Pfas Action Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I have been working to combat PFAS in the Great Lakes State that, truthfully, led the Nation in PFAS efforts for many years, including with my Michigan colleagues and sponsors of this bill.

Back in 2017, we hosted EPA staff at several contaminated sites in southeast Michigan so they could see firsthand the extent of the problem. We formed the Congressional PFAS Task Force and pushed for essential resources for PFAS research and cleanup efforts.

Many of our efforts have, actually, been enacted into law during the last administration and countless cleanup efforts are currently ongoing at all levels of government. In fact, over half of the provisions in this bill are already underway at EPA.

Unfortunately, other provisions in this bill would require the EPA to take a misguided approach by considering the group of more than 600 PFAS currently on the market, and the thousands of other unknown potential PFAS chemistries as if they were all the same.

Make no mistake, I believe this is a serious problem and it deserves serious solutions, but the bill before us today, although sincerely well-intended, goes too far. H.R. 2467 is so expansive that the CBO was unable to assign it a budgetary score, underscoring the untold cost and liability that it will impose on thousands, if not millions of manufacturers and consumers alike.

H.R. 2467 represents the largest expansion of regulatory authority at the EPA or perhaps any Federal agency in decades. But even more so, this bill will hamstring our small businesses, manufacturers, and water utilities by forcing them to take on so much cost and liability that they will be unable to comply or forced to raise prices and hire armies of attorneys all because Congress decided to substitute its political agenda for objective scientific judgment.

The Great Lakes Water Authority recently wrote to me regarding their concerns about the bill. A leading drinking water and wastewater treatment provider for southeast Michigan communities, Great Lakes Water Authority provides clean drinking water to nearly 40 percent of Michiganders. They told me this bill could likely cause them to be liable for trying to dispose of PFAS even if they are using current best practices.

As many would say, we ought to follow the science by letting the experts at EPA do their jobs and refrain from prejudging outcomes, overhauling existing regulatory structures, and most importantly, crippling our economy. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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