[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 3, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1393-H1398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      DECONTAMINATION EFFORTS REQUIRE IMMEDIATE ACTION BY CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Oregon?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, it is time at this juncture appropriate 
to step back and take stock of recent actions. We have had some 
commentary here on the floor this evening dealing with the environment 
and dealing with the recent activities of this Congress and the 
administration. I think it is appropriate for us to do this, as I have 
fresh in my mind very vivid memories of a tour that I organized today 
to visit the exclusive residential area of Spring Valley here in the 
District of Columbia around the American University campus. It was a 
tour to be able to understand clearly one of the key environmental 
issues that deals with 1,000 sites around the country.
  Twenty-six years after the Vietnam War, 56 years after the conclusion 
of World War II, 83 years after World War I, there is still a battle 
taking place, and it is taking place right here on the soil of America. 
It involves mines, nerve gases, toxics and explosive shells. This 
battle has claimed 69 lives and has maimed and injured far more. Sadly, 
this battle continues every day. If we are not careful in this country, 
it may continue for another 100 years, 500 years. There are some 
estimates that the areas of contamination by military

[[Page H1394]]

hazardous waste are such that at the current rate, it may take over 
1,000 years.
  Toxic explosive wastes of our military activities here in the United 
States, unexploded ordnance on formerly-used defense installations, 
probably contaminates at least 25 million acres in the United States, 
and, indeed, that number could be as much as twice as high, approaching 
50 million acres or more. Sadly, nobody can even give an accurate 
appraisal of this problem, but we do know that at the current rate of 
spending, which is less than $300 million a year, this problem of many 
billion dollars of magnitude will take centuries to return the land to 
safe and productive uses. Sadly, some areas of this country are so 
damaged that we cannot even attempt to clean them up at all.
  Mr. Speaker, unexploded ordnance is a serious problem today. Human 
activity and wildlife is encroaching on more and more of these sites as 
our neighborhoods grow, as our cities sprawl, and, at the same time, 
the natural rhythm of nature, flooding, earthquakes, landslides, aided 
and abetted by human activity, exposes these dangers as the land mines, 
as the unexploded bombs and shells work their way to the surface. Today 
across America we are finding lost and forgotten unexploded ordnance 
that in some cases was intentionally buried in a feeble attempt just to 
get rid of it, or we find shells that were fired and missed their mark 
and did not explode as intended. These are acute dangers.
  I recall one example that occurred in San Diego where two children, 
actually there were three, who were playing on a vacant lot in a 
subdivision that was formerly military territory. This had been used as 
a bombing ring, as a target. These children found an unexploded shell, 
started playing with it. It detonated. It killed two of them and 
seriously injured a third.
  At the sites that I visited today, there is a child care center on 
the campus of American University that has been closed because the 
level of toxicity from arsenic is so high that it poses a threat to 
human health. Across the road there is a grand home that belongs to the 
Korean Ambassador, and the whole backyard has been excavated away, as 
they are dealing there again with high levels of soil contamination. 
There are acres and acres of this site next to the American University 
campus and some that is on the campus itself that was used to test 
chemical weapons during World War I. At the height of the activity, 
there were almost 2,000 people working on this area. There were over 
100 buildings. They were testing things like mustard gas, arsenic. 
There were circles where they tied animals and subjected them to the 
gas. There were areas where they manufactured these chemical weapons.
  When the war was over, we were pretty haphazard about what happened 
there. In some cases, the buildings were so contaminated, they just 
burned them, and then covered them up. There was no careful accounting 
of the materials, and we have found over the years that some of the 
shells and explosives and toxics have been exposed.
  There was some construction there of late, in the last decades, in 
the 1990s, and as they were bulldozing away, they found shells that 
contained toxic explosives. There was a glass container that was broken 
in the late 1990s during construction that sent workers to the 
hospital. There was phosphorus that was encountered that when the 
container was broken open and the phosphorus was exposed to the air, it 
exploded into flame. Now, this is an area that is developed with homes 
and a university campus less than a 30-minute bike ride from where I am 
speaking this evening. We were done with it by 1919, and yet we have 
yet to thoroughly decontaminate the area.
  Now, there are many targets of frustration that citizens can have to 
direct their anger and concern. They can be frustrated and angry with 
the Department of Defense or the Corps of Engineers or the EPA or local 
authorities. People have legitimate concerns about these and other 
agencies about what they have done in the past and what they are doing 
now. But sadly, there is one participant in this battle that is missing 
in action: the United States Congress.

