Contaminated Water in America
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the cities of America--at least many of the cities of America.
While I was waiting for the opportunity to speak to the House and people of America, I went into the cloakroom and pulled out today's Roll Call, one of what we call the Hill rags. These are one of the newspapers around the Hill.
It says ``Lead in the Water, Way Beyond Flint,'' and it talks about the issue of contamination in our water supplies. Indeed, they are quite correct.
This would be one of maybe 20 different slides I could put up here. What do these cities of America have in common: Flint, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio; Sebring, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Brick Township, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; Wayne County, North Carolina; Greenville, North Carolina; Lakehurst Acres, Maine; Chicago, Illinois; Porterville, California? The list goes on and on and on. These are cities that have or have had contaminated water in the last couple of years. Some of these are ongoing.
We hear a lot of discussion about Flint, Michigan, and the tragedy of the water supply in Flint, Michigan, the lead contamination, the 8,000 or 9,000 children who have been inflicted with lead poisoning, and the incredible, awful effect that that will have on the development of their brain and of their future.
This issue is one that we are becoming aware of. Actually, we have been aware of it for a long, long time. The problem is that we haven't done anything about it or we have done very, very little about it.
Tonight we are going to talk about contaminated water in America, America's cities and towns that are providing water that is not fit to drink.
So what to do? Well, we are going to have to deal with the realities of 8,000 to 9,000 children, their development, the potential problems that they face in their lives ahead. That will be basically dealing with the fact that we had contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, and in a host of other cities.
We can't live without water. The human body requires it. If you don't get it, you are going to die very, very quickly. The fact of the matter is I am not at all sure you can live with contaminated water.
That is the actual water that was available to residents of Flint, Michigan: yucky, yellow, contaminated, polluted water. Not just lead, but yuck. Why would you want to drink that? Well, it is all you have. So you don't want to, but you really don't have any choice. Contaminated water, what to do?
Tonight we are going to discuss this issue. I guess one thing you can do is what California did. In Porterville, California, when the wells went dry, they brought a cattle water trough similar to what I have on my ranch to provide water for my cattle. This water trough provided water for the children of Porterville, California.
Now, there is a solution to the water crisis in California. Porterville isn't the only city or town in the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, there are dozens of towns in the San Joaquin Valley of California, the largest State, the richest State.
We like to think of California, my home State, as being ahead of everything. I guess we are ahead in providing cattle water troughs to provide water for children in California. We ought to be ashamed.
What are we going to do about it? There are 435 people here in the House of Representatives, and I guess there is another 100 Senators across the way, a President, and all the administration. What are we going to do about it? I guess we can look at our report card.
This is from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Let's see. The 2013 report card for America's infrastructure: Aviation, D; bridges, C plus; dams, D; down here, schools, D; roads, railroads, Cs; water--oh, here we are--water, a D.
We asked them about this. We said: Why a D?
They said: We would give them an F, but it is too much trouble to try to figure out how to do an F. So we just go to the lowest, which is D.
You don't get any lower than a D from the American Society of Civil Engineers. That is our report card in America, folks. It is not just water. It is the entire infrastructure system.
You are wondering why. Why does that happen? Take a look at this little chart. A sharp drop in government infrastructure spending. Let's see. That is 2002.
In 2002, $330 billion spent on all infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, water systems, sanitation systems. $325 billion in 2002.
And in real 2014 dollars, nondefense spending on infrastructure, here we are in 2012, 2013. We are down to about $200 billion, about $125 billion less spent on infrastructure of all kinds.
Oh. Back to water. What about water? Where did we go with water? Spending on clean water and drinking water infrastructure in 2014 deflated dollars, go back to 1973.
In 1973, the Vietnam war was still going on. Let's see. That would be somewhere around $10 billion in 2014 dollars in 1973. In 2016, we are down to $2 billion.
Don't be surprised when you see a list such as I put up a moment ago of cities in the United States that have water problems. Aging infrastructure, lead pipes.
Here is a picture of a lead pipe. Corroded. You wonder why kids get lead poisoning. If you don't spend money on infrastructure, you are going to wind up with sick kids, you are going to wind up with bridges that collapse, you are going to wind up with a second-rate economy and a third-world water situation.
By the way, that is the bridge on Interstate 5, the road from Canada to Mexico down the Pacific coast. The bridge collapsed.
What happens when you don't spend money on infrastructure? Your economy fails, your kids get sick, and they are forced to drink water out of a water trough. This is not the America we want to live in. This is not the America the public sent us here to provide for them.
We like to think of ourselves as the strongest, biggest, best country in the world, and we are in many respects, but when it comes to providing for the fundamentals of life--water--we get a D rating.
We get kids getting their water supply out of a water trough. We get kids in Flint, Michigan, who are poisoned with lead. That is not the only city. It is across the United States, city after city.
