty? Are 
they worried that there is too little E coli in hamburgers, or too 
much? And do you think people sit around and wish there was more 
pfisteria in the water killing more fish? The answers are self-evident. 
People want to clean up their water, clean up their food, and clean up 
toxic waste dumps in their community that are threatening their health.
  Last year, the movie, A Civil Action, told the story of a group of 
parents in the city of Woburn in my District. These parents discovered 
that far too many of their children were dying of leukemia, and linked 
it to the water they used, which smelled and corroded the water pipes. 
But for years they could not get anyone to listen to them, to do a 
rigorous public health assessment to find out whether they were at 
risk. The Children's Protection and Community Cleanup Act will require 
a public health assessment to be conducted at every Superfund site, and 
will allow communities to get Federal grants to conduct their own 
health assessments and take their own soil and water samples. It will 
require a cleanup that protects drinking water for future generations, 
instead of just building a fence around the toxic waste and hoping it 
won't leak out.
  In addition, people don't want to pay tens of millions of taxpayer 
dollars to corporate polluters who are responsible for dumping tons of 
chemicals into our environment. They want to see the responsible 
parties pay for the damage they cause. The Children's Protection and 
Community Cleanup Act would ensure that the polluters responsible for 
the messes they made have to pay for them. In addition, it will place 
all nuclear facilities under the same Superfund laws that control 
chemicals, and it will ensure that when the responsible polluter was 
the Federal Government, that the same high cleanup and liability 
standards are applied as to the civilian sites.
  For more than a decade under Republican administrations, EPA stood 
for nothing more than ``Every Polluter's Ally''. Superfund sites 
languished with no cleanups. But today more than half of non-Federal 
Superfund sites have completed construction activities. Where cleanups 
are not complete, two-thirds of the required work is underway or 
finished. The Children's Protection and Community Cleanup Act will 
ensure that the EPA can build on that record of achievement.

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