[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 27 (Tuesday, February 12, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1178-S1186]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT ACT--Resumed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 47, which the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 47) to provide for the management of the natural
resources of the United States, and for other purposes.
Pending:
Murkowski/Manchin Modified Amendment No. 111, in the nature
of a substitute.
Murkowski Amendment No. 112 (to Amendment No. 111), to
modify the authorization period for the Historically Black
Colleges and Universities Historic Preservation program.
Rubio/Scott (FL) Amendment No. 182 (to Amendment No. 112),
to give effect to more accurate maps of units of the John H.
Chafee Costal Barrier Resources System that were produced by
digital mapping.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip is recognized.
Green New Deal
Mr. THUNE. Madam President, last Thursday, Democrats released their
plan for a Green New Deal, although ``plan'' might be a bit of a
stretch. It is more like a wish list because while Democrats announced
their desired outcomes like getting rid of fossil fuels or upgrading
every single building in the United States, they provided no details at
all about how to get there. In particular, they failed to provide any
details on how to pay for the staggering costs of what they are
proposing to do.
Take just one provision of the Democrats' green wish list:
``Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building
new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency,
safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through
electrification.'' That is a direct quote from the so-called plan,
upgrading all existing buildings--all existing buildings.
Well, the cost of that provision alone is practically inconceivable,
but that is just a small fraction of what the Democrats want to do.
Their wish list also includes ``meeting 100 percent of the power demand
in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy
sources, including by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable
power sources and by deploying new capacity; overhauling
[[Page S1179]]
transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and
greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is
technologically feasible'' and much, much more, and they don't limit
themselves to energy initiatives either. They also announced that a
Green New Deal must include guaranteeing every person in the United
States a job, healthcare, paid vacations, and more.
It is possible the reason the Democrats didn't provide any details
about how to pay for their plan is because they knew that outlining the
actual cost would sink their plan from the very beginning. I cannot
even imagine the staggering amount of money that would be required to
pay for the ideas on their wish list, and that money will come from the
pockets of the American people.
Like other socialist fantasies, this is not a plan that can be paid
for by merely taking money from the rich. Actually implementing this
so-called Green New Deal would involve taking money from working
families--and not a little bit of money either.
Before the introduction of last week's absurd resolution, the Green
New Deal was modeled and projected to cost American families up to
$3,800 a year in higher energy bills, and $3,800 a year in higher
energy costs would be hard enough for most working families I meet, but
that would be just the tip of the iceberg under the Democrats' plan
because, of course, if your electricity costs are higher, then so are
your business's electricity costs, your doctor's electricity costs, the
electricity costs at neighborhood restaurants, and the electricity
costs at your gym, and all of these places are going to charge more
money to cover their cost increases so you are going to be paying more
in electric bills and more on everything else as well.
Then there is the fact that the government will not be able to pay
for one-quarter of what is outlined in the Green New Deal without
raising your taxes by a lot. There is no question that socialist
fantasies sound nice--they always do--until they end up victimizing the
very people they are meant to help.
As Ronald Reagan is reported to have said, ``Socialism only works in
two places: Heaven where they don't need it, and hell where they
already have it.''
Democrats' gauzy, nebulous proposal may sound appealing on the
surface, but it would devastate our economy and be paid for on the
backs of working families in this country. The Green New Deal would be
a very bad deal for the American people.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GARDNER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
S. 47
Mr. GARDNER. Madam President, today we are making some great progress
on a bill that is very important to so many Members in this Chamber and
particularly important to the American people--a public lands package
that, in some cases, has taken years for these bills to process through
the Senate and hopefully are on their way to passage in the House and
to the President's desk.
For 4 years, since being in the Senate, I have worked to permanently
reauthorize the crown jewel of our conservation programs, and we are
about to have that crown jewel success, permanent authorization of the
Land and Water Conservation Fund--the passage of the public lands bill.
The Senate will finally take an up-or-down vote and move forward on
permanent authorization of LWCF.
I have championed this program with so many of my colleagues in a
bipartisan way, Republicans and Democrats. It is time for this body to
act and make sure that we do what is right for the people of Colorado
and beyond with this reauthorization.
This program has an incredible direct impact on public lands in
Colorado and will be used to protect our State's amazing natural beauty
for generations to come.
Outdoor recreation opportunities in Colorado abound. The outdoor
recreation opportunities in Colorado make it the destination for
recreation, for adventure, for opportunity. You can hike in the summer,
hunt in the fall, ski in the winter, raft in the spring. We have it
all.
Those activities and more have led to an incredible outdoor economy
that is booming like never before. It generates the outdoor economy. It
generates something like $28 billion in consumer spending in the State
and $2 billion in State and local tax revenue. That is people coming in
to camp, to hunt, to fish, to ski--incredible employment opportunities.
Up to 230,000 people in Colorado alone are employed in the outdoor
recreation economy.
We don't just have this economy by chance. We have it because of our
public lands and the extensive efforts that so many in this Chamber
have undertaken over the years to conserve them in a condition that the
next generation will also get to enjoy.
One of our best tools to conserve and protect the public's lands has
lapsed, though--it goes back to the very beginning of our conversation
today--the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It has been over 100 days
since the Land and Water Conservation Fund expired, a fund, a program,
a conservation tool that has broad bipartisan support. It is an access
program. LWCF is an access program. It is there to sustain access to
land that may otherwise be cut off from public enjoyment, to provide
access to land that has been closed off to recreationists, to
environmentalists. The opportunities we have to enjoy this land, the
LWCF restores.
In the days leading up to the expiration of the Land and Water
Conservation Fund, a report was published by the Theodore Roosevelt
Conservation Partnership, and it published some figures on public land
acreage that is inaccessible to the American public.
It identified over 9.5 million acres in the Western United States
alone that is inaccessible to the public because of the surrounding
public lands; that is, 9.5 million acres of land that belongs to the
American people that the American people have no access to because it
is surrounded.
