[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11468-11472]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                  LIVABILITY IN AMERICA'S COMMUNITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure this evening to 
address this Chamber dealing with issues, as I have often done on this 
floor, of livability: what the Federal government can do to be a better 
partner helping American families to be safe, healthy, and more 
economically secure.

                              {time}  2000

  And as we approach the notion of how to structure that partnership, 
there are those that suggest that there are areas of new rules or 
regulations, tax, fees, new government programs, and they all have 
their place, I suppose, in the toolkit towards enhancing liveability.
  Mr. Speaker, I am of the opinion that the single most important 
factor that enters into the Federal Government being a better partner 
with our local communities is simply to lead by example. For the 
Federal Government to model the behavior that we expect of other 
entities, corporations, individuals, and governments, for the Federal 
Government to walk the talk, there is nothing that is more powerful, 
more

[[Page 11469]]

compelling, that is going to cost less and be more effective.
  For instance, I have worked with many in this Chamber on a simple 
piece of legislation that would require the United States Post Office 
to obey local land-use laws, zoning codes, environmental regulations, 
to engage the American public in a constructive fashion on decisions 
that affect communities large and small in over 40,000 locations around 
the country.
  It is not particularly revolutionary. It is not going to cost the 
taxpayer any money. It is not going to be in the long term more 
difficult for the post office. There is no real difference than their 
competitors like UPS, for instance, or FedEx. It will help change, 
however, the relationship that we have with the post office and local 
communities.
  Mr. Speaker, as we reflect on ways that the Federal Government can 
lead by example, I am struck by how key the decisions that we make 
regarding the United States Department of Defense for our military 
which is the largest manager of infrastructure in the world, over $500 
billion worth of roads, bridges, hospitals, docks, classrooms and 
apartments.
  The military, however, is stuck in this struggle in terms of how it 
is going to promote liveability for enlisted personnel and for the 
communities in which we are surrounded. In fact, there is all the 
discussion we have in the United States about the consequences of 
unplanned growth, the consequences of sprawl; but I think we can make 
the argument that it is the United States military that is affected the 
most by the consequences of sprawl and unplanned growth.
  Think for a moment about the controversies that are facing the 
military from Hawaii to Puerto Rico, where there is growing resistance 
to the areas in which the military is conducting its training 
exercises, people are trying to stop the use of live ammunition and 
equipment in Hawaii. And as we have seen, the Bush administration has 
recently announced that in 3 years we are going to stop these 
activities in Puerto Rico.
  Mr. Speaker, the question arises where is the military, in fact, 
going to undertake these activities that are still essential to 
maintaining military readiness for the men and women who serve in the 
Armed Forces?
  We are facing a question with this administration, as we did with the 
Clinton administration before us, what are we going to do with the 
inventory of military bases and other facilities that are in excess of 
what are necessary to maintain our fighting forces? Indeed, we have an 
inventory of military bases that basically reflects a tremendous 
overhang from World War I and World War II.
  We have more inventory than we need for today's military bases. But 
as is well known to Members of this Chamber that when you try 
attempting to close them, there is a great storm of controversy.
  There are some communities that are, frankly, very apprehensive about 
the consequences of losing the employment base in their community, but 
there are others who frankly are more concerned about what is going to 
be left once you shut down this base of operation. After you have 
recycled the jobs elsewhere, will there be an opportunity to use this 
land for productive purposes?
  We look at Fort Ord 10 years after the BRAC process closed that base, 
we have yet to be able to fully transition all of that land to 
productive private sector uses. As we approach a new round of BRAC 
decisions, uncertainty about what is going to happen to communities and 
