[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 91 (Tuesday, July 9, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H4412-H4416]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM POLLUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simmons). 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.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, ultimately the Federal Government has an 
important responsibility to protect the quality of life for our 
citizens. My sense is that it is important for us to promote liveable 
communities where the Federal Government is a partner to help make our 
families safe, healthy, and more economically secure.
  Unfortunately, when it comes to dealing with hazardous waste, we, as 
a Federal Government, have failed to follow through on our commitment. 
This is very serious business for most Americans. I, in the State of 
Oregon, have eleven Superfund sites. One in four Americans live within 
4 miles of a Superfund site. Ten million American children live within 
a short bicycle ride of a Superfund site. These are areas, some 1,200 
priority sites around the country, many of which are polluted by 
hazardous chemicals known to cause cancer, heart disease, kidney 
failure, birth defects and brain damage.
  There has been a very simple principle at work for over 20 years as 
far as the Federal Government is concerned, and that is that 
corporations, businesses that have been involved with serious pollution 
should clean up after themselves. If they are responsible for the 
environmental damage and the public health threats, they should be held 
financially accountable for their contaminated sites and should help 
keep them up.
  The law that we put in place in 1980 is based on this ``polluter 
pays'' principle. When the companies that are responsible for this 
pollution and the public health threats are unable to clean up after 
themselves, then the Federal Government steps in. And that part of that 
same legislation created the Superfund site, created a Superfund 
itself, that was to be supplied with money from a special tax on oil 
and chemical companies who, by and large, have been responsible for 
much of this pollution.
  The money from the tax was placed in a trust fund, the so-called 
Superfund, and designated for cleaning up polluted sites where the 
responsible party either could not pay or we were unable to identify 
them.
  Unfortunately, the tax that provides the Environmental Protection 
Agency with the funds to clean up these abandoned sites expired in 
1995. Part of the Gingrich revolution was simply a refusal to reenact 
the tax, despite the fact that every Congress and every President since 
its original enactment was supportive of that effort.
  Now, originally when they have refused to renew the tax in 1995, it 
was not an immediate disaster because over the years money had 
accumulated in the trust fund; and, indeed, at the time of the tax 
termination there was over $3.5 billion in 1996. But now that fund has 
dwindled from $3.8 billion down to a projected $28 million next year.
  This leaves us with three stark choices. We either reinstate the tax, 
we dramatically reduce our clean up efforts, or we force the taxpayers 
to pick up the tab from already strained budgets. The Federal 
Government now, as we know, is hemorrhaging red ink. We have gone from 
last year being concerned that we were somehow going to pay off the 
national debt too quickly, to a point where we are going to be 
borrowing over a trillion and a half dollars from the Social Security 
fund.

                              {time}  1900

  Sadly, the administration has chosen to abandon the notion of 
renewing the Superfund tax. It has chosen instead to slash the cleanup 
funding and to rely for what money will be available from the general 
fund. This is part of a pattern from this administration that is 
unsettling.
  In its first year, the Bush administration decreased the pace of 
cleanups by almost 45 percent, from an average of 87 sites per year in 
President Clinton's second term. It originally projected this year, the 
administration predicted that it would clean up 65 sites this year, but 
now that number will be only 40.
  Last month, the administration announced that it would be cutting 
funding for cleanup at 33 sites in 19 States. In addition to zeroing 
out the funding for these 33 sites altogether, it is severely 
underfunding sites of existing projects. We have two of them that I am 
following closely in Oregon, McCormick and Baxter creosote plant in 
Portland on the banks of the Willamette River, and a site designated 
Northwest Pipe and Casting Process Company, which is an area that is 
near a number of well areas and that drains into the Clackamas River 
which drains into that same Willamette River.
  I must say that I am rather frustrated at this attitude we have at 
this point. During the last presidential election, we had the 
candidates, both Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore, talking a good fight about 
being able to be forward protecting on the environment. Now when we 
have a chance to put it into action, we are not seeing the performance.
  It does not have to be that way. When we get a chance to work 
together, good things can happen. Earlier this Congress was able to 
work with the administration in a bipartisan fashion to deal with 
cleanup of brownfields, and we made some significant progress. These 
are the properties that are idle due to actual or potential 
contamination by hazardous substances and pollutants, by and large in 
our urban areas. We have an estimate of almost a half million of these 
brownfields sites nationally.
  We found that by moving to restore the environmental health of these 
sites it is an effective way to revitalize neighborhoods and in some 
cases an entire city. It can help communities become more livable in a 
number of ways. It improves the environment by cleaning up the toxic 
contaminants and preventing their spread and contamination and 
potential disease-causing aspects, side effects for individuals. The

