[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5333-5337]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    THE CONTRAST BETWEEN DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS ON ENVIRONMENTAL 
                           PROTECTION ISSUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Forbes). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, tonight, although I know it is the day 
after Earth Day, I want to concentrate my remarks on the environment. 
The gist of my statements tonight are basically to point out the 
contrast between the Democrats and the Republicans on environmental 
protection issues.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been very concerned over the last year or the 
last 18 months that the new administration, President Bush's 
administration, both in terms of actions in Congress with the 
Republican leadership or in agency actions as part of his 
administration, has done a great deal of damage to the environment, and 
has basically used the presidency and the power of agencies to break 
down a lot of environmental protection, not provide the type of 
enforcement action or the budgetary action that is necessary to protect 
the environment.
  Much of this has been linked to special interests, to corporate 
interests, and to concerns that big business has about environmental 
protection, environmental regulation. Very little concern has been 
focused on the impact of these changes in environmental protection on 
the average American.
  Mr. Speaker, the Democrats are committed to preserving America's air, 
water, and pristine lands for future generations, and are fighting to 
make sure that environmental protection and public health are not 
sacrificed to the corporate special interests.
  I have been concerned, Mr. Speaker, to see both the President and the 
Republican leadership in the Congress not handling in a responsible way 
what needs to be done to protect our air, water, and land from the 
polluters, and forcing taxpayers to pay for the cleanup of many 
pollution problems, such as hazardous wastes or Superfund sites, 
instead of having the brunt of the cost paid for by the polluters 
themselves, the corporations and other responsible parties.
  So in the aftermath of Earth Day, Mr. Speaker, I wanted to basically 
outline in some detail this evening some of the concerns I have about 
what has been happening under President Bush, and also with the 
Republican leadership that has a majority here in the House of 
Representatives.
  I thought that I would start by detailing a few areas where I think 
the actions of this administration and the Republican leadership in the 
Congress have been particularly egregious. I wanted to start by talking 
about wetlands protection, because I represent a district, a large part 
of which is along the coast of New Jersey, along the Sandy Hook and 
Raritan Bay.
  We have traditionally in New Jersey had a lot of wetlands, a lot of 
which has been destroyed. But we are trying very hard to make sure that 
what we have left continues to be protected.
  Wetlands provide us, and I think many of us know, crucial habitat for 
fish and wildlife, and protect our homes from floods by soaking up 
water from storms and releasing it slowly over time. America has lost 
about 50 percent of the wetlands that it started out with, and I do not 
think that we can afford to let anymore of it be destroyed, Mr. 
Speaker. Yet, the Bush administration dramatically increased the 
ability of developers to develop the remaining wetlands, essentially 
losing those wetlands forever.
  On January 14 of this year, 2002, the Bush administration undermined 
a balanced Army Corps of Engineers regulation protecting wetlands, 
which has opened the floodgates for building by developers. The EPA 
opposed a Corps of Engineers plan to allow more development permits, 
but the White House sided with the industries, with the corporate 
interests. This action resulted in increased wetlands development and 
the ability for developers to more easily qualify for development 
permits.
  The Army Corps loosened the permit standards for this program, making 
it easier for developers and mining companies to destroy more streams 
and wetlands. Keep in mind that 50 percent of the wetlands in the 
country have already been destroyed, so now we are just accelerating 
the pace.
  For more than a decade, the cornerstone of the United States' 
approach to wetlands protection has been a policy that calls for no net 
loss of wetlands. This is a policy, I might add, that originated with 
the first Bush administration.
  I want to stress tonight that when I talk and criticize this 
administration and the Republican leadership in this House for doing 
things contrary to the environmental interest, I am not suggesting that 
historically the Republican Party or Republican Presidents have taken 
that view. In fact, it is just the opposite. We know about Theodore 
Roosevelt, a great conservationist. Most of the environmental 
protection laws that we have on the books date from the 1970s, when 
Richard Nixon was the President. Even the first President Bush did a 
lot to protect the environment.
  But I see a concerted policy now with this President and the 
Republican leadership in this House to turn that around. With no notice 
or opportunity for comment, the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers moved to 
reverse the long-standing policy of no net loss of wetlands by issuing 
a new guidance dramatically weakening standards for wetlands 
mitigation.
  The new standards allowed wetlands to be traded off for dry upland 
areas, and will likely mean the loss of thousands of acres of wetlands 
annually. So instead of having to mitigate, when they develop, the loss 
of wetlands in the area, they are able to basically trade some other 
area in a different place, far away from the development. The 
consequence is that we continue to have a greater loss of wetlands.
  The reversal of this no net loss policy on the part of the Bush 
administration is just one component, as I said, of a broader Bush 
administration effort to diminish wetlands protection.
  Next, I want to talk a little bit, Mr. Speaker, about clean water. 
This is particularly close to my heart because, as I said, my district 
is mostly along the Atlantic Ocean, along the Raritan and Sandy Hook 
Bays, and along the Raritan River. Clean water is a major issue for New 
Jersey in general, as well as my district, because historically, we 
have suffered in my State from degradation of water quality.
  One of the biggest problems we have had historically in New Jersey, 
and this is true around the country, is a problem with sewage and how 
to make sure that sewage is properly treated, and that we do not have 
raw sewage or partially-treated sewage go into our waters, into our 
rivers, into our harbors, into our ocean.
  Sewage containing bacteria, fecal matter, and other waste is 
responsible each year for beach closures, fish kills, shellfish bed 
closures, and human respiratory illnesses. So understand, when I talk 
about the concern for clean water, it is not just because of human