an unwillingness of the Federal Government to act in a prompt and 
thoughtful fashion, to clean it up and turn it over adds to the 
uncertainty.
  It is going to make it more difficult for this administration 
politically, economically, and environmentally to do what is right for 
right-sizing the scale of American military operations.
  It is going to end up costing us more money, and it is going to delay 
the use of these lands for more productive uses. There is another 
serious problem that is associated with it. Today we have an all-
volunteer Army; and increasingly, we find that the skill level that is 
required for the men and women who are in uniform is rising ever 
higher, retaining these highly qualified men and women, the best and 
brightest of whom can transition into the private sector, have more 
certainty in their life, higher quality of life, earn more money, and 
have more career advancement.
  In order for the military to retain the highly qualified, technically 
proficient men and women who make the modern military work we give to 
them a high quality of life.
  If we are facing a situation where military housing is substandard, 
and I have seen reports that suggest half or more of a third of a 
million military housing units is substandard, it is very difficult to 
retain the men and women in uniform and their family members, because 
increasingly, these people are, in fact, more mature. They have their 
own families, and they care about quality of life.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would reference the difficulty the military 
faces with the exposure to liability for not having cleaned up after 
itself. Dealing with the environmental problems that are the legacy of 
military operations for over a century has the consequence, not only of 
denying productive use of this land to the community, but it is a 
distinct liability that the United States Government and the Department 
of Defense cannot escape. Ultimately, we are responsible for cleaning 
up after ourselves.
  The bill is going to come due for the Department of Defense. The 
longer we evade, the longer we delay in cleaning it up in a forthright 
fashion, the more expensive it is going to be for the taxpayer, the 
more damage to the environment.
  We are looking at what is happening in the State of Massachusetts 
with the Massachusetts military reservation where there is a toxic 
plume that is poisoning the aquifer on Martha's Vineyard, the source of 
drinking water for some of the exclusive properties in this pristine 
and valuable land. It has historic significance. It is very significant 
to some of the best and brightest around the country.
  That is slowly being poisoned because we have not been able to move 
quickly with the Department of Defense to clean up after itself. The 
liability in Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard is not going to get 
smaller over time; indeed, it is going to escalate. More environmental 
damage, a larger bill for the taxpayer.
  One of the areas that I am most concerned about deals with the legacy 
of unexploded ordnance. We have across the country in over 1,000 sites 
with potential contamination of 20, 30, 40, maybe 50 million acres or 
more where we have the legacy of unexploded ordnance from past military 
activities.
  We have had this visited upon people, burst on the scene in 
unexpected ways. My colleague, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. 
Kelly), had this occur in her district where on Storm King Mountain 
State Park, overlooking the Hudson River, the park actually was not a 
military range, but it was near West Point, and as effective and well 
trained and talented as the men and women are at West Point, often the 
targeted were missed.
  The shells that they were using were lodged in the land in and around 
the Storm King Mountain State Park.
  We had a situation here a couple of years ago where there was a 
serious forest fire and the firefighters were out to try to stop the 
blaze; and all of a sudden, there were a series of explosions where 
these shells that had been buried, in some cases for up to a century or 
more, started exploding due to the heat of the forest fire; and we were 
forced to close Storm King Mountain State Park, one of the examples of 
where the unexploded ordnance has returned to haunt the American public 
and the military.
  Earlier this spring, Mr. Speaker, I led a group to the campus of 
American University and to Spring Valley, one of the most exclusive 
residential districts in the District of Columbia.
  I am not talking about some far-flung area in the wilderness that had 
been used for military operations. I am talking about a location that 
is about

