Title: Recognizing access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, broadband communications, and public transportation as basic human rights and public services that must be accessible, safe, acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and reliable for every person.
Policy area: Energy

Summary:
This resolution recognizes the threat of the climate emergency to critical utility infrastructure and calls for public control of utilities.

[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1364 Introduced in House (IH)]

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117th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. RES. 1364

Recognizing access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, 
  broadband communications, and public transportation as basic human 
 rights and public services that must be accessible, safe, acceptable, 
   sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and reliable for every 
                                person.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 19, 2022

 Ms. Bush (for herself, Ms. Tlaib, Mr. Bowman, Mr. Garcia of Illinois, 
 Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, Ms. Pressley, 
   Ms. Lee of California, Ms. Schakowsky, Mr. Carson, and Ms. Omar) 
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee 
     on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on 
Transportation and Infrastructure, and Natural Resources, for a period 
    to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for 
consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the 
                          committee concerned

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Recognizing access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, 
  broadband communications, and public transportation as basic human 
 rights and public services that must be accessible, safe, acceptable, 
   sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and reliable for every 
                                person.

Whereas every person requires access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, 
        cooling, public transportation, and broadband to survive and live a life 
        with dignity;
Whereas decades-old infrastructure systems, including centralized utilities as 
        well as disconnected wells, septic systems, unpiped systems, the 
        electric grid, power lines, and related power infrastructure, have 
        reached their breaking points in safety and reliability in the midst of 
        compounding crises of the climate emergency and fossil fuel-driven 
        climate disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, worsening racial injustices, 
        deteriorating investments in existing systems, and deepening economic 
        inequities which endanger the public's health and safety;
Whereas these crises are exacerbated by privatization of public goods and 
        utilities by for-profit corporations that prioritize earnings and 
        shareholders over the welfare of people, the planet, and public health, 
        all while readily accepting public funding from the Federal relief, 
        recovery, and infrastructure packages;
Whereas millions of households have accrued billions of dollars of utility debt 
        before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, as utility bills continue to 
        grow faster than household incomes, including broadband prices that have 
        risen far faster than the rate of inflation for years, and utility 
        services have become profoundly unaffordable for millions of people, 
        causing 33 percent of low-income households served by the Weatherization 
        Assistance Program to skip prescription medicines and food purchases to 
        pay utility bills and 18 percent of low-income households to use high 
        interest, short-term loans to pay their energy bills;
Whereas utilities are engaging in punitive residential customer payment 
        collection practices including mass-scale service shutoffs even during 
        the pandemic, shutting off water service to an estimated 15,000,000 
        people in a typical year and electricity service to households well over 
        3,600,000 times between 2020 and 2021;
Whereas many utilities send overdue utility bills, particularly water bills, to 
        tax authorities to impose liens that can be sold at tax sales, 
        contributing to property foreclosures that can evict people from their 
        homes and lead to bankruptcy;
Whereas investor-owned utilities, fossil fuel energy companies, and their 
        industry associations fund and coordinate the obstruction of renewable 
        energy policies and programs, including rooftop and community solar 
        requirements and incentives;
Whereas utilities often rely on predatory collection agencies to pursue payment 
        on unaffordable bills and debts that damage credit scores and cause 
        long-term harm to households' ability to access affordable credit;
Whereas utility shutoffs and unaffordable bills have led to increasing numbers 
        of vulnerable people dying from uncontrollable household temperatures 
        and inaccessible water and sanitation after being denied access to 
        utility services that pose substantial threats to general public and 
        community health, as exemplified in a paper from Duke University 
        researchers that found a nationwide utility shutoff moratorium could 
        have prevented 15 percent of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, with similar 
        findings in a published study from Cornell University;
Whereas disconnection from water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, and 
        broadband services increases housing and utility insecurity and exposure 
        to eviction, homelessness, and resulting incarceration because of the 
        criminalization of being houseless;
Whereas disconnection from water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, and 
        broadband services can expose families to State-enforced separation due 
        to conditioning parental or guardian's ability to care for minor 
        children or incapacitated adults on ensuring access to these essential 
        services while, contradictorily, still allowing these services to be 
        disconnected from people living in poverty;
Whereas the United States is the largest historical contributor to global 
        greenhouse gas pollution, responsible for approximately 25 percent of 
        cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since 1870, which is accelerating 
        climate disasters and destabilizing ecosystems;
Whereas the climate emergency is causing widespread harm and acts as a 
        multiplier of harmful exposures, and it has already begun to generate 
        more intense storms that place greater demand and cause significant harm 
        to the aging infrastructure in places where Black, brown, and Indigenous 
        people live, particularly among low-income communities and other groups 
        who are economically vulnerable;
Whereas the need for cooling and air filtration will increase due to the climate 
        emergency, accelerating the need to assist vulnerable people during heat 
        waves, drought, extreme wildfire, and other heat- and air quality-
        related emergencies;
Whereas environmental justice-seeking communities experience disparate and 
        cumulative health impacts from climate change, air pollution, soil 
        contamination, unsafe drinking water sources (including lead service 
        lines or contaminated wells), and inadequate sanitation systems;
Whereas fossil fuel energy primarily delivered by centralized utilities is 