[[Page H4413]]

cleanup makes the communities healthier and safer, and it targets 
reinvestments in our city.
  By providing redevelopment opportunities where infrastructure is 
currently in place, it saves taxpayers dollars over greenfield 
development out in pristine farmlands that would require new roads, 
utility, water, and would take away open space, productive farmland, 
wetlands that have other purposes that help stabilize the environment.
  We see significant job creation and economic development 
opportunities provided by brownfield cleanup, and it actually boosts 
the tax revenues for cities and towns by improving property tax bases. 
In fact, the EPA estimates that for every dollar of Federal money spent 
on brownfield cleanup, cities and States produce or leverage almost 
two-and-a-half dollars in private investment.
  Sort of a stark example. We have the opportunity to revitalize 
communities with investments in brownfields, and we have been able to 
work on that on a bipartisan basis, what has happened with Superfund, 
where Democrats, I assure my colleagues, are willing to step forward 
with progressive, environmentally sensitive Republicans and support the 
administration to make sure that we take advantage of these 
opportunities to protect the environment and revitalize the community.
  I am pleased to be joined by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. 
Inslee), my colleague from the Great Pacific Northwest, from the 
Seattle area, who has been very active on a whole range of 
environmental areas. I would be pleased to yield to him to comment, if 
he would, on corporate responsibility, environmental cleanup and where 
he sees us going in the months ahead.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman organizing this 
chance to address this because this is an interesting sort of coming-
together of two themes of American values, and one of those values is 
protect our natural resources for our children, and the other American 
value is responsibility and accountability and corporate 
responsibilities which certainly is in the news in a lot of different 
ways today.
  I have come to the floor tonight because I am so concerned that I 
think the administration is grossly on the wrong track on both these 
issues on an interesting sort of marriage of two values, where the 
administration is going absolutely backwards. Clearly we have an 
environmental challenge in making sure that our Superfund sites remain 
in operation to clean up these most toxic areas with PCB, DDT, 
creosote, you name it, in it. So we have got this environmental 
challenge and cleaning it up is an American value. Americans feel very 
strongly about cleaning up these sites so that we do not leave water 
pollution for our children for hundreds and hundreds of years.
  But there is another thing Americans feel strongly about, and that is 
responsibility for one's actions. That is why years ago this Chamber 
and the Senate adopted a Superfund plan that would make sure that 
polluters pay, not taxpayers, and Americans have felt for years that 
polluters who dump this toxic material into the soil ought to be the 
one, to the extent humanly possible, to pay for the cleanup, instead of 
John Q. Citizen or Mary Q. Citizen who pay their taxes, and Americans 
have felt for a long time that it is only right because why should the 
taxpayer have to pay when the polluter was the one who dumped the crud 
into the ground? That has been the law up until George W. Bush was 
elected President of the United States.
  Now he wants to change that. He wants to abandon this basic American 
value of personal responsibility and he wants to shift the cost of that 
onto the American taxpayer, and I think that is wrong.
  I think the continued American value is, one, we ought to continue 
the Superfund cleanup to get these sites done, and two, that the 
President is wrong in trying to stop the idea and abandon the idea of 
polluter pays and now make the rule in America being that the taxpayer 
pays, and somehow we have got to put it on the general fund for the 
taxpayer to fund these billions of dollars of cleanup, and I think that 
that is way out of touch with what Americans want to see happen here, 
and it is but yet one more, just one more manifestation of how the 