  Only we in Congress can set adequate funding levels, can budget 
clearly, make sure enough money is appropriated to do the job right. 
Congress can pinpoint managerial responsibility and establish the rules 
of the game. It is not acceptable to me, and I hope not acceptable to 
the American public, for Congress to occasionally step in from the 
sidelines, complain, protest, perhaps shift already inadequate budget 
resources from one high-priority project to another. This is worse than 
a zero-sum game and does not advance the goal of protecting the public. 
Congress needs to report for duty and needs to provide the 
administrative and financial tools that are necessary.
  Now, I am not talking about the active ranges and military readiness. 
There are issues there, but that is a separate topic for another time. 
My concern is for the closed, the transferred or the transferring 
properties where the public is exposed, soon will be exposed, or 
unsuspecting children and members of the public could potentially be 
exposed in the future. More than 1,000 years to clean up these sites is 
not an appropriate timetable when people are at risk, and they are, in 
fact, at risk every day.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to provide the resources to solve this problem, 
not in 1,000 years or 300 years, but in the lifetime of our children. 
If we do this, provide the momentum, the energy, there will be 
improvement in technology, the development of appropriate partnerships 
that will mean we can make a quantum improvement in our ability to find 
these hazards, the unexploded ordnance, to decontaminate the sites, to 
have the infrastructure companies train personnel to do it right.
  I do believe that if we in this Chamber made a commitment that we 
would get the job done, say, in the next 75 years, it could create such 
a burst of enthusiasm and energy, that, in fact, we could get the job 
done far sooner.
  Our goal in Congress should be to make sure that the administration 
and that every Member in the House and the Senate understands what is 
going on; what is going on in their State, what is going on from border 
to border, coast to coast, because this is a problem in every single 
State in the Union. Our goal is to make sure that there is somebody, 
one person, who is in charge. Our goal is to make sure that there is 
enough funding so that we can at least get the cleanup done this 
century, hopefully sooner, and that no child will be at risk for death, 
dismemberment, or serious illness as a result of the United States 
Government not cleaning up after itself.
  I come here tonight with serious concern about the environment and 
with initially a plea for bipartisan cooperation in Congress, in the 
House and in the Senate, and with the administration to solve this 
problem. That is, in fact, what should be our approach to protecting 
our environment, to making our communities more livable and our 
families safe, healthy and more economically secure.

                              {time}  2000

  It should be in a bipartisan, objective, thoughtful approach.
  Mr. Speaker, I will tell the Members that I have been deeply 
concerned by the events that have occurred with this new 
administration. There was in fact an opportunity to take the rhetoric 
of Governor Bush on the campaign trail, and the rhetoric that we heard 
from President Bush as he was installed in office, to reach out, to be 
a compassionate conservative, to work together to solve America's 
problems. That was what we heard on the campaign trail.
  But, as some of us were concerned about on the floor of this Chamber, 
as we spoke out during the last campaign, it is important to look at a 
candidate's performance, not just the words.
  Frankly, I was concerned that this administration that we have now 
with President Bush, because of its past record, would not measure up 
to the rhetoric, the soft and fuzzy language we were hearing on the 
campaign trail.
  Sadly, my worst fears have in fact been confirmed. I will tell the 
Members candidly, even though I was a strong opponent of the President 
on the campaign trail, and I had no illusions based on his record as 
Governor of Texas that he was going to be particularly environmentally 
sensitive, frankly, I was shocked at what we have been visited with as 
a nation in the first hours of this administration.
  We have heard them push ahead with proposals to solve our energy 
crisis,

