[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 72 (Tuesday, April 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2210-S2211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, shortly, we are going to be taking up S.
914, the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act, and I would
urge my colleagues to approve this legislation promptly.
The Environment and Public Works Committee reported this legislation
by a unanimous vote. We don't get too many unanimous votes here on
substantive, important legislation, and we were able to get that
because this bill is truly bipartisan.
I want to congratulate the leadership of the Environment and Public
Works Committee, Chairman Carper, for the management of the committee
to bring us together, and Senator Capito, the ranking Republican
member. The two of them set the climate for us to work together to
bring out a drinking water and wastewater infrastructure bill. I also
want to compliment my counterpart in regards to the Subcommittee on
Infrastructure, Senator Cramer, who is the ranking member--I am the
chair--and Senator Duckworth, who is the chair of the Water
Subcommittee, and Senator Lummis. All six of us worked together so that
this Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act really does
represent the views of all the Members of the Senate, and it is a bill
that is desperately needed by our communities.
Water infrastructure is critically important to our Nation. It is
important for drinking water. It is important for how we treat our
waste, wastewater. The needs are tremendous. The American Society of
Civil Engineers gives us a report card grade of D in 2021. The gaps are
billions of dollars a year necessary to bring our water infrastructure
up to standard.
This legislation will move us in the right direction. It authorizes
$35 billion of water infrastructure, which is desperately needed in our
communities. It will allow us to upgrade aging infrastructure, address
the threat of climate
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change, invest in new technologies, and help marginal communities in
dealing with these needs.
COVID-19 has made the challenges even more dramatic for our
communities. Water utilities have incurred additional costs. I think
that is quite obvious. They had to deal with the protective equipment
for their workers to deal with COVID-19. They had workers who were out
as a result of COVID-19. They had to deal with changing the way they
operated their business. There was a demand for greater water during
COVID-19, just the washing of our hands frequently. It requires us to
have access to more clean water.
The ability of our customers to pay their bills was challenged during
COVID-19. As we know, American families' incomes were very stressed and
are still stressed as a result of COVID-19. The gap between the ability
of the public support for water infrastructure and what ratepayers are
asked to pay is getting larger and larger. We haven't made the money
available from the public side for water infrastructure, and to put
more pressure on the rate when customers are already having a difficult
time paying their bills is not a viable option. That makes S. 914 even
more urgent.
I want to talk about a couple provisions that are included in S. 914
that are bipartisan that I worked on that I think are extremely
important parts of this legislation.
One, working with Senator Wicker, we have in this bill a pilot
program that will establish 40 grants around the Nation so that we can
establish programs to help low-income households. By way of comparison,
this is similar to the LIHEAP program that we use to help our low-
income families deal with their utility bills for heating their homes
and air-conditioning their homes. This will provide similar help for
low-income families in dealing with the price of their water bills.
Having been through Maryland and some of our centers, I can tell you
that there are many communities where individuals literally cannot
afford their water bills. It is an essential utility. We need to do
something to fill the gap. So this bill will establish a program so
that we can take some of the pressure off of the ratepayers and
therefore allow local utilities to be able to use rates to do some of
their improvements without adversely affecting low-income families.
This pilot program, to me, is long overdue, but I am pleased to see it
is included in this legislation.
Another provision that is included in this legislation is legislation
that I have authored with Senator Capito, the Clean Water
Infrastructure Resiliency and Sustainability Program. The two of us
recognize that in the State of West Virginia and the State of Maryland,
we have extreme weather events that are affecting our ability to handle
drinking water and wastewater. That is true in every State in the
Nation. I could tell you about Maryland and the community of Ellicott
City, where they have had two 100-year floods in a period of less than
2 years.
These frequent, extreme weather events are happening in this Nation
on a regular basis, and it is putting additional stress on our water
infrastructure. The President had a recent summit on climate, and this
is one of the issues that were brought up.
Wastewater treatment plants and drinking water systems--we need to
increase their resiliency and add that ability. That is what this
provision will do by providing grants that will assist in planning,
designing, construction, implementation, operation, or maintenance of
the facilities.
Stormwater runoff is one of the largest sources of pollutants in our
environment. We have over 600,000 miles of rivers and streams in
America, 13 million acres of lakes, reservoirs, and ponds. I can speak
personally about the impact that runoff has on the Chesapeake Bay, a
national treasure. The fastest growing source of pollutant into the
Chesapeake Bay comes from storm runoff.
This grant program on resiliency will help all of us plan for how we
deal with water infrastructure in a way that can deal with our modern
challenges.
Another provision in this bill comes from legislation that was
authored by Senator Boozman and myself, the Water Resources Research
Amendments Act. This provides help for research so that we can find
effective and efficient new ways to deal with water treatment
facilities.
In Maryland, we are proud that we have the Maryland Water Resources
Research Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, that does
this type of research that will help us to the next generation of how
we can use technology to help deal with our water infrastructure in
America.
The bottom line is that S. 914 is a bill that will help us preserve
and provide drinking water to the people of this Nation and deal with
wastewater. It is a very important bill for water infrastructure. It is
bipartisan. It will be on the floor. I urge my colleagues to support
this bipartisan legislation, which is clearly part of building America
back better. I hope we can act on this bill this week and send to it
the House and get this bill to the President for his signature. I can
tell you, our local water systems desperately need the help.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Arizona.