President's administration unfortunately has acted slavishly to these 
corporate interests instead of the general interests, and the President 
who has had a history, as we all know, in the oil and gas industry, 
cannot seem to break that history to answer the general needs of the 
public rather than the special needs of the polluting industries.
  This is not something that we are asking the President to sort of 
invent a new science or even a new type of legislation. We are just 
asking him to take his hands off the existing legislation, which 
requires polluters to pay for their own problems they created rather 
than the taxpayer. We are only asking him to do what has been the law 
for years and years and years and years, and that is why it is most 
discouraging that the President has seen fit to try to go backwards 
both on environmental policy and on the concept of personal 
accountability, and we are going to do everything we can to stop him in 
his efforts.
  In the State of Washington we have a number of Superfund sites. They 
are at risk with many other Superfund sites of not being funded because 
of the President's threats, and even if they are funded, we do not 
think they should be funded by the taxpayer. We think they should be 
funded by the polluter who dumped the stuff in the ground.
  I give my colleagues an example. In Bainbridge Island, where I live, 
one of the largest toxic waste sites in the West Coast is a former 
creosote plant and that for years and years and years the owners dumped 
creosote into the ground right on Bill Point which is a point just on 
Eagle Harbor there in Bainbridge Island. It is a beautiful location. 
Trouble is now it is one of the most toxic area substrata around 
because it is full of creosote, which is pretty ugly stuff. Sometimes 
when I go by, I can see it bubble up out of the water, and it is real 
stinky and black and it is quite toxic. We think that the polluters who 
put the creosote in the ground should be responsible for that cleanup, 
which is going to take years and years and years, rather than the 
taxpayers in the State of Washington or anywhere else in the United 
States, and yet the President wants to reduce that protection.
  I just give my colleague a little comment, too. We are now trying, 
just to tell him how nasty the stuff is, we are trying a new technology 
of injecting steam into the ground to try to break up the creosote so 
it can be pumped out, and it is an experiment, really one of the first 
or second times it is being tried anywhere in the Nation. We hope it 
works because if it does not work, we have got to build these walls to 
essentially have a bathtub to preserve this stuff so it does not keep 
leaking into Puget Sound and causing terrible things in the food chain, 
and if we have to do that, we have to pump water out of this literally 
for eternity.
  So this is very expensive and we think the one who put it in ought to 
be responsible. We think that the President should revisit this issue 
and stick with the existing view of the polluter being responsible 
rather than the taxpayer. We hope we are successful in this regard.
  Today the President gave a speech about corporate responsibility, and 
he said that corporations need to be more ethical, more responsible, 
and if he feels that way, why the heck is he trying to shift the costs 
off of corporations who dump creosote in the ground year after year 
after year after year, poisoning the atmosphere and the environment, 
and try to change that responsibility off the taxpayers? That is not in 
league with what I sense he was saying today, which is corporations 
ought to be responsible for their own conduct.
  So we will continue in our efforts, and I appreciate this opportunity 
to join my colleague to talk about this one particular issue that I am 
very concerned about.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman making that 
linkage because I think it is important.
  There is a lot of talk about corporate responsibility. There is a lot 
of talk now when the spotlight has been trained on some practices that 
are having a devastating effect on the pocketbook of Americans across 
the country, as people are getting their quarterly statements from 
their individual retirement accounts, their 401(k)s. They