[[Page H1395]]

not with the summoning of a call to arms to use our energy more 
thoughtfully, more carefully, more constructively to conserve. Instead, 
they are pushing ahead with their proposal to drill for oil in the 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even though this will take perhaps a 
decade, even though this is opposed by the majority of the American 
public, even though this will be a false proposal to provide energy 
security for the United States.
  The Secretary of Energy managed to make an entire speech about the 
so-called energy crisis that we are in right now, and there was 
profound concern expressed in calling for building 1,600 new generation 
plants, and virtually no word about conservation. I believe there was 
one line about energy conservation.
  There was no word about the opportunity to conserve oil by improving 
the mileage of American vehicles, even though this is the area in which 
it would be easiest for us to take aggressive action.
  Indeed, this administration is proposing a budget that will cut the 
budget of the Department of Energy 7 percent and cut money for energy 
conservation 10 percent, an absolute wrong-headed approach for energy 
conservation.
  This administration took action to reverse the cleanup regulation for 
hardrock mining, returning to regulations from 1980 that do not require 
mining companies to pay for their own cleanup and restoration when 
mining for silver, gold, and other metals. That is absolutely 
outrageous, and completely out of sync with where the American public 
is.
  This administration is failing to regulate CO2 emissions from power 
plants. This is despite explicit campaign promises from candidate Bush 
that he was going to introduce mandatory legislation to deal with a 
reduction of CO2 emissions. This was a formal presentation of the most 
highly-scripted campaign perhaps in our Nation's history. They knew 
exactly what they were doing.
  Indeed, President Bush as a candidate attacked, during the debate 
with Vice President Gore, attacked the Vice President, who has a 
lifetime of working to protect the environment, because he was too 
soft; because he, Gore, was not willing to embrace what candidate Bush 
was promising, but what President Bush turned his back on, changed his 
mind on, conveniently, after the election when he was facing a little 
pressure to follow through on his campaign promise.
  They are taking action in this administration to delay implementation 
of the roadless areas protection policy until May, and most people feel 
that they are simply embracing delays and catering to the special 
interests that want to open these areas more to timber companies, to 
off-road vehicles, and that this is just the first step to repeal this 
important protection.
  This administration, with its about-face on the campaign pledge for 
the CO2 emissions, is not just breaking a pledge that was made to the 
American voters. This is having a destabilizing effect on our efforts 
to work with other national governments to follow through on the Kyoto 
accords, on the greenhouse emissions treaty. It is angering important 
allies, and dodging the United States' responsibility to reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions.
  It seems to me disingenuous to point a finger at developing countries 
like China and India and say that they have to solve the problem when 
the United States, as the greatest polluter of greenhouse gases, 
emitting six times the world average per capita, twice as much as our 
allies in developed countries like Japan and Germany, when the United 
States fails to step forward and to provide leadership in this global 
concern.

  The administration, the President, suggests that we need more time to 
study whether or not we have a problem with greenhouse gases and global 
warming, despite the overwhelming consensus of the environmental and 
scientific community since having 8 of the last 10 years be the highest 
temperatures on record; as we are seeing the ice caps shrink, as we see 
glaciers shrink.
  The rest of the world knows that we have a problem, and that it is 
time for the United States to assume leadership.
  In fact, President Bush could just simply listen to members of his 
own cabinet. The Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, in his 
previous life as chairman and CEO of Alcoa Aluminum, likened global 
warming to a potential disaster on the par of a nuclear holocaust. This 
was 2 years ago that Secretary of the Treasury, in his prior life as a 
respected business leader, was saying, we need to get serious. Now 
President Bush and this administration are falling back from our global 
responsibility.
  I had an eye-opening experience on the campus of American University 
on the hazards of arsenic. As I was looking at that site of the former 
military test ground for chemical weapons at American University in the 
Northwest part of the District of Columbia, I thought about this 
administration and wondered if we could get them excited about it, 
because this, after all, is the administration that has now recently 
revoked the arsenic rule, dismantling a rule that was mandated by 
Congress to reduce the level of carcinogenic arsenic in water from 50 
parts per billion to 10 parts per billion and provide healthier 
drinking water for the American public.
  This is not some crazy standard that is being proposed by the rabid 
environmentalists in the Clinton administration, this is the standard 
of the European Union, of the World Health Organization. This was the 
standard that was recommended for the American public for its 
protection. Yet, this administration has now revoked that rule.
  It is hard to imagine what would have happened if candidate Bush had 
spoken what was in his mind and his heart on the campaign trail. I 
think if he had proposed revoking the arsenic rule as a candidate, I do 
not think we would have had to worry about hanging chads in Florida. I 
do not think the election would have even been close, the election 
where Vice President Gore got the majority of votes of the American 
public.
  This administration has proposed eliminating Project Impact, a 
creative project with the Federal Emergency Management Administration 
that is working with over 2,500 partners in the private sector around 
the country, and dozens and dozens of governments are working to 
eliminate hazards before they occur from flooding, hurricane, and 
earthquake.
  This administration is ignoring the energy crisis in ways that could 
have the most impact now. If we ask any of the experts in the energy 
field, there is only one thing that is going to make a difference in 
the short term to provide more energy for those of us in the West who 
are having a serious problem, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. 
Because of the drought, we have been supplying energy that we cannot 
afford to share, actually, with our friends in California. We are 
paying far higher prices for the privilege. Yet, if we ask the experts 
in industry, in the environmental community, in business, in the 
neighborhoods and local government, the only thing that is going to 
make a difference now is energy conservation: making do with what we 
have in a more creative way.
  There are simple things we can do. Painting the roofs in California a 
light color that is reflective could cut the energy requirement for air 
conditioning by 30 percent. But where are we hearing a call to arms 
from this administration for people to do something right now that is 
going to make a difference in cutting down on the waste of energy? We 
listen in vain. It is not on their radar screen.
  We have seen this administration move forward threatening the 
designation of important national monuments. One of the areas that the 
last administration will be known for for generations in a positive way 
is moving to protect critical designations of national monuments, the 
most designations since the Antiquities Act was first used by President 
Teddy Roosevelt almost a century ago.
  Now this administration has signaled its intention to revisit these 
national monument designations. They want to have more comment to see 
if there is more that could be done for vehicle use, grazing, 
extracting more water, and mining that could alter or threaten these 
national treasures.
  We have seen the budget that has been submitted by this 
administration

