[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 22 (Wednesday, March 2, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1885-S1888]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ACCESS TO SAFE WATER AND SANITATION
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to legislation that
will be introduced by myself and others later today that focuses on an
issue which has for too long been neglected, not just by our people or
our Government but, indeed, peoples around the world. It centers on the
issue of access to safe water and sanitation. This legislation focuses
on developing countries with specific policies outlined in the
legislation. I am pleased we have Members on both sides of the aisle
joining me as original cosponsors of this legislation which will be
introduced later today.
It boils down to the simple fact that every 15 seconds, a child dies
because of a disease contracted from unclean water. Four children have
died since I began talking on this particular issue.
Fully 90 percent of infant deaths, of deaths of children less than 5
years of age, relate to waterborne illnesses, a product of lack of
access to clean water or inadequate sanitation. In total, water-related
illnesses kill 14,000 people a day, and most of them are children. That
is over 5 million people a year. It does not include the other millions
of individuals who will be debilitated and prevented from living
healthy lives.
Globally, in many ways, waterborne disease is a silent tsunami. That
is the impact it has on a continuing basis. Now is the time to focus on
it. Now is the time to act because these are preventable deaths.
Typhoid, cholera, dysentery, dengue fever, trachoma, intestinal
helminth infection, and schistosomiasis can all be prevented by simply
providing safe water and sanitation. More than 1.1 billion people today
lack access to clean water. They do not have access to what we take for
granted. We can go to the water faucets and drink water in most parts
of this country, but lack of access to that clean water is killing a
child every 15 seconds. Malaria, which is a mosquito-borne disease
directly linked with stagnant pools of water, kills 1 million people
each year. Again, most of those are young children. It is preventable.
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Unfortunately, reliable projections suggest that the problem is bad,
but projections are that it is getting worse. We know it is getting
worse. Water stress and water scarcity, leading to disease-borne and
impure water, is increasing. If we look forward to 2025, upwards of
two-thirds of the world's population may be subject to water stress.
There are over 260 river basins across the world that are shared by
two or more countries that actually share the water basins. There are
13 basins that flow through 5 or more countries. There, water is scarce
where it is shared by so many. Yet it is so necessary that scarcity
can, historically, result in armed conflict. Clean water seems so
simple. It seems so basic. In America, we, for the most part, take it
for granted. The rest of the world cannot.
UNICEF reports that over half of the world's schools lack safe water
and sanitation. In many parts of the world, including in Africa where I
have the opportunity to visit, people travel not just an hour but 3 and
4 hours to provide water on a daily basis for their family. In many
ways, it becomes a women's issue globally because in most countries
that burden falls upon women who are pulled away from addressing other
issues such as their children and family. It takes time going to that
water source and carrying it home.
Imagine living in a rural village in Sub-Saharan Africa or East Asia
where village members share their water with livestock, where you have
contamination occurring on an ongoing basis. Imagine being a
grandmother like Mihiret G-Maryam from a small village in Ethiopia who
watched five of her grandchildren between the ages of 3 and 8 die from
water-related diseases. Before the U.K.-based WaterAid organization
intervened in her community, constant stomach pain and diarrhea were a
fact of life, an accepted fact of life. The foul-smelling contaminated
water exposed Mihiret and her neighbors to parasitic diseases. They had
no latrines. Human waste, human excretions were everywhere.
As Mihiret testifies:
It was horrid to see, as well as being unhealthy.
Now, because of the education and investment of WaterAid, together
with the local church, her village is clean, and people no longer have
to suffer from that chronic stomach ache, pain, and diarrhea. Clean
water has literally saved lives. This story demonstrates that proper
management and intervention can be a currency for peace and
international cooperation.
On my medical missions, I have seen this on a daily basis. Most
recently, in January, a bipartisan group of Senators went to East Asia
to serve in the aftermath of the December 26 tsunami. As I have
mentioned in the Senate, traveling over the Sri Lanka coast for
hundreds and hundreds of miles, we could see that devastation was
nonstop. We saw the destruction of local water sources, water buckets
washed away, and the contamination of wells with saltwater.
We know the statistics: Well over 150,000 people died, and a million
lost their homes. Many are still missing as of today. Thousands of
children will grow up without their parents. It will take a lot of time
and, yes, a lot of resources to rebuild that infrastructure. A lot of
people will never recover from the psychological shock, and the scale
of the tragedy is difficult to comprehend.
I mention that because if you look at what happened in the tsunami,
it illustrates what can happen when one focuses aggressively on relief
with clean water. The tsunami poisoned wells, and the routine
dependence on water was taken away. That lack of access to clean water
introduced the potential for dysentery, for cholera, and for malaria.
As we flew over the coast we could look out the window and see
stagnant pools of water that, if left, will become a source of breeding
for the mosquitos that ultimately could have led to a malaria epidemic.
Those things did not happen because of the rapid relief addressing
clean water and sanitation. We participated in these relief efforts.
Many participated in some way.