In the Central Valley of California, it is arsenic, it is lead, it is other contaminants. Huh-uh. We have got work to do here in the House of Representatives. It is our responsibility. It is our task. We can't toss it off to somebody else.
So, yeah, Roll Call, you are correct: ``Lead in the Water, Way Beyond Flint.'' Arsenic in the water. Fecal contamination in the water. You name it. City after city, ancient systems, more than 100 years old, lead pipes which were put in the ground a century ago, leaching lead into the food supply. That is America.
What would it cost? About $348 billion just for the water systems. How can we pay for it? Well, there is a way.
Oh, America, are you aware that we are into a new nuclear arms race? We are. In the next 25 years, a trillion dollars of your tax money is going to be spent on a total rearmament of our nuclear weapons systems: intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, submarines, stealth aircraft. A trillion dollars.
City after city in America limps along, poisoning its children with 100-year-old water systems. We have got some choices to make here. What are we going to spend your tax money on? New nuclear bombs or new water pipes? Choices.
Joining me tonight to discuss these sets of issues are some of my dear friends. Paul Tonko and I have been working on this infrastructure issue for 5 years now, what we call the East Coast-West Coast. I am going to ask Paul if he would wait just a few moments.
Sheila Jackson Lee, you were in Flint, Michigan, last week--I guess yesterday, actually, for a discussion in Flint, Michigan. Share with us briefly, if you would, your reflections on what you saw there.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentlewoman from Texas. I know that your concerns are very real. You traveled to Flint, and you have been working on these issues for many, many years. Thank you for your participation.
Tomorrow, the Democrats are holding their own committee hearing on this issue. I am certain that we will go through the issues that you talked about: what actually happened and who is actually responsible. So, that will be a discussion for tomorrow. Perhaps we will cover it on the floor tonight.
Let me now turn to my colleague from New York, Mr. Paul Tonko, for the continuation of the East-West show.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you so very, very much. You brought to this issue enormous facts and passion. Your work as the ranking member on the subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee positions you in a very, very important place. Your passion and knowledge should help carry the day on this.
Mr. Tonko, if you can stick around, we will come back to this one more time.
I would like now to call on my colleague from California, Mr. Ted Lieu from Los Angeles.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Lieu, you said you are on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. You had the hearing last week and began the process of developing an understanding of what happened and who was responsible. Critically important.
You also said you are on the Budget Committee. So if I might just lobby you for a moment--
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me just lobby you. You are going to be taking up the budget--I think tomorrow, actually.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Okay. So the budget is going to be coming up, and that is the allocation of the $4 trillion that the Federal Government will spend. We will be spending it on education. We will be spending it on roads, on the military and the like.
Let me just toss you some numbers for your consideration. Now, these are adjusted 2015 dollars, so we are keeping equal-value dollars.
In 2007, the State Revolving Fund for Drinking Water, which Mr. Tonko talked about, had $957 million for that program. That goes to the States to repair their water systems. And it stayed around $900 million the next year.
And then we had the stimulus bill in 2009, and we spent $3 billion. Then we went back down, $1.5 billion, $1 billion, $947 million, and we stayed somewhere in the range of $900 million through 2016. So that is the current year. And that is $863 million that we are spending this year on the State Revolving Fund.
Keep in mind that it is estimated that we need $328 billion to repair all the pipes.
Now, the President's budget has $1.2 billion for the coming year. He just introduced that today.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Okay. Also, in the President's budget, he has $1.36 billion for the new Long Range Strike Bomber; $113 million for a ground-based strategic deterrence; $1.4 billion for the Ohio class submarine--those are nuclear submarines; the new long-range cruise missile, $995 million; to rebuild the B61 bomb, $137 million; and the total amount that the National Nuclear Security Administration is spending this new year, 2017, $9.24 billion.
Now, it would seem to me that this is just in the nuclear enterprise. These are our nuclear weapons.
So my lobbying is this: When you put together the budget, could you somehow squeeze out of the nuclear arms race that we are engaged in about a billion dollars so that we can stop poisoning our children?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Just double, if you would, just double the amount we are spending for the clean drinking water programs at the Federal level from about $1 billion to, let's say, $2 billion, or maybe even $3 billion, by squeezing some of the expenditures that we find in other accounts.
My particular target is the nuclear weapons account, which will in the next 25 years cost the American taxpayers $1 trillion. So when you go to the hearing, keep that in mind.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. I appreciate the opportunity to lobby you. You are in a very important position, as are all of us; 435 of us are going to make choices about what is important and how we spend our constituents' tax money. And these are choices we are going to make.
We often don't really look at it, but the budget that will be forthcoming, the President's budget, and then the response of this House to that budget, will allocate that $4 trillion across a whole variety of programs.