[[Page H4414]]

have watched what has happened as the stock market has been hammered by 
questionable practices that are in turn being reflected in a loss of 
wealth for Americans.
  It is going to make it harder to do business, yet this notion of 
exercising corporate responsibility is something that could be simply 
done in terms of an area that would actually add value to every 
community around the country in terms of reestablishing this principle 
of polluter pays.
  Mr. INSLEE. I may just tell my colleague, we have got a lot of great 
corporations out there, too, that are being extremely responsible, and 
those sort of good actors are paying corporate taxes, the ones who are 
not polluting against the law, and what the President's proposal is 
doing is shifting the burden for the pollution of the bad actors onto 
the corporations as well as individual taxpayers. He is shifting the 
burden for the pollution off the bad actors onto the good corporations 
that are not polluting. So I mean it is not like just individuals are 
victims of the President's proposal here. The good corporations that 
are following environmental laws and taking care of their waste and 
recycling their products, and thank goodness I have got hundreds of 
them in my district, Microsoft being one. Why do we have to have 
Microsoft have to pay for some other corporation that is not following 
the law, that is dumping this stuff in the ground? So we are defending 
the corporations who are good neighbors and good community members 
against the perditions of those who are not, and George Bush is in 
league with those corporations that want to violate the law and dump 
this stuff in the ground, and we think that is just absurd and that is 
the best, most gracious language I can use.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the distinction because in 
the Northwest we have seen a significant increase in environmental 
consciousness, worked with programs like The Natural Step. We are 
seeing models of corporate responsibility where people are trying to 
reduce their footprint on the landscape, and we are seeing many small- 
and medium-sized businesses and consulting firms that are emerging that 
are practicing sustainable business models.
  The approach that is being taken here, shifting this onto the general 
fund, means that instead of identifying sources of pollution 
historically, it is going to put a greater burden on individuals and 
corporations who are actually doing an outstanding job. In some cases, 
it is in effect taxing them twice because they pay their share plus the 
share of people who are evading responsibilities.

