Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUIZ. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment to H.R. 5895 to provide $2 million in additional critical funding for Bureau of Reclamation environmental restoration projects that will benefit our public health within a region such as the Salton Sea in my congressional district in southern California.

The Bureau of Reclamation is responsible for managing, developing, and restoring our Nation's waters to support the interests of the American people, and there are few interests more important than protecting the public's health.

To demonstrate why projects that support the public's health are so important, I want to talk about the Salton Sea, the largest inland body of water in the entire State of California.

Located in Riverside and Imperial Counties, the Salton Sea was once the jewel of the southern California desert, drawing thousands of tourists, birdwatchers, and other outdoors and water sports enthusiasts.

Having grown up near the Salton Sea, I have wonderful memories of going fishing there with my father and picnicking with my family.

However, for decades now, deteriorating water quality and reduced water inflows have made the declining lake bed of the Salton Sea a public health danger to the residents in the surrounding area. If we do not take decisive action now, the sea will harm the public's health in cities all across southern California.

You see, as the sea dries and the water level recedes, the exposed lake bed releases windblown contaminants containing selenium, arsenic, and pesticides. These are in small particulate matter small enough to go through your lungs and straight into your bloodstream.

Exposure to these contaminants has been shown to increase the number and severity of asthma attacks, decrease the growth and development of lung function in school-age children, and increase the risk of cardiac disease, heart attacks, and mortality in adults.

In fact, children in this underserved area already have the highest pediatric asthma hospitalization rate in the entire State of California. So adding this insult and adding this exposure is going to be devastating for the surrounding pediatric population.

As an emergency medicine doctor, I care deeply about the health of our communities and have seen firsthand the effects of poor air quality in these underserved communities. So the public health danger to families and children from the Salton Sea is very real and must be addressed at all levels of government--local, State, and Federal--and through public-private partnerships. We are making progress.

I also appreciate the committee's strong support of the memorandum of understanding that I helped broker between the Department of the Interior and the State of California to support the State's mitigation plan by including report language in the underlying bill.

In addition to the Salton Sea, funding for the Bureau of Reclamation supports restoration projects across the Western United States that protect public health. For example, in Congressman Ken Calvert's district which neighbors my own district, the Bureau of Reclamation helped to mitigate public health concerns and water quality issues at Lake Elsinore.

Lake Elsinore, like the Salton Sea, has faced chronic challenges relating to water level, water quality, and associated public health concerns. However, a collaboration between the city of Lake Elsinore, Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District, Riverside County, and the Bureau of Reclamation came together to finally address these challenges. Together they built levees to contain the lake, established a supply of recycled water to help maintain water levels, and installed aerators to prevent fish die-offs by keeping oxygen levels high.

So it can work. Lake Elsinore now supports many local businesses and has a flourishing tourism industry. Most importantly, the water is now safer for residents to enjoy all the benefits the lake has to offer, including swimming and water sports.

There are countless other examples of Bureau of Reclamation restoration projects helping to protect public health. That is why I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and provide an additional $2 million to these types of projects. That is why, if we know that this can work in other areas with pending public health crises, it can and will work in my district with the Salton Sea if they are so fortunate to receive some grant moneys and work in a collaborative way like Lake Elsinore. The health of the American people must be put above politics.

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Mr. RUIZ. Mr. Chair, I want to thank the chairman for not opposing. I also want to thank the ranking member for yielding me the time and allowing all of this to proceed.

On behalf of those children with pediatric asthma, on behalf of our seniors with COPD, chronic bronchitis, and on behalf of the doctors who work in emergency departments, I truly want to bring this awareness to everybody here that this is a pending public health nightmare catastrophe that, if we do nothing, will cost up to $9 billion to address the effects--the public health and the economic effects--that this will do. So putting money in the front end is going to save money in the back end, and it is going to prevent the bad health of our pediatric and our senior populations.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the leadership for both listening, understanding, and proceeding with this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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