What is critical to understand in the immediate aftermath of the
tsunami is that there are long-term solutions to the problem
surrounding water which we in this body and our Government have not yet
addressed. But when you have a child dying every 15 seconds from a
preventable cause--that is, lack of access to clean water--there are
things we can do to focus and, hopefully, prevent thousands and
thousands of deaths that occur now every week.
March 22nd is designated by the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 58/
217 World Water Day and will launch the International Decade For
Action. That will launch an initiative called Water for Life. For the
decade ahead--that is the next 10 years--from 2005 to 2015, the United
States has agreed to work to reduce by one-half ``the proportion of
people who are unable to reach or afford safe drinking water along with
access to basic sanitation.''
The President and the administration have taken steps to fulfill
these commitments. In August 2002, the Water for the Poor Initiative
was launched with the intent to improve sustainable management of fresh
water resources in over 70 developing countries. An estimated $750
million was invested in this initiative in 2004.
However, in a time of limited public resources, we find that in that
year only a little over 6 percent, or about a 20th of total U.S.
foreign assistance funding for water activities, was targeted for sub-
Saharan Africa. Yet it is in sub-Saharan Africa that the major problem,
for the most part, rests. It is an allocation of resources that we need
to examine to see if it is appropriate instead of investing where the
problem is. If the objective is to save lives, the allocation of our
resources seems to be going to other areas. Sub-Saharan Africa is not
only where we have the greatest problem today, but it has the fastest
growing population. Thus, they will have some of the greatest need for
clean water and sanitation in the future.
As we look at the legislation we will be introducing, we all
recognize there is no single piece of legislation that can fully
address this huge challenge before us to eliminate these water-related
diseases around the world. But I do think this legislation underscores
the importance, in a bipartisan way, of continued leadership in this
arena of addressing a problem that has been hidden from the world for
too long. Alongside Government leadership, many dedicated
organizations, private individuals, faith-based organizations,
nonprofits, and international governmental organizations are working
hard, each in their own ways, to address this challenge.
The bipartisan legislation we are introducing today has three simple
objectives.
No. 1, it would make it clear that we would have an unequivocal
pronouncement that clean, safe water and sanitation, sound water
management, and improved hygiene for people around the world is a major
policy goal of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. It becomes a major
policy goal. It is not today, but it should be. And with this
legislation it will be.
Second, it would authorize a 5-year pilot program of $250 million a
year to assist those countries that have the highest rates of
waterborne diseases. This is what it does: It helps them develop
funding mechanisms such as investment insurance, investment guarantees,
or loan guarantees of up to 75 percent to develop sustainable--the key
word is ``sustainable''--water infrastructure systems.
Third, the legislation directs the Secretary of State, along with the
Administrator of the USAID, to develop within 180 days a national
strategy that would both assess what is being done today and what
changes need to be made in order to expand access to safe water and
sanitation. This national strategy would be produced in consultation
with all of the Federal agencies addressing components of this problem
today, along with appropriate international organizations, foreign
countries, and U.S. nongovernmental associations and entities.
I will close with mentioning this, as well: In the weeks ahead, I
will introduce companion legislation to create a global health corps
that will be using the Peace Corps as a model and inspiration. It will
allow teams of medical professionals and other volunteers to travel to
remote areas to provide medical treatment and public health
information. Some of these teams will provide quick assistance when
disaster
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strikes. Some will provide ongoing care in some of the neediest parts
of the world. And many of these health volunteers would come from the
ranks of experienced doctors, nurses, and medical technicians.
We know that such public health and medical assistance can serve as a
currency of peace and a vital tool of public diplomacy. Our assistance
to other nations carries the most weight when it involves that personal
and intimate contact at the community level, and where it also provides
tangible benefits to everyday people. Medical and public health
assistance does both of these things. Thus, it can be used as a
currency of peace and a vital tool of public diplomacy.
I look forward to the Foreign Relations Committee reporting this
legislation in the near future, and I look forward to enacting this
legislation expeditiously. Remember, every 15 seconds a child dies
somewhere in the world from a waterborne illness because of a lack of
access to clean water.
In the short time I have given this statement on the Senate floor,
another 50 children have died from diseases we know how to prevent. We
must do our part to bring health and hope to the millions of people who
need clean water. It is as simple as the glass of water that sits on my
desk.
I do thank the Democratic leader. We have been talking and working
together on this legislation. I believe this can represent a tremendous
bipartisan, ultimately bicameral effort that can reverse a human
tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes as a product, at least in
part, because of inadequate attention.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader is
recognized.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, these 50 children who have died during the
presentation by the majority leader are children, of course, who have
parents, and brothers and sisters in most instances. The grief and
heartache is multiplied each day with the death of children. I
appreciate very much the majority leader reaching out to make sure this
is a bipartisan piece of legislation. I think it sets a good tone that
the two leaders are moving forward on an initiative that speaks of the
goodness of America. That is what this is all about. We care about
children dying, wherever it happens.
We have the unique situation in this Senate that we have one of the
leaders, the Republican leader, who is a medical doctor. During his
tenure in the Senate, he has traveled the world looking at medical
problems that exist and there is no bigger problem than water.