                              {time}  1915

  Mr. INSLEE. If I may add, the other thing that is frankly disturbing 
to a lot of my constituents, is that this is just one more of a litany 
of these antienvironmental actions by this administration.
  Everybody makes a mistake. We are all human, and we do not expect 
perfection from the President. But when we look at the number of times 
that the President, this President, has sided with these special 
interests to the degradation of clean air and clean water, it really 
bothers the people I represent. I have lots of them come up to me and 
say, ``Whatever you do, just do not let him continue down this road.''
  It started with his efforts on arsenic in the water; then it has gone 
on to issues to gut the roadless area rule where we are trying to 
protect the last pristine areas in our forest areas; then the President 
ignores any affirmative action on global warming; and then the 
President takes this action that we are talking about trying to gut the 
Superfund sites. That was preceded 2 weeks ago by his efforts to reduce 
clean air rules.
  This is consistent with his actions, unfortunately, with the 
Securities and Exchange Commission, to date, where he appointed a 
gentleman, who, though a very nice person, very intelligent, is from 
the industry he is supposed to be regulating. Mr. Pitt from the SEC is 
supposed to be regulating the securities industry and the accounting 
industry, and that is who he represented. As a result, we have had no 
effective, meaningful reform in the last 6 months of this horrendous 
predation on American investors. Yet the President has not stood up for 
American values, he has stood up and allowed the special interests to 
dominate his administration to the degradation and damage of the 
American investors.
  So this is a consistent pattern where corporations, not all of them, 
but some of them, who have acted against the laws, have dominated his 
decision-making. And this is just another example of how an 
administration has gone off course. We hope he restores that and 
rethinks through this pattern of his.
  With that, I would like to thank the gentleman for an opportunity to 
join him this evening.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's thoughts 
and observations and the leadership the gentleman has provided, 
particularly in chairing for the minority the Subcommittee on Forests 
and Forest Health of the Committee on Resources. The gentleman has had 
an opportunity to train a searchlight on some of the practices that 
those who would not place quite the same premium on the environment 
would have. The gentleman has also provided leadership in pushing back 
on the notion of abandoning the roadless rule, where we had, what, 
almost 2 million comments in support of this important protection.
  Mr. INSLEE. Just one more comment, if I may, and I thank the 
gentleman for his compliments, I always accept those, but 96 percent of 
the Americans who commented on this wanted a strong roadless area bill 
to protect our pristine area, yet what did the President of the United 
States do? He ignored them.
  Now he is trying to back up on this rule to allow clear-cutting and 
roadless area rules. We are going to fight this. We feel very strongly 
about it.
  And I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate the gentleman's leadership.
  One of the areas we have been focusing on in dealing with Superfund 
needs to be in the area of hard rock mining. Frankly, there are a 
number of us who are concerned about the situation that is occurring in 
our Nation's wilderness areas that have basically been given away to 
mining interests with virtually no change since that law was enacted in 
1872, basically the same as when it was enacted and signed into law by 
President Ulysses S. Grant.
  There are those that argue that hard rock mining is the Nation's 
number one polluter. They are currently responsible for approximately 
70 Superfund sites. Of the 33 sites around the country that the 
administration sadly is talking about eliminating funding for, two of 
them were contaminated by hard rock mining companies in Montana. Yet, 
until recently, there were no requirements that the mining companies 
pay for the notion of cleaning up after themselves.
  That is how companies like W.R. Grace, who have been in the news for 
years with its notorious activities, were able to walk away from the 
site without being held responsible. Yet, last month, the 
administration issued a rule that would make filling our waterways with 
waste from hard rock mining mountaintop removal legal.
  Now, think about this for a moment: giving a grant of authority from 
the administration to the mining industry to legalize this notion of 
where they are just stripping away mountaintops and shoving it into 
streams to gain access to seams of coal.
  As if the Superfund law and the Clean Air Act were not enough, we 
have here a direct opportunity on the part of the administration to 
overturn important provisions of the Clean Water Act, all of this to 
protect an extraordinarily destructive mining practice. These companies 
have already buried over 800 miles of rivers and streams in West 
Virginia and Kentucky, all with the permission of the Army Corps of 
Engineers. But until this rule change goes through, it is still illegal 
for the Corps to allow waste from mining to be dumped in our Nation's 
waterways.
  Why? Why would the administration, instead of changing the Corps' 
practice to make them obey the law, why have they decided instead to 
change the law to make these actions legal? Think about the types of 
harmful fill we are talking about dumping into wildlife habitat and 
communities' drinking supplies. Hard rock mining waste includes 
construction and demolition debris. People have found coal ash waste,

[[Page H4415]]

old tires, car parts, and discarded appliances. They also often contain 
particularly dangerous toxic chemicals, such as cyanide, arsenic, and 
sulfuric acid.
  Mr. Speaker, this is serious business. We are approaching the 130th 
anniversary of the mining law of 1872, as I mentioned, signed into 
effect by President Ulysses S. Grant, essentially unchanged. We should 
be talking about how to make this outdated law stronger. We should not 
be taking an opportunity to roll back provisions of the Clean Water Act 
that are here to protect public health and the environment.