[[Page 5334]]

health, though that is the highest priority, but it is also because of 
the economic losses, the jobs that are lost because we have to close 
beaches, because people cannot use recreation areas.
  According to the EPA, there were 40,000 discharges of untreated 
sewage into waterways in the year 2000. Before the current Bush 
administration took office, the EPA issued long overdue rules 
minimizing raw sewage discharges into waterways, and requiring public 
notification of any sewage overflows into our rivers and harbors.
  The proposed rules were blocked. In other words, these rules that 
were going into effect to try to minimize the raw sewage discharge and 
the overflow, these rules were blocked by the regulatory freeze that 
was ordered by President Bush when he first took office in January, 
2001.
  Now, President Bush said then, as he did in many of these situations 
where he froze regulations that were about to go into place that were 
protective of the environment, he said at the time, in essence, ``Don't 
worry about it because I am going to review these in a short time, and 
I will come back and maybe continue the regulations, these good 
regulations, or come up with better ones.''

                              {time}  2045

  Well, the fact of the matter is that it is well over a year later and 
the Bush administration still has not issued the sewage overflow 
safeguards. So the promise about coming up with a new system that maybe 
would make it better simply has not materialized. Meanwhile, sewage 
continues to flow into our waters around the country, and the Americans 
are still denied even rudimentary public notice of such contaminating 
in the waters where they swim and fish. Part of the regulatory scheme 
provided for notice about sewage contamination, and that also was taken 
away when the President essentially froze or took away the new 
regulations that were taken into place.
  But when you talk about clean water, it is not just these regulations 
with regards to sewage overflows and raw sewage that have been 
negatively impacted. There are a number of other clean water programs 
that have been slashed because of budgetary cuts that have been put 
into place or suggested for the next year by President Bush, and also 
by the fact that there have been cutbacks in the people and the number 
of people that do enforcement to go out and survey and make sure that 
environmental laws are not being violated. I mean, if we have a law 
that is on the books; but you do not have the money or the people to go 
out and find the violators, then in effect we have no law because 
people may just not voluntarily abide by it. So I wanted to mention 
three programs that I consider very important that fall under the clean 
water rubric that have been slashed or are suffering because of lack of 
funds or enforcement.
  The first is the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Many people do not 
realize it, but when a new sewage treatment plant is built or upgraded 
or a new reservoir is constructed or upgraded to make sure that the 
drinking water is safe, a lot of money comes from the Federal 
Government. There is a Clean Water State Revolving Fund that the 
Federal Government basically puts money into for the States and the 
local municipalities or utilities to build or upgrade these sewage 
treatment or drinking water facilities.
  That is where the biggest cut took place in the President's budget, 
in the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. This program provides loans to 
modernize and upgrade aging sewage and water treatment systems, and it 
is cut by $138 million in the President's proposed budget. The Drinking 
Water State Revolving Fund is similar. I was talking about the sewage 
treatment upgrading fund when I talked about the $138 million cut. But 
we see the same problem with this Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, 
which deals with the drinking water upgrades.
  In fact, I think many people remember that the Bush administration 
reversed a previous executive order under President Clinton that 
increased the level of arsenic in drinking water to be deemed safe by 
the EPA after intense pressure by Democrats and moderate Republicans. 
Now they put in place better arsenic standards. I think it is ten parts 
per billion so they are back to what President Clinton had initially 
put in place. But we did have the lag time when in fact it was not the 
stricter safe drinking water standards for arsenic. But regardless of 
that, the bottom line is we need more funding to upgrade our drinking 
water; and that money has not been made available.
  The third thing I would like to mention is what I call the ``beaches 
act'' and what I am very proud of because I was the Democrat in the 
House that sponsored the bill along with a Republican colleague on a 
bipartisan basis. This was modeled after the State of New Jersey where 
we started a program a few years ago after we had massive beach 
closings in the late 1980's and we lost billions of dollars in our 
tourism industry because we had to keep our beaches closed for almost 
one entire summer. We put in place a system on a State level in New 
Jersey that would require that each town that has bathing beaches, as 
well as any State or private bathing beach as well, would have to test 
on a regular basis the water quality; and if the water quality did not 
meet a certain standard, then the beach would have to be closed, and 
there would have to be public notice as well as posting of the fact 
that you could not use the beach.
