[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11043]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               GASODUCTO

  The SPEAKER. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, we've all seen bad horror movies, the 
ones where every time you think it's safe to relax and take a deep 
breath, the monster is right behind the door. You know the drill. No 
matter how hard the teenagers in the basement or the swimmers in the 
lake or the hikers in the wood try to get away, the creature just can't 
be stopped.
  Well, the people of Puerto Rico are stuck in their very own horror 
movie, one that just won't end, and one with a villain that just won't 
go away, except the villain isn't a guy wearing a hockey mask or 
carrying a chain saw. The villain is a bunch of government insiders, 
and the horror story is about their desire to build a huge gas 
pipeline.
  It's a pipeline that the people of Puerto Rico don't want, that 
experts have said that Puerto Rico doesn't need, and environmentalists 
have testified will destroy the natural beauty of thousands of acres on 
the island. And this might be the scariest part. It's a pipeline that 
Puerto Rico doesn't even have enough natural gas to operate.
  The name of the pipeline is Gasoducto, and the horror story started 
in 2010. About all that has been missing from the script is bad music 
and vampires. The story has featured the Puerto Rican people's tax 
dollars, as much as $100 million of them, paid to consultants and 
lobbyists hired by the government, including close friends and allies 
of the Governor and his ruling party.
  It's featured the government hiring a consulting team of former high-
ranking Army Corps of Engineer employees based in Florida. The 
consultants magically convinced the Army Corps to take review of the 
project away from the local San Juan, Puerto Rico, office. Where did 
they move it to? Surprise--to Florida, right down the road from where 
the consultants live and used to work.
  It has featured ever-increasing cost estimates of the project, 
ballooning to nearly $1 billion. It has featured huge protests and 
marches by the Puerto Rican people against the pipeline and public 
opinion polls showing three-quarters of the people strongly opposed to 
the project.
  It has featured power supply experts who studied the government plan 
and noticed one important flaw. Just as Casa Pueblo, countless 
technical experts, environmentalists, scientists, and I have insisted 
to the Army Corps all along, the only current source of natural gas 
supply available for this project in Puerto Rico was too small for a 
pipeline to even work.
  And finally, it even featured--after tens of millions of dollars 
spent--the Governor appointing his own commission to make 
recommendations about how Puerto Rico can make better use of natural 
gas to meet its energy needs.
  The commission, appointed by the very Governor who dreamt up the 
Gasoducto plan, made three recommendations. None of them--I repeat--
none of them included Gasoducto. Not one. Actually, they discarded it 
and called it unviable.
  Finally, the people of Puerto Rico thought the monster must be dead. 
Finally, we can stop sending tax dollars to connected government 
insiders, we can stop worrying about our environment, we can stop 
wondering where in the world the natural gas for a billion dollar 
pipeline will actually come from. But that's not how horror movies 
work.
  Last week, the Governor was quoted in the press as saying Gasoducto 
was still alive. Why? Because the Governor of Puerto Rico claims that 
the Assistant Secretary of the Army, who oversees the Army Corps of 
Engineers, has asked him personally not to withdraw the Gasoducto 
application. Assistant Secretary Darcy wants him, the Governor, to wait 
a while before pulling the plug, which is already on life support for 
this monster.
  Personally, I find this hard to believe. I don't know why an 
Assistant Secretary of the Army would want to keep a monster alive that 
is an unneeded, unwanted insider boondoggle that isn't even wanted by 
the regime that proposed it in the first place. But I've written to 
find out, is it true and how could this be?
  I expect answers, just like I expect answers on my ongoing request to 
the Army about how the Army Corps of Engineers has handled this 
application and why the review was moved away from their employees in 
Puerto Rico and closer to a bunch of consultants who used to head their 
office in Florida.
  When it comes to Gasoducto, enough is enough. Like in most bad 
monster movies, Gasoducto has been almost impossible to believe from 
the very first scene, a silly, unnecessary waste of time and money. 
It's time to roll the credits and declare this monster dead once and 
for all.

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