[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5802-5803]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONSOLIDATED RESOURCES ACT

  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak with 
regard to S. 2739, the bill we approved earlier this afternoon.
  First, I wish to acknowledge Chairman Bingaman and Senator Domenici 
for their great work in this legislation.
  As I worked over the last 2, 3 years on many of the bills that are 
included in this package of land bills we approved this afternoon, it 
was gratifying to see the bipartisan nature of the Energy Committee 
working on this legislation which is so important to our Nation.
  I very much agree that the process that historically has been used in 
the Senate where what we do is to bring these pieces of legislation 
which are important to our States, which are important to our Nation, 
through a unanimous consent procedure is the way we ought to go. 
Unfortunately, because of objections from a few Senators on the other 
side, we were not able to follow that procedure. But, at the end of the 
day, through the great leadership of both Senator Bingaman and Senator 
Domenici, we were able to get that legislation through. To both of them 
I say thank you very much for your leadership.
  I also thank the staff of the Energy Committee. Bob Simon, David 
Brooks, all of the staff on both sides who labored very hard on the 
more than 60 pieces of substantive legislation that we approved here 
this afternoon that will now head to the President's desk for his 
signature. So I thank them for their great efforts with respect to this 
legislation.
  I want to speak briefly about four of the bills that were included in 
this legislation which are important to my State of Colorado and are 
important to the Nation.
  The first of those pieces of legislation has to do with the South 
Platte River and the North Platte River and a multistate compact that 
involves the State of Colorado and the State of Nebraska.
  Over the years, we have had issues between our States, Nebraska and 
Colorado, and the State of Wyoming as well, with respect to how we deal 
with the implementation of the Endangered Species Act and how we 
recover endangered species on the Platte River, mostly working in the 
State of Nebraska.
  After many years of negotiation and involvement by the Fish and 
Wildlife Service and the Department of the Interior, the States came 
together and developed a recovery implementation program. That is a 
program which is intended to restore the habitat for the whooping crane 
in the State of Nebraska, with the participatory effort and obligation 
on the part of the State of Colorado and the State of Wyoming and the 
State of Nebraska to recover the whooping crane and to recover habitat 
and hopefully someday to be able to take that threatened and endangered 
species off of the list.
  In order for us to make progress to get there, we needed to implement 
this tristate agreement with the Federal Government. The legislation we 
passed today will help us get there, and I very much appreciate the 
participation of Senator Hagel and Senator Nelson from Nebraska, as 
well as Senator Allard, Senator Barrasso, and Senator Enzi from Wyoming 
on this bipartisan legislation, legislation that is very important to 
our States.
  The second legislative item I want to refer to here briefly is S. 
1116, which is the Produced Water bill. This is legislation which was 
sponsored in the House of Representatives by Congressman Mark Udall. We 
pushed it through our Energy Committee because we know this is 
happening out there in many of our public and private lands across the 
West; that is, as oil and gas is being developed, there is a huge 
amount of water that is simply being wasted, that is being disposed of 
without any kind of beneficial use. For those of us who come from the 
arid West, who know what it is like to live in places where you only 
get a few inches of rainfall a year, it is important that we not waste 
any water whatsoever. So what this legislation will do is it will help 
us figure out a strategy and a plan forward on how we develop a 
beneficial use for the water that is being produced from oil and gas 
production.
  The next bill that was included in this package which I wanted to 
speak about briefly is the Latino Museum bill. That legislation had 
several dozen cosponsors here in the Senate, including Senator 
Menendez, Senator Martinez, and many others who worked on that 
legislation over the last several years.
  It is important that when we look at this legislative piece, we 
understand the contribution many Americans have made to this country 
over a long period of time. The Latino community has been here in the 
United States of America for a very long time. Indeed, as the case with 
my family, my family helped found the city of Santa Fe, NM, in 1598, 
now some 410 years ago. That was before Jamestown, before Plymouth 
Rock. You find the stories of our history across the landscape of this 
country from Florida, throughout the Southwest of the United States of 
America. And in my own native valley, you can look out from the 8,000-
foot elevation of the San Luis Valley to the mountains on the east side 
of the valley that are named the Sangre de Christo Mountains; that is, 
the ``Blood of Christ Mountains.'' You can look to the west to another 
set of 14,000-foot peaks named after St. John the Baptist, the San Juan 
mountain range.
  Throughout America, you see the history of the Latino community 
etched into the landscape of our country. But it is more than that 
history that started out now more than four centuries ago here in the 
Nation, it is also the contributions Hispanics have made to this 
country as we have evolved from one generation to the next.
  It was a group of Hispanic solders who in many ways helped create 
this Nation through their service in George Washington's Army. It was a 
huge number of American soldiers who have served in every single war 
since the beginning of our Republic, including people like those in my 
family who served, and some who died, in some of the wars we have 
fought in this country.
  In World War II, my father was a staff sergeant in the Army. My 
mother, at the age of 19, found her way across the country from a place 
with no post office and no name in northern New Mexico to the War 
Department here in Washington, DC, where she spent 5 years contributing 
to that great cause of the last century which made America the power 
and the hope and beacon of opportunity for the entire world. There have 
been thousands and thousands of Americans like that who have made the 
ultimate sacrifice. But my mother was actually here in Washington, DC 
during World War II. She received a telegram that said her oldest 
brother, my Uncle Leandro, had been killed in the war in Europe.
  When we authorize a study of the Latino museum in Washington, we are 
saying that part of our history is to recognize that diversity that 
makes us a great Nation.