  Well, I tried to take this bill and one of my predecessors in 
Congress, Bill Hughes, also sponsored it, and we worked with some 
Republicans and passed this bill and finally got it signed into law in 
the last year of President Clinton's time in office, that would 
implement this type of program nationwide. Well, 2 years ago, as I 
said, this bill was passed, passed the House, passed the Senate, went 
to the President and was signed into law by President Clinton; but that 
bill provided $30 million a year in Federal grants to help coastal 
States protect their beaches through water quality monitoring and 
public notification, as I mentioned.
  The administration's budget cuts $20 million out of this program. You 
are not going to be able to implement it with only $10 million as 
opposed to the $30 million. So I could go on and on about the clean 
water issues, but I would rather move on to some other issues.
  I am very much concerned about the clean water issues because of the 
nature of my district, but there are many other areas where this 
administration and the Republican leadership have cut back on 
environmental protection. I would like to mention some of those as well 
before I finish tonight.
  The third area I wanted to mention is clean air, obviously important 
to you no matter where you live in the United States. The Republicans, 
again, the Republican leadership, the President, and I do not mean to 
suggest that all Republicans support this but certainly the leadership 
does and they are basically deciding what bills are posted here and the 
President is deciding what agency actions are taken. Basically, as I 
said, the President and the Republican leadership have undertaken a 
very deliberate effort, in my opinion, to undermine the bipartisan 
clean air act that has been on the books now since the 1970's, one of 
the bills that was started, one of the statutes that was put on the 
books when President Nixon was in office.
  Again, a lot of this breakdown or effort to downgrade and change in a 
very dangerous way the clean air act is linked to energy policies of 
the utilities in the energy industry. And, of course, we know that the 
President is very close to the oil industry. In fact, the top 
administration EPA official in charge of enforcing air pollution 
regulation for coal power plants, and coal power plants are a major 
source of air pollution, he was so tired of fighting the White House 
that he decided to resign I guess just a few weeks ago or about a month 
ago. And in his letter of resignation he said he was tired of 
``fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we 
are trying to enforce.'' That is from the New York Times last month, in 
March of this year.
  The President issued with a lot of fanfare in this past February a 
new

[[Page 5335]]

clear skies initiative. And this was his answer, I guess, to clean air 
and it met a lot of cheers in the big industry lobbyists that have been 
contributing to the Republican campaign coffers. But this clear skies 
initiative if passed into law will increase the amount of smog, soot, 
carbon dioxide, and toxic mercury emitted by power plants, by the smoke 
stacks, if you will, emissions by power plants and would roll back 
substantially the clean air standards found in the clean air act. The 
plan essentially provides no limits at all on carbon dioxide emissions, 
the prime culprit in global warming.
  I wanted to spend a little time, if I could, on the national energy 
policy because I know that it is so important to the average American; 
and of course, our energy policy has been highlighted a great deal in 
the aftermath of September 11 and the conflict in the Mid East because 
of the concern that maybe oil supplies would be cut off and what would 
the United States do in those circumstances. And the national energy 
policy that has been proposed by the President and the Republicans 
differs dramatically from the national energy policy for the future 
that has been proposed by the Democrats.
  The Republican leadership and President Bush continue to emphasize 
more production, more drilling. Democrats have talked about the need to 
address energy efficiency, renewable resources. And Democrats have been 
very much in favor of more production; but they want to couple that 
with more domestic production, I should say, of oil and natural gas and 
coal; but we want to couple that with energy efficiency, conservation 
programs, use of renewable resources because we realize that we cannot 
forever depend on fossil non-renewable fuels, and that we cannot assume 
that we will be able to consume the great amount of energy resources 
that we have been consuming and having that increase on a regular 
basis.
  Well, anyway, if I could talk a little bit, I would like to this 
evening, Mr. Speaker, about the President's national energy policy and 
this will fold in again the clean air issue that I mentioned briefly 
before. As I said, the Bush national energy policy, the President's 
national energy policy, seeks to primarily spur exploration and 
production of domestic oil and gas and increase the use of coal and 
nuclear power. In fact, the White House plan calls for the construction 
of more than 1,000 new power plants over the next 20 years and of 
course includes the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and 
other environmentally-sensitive areas.
  Now, thankfully, we all know that last week the other body killed the 
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, so it does not seem 
that we will have to deal with that.