The Land and Water and Conservation Fund is used to help give access
to land that the American people already own, to enjoy, to benefit
from, to create economic opportunities, and, more importantly, to
create the opportunity just to be in our amazing, wonderful outdoors.
In Colorado alone, there are over 250,000 acres that are closed off
to the public. These are 250,000 acres of publicly held lands that are
closed off because you don't have access.
That translates into just shy of 400 square miles of public land in
Colorado--basically, the same amount of land of the entire Rocky
Mountain National Park--that can't be used to hike, to hunt, and to
fish, even though it belongs to the American people to hike, to hunt,
to fish, to think, to hope, to dream, to plan, to resolve. They are
those things that we admire and need our public lands for--the
opportunity to think, to hope, to admire, to plan, to rest, to resolve.
Since its creation, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has provided
more than $258 million in support for Colorado public lands projects.
Again, the opportunity to have this permanent reauthorization today is
incredible. It is supported by this Chamber, and it is supported,
certainly, by people across the political spectrum in Colorado. It is a
great day for Colorado. It is a great day for public lands.
I want to show and share some of the incredible beauty we are talking
about. This is a picture of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
in Colorado. You can see the Gunnison River through the canyon, and you
can see the rim of the canyon. If you go to the next shot, though, you
will see some of the land that was purchased by the Land and Water
Conservation Fund. You can see the top of the rim looking down over the
river.
The top of the canyon was owned by a family. It was privately held
land. They could have sold it off. They could have developed the land.
You can see Bruce Noble, the park superintendent, pointing at the rim
of the canyon, the land that was purchased using Land and Water
Conservation Fund dollars. That land belonged to a family that, thanks
to LWCF, was purchased and held for the National Park Service so
[[Page S1180]]
that it doesn't risk development and we don't risk losing access and so
that somebody is not going to put barriers to access this incredible
majestic place. You see that land right there, and that is just one
example of how important the Land and Water Conservation Fund is.
The Black Canyon LWCF purchase was about 2,494 acres. Imagine that--
private land, nearly 2,500 acres of land, held within the national
park, that could have been sold off to a developer. Imagine what could
have happened. But this land allows us to continue to have access to
gold medal fly fishing on the Gunnison River. It creates potential
opportunities for the National Park Service to provide more family-
friendly hiking closer to the visitor center, and it serves as a
potential source of water to the South Rim, which will reduce the
operational costs of hauling water to meet visitor and staff need. It
was a win for everyone--for the family who wanted to sell their land
but not have it developed and certainly for the American people, who
now have an incredible addition to their national park.
If we go to the next picture. This next picture is a picture in the
distance of the Great Sand Dunes National Park. You can see the light-
colored sand at the foot of the mountain range. There is a 12,000-acre
ranch, the Medano Zapata Ranch, which borders the sand dunes on three
sides. These are some of the highest sand dunes in North America. It
has been bought by the Nature Conservancy, one of the great
conservation partners of the LWCF, and it is going through the process
to be incorporated into the park by using Land and Water Conservation
Fund dollars.
This is so important. This access with this purchase is so important
because it will help us to have access, once again, to existing public
lands, keeping these incredibly beautiful working lands conserved for
healthy wildlife habitat.
This is an inholding purchase. Inholding purchases are not the only
way LWCF benefits the outdoors, however. The National Park Service,
through LWCF State and local assistance programs, provides matching
grants for State and local park projects that aren't inside the
national park borders.
LWCF isn't just about our forests, either, or BLM land, or national
parks. It is also about local parks, bike trails, playgrounds--these
little slices of Heaven among concrete and the chaos that provide us
that respite in our daily lives to plan, to hope, to think, and to
rest.
In addition to the permanent reauthorization of LWCF, this package
includes legislation that I supported, authored, and worked very hard
the last several years to be included.
For Colorado, it includes the Crags, Colorado Land Exchange Act. This
will allow us and the U.S. Forest Service to have better access to the
Barr Trail, working to allow greater public use of their public lands.
The Bolts Ditch Access and Use Act. In Congress, when we have
legislation like this, sometimes our colleagues, particularly in the
East, don't necessarily have this problem that they are dealing with
each and every day. We have a community in the mountains where their
water supply goes through a wilderness area. As a result, you can't
take mechanized, motorized equipment to fix this water project, this
waterway. So Congress has to pass a bill to allow this city to have the
ability to fix its water system. That is exactly what we do in the
Bolts Ditch Access and Use Act. The 1980 Holy Cross Wilderness Area
didn't address this problem. Here we are, nearly 40 years later,
addressing this challenge and allowing the community to move forward to
fix its water system.
We included in this legislation a bill to update the map and modify
the maximum acreage available for inclusion in the Florissant Fossil
Beds National Monument. The park is currently restricted--this
incredible national monument--to 6,000 acres. However, somebody wanted
to give some of their land to the national monument. So we have added
280 acres of land to this incredible national monument.
We have reauthorized the Endangered Fish Recovery Program. This was
originally created in 1988, over concern for four endangered fish in
the Upper Colorado River. The Upper Colorado Endangered Fish Recovery
Implementation Program has been extended multiple times over the last
30 years, most recently in 2013. It is a science-based, basin-wide
approach to make sure that we recover these species and to make sure
that this program has taken to preclude any lawsuits being filed,
despite the diverse stakeholder group involved. This legislation will
extend the authorization of the program through 2023.
It also creates a feasibility study to look into whether or not we
should designate Amache, the site of a Japanese-American internment
site in southeastern Colorado, as a national park. During World War II,
tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans were wrongfully removed from
their homes and held in internment centers. One such internment center,
located in the eastern plains of Colorado, near the town of Granada,
and that became known as Amache, was designated as a national historic
landmark in 2005. This internment site is the best preserved among the
entire system of internment sites that were used during World War II.
To name this a national park--to have that recognition--is an important
reminder of a very dark period in our history that we would never
repeat the internment of Japanese-Americans. This is a study to do just
that.
