Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency

Floor Speech

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a proud daughter of New Mexico, as a water resources professional, and as a defender of the most basic element that we need to survive, which is water.

In New Mexico, water is life, water is sacred, water is culture, and water is fundamental to everything that we do and everything that we are.

For years, our State and our country and our communities have ridden the roller coaster of regulatory rollbacks on the Clean Water Act, but I never could have imagined that in the year 2023, we would be voting on a bill to gut the rule that protects our streams and rivers and our right to have clean water.

In 2023, just weeks ago, a train derailment in East Palestine sent toxic smoke into the atmosphere, and people were afraid to turn on their taps and drink the water. The American people want clean water. Yet, here we are, weeks later, being forced to take a vote on a bill that would gut a fundamental rule in how the Clean Water Act actually saves our lives.

Water is the most basic element for how we survive as a species. The Clean Water Act was passed because rivers were on fire. In fact, in some of the districts of our Members--who are actually sponsoring this bill--toxic waste and sewage was filling the waterways of these very districts, where children were being poisoned by toxins that were being put in the rivers. Yet, here we are voting for a measure that would leave massive swaths of our waterways exposed, particularly in New Mexico. We are talking about raw sewage, farm waste, and chemicals being dumped in our arroyos and our wetlands.

Let me ask the American people: Is this what you want this body to be working on, gutting the most basic foundation of the protection of our public health and our environment? No, the American people want clean water. They want us to protect our streams and rivers. They want us to protect our farmers and ranchers. They want us to protect their families and their children.

We cannot go back decades, as this measure would take us back, and we cannot gut this fundamental, underlying environmental law that protects the health and safety of our communities.

So wherever you live, whoever you represent, whatever you fight for, know what this bill is actually about.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote with clean water and vote against this measure.

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