Diana E. Murphy United States Courthouse

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Mr. DeFazio, Mrs. Napolitano, and all the leadership on both the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for putting this bill together.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk about the Energy and Commerce jurisdiction, which is initially the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Our Nation's public drinking water system serves more than 300 million people, but aging and failing infrastructure threatens access to safe drinking water in communities large and small.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that our water systems will require $472 billion in infrastructure repairs over the next 20 years, but investment simply has not kept pace with the need.

This bill reauthorizes the Safe Drinking Water Act State Revolving Fund for the first time in 20 years and provides significant new funding to State and local governments in dire need.

The bill nearly doubles the authorized funding from $1 billion to almost $2 billion in 2021 and increases funding for public water system supervision grants to States.

Important provisions in the bill ensure that this money gets to the communities that need it most by raising the cap on special assistance to disadvantaged communities under the State Revolving Fund and setting a floor for such assistance to guarantee help for those communities.

I want to thank Representative Tonko, the ranking member of our House Energy Subcommittee on Environment, who led the effort to reauthorize and improve the State Revolving Fund for many years. Many of the provisions in this bill were incorporated from AQUA Act, which he authored.

The bill also contains a provision first introduced by myself and Representative Rush establishing a grant program for replacing leaded drinking water fountains in schools and requiring, for the first time, a national inventory of lead service lines and the cost to replace them.

The bill contains Representative Dingell's provision to make drinking water quality reports to consumers more frequent, comprehensive, and understandable.

Significantly, the bill incorporates Representative Peters' provision to assist systems with resiliency to extreme weather, and it establishes new requirements to assess and address vulnerabilities to those threats.

It also provides $100 million for grants to extend access to safe drinking water into areas impacted by natural disasters, responding to concerns raised by Representative Green.

Additionally, the bill contains language championed by Representative McNerney authorizing a water sense program to encourage consumer product water efficiency, and it authorizes Buy America requirements for iron and steel products for 5 years.

Mr. Speaker, this bill won't solve all our drinking water challenges, but it makes important improvements and delivers real benefits.

I am also pleased that this final bipartisan bill includes important energy provisions that I pushed, to include among them provisions authored by Representatives Kennedy, DeGette, and Peters.

All in all, the drinking water and energy titles of this bill are critical, significant steps forward that will benefit America's families, industry, and the environment.

Mr. Speaker, America's Water Infrastructure Act is a victory for all of us, and I urge my colleagues to support the legislation.

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