Our former colleague who recently passed away, Paul Simon from
Illinois, wrote a book, ``Tapped Out.'' In that book, he mentioned some
of the things I have said. The State of Nevada is different from the
State of Tennessee. We have what we call rivers, but they are tiny,
little. I do not know what they would be called in most States.
The Colorado River is a river that at times can be a mighty river,
but the rest of the rivers we have in Nevada are tiny, little rivers.
The Truckee River, which supplies the second largest city in Nevada,
Reno, with all its water, is a little stream. You can walk across it in
most places. The world-famous city of Las Vegas gets 4 inches of rain
every year.
We need to do something about the lack of water around the country,
and not only the lack of water but the quality of the water. A lot of
places have water, but it is not water you can drink and stay healthy
with.
I am pleased to join the majority leader in cosponsoring this
important legislation. We are going to introduce it later today. Our
staffs are working on the language.
With this legislation, we are seeking to do something meaningful for
the hundreds of millions of people across the globe who lack safe and
clean water. It is something so basic, yet so critical to human life.
Improving the delivery and access of clean and safe water, better
hygiene and medicine, that is what this bill seeks to achieve.
No one knows more in this body than the majority leader, from his
travels in Africa and elsewhere, that over a billion people--and that
is probably a figure that is too low--lack access to clean water. Each
year, as has been indicated, millions of people die. We do not know how
many people, but at least 5 million people die from water-related
diseases. More people die from unsafe water than from all forms of
violence, including war. Eighty percent of all sickness in the world is
attributable to unsafe water and improper sanitation, and they go
together in most instances.
These statistics are staggering and disturbing because so much of
this disease and despair is preventable. That is what the legislation
is all about. We need greater U.S. and international involvement and a
more proactive strategy. In addition, we need to fully fund this
initiative and the other water programs currently undertaken by our
Government.
I am grateful the majority leader will shortly enter into a colloquy
with me that directly addresses the strategy and funding problems. We
are going to work together. This is bipartisan legislation. The
majority leader and I are doing this not for purposes of showing we can
do something together, which I think is an important message, but we
are actually going to do something. We are going to do more than
introduce this legislation. There is going to be more than authorizing
legislation. We have a huge budget in the United States. I think we can
find money to actually do this. It is important. And we do not have to
take from other programs. I hope that is the case.
So I look forward to continuing to work with the majority leader,
Senator Leahy, and Senator McConnell, who are the ranking member and
chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, and, of
course, Senators Lugar and Biden, who are the chair and ranking member
of the Foreign Relations Committee. There are others. But we are going
to get working to make sure we do something positive to make sure the
world is a safer place.
When people are healthy, they have less problems with raising their
children properly. It creates all across the world an influence that is
positive and resolves many differences. We know, as is pointed out in
the book by Senator Simon, in the future, wars are going to be fought
over water, not over territorial boundaries necessarily, unless it does
involve water. There is a shortage of water.
If we can do some good work in the Middle East, for example, with
water--and here, I have to compliment Israel. Israel, as we speak, does
not have the best relations with some of its neighbors, but they have
joint water projects that they are working on. There is not a lot of
fanfare for that, but they all realize that water is important, as we
do.
So again, I compliment and I applaud the majority leader for his
initiative. I look forward with anticipation to doing something good
for millions and even billions of people around the world.
Mr. FRIST. I am pleased to enter into this colloquy with the
distinguished minority leader and I appreciate his cosponsorship of the
Currency for Peace Act of 2005.
Mr. REID. I am grateful to the majority leader for raising the
critical issue of the lack of safe water in developing countries. It is
one of the world's most pressing development challenges which impacts
hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
Mr. FRIST. Unsafe water and water-related diseases have far reaching
consequences. That is why U.S. Government, acting through the
Department of State and the United States Agency for International
Development, has been undertaking critically important programs in
developing countries to provide clean and safe water, sanitation and
hygiene for many years. These life-saving programs should be continued
and expanded, wherever possible.
Mr. REID. It is also critical for the United States and the
international community to fully recognize the role that unsafe water
plays in causing death, disease, poverty, environmental degradation,
and instability. An aggressive and timely response is required, and the
United States should be at the forefront of that effort. The U.S.
Government and other donor nations must develop a more proactive
response that commits greater resources and ensures that these
resources are allocated where the greatest needs exist.
Mr. FRIST. And while we bolster and enhance our existing programs and
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strategies, Senator Reid and I are pleased to put forward this new
initiative that fully acknowledges the role that safe water plays in
health and development. In the future, we must find the additional
resources to fully fund the Safe Water Act of 2005, without decreasing
our support for existing safe water and other foreign assistance
programs.
Mr. REID. I fully agree that the initiatives set forth in this act
should be fully funded, but not with funds taken from existing and
ongoing foreign assistance programs. I look forward to working with
Senator Frist and the White House to obtain full funding for this
program in the President's fiscal year 2007 budget and in subsequent
years so the United States can implement pilot programs that can
eventually be expanded to other countries in the future.
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