[[Page H1396]]

that was going to be more compassionate, kinder, gentler. They are, in 
their rush to have a tax cut that was supposed to only be $1.6 
trillion, and now is over $2 trillion and counting in terms of the 
proposal they want, they are, in order to be able to carve out money in 
the budget to do this, they are reducing funding for everything from 
child care assistance for low-income families, programs to combat child 
abuse, cutting funding for the Interior Department, the EPA, and 
important bipartisan conservation agreements.
  As I mentioned, this budget proposes a 7 percent reduction in the 
budget of the Department of Energy when allegedly some people in this 
administration think we have an energy crisis, and a 10 percent 
reduction in energy conservation when this is the only approach that is 
going to make a difference this year.
  I recently had lunch with the retiring superintendent of Yellowstone 
Park, Michael Finley, a creative, brilliant public servant who has 
served us, and served us well, for over 30 years.
  Mr. Finley, and I think it is no coincidence that he is an Oregonian 
and has this reverence for the treasure that he was able to have 
stewardship for, he called forth the critical requirement to control 
the use of snowmobiles in our national parks, like Yellowstone.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. Speaker, it is a tragedy and a travesty to have people roaring 
through at 60 miles an hour, 80 miles an hour, spewing forth pollution, 
the noise, the hazard to wildlife, the hazard to the air, the hazard to 
the tranquility that other park-goers treasure and, indeed, a risk to 
each other in terms of the death that results from the reckless 
operation.
  This administration is now reviewing the important Yellowstone-Grand 
Tetons rule and possibly settling lawsuits with snowmobile groups in 
order to reverse the rulemaking, an outrage for these national 
treasures. Again, candidate Bush gave no hint that he would be involved 
in such reckless antienvironmental activity.
  Another area that is going to have significant environmental 
inconveniences has to do with the judicial process. One of the things 
that concerned a number of us when candidate Bush was running for 
office was his identification of people like Justice Scalia and Justice 
Thomas as his role models for judicial candidates that he was going to 
nominate for our highest courts.
  Given the environmental record of those two justices, it did not give 
much comfort to people who care about protecting the environment, 
because increasingly given the gridlock in Congress, citizens have to 
resort to our courts for the enforcement of environmental laws; and 
sometimes if there is an administration that is recalcitrant and bent 
on doing things like we are talking about with this administration, 
sometimes recourse to the courts is the only avenue open to citizens to 
protect the environment.
  Mr. Speaker, I found it extraordinarily disconcerting that this 
administration has chosen to reverse a policy implemented by President 
Eisenhower over 50 years ago to provide the American Bar Association as 
a nonpartisan impartial body that would review the qualifications of 
judicial nominees.
  This has served us well, Republican, Democrat, conservative and 
liberal. Every President since Eisenhower has relied on this screening 
process to help ensure, regardless of the philosophy of the candidates 
in question, to ensure the highest quality in terms of their standards, 
their qualifications.
  This administration has decided to not have that impartial 
professional review from the bar association. They have removed the ABA 
from this role of interviewing the peers of the nominees and other 
people in the legal community about their competence, their integrity, 
and their judicial temperament; and instead it is all going to be done 
in the White House with the aid and assistance of organizations that 
are by no stretch of the imagination impartial.
  In fact, you have seen in the newspapers of this country the 
expressions of glee on the part of the most reactionary elements that 
they have been able to push the ABA, making it easier to be able to 
have the most extreme people nominated and make it easier to confirm.