                announcement by the speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Forbes). The Chair will remind the 
gentleman to refrain from characterizing Senate action.
  Mr. PALLONE. I am sorry. I tried not to use the term Senate, but I 
will not characterize their action.
  The point I am trying to make is that even though, I think, we do not 
have to worry about drilling in the Arctic anymore as an issue, the 
bottom line is that the Republican leadership in both Houses, as well 
as the President, continue to push for drilling and exploration as the 
major priority rather than energy efficiency, conservation, and use of 
renewable resources.
  Let me give you, if I can, if I can just talk a little bit about some 
of these Republican energy policies and highlight them a little bit in 
the time that I have.
  The President's energy plan encourages increased domestic oil 
production, as I said, whether that means using new technology to 
enhance oil and gas recovery from existing wells, modifying Federal 
land use plans that currently restrict energy development; and the plan 
also calls for more natural gas pipelines and for streamlining the 
permit process to build more refineries.
  In addition to exploration in the Arctic refuge, they also suggest 
that this increased production is somehow going to correct other 
States' electricity problems. But I have to say, Mr. Speaker, the 
bottom line is even if we try, and we should try to increase domestic 
production overall in the United States, it is never going to provide 
the kind of demand that we are used to on an exponential level. We 
cannot assume that we will be able to continue to grow and use more and 
more energy resources. We have to come up with a way of refining that 
policy or defining that policy so it is more efficient and does not 
waste energy resources.
  Let me talk about renewables for a minute because I think it is 
important to stress that when it comes to energy resources that it is 
possible to use resources other than fossil fuels, nonrenewables. Over 
the last 10, 20 years regardless of who was President, we continued a 
policy of trying to look for renewables in a way of coming up with 
energy resources, new types of energy resources. The President says in 
his plan, in his energy plan, that he wants an increased focus on 
renewable and alternative energies; but once again when we look at the 
budget and where the money is going and what is proposed for the 
budget, we see that those programs have been downgraded. They have not 
been prioritized. In many cases they have actually been cut.
  In the President's 2002 budget proposal, it cuts Department of Energy 
funding for renewable and alternative energy sources by 37 percent; 
solar research funding is cut by nearly 54 percent; geothermal, 
hydrogen and wind research programs were cut by 48 percent. Funding to 
encourage the building of energy-efficient homes and offices and to 
reduce energy use at steel, glass, pulp and paper companies would also 
be reduced under the proposal.
  Basically, what we are seeing, as I said, again, is a budget policy 
and an agency policy on behalf of the Bush administration that seeks to 
enhance the power of industry and the needs and the lobbying efforts, 
if you will, of the utility companies. I guess the best example of that 
in my opinion was when the President reversed his campaign promise with 
regard to carbon dioxide. The President's energy plan proposes 
requiring electric utilities to reduce emissions and improve air 
quality. And he talks about this multi-pollutant strategy to encourage 
a development of legislation that would establish mandatory reduction 
targets for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury. Because of 
pressure from industry and anti-environmental leaders in the Congress 
and Republican leadership, the President earlier this year reneged on a 
campaign promise to include the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions 
in this plan.