I have also been part as cosponsor and original sponsor of other
legislation: the Arapaho National Forest Boundary Adjustment Act and
the Fowler and Boskoff Peaks Designation Act. Charlie Fowler and
Christine Boskoff, who tragically lost their lives in China in an
avalanche in 2006, were world-renowned climbers. We are naming two
peaks after them in Colorado.
This bill authorizes a feasibility study for the Pike National
Historic Trail.
It authorizes a bill that we worked on with Senator Cantwell--the
Wildfire Management Technology Advancement Act of 2017, a bill designed
to protect men and women in firefighting from harm and injury and to
give them greater tools on the behavior of fire.
Every single one of these bills in the package has undergone
extensive public review in the Senate and the House. They have gone
through a lot of legislative process.
I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for getting to this
moment as we pass this very critically important piece of legislation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about S.
47, a bill I authored with Senator Murkowski. It is a package of public
land issues that has been working its way through the Congress now for
several years.
I would like to point out to people who may not be as familiar with
the Interior side of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's work,
that the Interior side has a long history in our Nation. We decided a
long time ago that we needed to have oversight and management of our
public lands. S. 47, the legislation that is before us today, is a
recognition that our climate is changing and that we need new tools to
carry out new responsibilities as it relates to managing those public
lands.
I thank my colleague from Alaska, Senator Murkowski, for her
incredible leadership. I know we are going, hopefully, to go to final
passage of this bill sometime today, and I thank her for her good
bipartisan work on this legislation. It is safe to say that even though
we both come from the Pacific Northwest, we don't see eye to eye on
every issue, but we have worked hard to try to give local communities
the resources they need and to maintain the national interest where the
national interest was at stake. So I can't applaud my colleague enough
for her hard work and for her dedication to getting this particular
package moving through the Senate.
I also want to thank a lot of the staff who have worked on this issue
because I know that it is about the hard work of legislating. There are
many issues about which maybe not everybody understands all of the
details to, but, I guarantee you, all the details were critically
important. So I want to in particular thank Mary Louise Wagner, the
minority staff director for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee
[[Page S1181]]
until recently. I certainly also want to thank the dynamic duo of David
Brooks and Sam Fowler who, as counsel to the committee, have played an
incredible role over the last many years in preserving what is most
important about our public lands. I also want to thank, additionally,
Bryan Petit, Rebecca Bonner, Amit Ronen, and several of the staff who
have worked on many of the aspects of this package; Camille Touton,
Melanie Stansbury, and David Reeploeg and Megan Thompson who played key
roles in the Yakima provisions. And Angela Becker-Dippmann who
previously worked on this legislation.
I also thank Senator Murkowski's staff, Brian Hughes, Kellie
Donnelly, and particularly, Lucy Murfitt. I don't think we ever could
have gotten this package through without her due diligence and hard
work. I thank Lane Dickson and Michelle Lane.
I also thank my colleagues in the House of Representatives. I
certainly want to thank the staff director for Congressman Grijalva,
David Watkins, but I also thank Chairman Grijalva for his hard work and
Congressman Bishop. It is safe to say that all four of us, working
together--Senator Murkowski, myself, Congressman Bishop, and
Congressman Grijalva--definitely didn't always see eye to eye on these
issues, but we worked hard to resolve these issues. I also thank my
colleagues, Congressman Dave Reichert and Congressman Dan Newhouse, for
their work on provisions related to Washington State.
Before I get started in talking about the major provisions of this
legislation and why they are so important, I also have to call out
several of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have played
key roles.
Certainly, the historic Utah wilderness provision would not be this
lands package without my former colleague, Senator Orrin Hatch. He
played such an incredible role over a long period of time in shaping
the provisions as they affect Utah, and I thank him for that and for
working with our colleague on this side of the aisle, Senator Durbin,
on that important aspect of the package.
We would not be where we are today on the fire provisions without my
colleague Senator Gardner. Both Washington and Colorado have taken it
on the chin time and again with devastating forest fires, and we know
why it is so important to give firefighters and the land managers the
best possible tools available to locate the fires and keep track of
frontline firefighters.
We need a more hasty response to putting out fires, and having GPS
and tracking systems are going to help us do that. So I thank my
colleague from Colorado for helping with this legislation.
It is safe to say that without the strong determination of Senator
Burr, we probably wouldn't be here right now on the permanent
reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Making the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent represents the
ethos that we have in the Senate here today that public lands are
important to our Nation. They are important for recreating, for
hunting, for fishing, for moving forward on access to these lands that
are important for our veterans, for our school children, and for those
who just may want to go out and access the outdoors and reconnect.
We have had a big discussion here about whether we should return
public lands to oil and gas drilling, and this bill basically says no,
we are going to make a bigger investment in our public lands.
We are going to make this program permanent, and we are going to make
sure it is a key tool to continue to solve our problems of access to
public land, particularly in parts of the country where access to those
public lands is being eroded by development. That is exactly what the
Land and Water Conservation Fund helps us do--to protect those areas so
that either we can continue to have, for example, elk hunting, for
which we did a big project in southwest Washington, or whether it is
helping to improve access to Mount Rainier, a huge economic asset to
the State of Washington, or whether it is as simple as giving a
community like Auburn or Gas Works Park in Seattle access to a program
that can help us keep open space in some of our most developing areas.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund has been a preeminent program
for access to public lands, but it had been threatened when Congress
allowed it to expire 3 years ago, then only having a temporary
reauthorization, and then failing again to reauthorize it last
September.
What we are doing here now is saying that this is a bipartisan issue,
that more than 60 Senators here in the Senate didn't just see that we
needed to further adjust this program but we needed to save this
program. I emphasize this because I know my colleagues here in the
Senate are going to go on to a larger discussion, which is to secure
the funding that is set aside for the Land and Water Conservation Fund
and how it is spent, and we are going to get into a conversation about
how we take care of our maintenance and the backlog at our national
parks. I definitely believe that the mandatory spending for LWCF should
be in a future budget, and I certainly believe we should do more to
take care of our backlog and maintenance at our national parks. So I
look forward to working with both sides of the aisle to push that
through the U.S. Senate.