  Finally, I would reference the repeal of the ergonomic standards for 
repetitive stress. This was important in terms of the work that is 
done. And I am not concerned frankly by the majority of the American 
employers. The vast majority of the people that I represent in Oregon, 
in areas that I have worked around the country, I am confident that 
these rules would have been easy for the vast majority of the business 
community to comply with; but in fact, the majority of them probably 
did not even need these rules in the first place. That did not mean 
that those rules were not important.
  I wonder if representatives of this administration had talked, as I 
had, to a woman who was a chicken-thigh deboner, a woman who worked 8 
hours, 10 hours, 12 hours a day in a cold workplace dealing with 
semifrozen chicken carcasses that speed past her, the same repetitive 
motion time and time again, talking about what happened to her, to her 
hands, to the amazing stress and the mind-numbing activity. It was for 
a woman like that that we needed to have that ergonomic rule.
  There was a gentleman within an hour's drive from where we are, on 
Capitol Hill this evening, who is a chicken catcher, who catches 
chickens at the factory farms hour after hour after hour in the 
sweltering heat gathering them up, the feathers, the dust for hours at 
a time and carrying them to be loaded to go off for slaughter.
  This is back-breaking, mind-numbing work; and these people need the 
benefit of the ergonomics rule. It is estimated that the stress and 
strain of repetitive-stress injury costs the economy over $50 billion a 
year, but it is the largest single workplace safety and health problem 
in the United States today.
  It is not just cost. It is the toll on workers who do not have the 
benefit in many cases of enlightened employers, the protection of 
unions for whom this rule promulgated by OSHA would have made all the 
difference in the world.
  This President signed in to law legislation to overturn these 
standards and is going to have a serious effect on the health and 
welfare of tens of thousands of American workers who need this help the 
most.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a summary of some of the most depressing actions 
on the part of this administration in just the first 3 months. These 
are not the actions of candidate Governor George Bush. These are 
activities that in some cases violate explicit campaign promises, 
misleading the American public about its intentions. There are things 
that are going to have serious consequences for decades to come.
  Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that we will have an opportunity to review 
in greater detail these activities on the floor of this Chamber. I am 
hopeful that the American public is going to push back to hold this 
administration accountable for the specifics and the rhetoric that was 
embodied on the campaign trail.
  It is important for us to take several of these items to be able to 
focus on them, to make sure that the American public is, in fact, 
heard.
  I think there is no area that perhaps there is a greater difference 
between where the American public is and where this administration is 
pushing than drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is 
one of the premier approaches to this administration for solving the 
energy crisis that they are talking about.
  Bear in mind, as I mentioned, this administration is not proposing an 
increase in conservation. In fact, they are proposing to cut 
conservation dollars. They are proposing to cut the budget for the 
Department of Energy. Yet they are proposing to solve the problem by 
drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
  This refuge is a more sensitive area than Prudoe Bay. It is a 
resting, nesting and breeding area for over 160 species of birds, 
including species that visit each of the lower 48 States.
  It is known as America's Sarengetti because of the huge herds of 
caribou, 130,000 of them that calf and rear their young on the coastal 
plane. These are the herds that provide subsistence for native Alaskans 
in an area whose way of life would be destroyed by a disruption of the 
herd.
  We could talk about the disruption of the habitat of significant 
polar bear denning habitat, but the time this

