Safe Drinking Water Act Improved Compliance Awareness Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4470, the Safe Drinking Water Act Improved Compliance Act. This legislation will help ensure no community in America ever experiences what is happening in Flint by ensuring that federal and state regulators promptly notify a local community if there are elevated levels of lead in their water systems.

Specifically, the bill requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to notify a local water system if EPA receives data indicating high lead levels in the water. The local water system must immediately notify their customers, and if they do not act quickly then EPA must notify local residents themselves.

It is critical that a community is immediately notified when there is a problem with their drinking water. Transparency is essential to ensuring water lead contamination never poisons another community, and this bill helps us achieve this important goal.

The facts about the Flint crisis are being gathered right now through multiple investigations, and every person responsible must be held accountable for the lack of appropriate action. Government at every level failed the people of Flint, but this is a man-made disaster led by the state of Michigan, and we must take action at the federal level to prevent this from ever happening again.

Every Member of the Michigan delegation co-sponsored this bill, and we thank our colleagues Congressman Kildee and Congressman Upton for their good work on it. This is an example of what can happen when we work together to solve the problems facing our nation, and we need more of it. Clean water is one of the most fundamental, basic rights we should guarantee anyone living in America.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this critical legislation.

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