[[Page 11470]]

a 25-minute bicycle ride from where I am speaking this evening.
  I have here a map, an aerial map that dates from 1922. It seems that 
the land adjacent to and surrounding American University, in fact, some 
of the land on the American University campus during World War I was 
the location of the American testing for chemical weapons.
  We have here an aerial view that shows the location of test pits 
where they had goats and rabbits and hamsters, where they would inflict 
nerve gas, mustard gas on these animals, where we would manufacture it, 
where we had over a thousand structures and almost 2,000 men and women 
working during World War II.
  Mr. Speaker, it was one of the most toxic sites in America. Some of 
the facilities were so contaminated they could not even tear the sheds 
down. They ended up burning a number of them and burying the residue, 
burying the leftover chemicals and weapons.
  Now what we see, 83 years after World War I, we still have a toxic 
legacy here in the United States capital. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we had 
a situation in the mid-1990s after we had gone in with the work of the 
Corps of Engineers spending over $30 million, removing contaminated 
soils and materials and bombs.
  There were working people out on this site escavating a foundation 
for one of the multimillion dollar homes for the Spring Valley 
Development, most of them are between $1 million to $5 million or more, 
and the workmen were busy with the backhoe.
  It hit something, broke something and the work people were sent to 
the hospital because they had discovered a container of a toxic 
chemical.

                              {time}  2015

  As they went to the site and started working around it, they found a 
container of phosphorus where the steel container had rusted away and 
left the ceramic shell. And when they broke the shell open, the 
phosphorus came in contact with the oxygen in the air and burst into 
flames. The question occurs to a thoughtful person, what would have 
happened if it was a child who had been playing on a construction site 
who had found this waste from World War I?
  Farfetched? Well, as I speak, we are spending another $40 million to 
try and decontaminate the site. As I speak, one can go out to this 
exclusive residential neighborhood and find little flags in various and 
sundry properties in the neighborhood where they are taking samples to 
try and find out where the contaminants are. If any of my colleagues 
were to go to a cocktail reception at the home of the Korean 
Ambassador, who lives in a little $10 million bungalow just off this 
site that I mentioned here, the Korean Ambassador to the United States, 
I would suggest they not go in his back yard, because they will find 
that it is all dug away as they are trying to remove the contaminants 
in his back yard.
  Just up the hill and across the road from the Ambassador is the child 
care center from American University. It is a modern child care center. 
The playground equipment is visible in the yard. But it is vacant 
because the levels of arsenic in the soil upon which this child care 
center is built is 20, 40, 50 times the level that is regarded as safe.
  There are young women who were on the rugby team, the girls that 
played on the girls intramural field at American University, who 
wondered why the rashes that they suffered when they were playing on 
that field did not heal properly, and questions have been raised as to 
whether or not the contamination on that field was a part of it.
  I mention Spring Valley not because it is the worst site in America, 
I mention it because it is here, literally in the shadow of the 
American Capitol, and it is 83 years after World War I has concluded, 
after we have spent over $30 million cleaning it up, and we still have 
not been able to tell the residents around Spring Valley and the 
university community at American University that we have taken care of 
the problem.
  It is not farfetched to speculate what might happen with children who 
come across unexploded ordnance in over a thousand locations around 
America. There was a tragic situation that occurred in San Diego where 
there were three junior high students, young boys, playing in a field 
in a subdivision that had been built on a formerly used defense site. 
They came across a shell. Now, 10-, 11-year-old boys will do what 
children will do. They were playing with it, trying to figure out what 
to do with it, if it was real, and seeing if they could open it up. It 
exploded. It killed two of them.
  I have been able to identify 65 Americans who have been killed as a 
result of unexploded ordnance. And I suspect on America's military 
reservations, bases, bombing ranges, that if we had full access to all 
the information, that, in fact, we have probably had far more than 
these 65 that I have been able to identify.
  In Portland, Oregon, just across the river from us, a half-hour's 
drive, there is a 3,800-acre military reservation, Camp Bonneville. No 
longer used for military purposes, it has been used for the better part 
of the last century. It is separated from the public, for most of the 
3,800 acres, by three strands of barbed wire. No way we are going to 
keep out the public. People have been using these 3,800 acres for 
years. Children have played on it, people have ridden horseback, there 
are people who have hunted, folks who have used it just for a day hike, 
even though we attempt to post signs and keep people off it.
  The military personnel who are responsible for it advise there is no 
way to secure it and people continue to use it. We do not yet know what 
all is on the site of Camp Bonneville. We have had situations where 
they have found 105-millimeter shells on the surface. Now, these are 
the shells that are about like this, that have seven and a half pounds 
that serve to detonate the shells.
  There are ambitious plans to return these 3,800 acres to public use, 
for a wildlife refuge, for a park, and the people of Vancouver and 
Clark County, Washington, are excited about the prospect, but we have 
not yet been able to analyze what is on the site. We have not been able 
yet to understand what we need to make sure that it is clear and that 
we can turn it back over.
  Mr. Speaker, I could go on and spend the remainder of the hour that 
has been allocated to me just talking about these examples. As I work 
with the men and women in this Chamber, virtually everybody I work with 
has a problem like this in their community or near it, my colleague, 
the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), with Fort Ord in California. 
Ten years after Fort Ord has been closed, we still have not been able 
to turn over the 28,000-acre former home to the 30,000 men and women 
who were there.
  We have a situation with my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Udall), with Rocky Flats, Colorado, a former nuclear weapons 
production facility that they are attempting to be able to make the 
transition for.
  We have situations with the Aberdeen Proving Ground, affecting the 
district of the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ehrlich) and the gentleman 
from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), that contains a number of closed ranges 
with unexploded ordnance and chemical weapons materials. Now, this is a 
problem not just for what is on the land there, but the potential of 
exposing the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries and the potential 
contaminants in a plume that threatens Harford County's drinking water 
supply.
  We have Savannah Army Depot, which concerns the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Evans) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo), 
some 9,000 to 10,000 acres that we would like to transfer to the Fish 
and Wildlife Service, but much of the acreage along the Mississippi 
River is not suitable for transfer or reuse because of UXO.
  I could continue on and on and on this evening. I will not. Suffice 
it to say this is representative of over 1,000 locations around the 
country where we have these problems. It is something that knows no 
geographic limits because it is east and west, north and