[[Page H1397]]

evening actually does not permit me to go into the detail that I would; 
but suffice it to say that this is an area of deep, deep concern for 
many in the environmental community, because 95 percent of Alaska North 
Slope is already available for oil and gas exploitation and leasing.
  This Wildlife Refuge is only the remaining 5 percent and it is the 
most sensitive. It is an area first and foremost that makes no sense in 
terms of a timely reaction to the energy problems that we have now.
  First of all, only about 1 percent of the State that is having the 
most difficulty, California, comes from petroleum-based sources. Of 
that 1 percent, the Arctic Wildlife Refuge is not going to help at all. 
It will take conservatively 10 years before this oil is going to flow 
and be available.
  But reflect for a moment the total amount of oil that would be 
available, according to reasonable projections, is only about a 6-month 
supply for the American public. It is an amount, to put it in 
perspective, that we could save if we simply increase the miles per 
gallon of SUVs in this country 3 miles a gallon. Three miles a gallon, 
we would not have to drill at all.
  Okay. Maybe that is a radical notion to take SUVs and have a 3-mile 
per gallon improvement. Forgive me, but let us suggest a less radical 
proposal, because the mileage fleet numbers for the United States this 
year are tied for a 20-year low. Just taking that 20-year low and 
improving it \1/2\ mile per gallon across the board for the fleet, we 
would not have to drill in the Arctic.
  But what about energy security some of my colleagues suggest? This is 
an area that will improve America's energy independence and security by 
being able to exploit our own resources. This is perhaps the most 
bizarre notion that we are going to take an aging pipeline, 800 miles 
long that already has problems, and we are going to rely for our energy 
security for protecting this 800-mile length of the pipeline.
  Everybody that I have talked to acknowledges that this 800-mile aging 
pipeline is already subjected to any deranged person, to hostile 
powers, to accident. If this is what we are relying on, we are 
potentially in big trouble in the future, because this 800-mile 
pipeline is a sitting duck for a terrorist, a foreign threat, or simply 
a deranged person in this country. We have seen them act.
  It is far more appropriate, I would suggest, rather than drilling in 
the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, for us to get serious about improving fuel 
efficiency, improving how we utilize energy in this country, if we were 
only to listen to the American public.

                              {time}  2030

  The vast majority of the American public says nothing, and something 
that I have found intriguing, even citizens of Alaska are conflicted on 
this issue. A slight majority in the most recent poll I have seen 
oppose development: 46.7 percent to 45.7 percent.
  Now, these are people for whom the permanent fund in Alaska State 
with no sales tax, no income tax, that runs on revenue from oil, and 
every man, woman and child who has resided in Alaska for more than a 
year gets a payment, I believe last year it was $2,000, these people 
with a financial stake in drilling, a slight majority oppose drilling 
in the ANWR. But this is not the limit of where the administration has 
reversed its direction and moved in the wrong way relating to the 
environment.
  Mr. Speaker, we look at hardrock mining. One of the things that I was 
pleased the last administration did was to deal with proposing the 
regulations under which the Bureau of Land Management dealt with 
hardrock mining. The Clinton administration, after 4 years of work 
listening to the public, listening to the experts, looking at the 
impact, issued new regulations. These 3809 hardrock mining regulations 
required that the companies that mine for silver, for gold, copper, 
lead and zinc, that they have to administer and pay for cleaning and 
restoration efforts on the land once the mine closes to reduce the risk 
of water pollution. Reversing these regulations will open legal 
loopholes for the mining industry and allow them to evade cleanup costs 
after they finish mining.
  From Pennsylvania to Montana to my State of Oregon, we have seen the 
devastation from the mining industry, often on public lands owned by 
the public. The mining companies are able to extract these minerals for 
a pittance, and bear in mind that the Mining Act of 1872 is exactly as 
it appeared when it was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant. 
It is not adequate to protect the American public. The American public 
does not get adequate value for the minerals that are extracted under 
it, unless you think $250 an acre, in some cases $5 an acre, is 
adequate payment to the American public for the ability to exploit, 
extract, and then leave ravished land.
  These standards have aggravated the mining industry. They have 
prompted numerous lawsuits, and now the Bush administration has 
requested the return to the inadequate, inferior regulations of 1980.
  Mr. Speaker, I am frankly shocked that we have seen this reversal. I 
am disappointed at a time when I would hope that there would be some 
areas that would be exempt from this extreme activity. According to 
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog agency that has helped us a 
great deal to sort of focus a spotlight on this, a nonpartisan group 
that is looking over our shoulders, the return to the old rule would 
allow mining practices to continue that will cost taxpayers more than 
$1 billion to clean up.
  I think it is another example where we cannot afford these type of 
reversals of the hard, painstaking activity of the previous 
administration.
  Mr. Speaker, I referenced earlier in my opening summary that the 
administration has turned its back on the arsenic rules. I mentioned 
that this was something that was heavy on my mind because I had visited 
polluted sites here in the District of Columbia where arsenic 
contamination is something that we are spending millions of dollars to 
try to eliminate, yet last week the Environmental Protection Agency, 
and it is not just EPA, it is the Environmental Protection Agency, the 
same agency that was caught flat-footed when President Bush reversed 
himself on his explicit campaign promise to reverse CO2 emissions, the 
EPA has announced its intention to withdraw a new drinking water 
regulation on arsenic that was approved by the Clinton administration.
  Administrator Whitman announced that the EPA will propose to withdraw 
the pending standard that was issued on January 22 that would have 
reduced the acceptable level of arsenic in water from 50 parts per 
billion to 10 parts per billion.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a reduction in a standard of a known carcinogen, 
and it is not some wild-eyed environmental proposal. And forgive me at 
times for being a wild-eyed environmentalist, which is something, given 
the alternative, is not that bad. This 10-parts-per-billion standard is 
already the standard in place to protect the people in the European 
Union. This is the World Health Organization standard that is already 
in place. At least 11 million Americans rely on drinking water with 
arsenic standards higher than the proposed standard, and one that I 
think should give pause to Americans across the country.
  This 55-parts-per-billion standard was adopted in 1942 by the Public 
Health Service. This was before we had proven the causal connection 
between arsenic and cancer. The National Academy of Sciences found that 
the EPA's old standard was not protective of health and should be 
reduced as promptly as possible. We do not need to study this anymore. 
It should be reduced as promptly as possible.