                              {time}  2100

  Obviously, the environmental community and myself and most Democrats 
feel very strongly that carbon dioxide emissions have to be included if 
we are really going to get a handle on trying to fix the air pollution 
problem that we have.
  The last thing I wanted to mention in this regard with regard to the 
national energy policy is a very important point I think; and that is, 
that under the Clean Air Act, when it was passed and with subsequent 
amendments, standards were put in place for any new power plants that 
are built, that they have to meet certain standards with regard to air 
emissions, but the plants that were built when the Clean Air Act came 
into effect are what we call grandfathered. In other words, they do not 
have to upgrade the plant to meet the air quality standards or air 
emission standards that exist for new plants.
  When that happened back in the seventies and when the Clean Air Act 
was first passed, and again, that was under President Nixon, a 
Republican, it was anticipated that over the years, those old power 
plants would close and they would be replaced by new power plants that 
have the stricter standards. But what has been happening instead is 
that the older power plants continue to operate and, in fact, have 
expanded and used the grandfathering under the rubric of grandfathering 
to continue to go by the old standards that caused more air pollution.
  What President Bush did or is proposing to do is to take aim at this 
so-

[[Page 5336]]

called new source review. That is how we characterize the requirement, 
that for new power plants they have to adhere to stricter standards, 
and if just going by one of the environmental groups', National 
Resources Defense Council, quote that says, the Bush energy plan 
appears to invite all utility and coal industries, the Department of 
Energy and other agencies, to weaken Clean Air Act rules and interfere 
with pending enforcement cases.
  What happened is that previously the EPA had actually sued some of 
the utilities that owned these older power plants and said that they 
were violating the law by expanding those older plants and letting them 
use the older pollution standards rather than build new power plants 
that would adhere to the stricter standards, and the EPA brought this 
suit, was very successful and, in many cases, were at the point where 
they were going to force some of the utilities to adhere to the new 
standards rather than expanding the older plants under the old 
standards.
  Now the Bush administration has essentially said that they are going 
to step in and not require that these upgrades take place. So, once 
again, it is just another example of how this administration is taking 
a very anti-environmental position. After over 30 years of continual 
upgrading of the environment and environmental laws, now we are seeing 
the Federal Government go in the opposite direction.
  There are two other areas, Mr. Speaker, that I wanted to talk about 
in this regard. I actually only have one other area that I wanted to 
talk about in this regard, and again, I take this back to my home State 
because this is such an important issue in New Jersey, and it is just 
as important really in the rest of the country and, that is, hazardous 
waste sites.
  We have, as I think many of us know, again dating back to the 
seventies, we put in place on a national level a program called the 
Superfund, which essentially requires that the Federal Government 
identify the most severely polluted hazardous waste sites in the 
country, the ones that pose the greatest threat to the environment, and 
once they are identified and put on what we call the national priority 
list, that the Federal Government is obliged to go in and clean them 
up. And they work with the States in doing that.
  The basic premise of the Superfund program is the concept of what we 
call polluter pays. In other words, that the company that caused the 
hazardous site to occur, the company that caused the hazardous waste to 
be produced and left on a particular site is the one that has to pay 
the cost to clean it up. The problem, though, is, as anybody who is 
familiar with corporate law knows, is that corporations, and therefore 
the polluters that caused this pollution or these hazardous waste 
sites, often will go bankrupt, will go out of business, or we cannot 
find them.
  So even though the Federal Government and the EPA pursuant to the 
Superfund program goes out and identifies the Superfund sites and then 
finds out who the responsible party was that caused the pollution, 
oftentimes, usually in about a third of the cases, the corporation no 
longer exists or does not have any money, and they cannot go after them 
and force them to do the cleanup.
  What they did, and this was basically what the Superfund law was all 
about from a financial point of view, was that when the Superfund law 
was set up, Congress established a tax primarily on the oil and 
chemical industry that is paid into a fund called the Superfund, hence 
the name, and that that money is then used to clean up those sites 
where we cannot find the polluter, the responsible party.
  What happened, though, is that the Superfund program was moving 
along, and frankly, at the time when President Clinton took office and 
the 8 years that he was President, they accelerated the level of the 
cleanup at a lot of sites in the country so that now the majority of 
the Superfund sites are in some stage of cleanup, and many of them are 
actually completely done and totally remediated, as we said.
  When the Republicans took the majority back in the House of 
Representatives, I guess 7 or so years ago, and Newt Gingrich became 
the Speaker at the time, the first thing or one of the first things 
that the Republican leadership did was to refuse to renew the authority 
for the Superfund tax. And so we have been going now for 7 years 
without that tax on the oil and chemical industry being renewed.
  There was enough money carried over over those last 7 years or so 
that we have been able to continue to clean up a lot of these sites 
using the money left over from this Superfund tax, as well as providing 
some money through the budget from what we call general revenues. This 
is the money that the average American pays in their income tax 
primarily, or other taxes, to the Federal Government that has been used 
to make up for the fact that we do not have this Superfund tax in 
place.
  The problem is that this budget year will be the last fiscal year 
when there is significant money left in the Superfund program generated 
by that tax on the oil and chemical industry. In the next fiscal year, 
even the President estimates there will only be about $28 million left 
in the Superfund to do these cleanups. Twenty-eight million dollars is 
woefully inadequate. I think the level of funding that we need on an 
annual basis is in the hundreds of millions.
  So what do we do? Democrats have been saying since 1994, when the 
Republican leadership took over in the House, that it was wrong to 
abolish or not renew this tax on the oil and chemical industry because 
the consequences eventually would be that we would not have money to 
pay for hazardous waste cleanups, and also that the burden now would be 
shifted to the average American taxpayer to pay for this cleanup, 
rather than having it paid for by the companies of industry that 
primarily caused it.
  Now we are faced with a crisis where in the next year or so we will 
not have any money coming from this tax because there is nothing left. 
We have been advocating as Democrats, I have been advocating as the 
ranking member on our Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous 
Materials of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that we should simply 
renew the Superfund tax. It makes sense. That was the whole idea from 
the beginning, that the polluter pay, or if we cannot find the 
polluter, that the industry pay.
  Again, so far as the Bush administration, President Bush has said he 
does not favor reimposing that tax. The Republican leadership in the 
House has said that they oppose it, and we are at a standstill and do 
not know what to do.
  The President's budget this year calls for only about 40 Superfund 
sites to be cleaned up as opposed to the approximately 80 that have 
been cleaned up on the average, over the last 8 or 9 years. So we know 
that the program is already suffering because the number of sites to be 
cleaned up is half, and many of the States even in my own State of New 
Jersey and around the country, many of the States have been told that 
the money is not going to be forthcoming from the Federal Government to 
do the Superfund cleanup, even though those sites are ready and have a 
plan in place to do the cleanup.
  In my home State, in my home district, in my congressional district, 
both in Edison, New Jersey, where we have a site called the chemical 
insecticide site, which basically produced Agent Orange during the 
Vietnam War, and a lot of the residue is still there on the site, they 
are ready to go with the remediation plan they have been working on for 
the last 20 years. And they have been told, no, they cannot start it, 
we do not have any money from the Federal Government.
  There, again, the company that caused the problem went bankrupt, 
cannot be found, and so we cannot go after the polluter, and there is 
no money from the Federal Government.
  Another site in Marlboro Township, again these sites are some of the 
most polluted Superfund sites in this country. This one is called Burnt 
Fly Bog. It was run by Imperial Oil Company, has all kinds of petroleum 
residue percolating from underground. That had experienced about 80 
percent cleanup