This legislation is amazing because there are some--particularly in
this administration--who want to use public lands to oil and gas
drilling, but there is a bipartisan group here in the U.S. Senate who
has said: No, we want to put more focus on saving our public lands.
This legislation preserves over 1.3 million acres of new wilderness,
and 367 miles of wild and scenic rivers. It allows conveyances of land
but also protects lands from potential mining and development
projects--like removing the threat of mining and development in the
Methow Valley in the State of Washington. It also continues to make
investments in heritage areas that are important to many parts of the
United States of America.
I want to talk about how this bill invests in water. The water issues
are like fire; they are not going to go away. The only question is
going to be this: What kinds of tools do we give communities across the
West--and I should say probably throughout the United States--to deal
with the changing climate and the impacts of less and less water?
What this legislation says for ideas like the Yakima Basin Project is
that we are not going to divide people and choose farming over fish. We
are not going to divide people and choose one aspect of the environment
over the other. It says that we are going to look to smart, holistic,
and cost-effective ways to preserve more water and enact smart
conservation across our State and country.
This is so important because the water issues are not going to go
away, but this legislation represents important new tools to fight
those challenges and to move forward in a way that I think will prove
to be an example of what we should be doing in other parts of the
United States.
I look forward to working with my colleagues in trying to fund more
water infrastructure improvements and conservation. I think this is
just as important as any other infrastructure investment we are talking
about in the U.S. Senate today. I know we see congestion in our
streets. I know we need to do more on aviation infrastructure. But I
guarantee you that we need to do more on water, and I look forward to
working with my colleagues on these challenges in the future.
One aspect that I don't know if my colleagues on the floor have as
much interest in as Senator Murkowski and I do, but there is a
provision on volcano monitoring that is very important to us.
Having experienced the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington
State and having active volcanoes in both Washington and Alaska, it is
so important for us to have the right science and monitoring of these
volcanoes. I was glad to work with my colleague Senator Murkowski on
that provision to give the latest and best tools to our scientists so
that they can give us the best information for the future.
All in all, this legislation is a major investment in our public
lands. It is the kind of hard work that happens behind the scenes that
not everybody pays attention to. I guarantee you that when you use the
word ``land,'' there are a lot of people to pay attention to.
[[Page S1182]]
There are local communities. There are landowners. There are
environmental interests. There are all sorts of very, very thorny
issues that have to be worked out. I thank all of my colleagues for
their due diligence on this.
Some people have said: Why is it that a lands package comes together
only at the end of a Congress or, in this case, held over from last
Congress into this session? I hope our colleagues will give more
attention to these important public policies.
Public lands and access to those lands is an economic juggernaut.
Behind finance and healthcare, the outdoor economy is the third most
important sector. So for something that important, let's pay more
attention. Let's give the tools to local communities and to these
resources to manage this, to give more access to the American people,
and to do the things that will help us grow jobs and help us recreate
for the future and preserve against a very challenging and threatening
climate.
I thank the Presiding Officer.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott of Florida). The assistant
Democratic leader.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will finish its work on
the Natural Resources Management Act. This is a bipartisan package
addressing over 100 public lands, natural resources, and water. It will
provide protection for a number of historical sites and treasured
landscapes across the country.
One of those sites is in my home State of Illinois. This lands
package would include a bill I have cosponsored with my colleague
Senator Tammy Duckworth to expand the Lincoln National Heritage Area.
It would expand the heritage area to include several areas in Central
Illinois that were a critical part of President Abraham Lincoln's life,
including the site of Lincoln's legal career within the eighth judicial
district, as well as the sites of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.
By expanding the Lincoln Natural Heritage Area, we can give more
Illinois residents and visitors a chance to learn more about President
Lincoln's legacy to our State and Nation.
In addition, this lands package contains legislation that Senator
Orrin Hatch of Utah introduced in the last Congress to protect over
700,000 acres of land in Emery County, UT.
I have worked for many, many years to protect the stunning, fragile,
and amazing desert landscape in Utah through the Red Rock Wilderness
Act, which I have introduced and reintroduced over a period of time.
While I would like to have seen the Red Rock Wilderness Act included in
this package, Senator Hatch and I worked together to protect some of
the land covered by my bill in a bipartisan compromise that is, in
fact, included in this bill.
This lands package also contains an important tool for conservation
and recreation throughout the country, permanently reauthorizing the
Land and Water Conservation Fund, also known as LWCF.
In Illinois, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has invested more
than $213 million to protect outdoor spaces, public access to trails,
parks, and historic sites. Permanent reauthorization of this critical
program should have happened a long time ago, but I am glad we have
finally reached a bipartisan moment of achievement in passing it as
part of this legislation.
I look forward to the enactment of this legislation to protect these
important areas in Illinois and across the Nation.
Sterigenics and Ethylene Oxide
Mr. President, there is often kind of a casual debate about
regulation and the power of government. Some basically start with the
premise that all regulation is bad, eliminating regulation is always
good, and the role of the government needs to be challenged and
questioned regularly.
I guess there is some truth in those statements, but there comes a
moment when we put things in perspective. Let me tell you that the
people who live in the community of Willowbrook in Illinois are putting
things in perspective when it comes to regulation.
Most people are not familiar with Willowbrook. It is a village west
of Chicago with a population of 9,000. It is in DuPage County, just
west of the downtown Chicago area. It is a middle-income community with
a lot of hard-working families, and many of them work hard to make sure
their kids have a better life than they do, as so many American
families do.
In the middle of this village at Willowbrook is a business known as
Sterigenics. It is a sterilization plant that uses a chemical, ethylene
oxide, to sterilize medical equipment, and they do it in great volume.
On any given day, they will be sterilizing thousands of catheters
that are being used across the country and certainly in the Midwest for
stents and for investigative medicine--absolutely essential to the
health of those who are being treated. They will approve over 1,000
surgical kits each day through their sterilization process. They put
through the sterilization process such things as knee replacements and
defibrillating devices that are implanted in people, so it is an
essential part of the medical picture in the Midwest at this moment,
but it also turns out that the chemical they are using, ethylene oxide,
is problematic, and that is where the issue of government regulation
becomes front and center.