  The National Academy of Sciences found in its unanimous 1999 report, 
Arsenic in Drinking Water, that the prior standard that the Bush 
administration proposes that we go back to ``does not,'' and I am 
quoting, ``achieve EPA's goal for public health protection; and, 
therefore, requires downward revision as promptly as possible.''
  The Academy found that drinking water at the current standard that 
the Bush administration now wants to go back to could easily result in 
a fatal cancer risk of 1 in 100. That is a cancer risk 1,000 times 
higher than the EPA allows for food, and 100 times higher than the EPA 
has ever allowed for tap water contaminants. Why in the name of all 
that is holy does this administration plan to go back, to reverse that 
standard, to study it further?

[[Page H1398]]

  Arsenic is found in the tap water of millions of American homes. Over 
26 million American homes have levels averaging over 5 parts per 
billion. Scientists point out that not everybody is equally 
susceptible. It is the children and pregnant women who are especially 
susceptible. A wider margin of safety might be needed when conducting 
risk assessments, the National Academy found, because of variations of 
the sensitivity of these individuals. But the Bush administration has 
proposed that we go back to the standard that was good enough for 1942.
  Mr. Speaker, I am deeply concerned that this Congress, in its rush to 
focus on a very narrow agenda from the administration where they do not 
want to talk about these inconvenient proposals, these inconvenient 
reminders of their campaign pledges, they want to narrow the discussion 
to their economic agenda, and actually I do not have any qualms about 
the American public turning a searchlight on that proposal, on the $1.6 
trillion tax cut that was conjured up by Presidential candidate Bush 2 
years ago because it was just right. We did not need it. The economy 
was rolling along and, therefore, we needed to return the surplus. Now 
the same proposal is needed when the economy is going down because that 
is somehow magically going to stimulate the economy. But of course that 
was not going to stimulate the economy 2 years ago.
  There is a certain discontinuity, I find, in terms of that argument, 
and I would wish that the American public would focus on it. I would 
wish that the American public would focus on the illusory $5.6 trillion 
surplus that the administration is claiming, except if they use the 
same budget assumptions that the recent commission reporting on Social 
Security and Medicare reported on, that the budget surplus evaporates. 
They assume that we are going to spend at a lower rate than even the 
revolution of Mr. Gingrich when they were riding high, and we never 
achieved the 4 percent reduction. They are assuming that tax breaks 
that we know are going to be reinstituted somehow are magically going 
to go away. And the fact that millions of Americans are going to be 
subjected to the alternative minimum tax, and we know that we are going 
to fix that at a cost of probably $400 billion, all of these are 
ignored.
  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to debate these on the floor of the Chamber. 
It would be nice to have debate time rather than rushing it through. At 
least our colleagues in the Senate are going to take some time and 
deliberate on it. I think it is ironic that this tax cut my colleagues 
think is so important, they have permitted 1 hour debate. At a time 
when we were standing around waiting for my colleagues to come back 
from meetings across the country, we could have had an opportunity to 
discuss it, if not amend it.
  While we have that debate, it is important that every American 
reflect on what is going on in the back rooms here in Washington, D.C., 
what is going on in the agencies as we are having campaign pledges 
reversed, as we are having campaign promises ignored, and we are having 
vital protections for the American public put at risk.
  I came to Congress committed to work in a bipartisan, cooperative way 
for the Federal Government to be a better partner working with 
