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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 81 (Tuesday, May 16, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H5053-H5054]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

             CLEAN WATER ACT AND THE GREAT LAKES INITIATIVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I come to the well this evening to express 
my strong opposition to H.R. 961, the Clean Water Act amendments and 
why I urged its defeat. It steps back from the progress resulting from 
our Nation's commitment to clean water as a national treasure.
  I represent a Great Lakes district along Lake Erie. Cumulatively, the 
Great Lakes contain 20 percent of all the fresh water on the face of 
the Earth. For those of us who remember when swimming or fishing in 
Lake Erie was hazardous to your health, the actions the House is taking 
to weaken Clean Water Act protections are backward-looking. I am 
astounded that anyone can fail to see the great progress we have made 
over the last 25 years to clean up our Nation's water. Today, after two 
decades, the job of cleaning up Lake Erie is one-half finished. Our 
progress is laudable, but the goal has not been achieved along our 
coast or on the Nation's other major waterways.
  I can remember when the Cuyahoga River burned and when Lake Erie was 
declared dead. Some of our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, have apparently 
forgotten. We have made great strides toward renewing our water 
resources, but there is still a long way to go. In Ohio, 92 percent of 
our lakes and 60 percent of our rivers still cannot support fishing or 
swimming on a year-round basis. Some of our waters still cannot support 
aquatic life. Just last summer the city of Toledo found it necessary to 
pump fresh water into the Ottawa River just to restore some oxygen and 
flush out the polluted discharge from combined sewer overflows. The job 
of cleaning our waters is far from over. The task of cleaning up dozens 
of major toxic burial grounds leaching into our fresh water tributaries 
stands before us.
  The aspect of H.R. 961 about which I am most concerned is the 
provision to make adherence to the standards of the Great Lakes 
initiative voluntary on the part of Great Lakes States. This initiative 
has been a model bipartisan effort to standardize water quality 
protections in the Great Lakes watershed. Over the last 6 years, 
Federal guidelines have been developed, which, under current law, the 
States have 2 years to implement. Under H.R. 961, adherence would be 
voluntary. States could choose which standards to implement 
[[Page H5054]] or they could choose to unilaterally weaken certain 
standards.
  This might possibly be an acceptable program for waters within a 
State's boundaries, but seven States and another country adjoin the 
Great
 Lakes. Allowing eight different sets of standards for these waters is 
irrational. As different States adopt differing water quality 
standards, their efforts may be defeated by a neighboring State's 
program. Voluntary compliance may even lead to a race to the bottom for 
water quality as each State offers weakened standards as an inducement 
to bring polluting industries into their State or to keep them there. 
Mexico's policy of competing for investment with lax environmental 
standards may find its counterpart in interstate or international 
economic rivalries on our northern border.

  The Great Lakes comprise 95 percent of the fresh surface water in the 
United States. That is a resource too valuable to risk. Yet today we 
have restrictions on the consumption of fish from these waters because 
of mercury and PCB pollution. Lake St. Clair and the southern shore of 
Lake Erie were closed for the better part of the month of August last 
year because of fecal coliform contamination. The job is far from done 
in the Great Lakes. This is not the time to minimize our efforts.
  Setting consistent water quality standards in the Great Lakes 
watershed is the only reasonable way to protect these waters. The only 
way to ensure consistent standards is through entities such as the 
Great Lakes initiative. It once was common to find fish with festering 
lesions and tumors coming out of Lake Erie. Today it is rare, but it 
still happens. There used to be a viable commercial fishing industry on 
the lakes. That industry rapidly diminished as warnings about eating 
Great Lakes fish increased. We can restore that industry if we continue 
to clean up the lakes. That won't happen if we can't assure consistent 
water quality standards for the Great Lakes Watershed. Let's not weaken 
the Great Lakes initiative.
  The bill we have before us also takes other major steps backward. 
H.R. 961 allows for increases in toxin discharges into our waters, and 
it weakens public notification requirements when swimming or fishing is 
unsafe. It lets industry off the hook by weakening requirements for 
pretreatment of industrial toxins before they are discharged into 
municipal wastewater treatment systems.
  H.R. 961 also dramatically undermines attention to wetland habitats--
which play such an important role providing storage areas for flood 
waters and which naturally filter pollutants--by removing half of them 
from regulatory oversight. And the bill completely ignores the serious 
issue of nonpoint source pollution and how to reduce toxic runoff from 
farms, yards, streets, and parking lots.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to be able to vote for a clean water bill 
that aims at meeting the original goals of the Clean Water Act, to make 
all our Nation's waters fishable and swimmable. But I am not going to 
have that opportunity. H.R. 961 will actually reverse the progress we 
have made under current clean water law. This bill will expose our 
communities, our water-dependent industries, and our fishery resources 
to continued and increased degradation. I want to support legislation 
that strikes an appropriate balance between a healthy economy and 
healthy water.

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