        driving the climate crisis and polluting;
Whereas increased electricity rates and dirty electricity sources have 
        disproportionately impacted communities of color; and
Whereas clean, renewable energy and storage present nonpolluting, affordable, 
        climate-resilient energy and opportunities for energy democracy: Now, 
        therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) recognizes access to water, sanitation, electricity, 
        heating, cooling, broadband communications, and public 
        transportation as basic human rights and public services that 
        must be accessible, safe, justly sourced and sustainable, 
        acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and 
        reliable for every person;
            (2) affirms that access to utility services should be 
        guaranteed for all people and should not be denied to any 
        person based on ability to pay, housing status, immigration 
        status, race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual 
        orientation or identity, (dis)ability, employment status, 
        credit history, or incarceration status or history, and affirms 
        that all agencies must enforce antidiscrimination language in 
        existing laws and ensure language access through translation 
        and interpretation to provide adequate communication with 
        people in the language they speak at home;
            (3) affirms that utilities should be held under public 
        control, with equitable and transparent asset management 
        planning systems with robust public involvement and meaningful 
        community engagement, based in the public interest, repairing 
        legacies of harm and pollution in environmental justice 
        communities;
            (4) calls for a full ban on water privatization, support 
        for exiting privatization contracts and municipalizing 
        privatized systems, and the elimination of Federal funding and 
        subsidies for private water corporations;
            (5) calls for the development and expansion of accountable 
        Federal public power providers, municipalities, cooperatives, 
        and communities to produce, procure, and deliver clean, 
        renewable energy, storage, and energy efficiency, and 
        meaningful public accountability over any remaining private 
        utilities to deliver the same package of climate-resilient 
        energy;
            (6) calls for public municipalities, cooperatives, and 
        smaller broadband providers to explore public ownership options 
        and other means to provide better, more equitable and 
        affordable choices than giant incumbent for-profit companies 
        alone provide;
            (7) affirms that utility services must be affordable for 
        every person based on their ability to pay;
            (8) calls for a full ban on all punitive collection 
        practices for unpaid household utility bills including--
                    (A) disconnections of water, electricity, heating, 
                cooling, and broadband service;
                    (B) the use of property or tax foreclosures;
                    (C) the sale of any uncollected household debt to 
                collection agencies; and
                    (D) the filing of an adverse report with a credit 
                reporting agency;
            (9) commits to provide and prioritize direct payments to 
        environmental justice and impacted frontline communities for 
        water, sanitation, distributed solar, and broadband projects;
            (10) commits to eliminate policies that criminalize a 
        person's inability to afford utility services, including 
        unauthorized utility reconnections and a person's inability to 
        improve home septic systems and other utility infrastructure;
            (11) commits to provide utility access to unhoused people 
        for a basic level of service for the public good including 
        water for drinking, bathing, and sanitation, shelter from 
        inclement weather, as well as wildfire and floods, access to 
        public transportation, and access to internet communication;
            (12) affirms that utility services should be safe for all 
        people, providing high-quality drinking water free from lead, 
        arsenic, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and 
        other contaminants, safe heating and cooling sources that do 
        not rely on dangerous methane gas, and safe situating of lines 
        and infrastructure that protects workers and communities;
            (13) affirms that policies facilitating the commodification 
        of water resources, services, and systems such as private water 
        bottling, diversions, and futures trading should be banned;
            (14) recognizes that, while short-term water access must be 
        maintained in instances of public health risk, including 
        through the distribution of prepackaged water, it is neither a 
        long-term or sustainable solution to infrastructure-related 
        public health crises;
            (15) calls for the scaling up of publicly controlled and 
        environmentally sustainable capabilities to provide utility 
        services such as clean drinking water;
            (16) recognizes the climate emergency poses a substantial 
        threat to critical utility infrastructure, requiring climate 
        adaptation planning to reduce risk and cost burden on taxpayers 
        and climate-resilient utility solutions including--
                    (A) enhanced clean, renewable energy and energy 
                efficiency technologies (e.g., rooftop and community 
                solar, storage, microgrids, weatherization 
                technologies, heat pumps, and other efficient cooling 
                and heating technologies); and
                    (B) updated indoor air quality standards and 
                expanded water conservation measures (including green 
                infrastructure and stormwater management);
            (17) affirms that investments in new and existing 
        infrastructure should prioritize local, responsibly sourced, 
        and clean, renewable energy while divesting from all global 
        extractive and fossil fuel processes that harm local 
        communities, economies, and cultures in the United States, in 
        the Global South, and across Tribal communities, which 
        disproportionately bear the climate burdens and consequences of 
        extractive capitalism of Western nations;
            (18) commits to provide direct grant investments in 
        environmental justice and frontline communities that have been 
        historically burdened to increase the availability, 
        affordability, safety, reliability, and accessibility of 
        electricity, broadband, water, sanitation, heating, and cooling 
        needs, while supporting high-quality, family-sustaining union 
        jobs and requiring local hiring and job training for residents 
        in affected communities, project labor agreements, labor peace 
        agreements, and living wages;
            (19) commits to upholding Tribal treaties for self-
        governance and self-determination;
            (20) commits to creating a Federal database that requires 
        utilities to regularly report all disconnections, and includes 
        data on length of disconnections, amount of arrearages, 
        demographics, and income levels of affected communities; and
            (21) calls for congressional hearings on the subject matter 
        of this resolution.
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