  We are already giving the mining industry public lands and minerals 
for 19th century recording prices. We are not requiring that these 
corporations, often foreign-owned, that are extracting this mineral 
wealth, give a portion of it back in the form of a tax or royalty to 
American taxpayers to put in our Treasury. And now we are allowing them 
to blow off the tops of mountains, bulldoze them away to bury rivers 
and streams.
  I would strongly suggest that instead of facilitating this type of 
behavior, it is important that we provide more corporate 
responsibility, provide more environmental protection, and we make sure 
that we are protecting the heritage that God has given this country.
  It is frustrating that we have not been able to give people the type 
of understanding of what is at stake. Remember, as I mentioned earlier, 
one in four Americans lives within 4 miles of a Superfund site. Now, 
these sites are hazardous waste, often abandoned warehouses, landfills 
and mines, and 85 percent of all Superfund sites have contaminated 
groundwater. Research suggests that there is a markedly increased risk 
for birth defects when women live close to Superfund sites early in 
pregnancy.
  A few of the hazardous chemicals that people are discovering on these 
sites include arsenic. We had a great deal of debate earlier in this 
Congress as the administration proposed rolling back protections on 
arsenic in the drinking water. Well, that frankly blew up, and the 
administration did retreat because the public knows arsenic in the 
drinking water is not a positive development. It is known to cause 
cancer of the lungs, bladder, and skin. It is also linked to cancer of 
the liver, kidney, colon, even nasal passages; and to a variety of 
noncancerous health effects, including heart disease, diabetes, adverse 
effects to the immune system, lungs, gastrointestinal tract, and 
thickening and discoloration of the skin.
  Lead is another serious area of pollution that can damage almost 
every organ and system in the human body, especially the immune and 
reproductive system, and can cause heart disease and kidney damage. It 
is particularly damaging to the central nervous system, especially for 
children, where it is well-known and accepted now that children 
suffering from exposure to lead can have serious brain damage, 
decreased IQ scores, slow growth, and cause hearing problems in infants 
or young children.
  We have serious problems with mercury on these Superfund sites that 
can cause brain and kidney damage and pose a high risk for adverse 
neurological development of fetuses. These are some of the hazards that 
we face with over 1,200 toxic waste sites on the Superfund national 
priority list.
  Congress should not be undercutting the polluter-pays principle and 
walking away from its financial responsibility. Some of these sites 
have been on the list for more than a decade. Last year, in a report 
requested by Congress, Resources for the Future calculated that 
implementing the Superfund program for the current decade is going to 
cost us from $14 billion to $16.5 billion. Now is not the time to walk 
away from the financing.
  I mentioned that it was, I felt, unfortunate that Congress allowed 
the corporate tax that funded the Superfund to expire in 1995 and that 
the administration has no plans to work with us to reinstate this tax. 
It has been that combination of funding that enabled us to clean up 
more than 800 toxic waste sites in communities across the country. 
During the last 5 years, we were averaging about 87 sites per year. 
Last year, in its first year, the Bush administration found that the 
pace of cleanup was down 45 percent. In 2 years, the administration 
expects to reduce the pace of cleanups by more than 50 percent more, 
along with shifting the responsibility for the cleanup.
  Now, we have seen, as a consequence, that the administration has gone 
to the General Fund for $634 million in 2001. It is proposing $700 
million this next year. When we had the Superfund in place that was 
funded by the tax, the General Fund only assumed about 18 percent of 
the program costs. Next year, if the President's proposals are adopted, 
they will be paying 54 percent of the associated costs, and soon, in 
the next year or two, the entire cost.
  Mr. Speaker, I find that to be unacceptable. We need to not be 
abandoning the principle of polluter-pays. We ought not to be putting 
more pressure on the beleaguered General Fund. We ought not to be 
cutting the pace of Superfund cleanup. After more than 20 years, if 
anything, we should be redoubling our efforts in providing this 
revitalization. We have, today, opportunity after opportunity to take a 
step back and to do what the American public wants us to do, which is 
more investment in areas that is going to protect the environment.
  Another critical area that we are having a great deal of discussion 
about on the floor of this Congress and in our committees deals with 
the situation we see in forest fires that have been raging across the 
West. In recent days, we have had 22 large fires in seven States.