[[Page 5803]]

  Oftentimes I reflect on the greatness we have here in America. It is 
important for us to reflect on the fact that that greatness has come 
about through some pain but always with some promise of the future. 
Yes, there have been painful chapters of our history, including the 
very painful chapter where this country allowed for one group of people 
to own another group of people, simply based on the color of their 
skin. We lived through another 100 years after the Civil War until 
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, when we allowed as a function of 
government for there to be the separation of the races so that it was 
OK for there to be Black schools and Brown schools and White schools. 
It took Justice Warren and a unanimous Supreme Court in 1954 to say 
that under the 14th amendment, that kind of segregation had no room 
under the equal protection clause of our Constitution.
  When we push forward initiatives as we have today with the Latino 
initiative, what we are saying to America is, we are a great nation, 
because we are a diverse people. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said it 
best in a case she decided in the last few years involving diversity at 
the University of Michigan. She said the national security of our 
country depended on the military forces having diversity. She said that 
in an opinion that had been filed as an amicus brief by former members 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She also said that the strength of the 
Nation in terms of future participation of the United States in the 
global economy was very dependent on us being able to participate in 
that global economy, that diversity was required for us to succeed. For 
that proposition, she cited to a brief filed by some 50 of the Fortune 
500 companies that participated in that case. The Latino museum for us 
is another step in the celebration of our diversity.
  As I look at the challenges we face ahead in this century, I think we 
can embrace and celebrate the diversity of our country that will make 
us stronger. There will be those who will say we ought to take another 
road and that that road ought to be the one where we allow differences 
to separate us, where they will agitate for using those differences 
among us to create discord and to bring about agents of division. I 
reject that view. The view I embrace is that the diversity of our 
country is what will make us strong, not only in the 21st century but 
beyond. The Latino museum legislation we passed today is one step in 
making that statement.
  I also finally want to comment on S. 327 which was also included in 
this legislation. It requires a study on ways in which we can celebrate 
and commemorate the contributions that Cesar Chavez made to the United 
States. Cesar Chavez was the leader of the United Farm Workers until 
his death a few years ago, one of the most celebrated Americans we know 
today and one of the architects of our civil rights movement and 
someone who in many ways is typified with people who have been pioneers 
of civil rights such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and others who have 
done so much to make sure we are an America in progress. It is fitting 
and proper that we, as a Congress, honor someone with the legacy of 
Cesar Chavez. I was proud to have bipartisan sponsorship of that 
legislation so that we can now move forward to figure out ways in which 
we can celebrate the legacy of this great man.
  I yield the floor.

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