I didn't know much about ethylene oxide. I was a liberal arts lawyer,
so I skipped all of those hard chemistry courses and tried to
understand other aspects of education. When it came to ethylene oxide,
I needed to be educated. Here is what we found.
We have learned that ethylene oxide is a dangerous toxin. It is
carcinogenic. To put it in layman's terms, it causes cancer. We learned
that ethylene oxide, a chemical in the form of gas, is more
carcinogenic to humans than we previously thought, and this facility
has been releasing ethylene oxide into the surrounding Willowbrook
community for 34 years.
Then we found out last August that the Willowbrook community is an
area with higher cancer risk due to ethylene oxide emissions from
Sterigenics, and we know that cancer-related ethylene oxide exposure
includes lymphoid cancer, breast cancer, stomach cancer, and others.
After we were told that this company, Sterigenics, was doing
everything it could to reduce the emissions of this carcinogenic toxic
gas and that it had installed pollution control measures, a local
television station--CBS in Chicago--revealed a few days ago through
interviews that this wasn't the case at all.
Ex-employees of Sterigenics came forward and reported to this
television station that ethylene oxide was often released directly into
the air surrounding the plant through open doors and vents, and,
instead of being directed through pollution control measures, it was
simply released.
According to these whistleblowers, employees at Sterigenics were
instructed to dump a toxic liquid byproduct of ethylene oxide called
ethylene glycol directly into the water drains that lead to the public
sewer system. Ethylene glycol is a chemical that is used in antifreeze.
Then, in the middle of last week, came a stunning revelation. We were
told by the Environmental Protection Agency--an Agency that is often
derided here in Washington by many--that the level of ethylene oxide
measured outside of the Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook, IL, was
350 times higher than what the EPA finds to be an acceptable risk and
50 times higher than what was found in the surrounding area.
Saying that the families--some of whom have lived in Willowbrook for
decades--are concerned is a dramatic understatement. Imagine for a
moment, if you will, that you have been raising a child in Willowbrook,
that your family has lived within sight of this Sterigenics plant, and
now you are learning that they were releasing this toxic gas into the
air at a level of 350 times beyond what is deemed acceptable for human
exposure. To say that the residents are concerned is a dramatic
understatement. They are demanding action, and they want answers.
For the record, this is not about Democrats making noise. This is a
bipartisan response. Dan Cronin is a friend of mine. He is the chairman
of the county board at DuPage County and a proud Republican. Both he
and Jim Durkin, who is the Republican leader of the Illinois House,
have come out publicly with the strongest possible statements about
this Sterigenics
[[Page S1183]]
emission and the danger it poses to their community. The same thing is
true for the Democratic side of public service in that county.
All of us have come out together, Democrats and Republicans, decrying
this terrible situation, this dangerous situation.
Members of this community should not have to divert time away from
their lives and their loved ones to try to research a chemical release
and to piece together answers. That is the responsibility of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, an Agency which, sadly under this
administration, has been led by people who don't have sympathy for
families before business. They tend to lean toward the business side
before they look at the public health aspect. That is unfortunate.
The Clean Air Act was one of the first and most expansive
environmental laws ever created in the United States, but, as with most
laws, the Clean Air Act is enforced by a Federal Agency--in this case,
the Environmental Protection Agency--with broad power and authority to
act or to refuse to act.
In this case, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority
to use the new information that came off its own monitors--new
information about the concentrations and danger of ethylene oxide--to
develop new rules around the use of that chemical, including when it is
used for commercial sterilization in plants like Sterigenics. The EPA
has the authority to do this.
The EPA should quickly promulgate rules to establish safe limits for
ethylene oxide used in manufacturing and commercial sterilization. This
would protect not only the people in Willowbrook but also the people in
Gurnee and Waukegan, IL, which also have plants that use ethylene
oxide--plants that are located smack dab in the middle of these
populated communities.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is 4 years overdue to begin the
process of promulgating new rules for ethylene oxide commercial
sterilization. Yet when I called the Acting Administrator, Mr. Wheeler,
at the EPA last Friday, there didn't seem to be any sense of urgency to
take action on this issue beyond the further collection of data over
the next several weeks.
The EPA is under court order to review ethylene oxide emission
standards for manufacturing by 2020, but there is no official timeline
for commercial sterilization review--exactly what we have asked of Mr.
Wheeler and the EPA over and over again.
Waiting 1 year is unacceptable for the families who are affected by
these emissions. The health and safety of these families and their
children are at stake in this decision by the EPA. That is too long to
ask someone to wait when they sleep near this plant, work near this
plant, or take their kids to school near this plant. That is why today
I join my colleague Senator Duckworth, who has been my trusted ally in
this effort, and my colleagues in the House of Representatives,
Congressmen Schneider, Foster, Casten, and Lipinski. We are introducing
legislation requiring the EPA to promulgate these rules within 180 days
on the use of ethylene oxide in this manner. There is no excuse and no
logical explanation for delaying this kind of establishment of a rule.
But the EPA has to do a lot more than simply start a 6-month process
toward promulgating a rule for ethylene oxide. The EPA needs to treat
this matter like the public health crisis it is. Today Senator
Duckworth and I are calling on the EPA to immediately require
Sterigenics to work with an independent, third-party environmental
engineering firm to identify the source of these emissions and reduce
these emissions coming from that facility. We want a third party on the
scene. We don't trust Sterigenics to do this by themselves.
For their own credibility, they should invite a third-party
environmental engineering firm to do this work. If Sterigenics cares
about this community as much as they say they do, they shouldn't wait
for the EPA to issue an order for them to have this sort of inspection
and to make the repairs and changes necessary to protect the people in
the surrounding community. They should immediately hire an independent,
third-party expert to identify the source of the emissions and reduce
them as quickly as humanly possible.