                              {time}  1930

  We have had over 300 million acres already burned this year. For 
comparison purposes, that is more than twice what we have had over the 
last 10 years on average, and we are only halfway through this fire 
season. There are approximately 10,000 men and women currently fighting 
the fires throughout the West. It has been important enough for the 
President and a number of governors to be involved with touring. We 
have been watching homes being lost. To date we have had nearly 1,500 
homes across the West and over 35,000 residents have been evacuated. I 
would hope that this would be another area where we might be able to 
assess what has happened and draw the appropriate environmental 
conclusions and lessons, particularly since we are facing what is 
likely to be the worst fire season in memory.
  It is important that these catastrophic fires serve as a wake-up 
call, not senseless recrimination, attacking. In some cases we have 
even seen people trying to blame this on environmentalists, incredible 
as it sounds. This is an opportunity for us to reflect on the 
transformation of our natural systems of forest and even astrospheric 
chemistry dealing with global warming. We need to have a cultural shift 
to a more conservative approach, respecting the fragility of these 
systems and our dependence upon them. We need to stop this curious 
blame game.
  It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the environmentalists 
who caused the drought. It is not the environmentalists who have had a 
policy for the last 50 years of instantly suppressing any fire anywhere 
so that what we have done is we have stopped the periodic fires that 
have swept through the forests of the West. We have seen the number of 
trees and other flammable material expand dramatically, and it has been 
actually compounded by logging practices that have opened up many of 
these forests and removed the most mature trees, trees that are the 
most fire resistant, and leave the tinder behind. And it was 
interesting 2 years ago when we went through this cycle, we found that 
the areas that had been the most heavily logged were the ones that had 
the worst forest fires.
  This current fire season will be the worst in the past half century, 
and I am hopeful that we will be able as a Congress, we will be able as 
a country to take a step back and face the hard questions about current 
forest management policies, funding for various wildfire management 
programs, and look at the Federal role in protecting State, Federal, 
and private land and, yes, take a hard look at the land uses that we 
are permitting and encouraging in this area.
  We need to return to ecology 101. Small ground fires that once 
regulated the vegetation in our great western woods need to be returned 
to the ecosystem. The brush and small trees that

[[Page H4416]]

would burn while older larger trees survive were part of a natural 
process that made the forest healthier. We need to recognize that a 
century of aggressive fire suppression has rendered western forests 
susceptible to these massive conflagrations that cost us billions of 
dollars annually and that much of the cost and the agony can be 
attributed to structure protection for homes that are in the forested 
fringe.
  There is a lot of talk these days about the wild land-urban 
interface. It is a serious question, Mr. Speaker, because we have in 
this interface between the developed areas on formerly undeveloped 
forest land, it is putting people in direct contact with what earlier 
had been a healthy natural phenomenon of wildfires that have just 
rushed through. We found that people have a difficult time accepting 
the reality. A recent survey in the Arizona Republic showed that people 
in this wild land-urban interface have an attitude that, well, they 
know that it is risky, but I think I will take my chances because it is 
not that risky. Of course it is not just their chance. They will not 
bear the costs alone when the worst scenario plays out. Since 1985, 
wildfires have burned over 10,000 homes.
  I see my good friend Mr. Tancredo from Colorado in the Chamber. My 
understanding is that there will be a million people in the foreseeable 
future in Colorado who will be located under current policies in areas 
that are heavily forested, putting them in harm's way and giving us a 
very difficult choice about allowing the fires to burn on, risking 
people's homes and lives, or making some changes to deal with a more 
rational approach. It is not appropriate for us to continue to put 
thousands of men and women in harm's way needlessly, and in some cases 
there are bizarre situations that are a result of human activity on 
formerly wild forest areas.
  We had in Fort Windgate, New Mexico, firefighters having to stay away 
from certain areas because there were explosions of unexploded ordnance 
beneath the surface of the public land in areas that had been used for 
target practice. We had this a couple of years ago in Storm King State 
Park in New York where firefighters were out fighting a blaze and all 
of a sudden explosions started to occur. This was a result of shelling 
from cadets from West Point.

