[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 13, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H259-H260]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              CREATING LIVABLE COMMUNITIES IN THE MILITARY

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I came to Congress committed to having 
the Federal Government be a better partner in helping our communities 
be more livable, our families safe, healthy, and economically secure. 
Among the most important areas for the new Administration to reexamine 
is the quality of life, the livability of our enlisted people, and the 
relationship that the military plays in making all our communities more 
livable.
  There are tremendous opportunities to continue some good things that 
started in the last Administration, and for the President and Secretary 
Rumsfeld to move even further. The bottom line is that the United 
States Department of Defense should be a leader at home and abroad, 
improving the quality of life for the men and women in uniform and 
their families.
  The Department of Defense should be a world leader in building 
livable communities, whether it is improving environmental protection, 
sustainable development or partnerships with citizens at all levels.
  There are some outstanding examples taking place within a stone's 
throw of our Nation's capitol.
  The Navy Yard renovation is leading the revitalization of the 
District of Columbia's Southeast waterfront. It is recycling materials 
and land, developing green buildings, and proving that you can improve 
the quality of military life while making a difference for the 
community.
  The Department of Defense is managing a massive problem dealing with 
the same Endangered Species Act that confronts American communities all 
across the country. To cite just one example, there are 17 endangered 
species that have been identified at Camp Pendleton, the only large 
green space remaining between Los Angeles and San Diego.
  The Department of Defense is managing 12,000 properties that are 
listed on or are eligible to be listed on the National Register of 
Historic Places. This is the largest inventory in the United States and 
slated to grow even larger because over the next 30 years another 
70,000 buildings will reach 50 years of age and require evaluation.
  In fact, our military is the largest manager of infrastructure in the 
world with over $500 billion in bridges, hospitals, roads and docks. 
One of the most challenging examples is to be found in the area of 
housing. There are over 300,000 units of military housing; and sadly, 
as President Bush is discovering today, two-thirds of them are 
substandard. There is an opportunity to harness new techniques in 
partnership with the private sector to make sure that we retain valued 
personnel by treating their families right with homes we can all be 
proud of.
  I hope this Congress will step forward to help the military in other 
ways to promote livable communities. One of the most important ways 
would be to increase the necessary funding in order to accelerate the 
timetable for cleaning up unexploded ordnance, the bombs and shells 
that did not go off as intended and litter the landscape in over a 
thousand locations across the United States. There is a legacy of 
bases, bombing sites, and storage depots from Martha's Vineyard to Camp 
Bonneville in metropolitan Oregon.
  Even around the American University campus right here in Washington, 
DC there is unexploded ordnance and nerve gas and that has been here 
since World War I. We cannot wait 500 years to clean these sites up, 
which is the time that will be required if we follow the current 
pattern.
  The President should include a separate line item in the budget he 
submits to us, and Congress should focus on it and provide adequate 
funding. Another simple but powerful step would be for the Department 
of Defense and, say, the Post Office to obey the same rules as the rest 
of America. The presumption should be that absent a specific finding of 
urgent military necessity, our Department of Defense meets the same 
building codes, environmental standards, and transportation 
requirements.
  Last, but by no means least is the opportunity to keep the mission if 
not the team intact at the Department of Defense for the military to 
provide true environmental leadership. There

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was an outstanding team that was assembled in the last administration: 
Sherri Wassserman Goodman, Randall Yim, Sandy Apgar, to name just a 
few. These people have doubtless moved on, but there is a lot to be 
learned from them, and we need to make sure that the mission and the 
techniques are retained and enhanced.
  Getting and retaining the highest quality fighting force in the world 
requires that we treat them and their families right. It is important 
to make the military a full partner in livable communities using the 
ingenuity, the brain power, and the sense of mission and devotion to 
duty that are the hallmark of our armed forces.

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