[[Page 11471]]

south, and indeed it is the islands that the United States is 
responsible for off our territorial boundaries in Hawaii, in Guam, and 
in Puerto Rico. It is a situation where we are today, at today's rate 
of cleanup, looking at this problem continuing for one century, two 
centuries, 500 years, perhaps 1,000 years or more given the current 
rate of cleanup.
  It is a situation where we do not even know what the dollar amount 
is. What we do know is that the estimates that have been provided by 
the Department of Defense are completely inaccurate. They are 
unreliable. They understate the problem in a dramatic sense. The most 
recent numbers are like $13 billion. It is off by an order of magnitude 
not just tenfold but it could be $200, $300, $400 billion or more to 
clean this up. But the notion that it is $13 billion is absolutely 
laughable.
  Well, what needs to be done? It seems to me that first and foremost 
people in the United States Congress need to report to the game. 
Congress is missing in action in a battle that is still claiming 
casualties 141 years after some of these materials were deposited 
during the Civil War, 83 years after World War I, 56 years after World 
War II, and 25 years after Vietnam. We still have casualties, and not 
just in the United States.
  Frankly, the technology that we should be developing to clean up 
military waste and contamination, unexploded ordnance, the technology 
that will help us determine whether it is a hubcap or an unexploded 
land mine will make a difference, and not just in the United States. 
Sadly, unexploded ordnance, bombs, shells, and land mines are found in 
former battlefields and current battlefields all across the world, in 
Kosovo, in the Balkans, and in sub-Saharan Africa. In Southeast Asia, 
on a trip with President Clinton this last fall, I looked at the 
children who were blind, maimed, missing limbs as a result of 
unexploded ordnance and land mines detonating. There are people in 
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, as we speak, every single week, who are being 
maimed and being killed.
  We have a situation where there are some people who are so desperate 
economically that they are mining these fields trying to recover the 
military hardware at the risk of their lives. If the United States is 
able to develop the technology to more efficiently decontaminate, 
decommission, identify and remove, it will not only return tens of 
millions of acres to the public for reuse, for wildlife, for open 
space, for housing and parks, but it will help save lives around the 
world.
  I suggest that what we need to do first and foremost is for the 
United States Congress to no longer be missing in action. I will be 
proposing legislation in this session of Congress to first of all put 
one person in charge. Right now the administration, Members of 
Congress, the public, the media cannot find out exactly what this 
problem is. There is nobody who is responsible for putting the pieces 
together. This is unconscionable. And by simply designating somebody in 
the Department of Defense, in EPA, or an independent agency to be 
responsible for monitoring, collecting the data, being in charge of the 
tens of millions of dollars of work that is going on right now to make 
a dent in it, this will help us in significant, significant ways.