[[Page 5337]]

over the last 9 years, and they were supposed to do the last 20 percent 
starting now in the next few weeks, next few months. They were told by 
the EPA, we do not have the money to do it.
  Here again what we are seeing, and maybe the Superfund program is the 
best example for me to use in the context of what I am trying to get 
across tonight, is that whether by regulatory action of the agencies or 
proposals to come to Congress or budgetary efforts to cut back on the 
amount of money that is available for cleanup or for enforcement, we 
have seen a concerted effort on the part of this administration of 
President Bush to try to cut back on environmental protections.
  It is very unfortunate that on the anniversary of Earth Day, which 
was yesterday, we saw the President going around the country talking 
about Earth Day, but his actions and the actions of the Republican 
leadership in this House do not dovetail with real environmental 
protection. In fact, the opposite is happening, and they continue to 
work to downgrade the environment and not provide the funding and the 
apportionment that is necessary to adequately carry out the good 
environmental laws that are on the books.
  I am not going to keep going, Mr. Speaker. I could use a lot of other 
examples. But I did want to come here tonight to stress what is going 
on, and I think that hopefully the American people and my colleagues 
will wake up and realize that this degradation of the environment 
cannot continue and that the historical commitment that this Congress 
and that previous Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, have been 
making on a bipartisan basis to try to improve the quality of our 
environment should continue and should not be allowed to reverse itself 
as we have seen in the last year or 18 months into this administration.

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