We really do have the opportunity here, as we put together the budget and then the appropriations following, to take up the challenge that Mr. Tonko put before us in the State Revolving Fund.
Mr. Lieu, thank you so very much for joining us.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. We appreciate you being here. Thank you so very much.
Well, Mr. Tonko, lead pipes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. As you were talking, I think back when I was growing up, and we used to call this, not infrastructure, we used to call this ``public works.'' Public works.
This is for the public. It is infrastructure, but this is the public investment in the things that an individual, even a private company, cannot do. This is something that we do as a community in the public domain.
It is work. We are talking, if we were to invest $2 billion this coming year in these community water systems, we would actually generate thousands of jobs, and we would increase the economic growth immediately.
It has been estimated that for every dollar you put into public works, infrastructure, you immediately increase the economy by $1.3, $1.4. So this is a way of investing immediately, putting people to work in good, middle class jobs, and laying in the public works for future economic growth and, as you just said so eloquently, protecting our health, our children's health. So this is absolutely essential.
We are at a very propitious moment. The President proposed today the budget for the United States of America's next fiscal year, beginning October 1, 2016.
It is his proposal on how to spend about $4 trillion of taxpayer money and debt. We, as the representatives of the people of the United States, will take that and modify it.
What if we just made one modification in that $4 trillion and said: We are going to spend an additional billion dollars or an additional $2 billion on public works water systems? What would it mean?
The 140-year-old pipes that you talked about, could they be replaced? Could the 250,000 water main breaks across the United States be reduced to maybe just 200,000?
People going to work, engineers designing the system, financiers figuring out how to put together the local money, the State money, and the Federal money, generating jobs, growing our economy, and stopping the poisoning of our children.
The President proposed his budget today. Tomorrow our colleagues take up the budget and begin to decide how to move that money to things that are a priority. Here we are.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. A pothole, maybe?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. The art of the possible. The art of the possible is what we have here.
Mr. Tonko, I don't know where you were when I brought this up. This is the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. That is a recent photo from a water tap in Flint, Michigan. Unacceptable. The bottom line is it is unacceptable. Not only is it dirty, it is poisonous.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. It is poisonous.
So we are going to make some choices. My plea to my colleagues here-- and it echoes what you said--you can talk about it in terms of jobs. Thousands and thousands of jobs would be created if we invested in our infrastructure, our public works, and the water systems.
Is the money available to do it? If we make the right choice, it is. If we make the right choice to invest in ending the poisoning of our children, it is there. We can move $4 trillion around in one way or another and build modern infrastructure. We could do that.
We are going to do it now. We are going to do it now. The issue of the budget begins today. In the United States Congress, 535 American citizens are brought to this Capitol to make decisions about the health and the safety of their children. We have been given that responsibility.
God knows there is enough money around $4 trillion to find a way to spend the money to build the water systems to stop the poisoning of our children. It is just a matter of choices.
What do we choose to do? Refurbish a nuclear bomb that, God willing, we would never ever even think about using? That is our choice. It is our choice.
As your representatives, we can move money into providing the public works to meet the fundamental human need, in this case, drinkable, potable, safe water. It is fundamental.
You cannot live but 3 days without water, and the last 2 days aren't worth living anyway because you are comatose. Water. Choices. Public works. Investment in the future. Jobs today. Engineers, as you talked about. Financial. All of that.
It is disheartening. I hear my colleagues like Sheila Jackson Lee come in and talk about going to Flint, Michigan. I will never forget Mr. Kildee on the floor last Thursday.
I asked him to talk to me about that young child that you saw in your community that you represent. He said the kid turned to him and said: I am not going to be smart enough. We make choices.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Can we talk about the California drought in this context?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, I wasn't in Flint, Michigan when Representative Kildee spoke to that young child--I think he was probably 4 or 5--who had been drinking this lead contaminated water, and was aware that he had been drinking the water. When that young kid turned to Mr. Kildee and said: I am afraid I won't be smart enough, I visualize it.
My question to you, to myself, and to my colleagues here in the House of Representatives and across the way in the Senate is: Will we be smart enough to protect our children? I think we must be smart enough to do that.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI. I was just thinking about your community that you mentioned, Albany and the like. I represent the University of California, Davis, in Davis, California. I think they have got maybe 12 wells that provide most of the water. About half of those wells are contaminated. They are building a new water system, and it should go online in the next few months, or maybe a year, or maybe sooner. They are investing. Perhaps they got some of this money from the State revolving fund.
It is an example of a community that wrestled with this for about a decade. They turned out to be smart enough to address it. They did it with their neighboring community of Woodland. A new water system is going into place. They will have safe drinking water.
There are other communities spread throughout California that don't have the same opportunity. It is our task to address this. I think we are smart enough to do so. I think there is enough money in the system to do it.
Mr. Tonko, would you like to do a quick 15 second wrap?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GARAMENDI.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source