                              {time}  2030

  Second, we need to put more money into cleaning up after ourselves. 
At a time when this administration can propose spending $100 billion or 
$150 billion or more on unproven technology for an unproven threat of a 
missile attack from a so-called rogue nation like North Korea sometime 
in the next 10 years, with no expectation that after the $130 billion 
we have already spent on Star Wars, that it is going to be any more 
successful.
  Put aside for the moment that military experts, and I think every 
Member of this Chamber will acknowledge that if a rogue nation really 
wanted to inflict damage on the United States, rather than spending a 
lot of time and money trying to put together a missile that may or may 
not hit us 10 years from now, which we could track, know who it is and 
bomb into the Stone Age, it would be much more simple for them to 
simply float a biological, chemical, or nuclear device into the New 
York harbor, into San Francisco Bay, into Seattle. They could bring it 
right here into our Nation's capitol. That is a much more real threat. 
It poses more danger and could happen tomorrow.
  But put aside for a moment the logic, think about the numbers. If we 
are going to invest $100 billion or more on something that is unproven, 
against a threat that although unproven, will likely have destabilizing 
effects diplomatically, should we not put a few billion dollars a year 
into fixing something that threatens the health and safety and 
environment of American families all across the country? Absolutely, we 
should. The amount of money that I am talking about to double or triple 
what we are doing today is literally rounding error in the Pentagon's 
$350 billion budget.
  The United States Congress should step to the plate and put $500 
million, a billion dollars extra into accelerating the cleanup.
  Second, they should put more money into research. I mentioned earlier 
a problem we have got. We have highly sophisticated techniques to 
detect metal way under the surface. But as I said, we do not know if 
that is a 105 millimeter Howitzer shell, a hub cap, or a land mine. If 
my colleagues meet with people in industry, as I have, they will tell 
my colleagues that with more concentrated research money, we can 
develop the technology to make it much more efficient and cost 
effective to know what is there and to move forward with the 
decontamination.
  Finally, we need to make a long-term commitment to solve this 
problem.
  When it is driven by political considerations, when something like 
Spring Valley happens, and it happens in the backyard of the rich and 
the famous in the shadow of the United States Capitol, then we can find 
$40 million extra to try to clean it up right, 83 years after we made 
the mess in the first place. But this is taking away from other 
problems around the country.
  Mr. Speaker, we are just shifting from serious problem to serious 
problem based on what has the most media cache, what has the most 
political pressure. It should not be that way, and it is not the fault 
of the Corps of Engineers or the Department of Defense. They should not 
be in a situation where they are making these trade-offs. It is the 
responsibility of the United States Congress to adequately fund the 
cleanup.
  I would hope that before we recess for the summer we have stepped up 
and made a significant financial contribution to the research and the 
cleanup and we have put somebody in charge. What will happen if we do 
that? Again, if my colleagues talk to the firms that are involved with 
the military cleanup right now, they will tell my colleagues that if 
they make a concerted effort with adequate funding and a commitment for 
multiple years, you are going to see the private sector leap into 
action. They will invest more themselves.
  We are going to have the research. They are going to develop their 
own techniques, and in fact we can issue contracts that enable them to 
do the research and to retain some rights in terms of developing the 
patent, the techniques, so they profit by helping us solve the problem. 
What that will do is it will bring more competition. It will drive down 
the per unit costs. We will have more momentum, and we will be able to 
decontaminate far more acreage than if we were sitting around doing 
this in fits and starts, bits and pieces.
  Once we do that, the savings to the public multiply. As I mentioned, 
the liability for the Federal Government cleaning up after itself as 
the largest polluter of superfund sites in the United States, it is the 
Department of Defense. It is the Federal Government itself.
  We cannot evade that responsibility by just putting up fences and 
pretending that it does not exist. And by going faster and being more 
efficient, what we have done is not only lower the per unit cost, we 
eliminate long-term responsibilities.
  If we do not pollute the aquifers in suburban Maryland that threaten 
the