  Well, it is not just these unusual situations that deal with 
unexploded ordnance in military activities. We have to have a 
comprehensive approach to how we are going to permit activities into 
the forest land, who is going to bear the risk, what we can do to 
minimize that in terms of if we are not going to prohibit it outright, 
to regulate where it is, building materials, what is happening in terms 
of landscaping. In too much of the West, people have just turned their 
back on their responsibility, creating serious, serious problems.
  Since 1970, over 2.8 million housing units have been constructed 
along this forest fringe and out into the forest land. The total now is 
over 5 million dwelling units. If population growth continues at 
current rates, and we continue to have the ex-urban housing development 
and we have resort development, there will be an additional 2.4 million 
housing units in the next 30 years, approaching 9 million in all.
  As staggering as these numbers are, they only represent primary 
residence. They do not include tens of thousands of residences that are 
second and seasonal and vacation homes, particularly near resort towns. 
We are seeing the consequences of unplanned growth and development. 
Some may call it sprawl or dumb growth when it occurs in and around 
suburban areas; but the facts are we are seeing it leak out in the 
countryside, and we are going to be penalizing the taxpayer, costing 
money to extend services, penalizing the taxpayer for fighting fires, 
for example, where it is going to be exceedingly expensive and 
difficult to solve in the future.
  The final area of concern that I have that I wanted to talk about 
this evening deals with the way the global climate change has the 
potential of accelerating and compounding these difficulties. Now the 
unprecedented drought that we have seen in the West, we have seen in 
Wyoming, it is the worst in 100 years. We are seeing it throughout the 
eastern seaboard in places like metropolitan Atlanta where we are not 
used to thinking about drought conditions.
  This is merely a preview of what we can expect if we are going to 
continue to have the effects of global climate change, as droughts are 
going to be contributing to concerns about wildfire vulnerability. 
Unusually dry winters and hot summers increase the likelihood, and we 
are going to make it more and more difficult to contend with multiple 
challenges across the country.
  I find it ironic that the President will tour the fire sites in 
Arizona, but really does not have anything in the way of a plan for 
American leadership when it comes to mounting a plan to deal with 
global climate change which might forestall or minimize this very 
serious problem in the future.
  It is research from our own federally funded studies that have shown 
that climate change is going to have a dramatic increase in the areas 
burned and the number of potentially catastrophic fires, in fact, more 
than doubling the losses in some regions. And the changes are going to 
occur despite deployment of fire suppression resources at the highest 
levels, implying that the change is going to precipitate an increase in 
both fire suppression costs and economic loss due to just wild fires 
alone.
  And it is not just wild fires that are a concern dealing with the 
change in greenhouse gasses and global climate. Worldwide, the number 
of great weather disasters, including fires, in the 1990s was more than 
five times the number of these disasters for the 1950s. And the 
damages, the costs that were incurred by governments, by insurance, 
were more than 10 times as high adjusted for inflation than in the 
1950s.
  We have seen in the last year of the previous decade 47 events, more 
than double the average for the 1980s. Well, the United States, with 
less than 5 percent of the world's population, is playing a huge role 
in greenhouse gas contributions. We produce approximately five times 
our per capita contribution.
  We as Americans know that we can do better. I sincerely hope that the 
administration will work with concerned people on both sides of the 
aisle to not abandon the principle of ``polluter pay'' and make sure 
that Superfund cleanup is the priority that the American public wants, 
to deal with the abuse of the mining industry, hardrock mining in 
particular, to not make it easier for them to have assaults on the 
environment, to fill miles of streams and valleys in violation of 
current law, that instead encourage, indeed mandate, that the industry 
clean up after itself, that we deal with the current realities of this 
urban-rural interface that has created such a problem with forest fire 
protection. And last, but by no means least, that we deal with national 
leadership for global climate change.
  Next month the United States will join with over 100 other nations in 
the environmental summit in Johannesburg. Mr. Speaker, this would be an 
excellent opportunity for the United States, if the administration 
cannot abide by the Kyoto Protocols, which ironically even some large 
businesses are stepping up and agreeing to meet those targets, at least 
we are obligated to have our plan, our approach, and it would be a 
perfect time for the administration to reverse its position, come 
forward with a leadership approach to make sure that these problems of 
global climate change, storm events, and wildfires, are not going to be 
worse as a result of our stewardship, but instead would be better.

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