Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairwoman of the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee for yielding me this time, and I thank her for her unyielding support for water issues across this country, including in our very critical Great Lakes region. She has been a true and unyielding champion on these issues, and I thank her.

Today's package of bills includes key priorities for protecting not just our Great Lakes, but ecosystems across our country. H.R. 4031, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act of 2019, enjoys broad support from the Great Lakes region. The 49 cosponsors of the bill represent every ideological perspective of our caucus, and today's bill, which is on suspension, is a testament of that bipartisan, bicameral critical support.

In that vein, Mr. Speaker, I must also commend my colleague from Ohio, Congressman David Joyce, for his steadfast effort to work collaboratively to collect signatures for H.R. 4031 so we could move it from 2019 to 2020.

This Great Lakes Act recognizes the enormous, unmet need for the region. The interagency collaborative effort has brought to bear resources, expertise, and stakeholders from across the local, State, and Federal portions of the region and helped to focus resources on a major hot spot.

The Maumee River is the largest river that flows into the entire Great Lakes and is also facing gigantic harmful algal blooms. The Maumee River dumps all of these nutrients into Lake Erie, which then feeds the most productive part of the lake, endangering, annually, native species and creating massive harmful algal blooms with the critical ingredient of microcystin, which is toxic.

Annually, the harmful algal blooms threaten Toledo's drinking water system, which had to be shut down 3 years ago. It threatens the safety of our beaches and longevity of our ecosystem.

This Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is assisting communities to address the root causes of the blooms.

Since 2010, over 4,000 projects have been completed across the basin, the largest watershed in the entire Great Lakes, and a recent University of Michigan study revealed that each dollar spent on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative will result in $3.35 million in additional economic activity.

The long-term goals of the initiative are delisting of the areas of concern, ensuring that fish are safe to eat and the Asian carp is kept out, and control of numerous environmental problems across our lakes, the largest source of freshwater on our continent.

Today's legislation offers a ramp-up back to the level for the restoration initiative initially envisioned when the program was first funded in fiscal year 2010. So it is pretty new as Federal programs go. This gradual ramp-up represents a consensus across the delegation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation on final passage.

Again, I want to thank Chairwoman Grace Napolitano for her work across both sides of the aisle and with Members of this House from every region of the country.

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