The EPA should commit to continuous monitoring around the facility
instead of ending the monitoring as planned later this week. The EPA
should remain as a presence in this community to make sure we restore
the faith to the people living nearby that the situation is no longer
dangerous and threatening.
The EPA should commit to continuing to analyze and share the data
they collect with the public. No one should have to live in fear that
simply breathing the air around their home, their school, or their
workplace will give them cancer.
I am calling on the EPA to treat this with the urgency it deserves. I
am ready to work with them, and I am sure Senator Duckworth is as well.
Let me close by saying that there are many people who mock the EPA
and say that we would be better off if they stopped harassing
businesses like Sterigenics. Tell that to the people who live in
Willowbrook. Tell that to the people who live in Gurnee and Waukegan.
They are counting on us--those in Washington who work with the
Environmental Protection Agency--to keep this community safe for their
families. They are counting on us to understand the concern they feel
for themselves and their children. They are counting on us not to come
with bureaucratic delay but to come up with a timely response, to put
Sterigenics on the spot when it comes to the emissions that are coming
off their plant, and to put us as a government on the spot to respond
as quickly and as humanly as possible.
It is not a matter of bureaucracy; it is a matter of common sense. If
this were your family living next to this facility, would you want
business as usual, or would you want to make sure the government
responds in a timely fashion? I think the answer is obvious.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Nomination of William Barr
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues on the Senate floor
to discuss William Barr, President Trump's nominee to serve as
America's next Attorney General.
The Attorney General's job is to defend the U.S. Constitution against
all enemies, foreign or domestic, and to stand up for the rights of all
Americans, but President Trump has a different view of the Attorney
General's role. He has made it quite clear that he is not interested in
an Attorney General who is committed to working for the American
people. For President Trump, only two criteria matter when it comes to
picking an Attorney General.
No. 1 is loyalty to President Trump. William Barr easily checks this
box. Just look at the Mueller investigation. As Special Counsel
Mueller's team investigates whether there are connections between
Russia's meddling in the U.S. elections and the Trump campaign and
indicts more and more people with close ties to the President,
President Trump has viciously attacked the investigation, calling it a
``witch hunt.''
Trump was not pleased that his first pick for Attorney General, Jeff
Sessions, recused himself from the Mueller investigation. He doesn't
want to make the same mistake twice. In Barr, the President has found
someone he believes will put the President's interests above those of
the country, and it is not hard to see why.
Barr has taken extraordinary steps to undermine the Mueller
investigation, even voluntarily submitting an unsolicited memo to the
Justice Department arguing that the special counsel doesn't have the
power to investigate Trump for obstruction of justice. Man, that is
quite the cover letter for a job application when the job is overseeing
the very investigation you don't think should exist in the first place.
Loyalty to President Trump--check.
The second criterion for President Trump when picking an Attorney
General or any nominee to serve in the
[[Page S1184]]
highest levels of the Federal Government is whether the nominee will
continue to tilt our government further and further in favor of the
powerful few over everyone else.
Once again, Barr checks the box. Barr's record on women's rights,
criminal justice reform, immigration, and so many more issues shows
that he will promote the interests of the powerful few instead of
defending the rights of all.
Take women's rights. Barr believes Roe v. Wade--the Supreme Court
case establishing the right to abortion care--was wrongly decided and
should be overturned. He also joined the amicus brief arguing that
employers should be allowed to deny women access to contraceptive care
based on employers' religious beliefs.
On criminal justice reform, Barr has endorsed harmful policies that
have perpetuated America's broken criminal justice system. While
serving as Attorney General in the early 1990s, the Justice Department
issued a report arguing that the United States had an under-
incarceration problem--that we put too few people in jail in this
country--and Barr has personally made many statements in line with that
misguided approach. He has argued that children should be prosecuted as
adults. Despite the fact that Black people are arrested, prosecuted,
convicted, and more harshly sentenced than their White counterparts for
exactly the same crimes, Barr has denied that racial disparities exist
in the criminal justice system and has championed discriminatory
sentencing policies.
On immigration, Barr supported the first and harshest iteration of
President Trump's unconstitutional and immoral Muslim ban. In his stint
as Attorney General in the 1990s, he advocated for denying political
asylum to Haitian asylum seekers who happened to be HIV positive.
On healthcare, Barr has argued that the Affordable Care Act is
unconstitutional.
On LGBTQ equality, he has opposed efforts to promote LGBTQ equality.
The list goes on and on. There is no doubt that if confirmed, Barr
would continue the same broken system that protects the wealthy and
well-connected while it leaves everyone else behind.
The President doesn't hide what he wants from an Attorney General. He
wants someone who will put protecting the President ahead of protecting
our Constitution and someone who will help maintain America's two very
different justice systems--one that protects and coddles the wealthy
and the powerful and another harsh, unjust system for everyone else.
Barr's record shows that he is not the Attorney General America
desperately needs--an Attorney General who will stand up for the rule
of law and for the rights of all Americans. That is why I will vote no
on Barr's nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
S. 47
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, as a former chair of the Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, I have a pretty good sense of how complicated it
is to pull together a legislative package of public lands like the one
this Senate is about to pass.
So I would like to begin my comments with a special shout-out to our
chair and committee leadership, Chair Murkowski, Senator Cantwell,
Senator Manchin, then-chairman and my friend Congressman Rob Bishop,
and now-Chairman Grijalva for helping me negotiate the Oregon
provisions in this bill.
This morning, I have brought to the floor of this Senate a copy of a
wonderful story. It is called ``Fire at Eden's Gate.'' It is an
inspiring account of our late Republican Governor, Tom McCall. Nobody
understood better than Tom McCall the very basic idea that protecting
our public treasures should not be a partisan proposition. In this day
and age, too often, it can feel like the sense of common purpose around
protecting our public treasures is slipping away, but I hope this bill
is a bit of a signal that it is coming back.
That is why this morning, I am dedicating the Oregon provisions of
this bill to the memory of our late, great Tom McCall. If Governor
McCall were here with us this morning, he would say the Oregon
provisions in this legislation are all about protecting and enhancing
Oregon's unique and extraordinary livability. At the heart of that
livability are our natural treasures and the recreation economy that
pumps billions of dollars into Oregon, especially in our rural
communities.