communities to make them more livable, to make our families safe, 
healthy and more economically secure.
  Mr. Speaker, I fear that reversing the arsenic standard, drilling in 
the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, ignoring energy conservation, and turning 
our back on our leadership in global climate change is not in keeping 
with that goal.
  Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that there will be time for Congress to 
give voice to what the American public is concerned about in protecting 
the environment, and urge the Bush administration to reconsider these 
ill-advised policies. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
discuss these issues this evening.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from 
Oregon, Mr. Blumenauer, for his leadership in the fight to build 
livable communities in a livable world.
  I rise tonight to speak out against the pollution of our waters, our 
atmosphere, our wilderness, and our children.
  Arsenic causes cancer. Global temperatures are climbing every year.
  These are not wild theories, they are established science.
  Nonetheless, the Bush Administration is turning back the clock to 
1942 on arsenic regulations, is seeking to plunder the Arctic Wildlife 
Refuge, and is declaring that the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate 
Change is dead on arrival.
  As a candidate, George W. Bush declared, ``We will require all power 
plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of 
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a 
reasonable period of time.''
  He also states that voluntary reductions were insufficient: ``in 
Texas, we've done better with mandatory reductions, and I believe the 
nation can do better.''
  I agree. We can do better.
  However, as President, Mr. Bush has reversed himself on carbon 
dioxide, claiming that the nation cannot afford to reduce emissions.
  The fact is, we can't afford not to.
  We cannot erase decades of progress.
  We cannot wipe out the accomplishments of such wild eyed radicals as 
Richard Nixon who signed the Endangered Species and Clean Air Acts.
  We have to move forward, not backward.
  We have to set drinking water standards that will safeguard human 
health.
  We need to establish protections for the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge and other irreplaceable wilderness areas.
  And we need to live up to our commitments to reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions because global warming threatens the well-being of the entire 
planet.
  Tomorrow, as a first step in restoring our national and international 
commitments to a cleaner environment, I will be introducing the Carbon 
Dioxide Emissions and Global Climate Change Act.
  This resolution will send a strong message to the President and the 
country that Congress will hold Mr. Bush to his campaign promises, that 
it recognizes that global warming poses grave dangers to our 
environment, our economy, and our national security, and that this 
country must seek to reduce its CO2 emissions.
  As a member of the International Relations Committee, I am fully 
aware of the impact that abandoning our commitment to reduce greenhouse 
gas emissions will have on our allies in Europe and throughout the 
world.
  As a member of the human race, I am aware of the impact that it will 
have on our planet.
  We must uphold our commitments and responsibilities to the rest of 
the world.
  We are the biggest contributor to global warming, and we must also 
take the lead in reducing pollution.
  Clean air and clean water are the most basic of human rights.
  However, we have a President who apparently feels that arsenic is 
good for kids, that oil spills are good for caribou, and that excessive 
carbon dioxide is good for all of us.
  The American people disagree.
  They overwhelmingly oppose weakening arsenic standards, drilling in 
the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and abandoning CO2 reductions.
  We cannot turn back the clock, we cannot abandon our commitments, and 
we cannot give up this fight for our future.

                          ____________________