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, justly sourced and sustainable, acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and reliable for every person.

Bill: 118-hres-1478
Sponsor: full_name: Rep. Tlaib, Rashida [D-MI-12]
Introduced: 2024-09-19
Policy area: Environmental Protection
Latest action: action_date: 2024-09-19
text: Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Natural Resources, and Transportation and Infrastructure, 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.

Summaries:

tv_txt: IV 118th CONGRESS 2d Session H. RES. 1478 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES September 19, 2024 Ms. Tlaib (for herself, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez , Ms. Omar , Mr. Carson , Ms. Lee of California , Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania , Mrs. Ramirez , Mr. Huffman , Ms. Pressley , Mrs. Watson Coleman , Mr. Jackson of Illinois , Ms. Bush , and Mr. Bowman ) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce , and in addition to the Committees on Natural Resources , and Transportation and Infrastructure , 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, justly sourced and sustainable, acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and reliable for every person.

Whereas every person requires access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, broadband communications, and public transportation to survive and live a life with dignity; Whereas decades-old infrastructure systems, including centralized utilities, disconnected wells, septic systems, unpiped systems, the electric grid, 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, racial injustices, disinvestment in existing systems, and economic inequities that 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 Federal infrastructure programs; Whereas millions of households collectively accrued more than $20,000,000,000 of energy utility debt by 2023, utility bills are growing faster than household incomes, with water prices increasing 56 percent from 2012 to 2023 and becoming unaffordable for one in six households nationwide, and broadband prices typically rising faster than the rate of inflation, and utilities have become profoundly unaffordable for millions of people, causing over 34 percent of all households to cut back on basic needs to pay energy bills; Whereas utilities are engaging in punitive residential customer payment collection practices including mass-scale service shutoffs, shutting off water service to an estimated 15,000,000 people in a typical year and electricity service to households well over 5,700,000 times between 2020 and 2022; Whereas many utilities send overdue water bills and associated late fees to tax authorities to impose liens, which can lead to tax sales of properties, 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, thus posing 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 unhoused; Whereas disconnection from water, sanitation, electricity, heating, and cooling 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, sea level rise and extreme weather events that place greater demand on and cause significant harm to the aging infrastructure, including overloading outdated stormwater and wastewater systems and threatening public health through flooding, sewage backups into homes, and sewage spills into public spaces, which disproportionately impact places where Black, Brown, and Indigenous people live, particularly among low-income communities and other groups who are economically vulnerable; Whereas aging drinking water and wastewater systems need at least $1,279,000,000,000 in improvements over the next 20 years to comply with existing Federal water quality regulations, according to the latest needs assessments from the Environmental Protection Agency; Whereas 2023 was the hottest year on record and the need for cooling, air filtration, and public water fountains and refill stations will continue to increase as a result of 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 communities experience disparate and cumulative health impacts from climate change, air pollution, soil contamination, unsafe drinking water sources (including lead service lines and contaminated water supplies), and inadequate sanitation systems; Whereas fossil-fuel energy primarily delivered by centralized utilities is driving the climate crisis and pollution; Whereas the climate emergency poses a substantial threat to critical utility infrastructure and broadband communications networks vital to connectivity during times of emergency and rebuilding; Whereas increased electricity rates and dirty electricity sources have disproportionately impacted communities of color; Whereas the United States has joined a global pledge to transition away from fossil fuels and triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030; and Whereas clean, renewable energy, distributed power, energy efficiency, and battery storage present nonpolluting, affordable, climate-resilient energy and opportunities for energy democracy: Now, therefore, be it

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 policy-setting public involvement and intentional community engagement, based on the public interest and seeking to repair legacies of harm and pollution in environmental justice communities; (4) calls for a full ban on water privatization and supports ending privatization contracts and franchises and municipalizing privatized systems; (5) commits to the elimination of Federal funding and subsidies for private water corporations; (6) commits to the development and expansion of accountable Federal public power providers and Federal support for 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; (7) 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 incumbent for-profit companies alone provide; (8) affirms that utility services must be affordable for every person based on their ability to pay; (9) calls for all public utility commissions to create processes to grant policy-setting powers to community-based organizations representing the most vulnerable populations within the utility service area, and to require racial and economic equity impact assessments to determine project prioritization; (10) commits to a full ban on all punitive collection practices for unpaid household utility bills including— (A) disconnections of water, wastewater, stormwater, electricity, heating, cooling, and broadband service; (B) the use of property or tax foreclosures or evictions; (C) the sale of any uncollected household debt to collection agencies; and (D) the filing of an adverse report with a credit-reporting agency; (11) commits to provide and prioritize direct payments to environmental justice and impacted frontline communities for water, sanitation, distributed solar, and broadband projects; (12) 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; (13) 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, wildfire, floods, and extreme temperatures, access to public transportation, and access to internet communication; (14) 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 fuel oil, propane, or dangerous methane gas, and safe situating of lines and infrastructure that protects workers and communities; (15) affirms that policies facilitating the commodification and financialization of water resources, services, and systems such as private water bottling, interbasin diversions, and water futures trading should be banned; (16) recognizes that, while short-term water access must be maintained in instances of public health risk, including through the distribution of prepackaged water, such a project is neither a long-term or sustainable solution to infrastructure-related public health crises; (17) commits to direct Federal grants to support capital improvements and operations, including the compensation packages necessary to attract and retain a qualified unionized workforce, forgive outstanding municipal utility debt and household utility bill debt, and otherwise scale up the capacity of publicly-controlled utility services such as drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems; (18) commits to 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 (including 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); (19) 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; (20) 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, wastewater, stormwater, sanitation, heating, and cooling needs, while supporting high-quality, family-sustaining union jobs and requiring community benefit agreements and local hiring and job training for residents in affected communities, project labor agreements, labor peace agreements, and living wages; (21) commits to upholding Tribal treaties for self-governance and self-determination; (22) commits to creating a Federal database that requires utilities to standardize regularly issued reports for water quality, noncompliance events, disruptions, disconnections, and includes data on length of disconnections, amount of arrearages, demographics, and income levels of affected communities; and (23) commits to establishing an interagency task force composed of relevant experts to develop and submit to Congress, and publish publicly, a plan, including timelines, for implementation of the activities committed to under paragraphs (5), (6), (10), (11), (12), (13), (17), (18), (20), (21), and (22).