America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, last August several Western States and Indian tribes suffered an enormous environmental disaster. It was called the Gold King Mine spill. In this disaster, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency caused a spill of 3 million gallons of toxic waste water into a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado.

This photograph shows the before and after. People all across the country remember this picture and the poisoning of this river by the EPA. This plume of toxic waste threatened people in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It stretched to the land of the Navajo Nation and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.

When the Indian Affairs Committee held a hearing on the Gold King Mine spill last September, we heard testimony from Russell Begaye. He is the President of the Navajo Nation, which has lands roughly the size of the State of West Virginia, a very large piece of land. President Begaye told our committee that for the Navajo people, water is sacred, and the river is life for all of us.

He said: Today, we are afraid to use the river--with an emphasis on the word ``afraid.'' The EPA caused that spill more than 8 months ago because it made crucial mistakes, critical mistakes. It failed to take basic precautions.

Well, we still have not gotten answers to some very important questions. Now that the snow in the Rocky Mountains is beginning to melt, people in this very area, in the course of this river, are worried that they are being victimized once again by the failures of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They want to know if melting snow is going to stir up the lead and the mercury and the other poisons that have settled to the bottom after this poisonous spill.

They want to know if this blue river is going to turn bright yellow again. Well, next week I am chairing a hearing in Phoenix, AZ, and it is a field hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee. We are going to be looking at the Environmental Protection Agency's unacceptable response to Indian tribes. This includes inadequate handling of the Gold King Mine disaster. It includes the Agency dragging its feet on cleaning up the cold-water uranium mines across the Navajo and the Hopi reservations.

The members of these tribes deserve to hear directly from the EPA. They want answers about what is being done to fix this blunder. From what I have seen lately, I expect the Environmental Protection Agency will be doing its best to avoid giving any answer at all. When we, the Indian Affairs Committee, first invited the Agency to send a representative to this hearing to update us, they refused. It is astonishing; they refused. They said they would send written testimony instead.

I don't think the EPA understands how this works. We are holding this field hearing to do oversight on this catastrophe that the EPA caused. This is not optional for them. This is not supposed to be just another chance for the EPA to show how uncooperative and unhelpful they can be. So tomorrow the Indian Affairs Committee plans to issue a formal subpoena for the EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, to appear at the field hearing.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source