[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 72 (Thursday, May 13, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E842-E843]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT HEARING ON THE 
                REAUTHORIZATION OF STATE REVOLVING FUNDS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BOBBY L. RUSH

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 13, 2010

  Mr. RUSH. Madam Speaker, I submit the following.
  Chairman Waxman, Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Barton, Ranking 
Member Upton and all of my distinguished colleagues that sit on the 
Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, thank you all for allowing 
me to make these remarks for the record on this important hearing on 
the reauthorization of State Revolving Funds within the ``The 
Assistance, Quality, and Affordability Act of 2010.''
  Chairman Markey, I would especially like to thank you and your staff 
for working with my office over the past year to tighten the 
regulations within the SRF that govern water security to ensure that 
the incident that happened in my congressional district of Crestwood 
will not be replicated and that all of our constituents will have 
access to clean, safe drinking water.
  Mr. Chairman, I would like to briefly recount for all of my 
colleagues the preposterous and unbelievable events that happened in 
Crestwood that has brought us to the point we are today. It is a story 
that, unfortunately, is ripe with abuses of the public trust by crooked 
and corrupt public officials at a level that is hard to fathom.
  And it is a story that, hopefully, with the measures that we will 
enact in this legislation, will never be allowed to happen again.

[[Page E843]]

  Mr. Chairman, the story of Crestwood began in 1986, when the Illinois 
EPA was notified that the well water that was being used for public 
consumption was contaminated and was found to be unsuitable under 
federal EPA standards. Officials from the Village of Crestwood told 
State EPA authorities that the well would no longer be used for 
drinking purposes, but would remain open for emergency uses only, such 
as fighting fires.
  Unbelievably, despite the warning from the IL EPA to the Crestwood 
officials about using the well for public consumption, for another 20 
years, from 1986-2007, untreated well water was mixed with Lake 
Michigan water and was piped into the homes of village residents for 
drinking and other uses.
  Mr. Chairman, for over 20 years, the citizens of Crestwood Village 
were consuming water, filled with contaminants, while the IL EPA never 
went back in to test the water quality or ensure that Crestwood 
officials had followed their edict to stop using the well for public 
consumption.
  Then, in December 2007, acting on a tip from a private citizen, 
Tricia Krause, the IL EPA decided to test the well water for the first 
time since they were first alerted to the problem in 1986.
  During these tests, the IL EPA found that the well water contained 
unacceptable levels of perchloroethylene (PCE), a chemical linked to 
liver damage and neurological problems, as well as other carcinogenic 
chemicals that were higher than federal standards permit.
  Mr. Chairman, it took the brave and courageous act of an everyday, 
hardworking, private citizen, Ms. Tricia Krause, to finally pull the 
plug on the nefarious and despicable acts of Crestwood officials. For 
20 years, these officials willfully and reprehensibly lied to State 
authorities and fed contaminated water to the very citizens they were 
sworn to protect.
  After Ms. Krause blew the whistle on these despicable acts and the 
story became public, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the 
U.S. Department of Justice executed search warrants and found that 
Village officials had been falsifying records regarding the purchase 
and delivery of water to its citizens for over 20 years.
  And while we must acknowledge and praise the work of courageous 
citizens like Ms. Krause for taking matters into her own hands to shed 
light and seek justice, we must also do everything in our power to make 
it more difficult for immoral and despicable public officials to dupe 
the public again and feed contaminated and poisonous water to our 
citizens.
  Mr. Chairman, the steps that you have taken in this bill will go a 
long way toward restoring the public trust in the system by requiring 
our State agencies, which are in many cases the last line of defense in 
ensuring public safety, to go that extra step to protect the public.
  This language would simply compel the EPA to set up requirements for 
notifying the public served by a water system when different types of 
violations occur. The EPA would be allowed to use the same categories 
of violations that have already been developed under subsection (c) of 
the Safe Drinking Water Act.
  Additionally, for each category of violation, the EPA will determine 
what types of follow-up inspections are needed, and how many 
inspections the State will need to carry out. This gets right at the 
issue of the Illinois EPA not being required to go out and check 
whether the contaminated well was being used, without being overly 
burdensome if the violations are not related to public safety.
  Mr. Chairman, as representatives of the people we serve, for most of 
us the actions taken by Village of Crestwood officials would be 
unconscionable. In all of my time as a public servant, I have rarely 
encountered public officials acting so egregiously against their own 
citizens or abusing their power in a way that puts the public safety at 
risk.
  In March 2010, the IL Dept. of Public Health released a report that 
found cancer rates were ``significantly elevated'' in Crestwood 
residents, with higher-than-expected cases of kidney cancer in men, 
lung cancer in men and women, and gastrointestinal cancer in men.
  While researchers could not make a definite link between the 
consumption of contaminated water for 20 years for the 11,000 residents 
of Crestwood and the elevated rates of cancer there, they determined it 
was possible that toxic chemicals in the drinking water caused the 
extra cancer cases.
  Well, I'm not a researcher, but I can analyze commonsense, and for 
me, the coincidence between drinking cancer-causing contaminated water 
for 20 years and then having higher-than-normal rates of cancer appear 
in those same citizens shows that there must be some connection between 
the two.
  With our actions here today and in moving this bill forward, it is my 
sincere hope that no other community in America will have to suffer 
from the reprehensible acts of a few despicable public servants who 
would seek to abuse the public trust.
  Thank you again Mr. Chairman, and distinguished Members of the 
Subcommittee, for allowing me to participate today.

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