[[Page 11472]]

Chesapeake Bay or Martha's Vineyard, we are going to save the Federal 
Government a huge bill in the future.
  Once we decontaminate that land, we are creating value. Right now 
these abandoned bases, the contaminated areas, are a liability. We 
spend money trying to keep people away. The trail in West Virginia that 
has a sign on it that says stay on the path, it is safe on the path. If 
you go off, they warn of explosions. Or the grade school children in 
Hope, Arkansas who take home flyers every year describing to children 
what the potential military waste looks like and that they should not 
touch it.
  We are spending a lot of money now trying to keep people away from 
these destructive forces. If we are able to return the land to 
productive use, we are going to strengthen the environment. We are 
going to improve wildlife habitat. We will have more recreational 
opportunities in communities around the country where open space is a 
premium. We see unplanned growth and sprawl, and being able to turn 
these facilities back to the public, back to local government, back to 
park and recreational districts, which add value and quality of life.
  Many of these facilities, abandoned bases and bombing ranges and 
military maneuvers, when they are returned have opportunities to be 
turned into commercial and housing uses, but they must be safe. Once we 
certify it is safe and we can turn it over, there are opportunities for 
colleges to be built and airports to be constructed, for parks and 
recreation, opportunities for commercial activities. These have 
tremendous, tremendous value.
  In a nutshell, we will be adding value to communities, saving money 
and meeting our responsibilities for the environment.
  Mr. Speaker, I am convinced that the American public is often ahead 
of the Federal Government and Members of this Chamber. In the energy 
debate of late it is interesting to note despite some of what I think 
is misleading information which has been presented by some in the 
Federal Government, the American public has a pretty good idea of what 
they want to have happen as far as energy is concerned. They want wise 
stewardship. They want conservation. They want us to have more fuel-
efficient vehicles. The last thing they want to do is spoil the 
environment, drill in the Arctic Refuge and build massive numbers of 
power plants.
  The same way when it comes to making our communities livable. 
Citizens would like us to do our job for the Federal Government to be a 
better partner with them. In over 500 referenda on the State and local 
level across America, the public has voted at the ballot box to 
purchase open space, to clean up contamination, to protect watersheds, 
to provide more transportation choices, to fight against sprawl.
  The Federal Government has an opportunity to work with the citizens 
to kind of run to catch up with them, maybe not lead the charge, but to 
be a full partner. There is nothing that the Federal Government can do 
that will make more of a difference for improving the livability back 
home than for us to take these sites, whether it is Spring Valley near 
the American University campus here in Washington, D.C., Camp 
Bonneville near Portland, Oregon, the Massachusetts Military 
Reservation, or any of the other 1,000 sites across the country, clean 
up after ourselves and enter into a partnership with the American 
public.
  Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful during this session of Congress we will no 
longer be missing in action. We will put the structure in place so 
somebody is in charge. We will put more money into research so we can 
do this job better. We will fund adequately over a specific period of 
time so the private sector can do its job, and we can make it easier to 
promote the livability of America's communities and make our families 
safe, healthy and more economically secure.

                          ____________________