[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 22840]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                  PROTECTING THE PUBLIC DRINKING WATER

  (Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, we are now focusing on airport 
security. That is appropriate. But in doing that, I hope that we are 
not neglecting security of other very essential parts of our 
infrastructure. I am thinking particularly of water.
  Our vast municipal and public water systems were developed to be 
economical and to be efficient, and they are both. We are one of the 
few countries in the world that can water our grass and wash our cars 
and flush our toilets and fight our fires with drinking water. Our 
water systems were not developed with any eye toward security.
  We just passed out of the Committee on Science a very important bill 
that supports R&D, looking at ways to make our very important water 
system infrastructure more secure to terrorists. This bill needs to 
come very quickly to the floor because this is one area of our 
infrastructure we cannot afford to continue to be at risk.




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