I am heading home this weekend. I have townhall meetings in every one
of Oregon's 36 counties. In those rural areas, I am constantly seeing
people whose livelihood revolves around that theory Tom McCall talked
about--our unique livability. We will see small businesses, we will see
guides who are taking folks out into the back country, and people who
sell gear. The recreation economy is a big economic multiplier, and it
is all tied to what Tom McCall talked about, which is protecting
Oregon's livability.
Tom McCall would be very pleased with a number of aspects of this
bill, and I want to tick them off briefly this morning. I believe
Governor McCall would be especially pleased that this legislation does
more to protect Oregonians from the growing threats of wildfires that,
in our part of the world, are not your grandfather's fires. They are
becoming infernos. We are seeing fires leap our majestic Columbia
River, something that used to be unheard of but is a reality today.
This legislation, in my view, makes a real difference in reducing the
threats of wildfires.
I want to talk about one provision specifically, and that is what the
bill does for Crooked River Ranch in Central Oregon. The Crooked River
Ranch provision I worked on with the committee leadership and that we
got in this bill is just common sense because it reduces the risk of
fire and also prevents the increasing backlog that prevents our land
managers from clearing out dead and dying hazardous fuels near the
homes of families.
Folks from this really small community, the Crooked River Ranch, came
to my townhall meetings and told me about their very understandable
fear of being engulfed in one of these infernos, which is how I
describe some of these fires that just leap through Federal, State,
local, and private boundaries. I want everybody at Crooked River Ranch
this morning to know the provisions of this bill reduce the risk of
those huge fires, promote forest health, and reduce the backlog that is
so critical to preventing fires in the future. I think the provisions
in this bill show all those folks from Crooked River Ranch who came to
our townhall meetings that the Senate has listened to them and
responded to this very real threat.
In addition, I can picture Tom McCall this morning--this towering
figure--striding through the forests that this bill designates as the
first new wilderness in Oregon in nearly a decade. I am talking about
the Devil's Staircase Wilderness area, which is 30,000 acres of rugged
rainforest in our beautiful Oregon Coast Range. This is an untouched,
pristine area, and it was named after a series of cascading waterfalls.
It is an area that is so remote and so steep that hikers--who come from
all over the country and literally from around the globe--when they
come to Devil's Staircase, they can only gain access after a daylong
trek through miles of devil's club, which is a tall, spiky bush that
has irritated many a hiker. Few people have actually seen the
waterfalls and the primeval stands of old-growth trees that surround
it. In true Tom McCall fashion, this bill ensures that these majestic
Douglas firs and tall trees on the hike are there for future
generations to come, and that, in particular, is something Tom McCall
personally talked to me about.
I am going to mention volunteers in the forests and a conversation I
had with Tom McCall not long before he passed. He was always coming
back, trying to make sure those of us in positions to make policy were
thinking about future generations.
Nancy and I are older parents. We have twins who are 11 and a little
redhead who is 6. Pictures are available on my iPhone after my
presentation.
[[Page S1185]]
Whenever I look at them, I think about what Tom McCall said: You are
making policy for future generations. Now, because of the provisions
here to protect Devil's Staircase and create this unique, new
wilderness area, it is going to be there for those future generations,
for Oregonians, Americans, and literally visitors from around the
world.
While we are on the topic of remote areas in my State, the lands bill
we are about to vote on protects yet another very special place, the
Chetco River in Southwestern Oregon. The Chetco lives within steep,
mountainous terrain in the heart of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness area.
This river--one of the wildest in Oregon--drops almost 4,000 feet in
elevation from its headwaters in the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest
before it empties into the Pacific Ocean near Brookings. This area
would be particularly beloved by Tom McCall because it is a haven for
treasured Oregon fish species like salmon and steelhead. There are so
many pictures of Tom McCall throwing a rod because he loved to fish.
Although it is a hike to get there, it is an irresistible challenge to
even the most proficient anglers and whitewater kayakers, but they will
find it the trip of a lifetime.
In addition to its recreation benefits and wildlife-sustaining
habitat, the river also provides a clean and pristine source of
drinking water for the city of Brookings and the town of Harbor on the
Oregon Coast.
For years, this extraordinarily pure river, with crystal clear water,
was being threatened by those who simply didn't appreciate what it
meant for fishing and protecting the future, and simply just looked at
as an opportunity for mining. This legislation ends the future
potential for mineral exploitation along the banks to the Chetco once
and for all.
I and other Members of the delegation have been working for years to
try to make sure this was done permanently. We wouldn't have to lurch
from one kind of administrative fix to another. Now we are embedding in
black letter law that we are ending the future potential for mineral
exploitation along the banks of the Chetco River.
I have been working on this for my entire time in public service
representing Oregon in the U.S. Senate, and it is something that I--
again, apropos of that shout-out to Senator Murkowski, Senator
Cantwell, Chair Bishop, Chair Grijalva--am so appreciative of.
The Chetco, by the way, is just one of the many rivers the public
lands bill will protect and conserve in my home State. The bill
protects more than 250 miles of rivers and streams in Oregon by adding
them to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
As an Oregonian, I know it doesn't take an act of Congress to remind
us that rivers and streams are the backbone of Oregon's recreation
economy. I spoke about it earlier, but this is something that, in my
view, is missed in much of the debate about public lands. Recreation is
an enormous economic multiplier for our communities.
I see our new colleague in the Chair, the Presiding Officer, and I
know Florida cares deeply about treasures. So, again, this is not a
partisan concern. This is all about looking down the road. When I have
a chance, as I will this weekend, to be home for townhall meetings, I
am always stunned at how far the reach is with respect to the
recreation economy.
I was home recently, and a young man said he wanted to talk to me
about his kayak business, and so we visited. He talked about how he had
tourists come, and he would take them out in his kayak. Then he talked
to me about how there is a global market for his kayaks.
