WRDA

Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I rise to applaud the Senate for passing earlier today the Water Resources Development Act of 2016, better known as WRDA. It is important to pause for a moment and appreciate the fact that we were able to come together in such a bipartisan way on such an important and substantive matter. Today, WRDA passed by an overwhelming majority of 95 to 3.

Today we took a critical step toward making real investments in our Nation's waterways, ports, harbors, ecosystems, and the infrastructure we rely on for our drinking water. We also made a statement that when a group of people are suffering, our country must pull together to help.

Delivering assistance to Flint, MI, and other communities suffering from poor drinking water quality is, frankly, quite overdue. We should have provided funding to fix Flint's water infrastructure long ago, but today we have taken a meaningful step toward the future, where the people of Flint, as well as communities all across America, can turn on their taps and trust that it is safe to use the water that comes out of them.

We cannot forget that right now the people of Flint are still living in this crisis. People are still depending on bottled water and filters for everyday water needs. The health effects will last for decades to come.

Over the past year, I have regularly heard from Flint families about their ongoing struggles. Just this week, I heard from Flint residents who came to Washington. They came to share their stories and to keep up the fight for the Federal support their community needs. These Americans continue to endure unimaginable circumstances with both grace and dignity.

The breadth and severity of the hardships these families have faced are breathtaking, but I continue to hear news stories that would shock all of us in this Chamber and push Congress to finish our work to get this package signed into law.

This week I heard from one Flint mother who told me a story about her 10-year-old daughter with aching bones and teeth. Lead and calcium compete for the same locations in the body and are stored in bone tissue. This is one of the many reasons lead exposure is especially devastating to growing children.

Try to imagine the horror of seeing your daughter's teeth crumble while biting into a sandwich. This is what the people of Flint are living with. The girl's blood lead levels, even recently, were up and down, and she takes large supplements to improve her bone strength. As these Flint residents continue to tell their stories, we must not let their reality fade from the minds of this Nation. As a nation, we can do better than this. We must take care of our own.

As we pause to recognize the weight of our actions today, we must recognize and remember the people who have been fighting for a very long time.

I would like to recognize Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Dr. Marc Edwards, and Miguel Del Toral for their tireless work to identify and shine a light on the crisis of Flint last year, as well as for all of their advocacy and work since then.

I would also like to recognize the grassroots leaders in Flint who realized there was a serious problem way before anyone else. LeeAnne Walters, Melissa Mays, the Concerned Pastors of Flint, and many others. Despite being repeatedly dismissed and ignored, they kept talking and marching and battling to let the world know about the injustice.

Senator Stabenow and her team have worked tirelessly with us on this effort and to advance our package helping Flint and other countries across the country. She and I underwent weeks of negotiations to carefully craft a bipartisan agreement, and we have a number of Senators who were willing to work with us and truly wanted to find a solution.

Senator Stabenow's staff, particularly Matt VanKuiken and Aaron Suntag, deserve a lot of credit for late nights drafting legislative language and making calls to negotiate a deal.

Senators Inhofe and Boxer deserve special gratitude for their creative ideas and steadfast determination.

I would also like to thank the Environment and Public Works Committee staff, including Alex Herrgott, Jason Albritton, Bettina Poirier, and Susan Bodine, among others. Your long hours and commitment were critical to the bill's passage.

I should also recognize the cosponsors of our bipartisan legislation, including Senators Brown, Portman, Kirk, Reed, Burr, Durbin, Mikulski, Capito, and Baldwin.

I would like to recognize Senators Murkowski and Cantwell and their staff who worked for weeks to help us find a path forward on a bipartisan energy bill. While this did not come to fruition, we kept working hard to find a path forward. We didn't let one roadblock stand in the way. We kept on fighting for Flint, just like the families in Flint keep on fighting.

So while I am pleased the Senate finally passed this bipartisan, fully paid-for legislation to provide much needed support for Flint families, we now need to redouble our efforts to get it done and get it over the finish line.

I urge my colleagues in the House to swiftly pass similar assistance to Flint and other communities across the country. This bill is the best way for us to help them make critical investments in their aging water infrastructure.

I thank my colleague Congressman Kildee, who has been Flint's most steadfast champion in the U.S. House. He has worked with Senator Stabenow and me to secure Federal resources for Flint families, and I know he is working hard with his House colleagues to pass legislation to aid Flint.

Local elected officials, such as State Senator Jim Ananich, State Representative Sheldon Neeley, and Mayor Karen Weaver continue to battle for their constituents, secure resources to fix problems, and shine a light on all of the many positive aspects of the city of Flint.

I know other Members of the Michigan delegation and of other States are committed, but now is the time to step up to the plate and show that we will follow through on our responsibilities as representatives of the people.

Finally, if we are to solve this crisis, the State of Michigan must step up with substantial long-term support for the people of Flint and help them fully recover in the years and decades ahead. This disaster happened on their watch, and it is an immense failure on the part of the State of Michigan to protect the health and safety of its city's residents.

Despite the grim facts of this tragedy, some day in the future I hope we will look back at today and say it was a milestone and a turning point. I am optimistic that we will. This is not the end of our efforts for Flint. This is the beginning of making things right.

We won't stop fighting for what is best for Flint families. I urge all of my colleagues to continue working to invest in critical water infrastructure so that we never, ever see a crisis like this again anywhere in our country.

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