I am the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee with
jurisdiction over trade. He asked me about my view on economics. One
out of five jobs in Oregon revolves around international trade. We like
to make things and grow things and add value to them and ship them all
over the world.
Well, the recreation economy creates opportunities here at home, as
that young man took folks out in his kayaks, but creates even more
opportunities as the rest of the world benefits from his kayaks as
well.
In Oregon, we outdoor enthusiasts understand that from every corner
of the United States we have an opportunity to show Oregon's true
natural beauty as well as give people the experience of a lifetime
seeing unparalleled treasures. It is a big boost to a lot of families
for increasing their incomes.
Rivers and streams, such as those we are going to protect with the
new additions to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, are a
place for families to picnic, for anglers to cast a fly rod into some
of the best fishing holes in the country, and for whitewater rafters to
get an adrenaline rush while enjoying Oregon's treasures.
I can tell you about Tom McCall because Tom McCall loved fishing
almost more than life itself. I am telling you, he would look at these
provisions, and he would say that what this bill does to protect those
hundreds of miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers is something that he would
call part of laying the future for future generations but making sure
there is a lot that benefits the people of my State and our country
right now.
From Brookings to the Willamette Valley, from the Chetco to the
Molalla River, this bill and the provisions we were able to negotiate
on rivers protects treasured fishing streams and salmon habitats in
every single corner of Oregon. As I indicated, it is going to be a real
shot in the arm to rural communities that are going to be able to
create world-class recreation destinations and look at that recreation
economy as an increasing opportunity to build a more secure economic
future.
Especially important are some of the protections this bill gives to
the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. Fifty-one years after President
Johnson named the Rogue to the original Wild and Scenic Rivers Act,
this bill adds just over 120 miles of important Rogue River tributaries
to the list. In doing so, this bill further protects and safeguards the
mighty Rogue that the iconic western author Zane Grey put on the map
when he wrote about the wilderness and remoteness of the river from his
cabin at Winkle Bar nearly one century ago.
With these designations, Oregon will now have more miles of Wild and
Scenic Rivers than any other State in the contiguous 48. Stay tuned,
folks. Alaska is the only State that has more miles designated, but
given that State is about six times the size of my Oregon, I still
think we are in a position to catch up.
As the Governor who gave the public access to all of Oregon's beaches
and passed the Nation's first bottle recycling bill, Tom McCall valued
those who volunteered to keep Oregon so special. He was a great
champion of promoting volunteers--again, something that historically
has been bipartisan.
I ran the legal aid program for older people for a number of years--
the Gray Panthers, for about 7 years--and shortly before he passed, Tom
McCall came to see me. I had never been elected to anything. I was
stunned that such an important person would come to see an obscure
fellow like myself. He was talking about the elderly, and it really led
to a broader discussion of volunteerism and people participating,
getting involved in their communities, and because he was always
working to get people involved in cleaning up our beaches, and then he
passed the Nation's first bottle recycling bill, he always came back--
as he did that day when he came to see me--to talking about how
volunteerism is a big part of what keeps Oregon so special.
In that spirit, this bill honors the conservation legacy of two
Oregonians who spent their lives working to keep Oregon special--Frank
and Jeanne Moore.
Frank Moore just embodies the Oregon way. He served in World War II,
and he returned to Oregon and settled with Jeanne in North Umpqua,
guiding generations of anglers on the river. Frank and Jeanne dedicated
their lives to preservation and conservation of the Umpqua River.
For somebody who knows a thing or two about casting a fly rod, Frank
Moore understood just how important protecting the river is. I and my
colleagues have felt it is long past time to honor Frank and Jeanne's
legacy along the river and in their community. That is what this bill
does.
I went and visited them not long after we made a judgment that we
wanted to protect these Oregon icons and their conservation legacy, and
now Frank and Jeanne Moore will be recognized in this bill for
protecting nearly 100,000 acres of Forest Service land near the North
Umpqua River through
[[Page S1186]]
the inclusion of the Frank and Jeanne Moore Salmon Sanctuary.
As anybody who works on public lands legislation knows, sometimes it
is hard to find a balance in order to get public lands legislation
passed. Nobody gets everything they want. Nobody gets everything they
believe they ought to have. The question is, can you bring people
together.
I am going to close by way of saying I have highlighted a number of
provisions that I am glad we got in here. It was 10 years earlier when
then-President Obama signed seven pieces of public lands legislation
that I was the lead author of. So these opportunities don't come along
all the time.
There are additional protections that I wish were in this bill we
will vote on in a few hours. I particularly wanted further protections
for the Rogue and the Molalla Rivers. I want to say to the people I am
so honored to represent at home that as soon as we get this done, we
are going to go back and start building support to get those
protections through Congress in the future, and I am optimistic that if
we can have the same kind of cooperation I have been talking about this
morning, we can get them across the finish line.
This public lands bill may not be perfect, but it is a major
accomplishment. If you had told me, in a polarized political climate
like the one we have today, that we could get a permanent authorization
for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, I would have said, ``No way.
Can't happen,'' but now we have real protection for, as it is called,
LWCF.
I am just going to close by mentioning, finally, my friend, our late
Republican Governor, Tom McCall. He embodied--and you see it in this
book, ``Fire at Eden's Gate: The Oregon Story.'' Tom McCall, a
Republican, embodied Oregon's long and proud history of conservation.
I want to close by saying the reason I focused on Tom McCall this
morning is that he is part of a historical legacy. Sometimes, over the
last few years, I have gotten the sense that that historical principle
that protecting public lands was not a partisan issue--sometimes I felt
it was just slipping away. Today, it seems to me, we are pushing back.
We are headed in the right direction, and protecting the special places
my home State is known for is something that gives me great pride. It
is also something you bring some humility to because Tom McCall was in
a league of his own with respect to protecting our treasures, and I am
very glad today, with the Oregon provisions in this bill, we can build
on Tom McCall's legacy. I am proud to have been able to play a role in
making sure those provisions that help Oregon and our country have been
included in this bill.
I yield the floor.
____________________