Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. NUNN of Iowa. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would like to begin by thanking Representative Collins for his leadership on the PERMIT Act and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for their joint work in a bipartisan way on many of these issues in this bill, as well.

I rise in support today of an amendment to the PERMIT Act that would establish a new State-led water quality pilot program through the Environmental Protection Agency.

This amendment is straightforward, and like my home State in Iowa, it is something that can help in our rural communities. It supports States across the country in working to address water quality challenges using voluntary, science-backed conservation practices that our landowners and local partners are already engaged in implementing.

This issue hits particularly close to home for me. In the Hawkeye State, we have seen some of the highest nitrate levels ever recorded in our rivers and streams across Iowa. This year alone, the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers exceeded Federal nitrate limits multiple times, requiring expensive water treatment to provide safe drinking water for more than 600,000 Iowans.

More than 600 water segments across Iowa are now listed as impaired, with just over 60 percent of our nutrient-impaired watersheds remaining on the 303(d) list.

Iowans worked hard, as have many States, to address this issue, but the scale of the challenge demands better coordination and support from our Federal Government.

My amendment would create a new pilot program to strengthen the State and Federal collaboration in areas with nitrogen and phosphorus impairments, exactly what Iowa is struggling with. It would bring the Environmental Protection Agency to the table with States to help advance water quality improvements more efficiently and ensure that our existing tools and conservation programs work together as effectively as possible in a hybrid model.

This pilot is fully voluntary and keeps the Federal Government in its proper lane. It does not impose any new obligations on a producer or private landowner. What it does do is it helps best practices already being implemented in places like Iowa and many other States that are working to meet ambitious nutrient reduction goals.

This amendment will help ensure that projects designed to improve water quality can move forward smoothly and with support, particularly in those areas with watersheds.

This approach is the type of State-led partnership that focuses on solutions the PERMIT Act is intended to help support. It accelerates the forward progress of water quality projects. It strengthens State leadership on this issue. It gets buy-in from communities. It promotes voluntary conservation work that everyone agrees is the best way to help our family farms, local communities, rural hometowns, and, most importantly, water quality across this country.

I respectfully ask my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment as we move forward with the PERMIT Act.

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Mr. NUNN of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, while I appreciate the feedback from my colleague on the other side of the aisle, I will remind the gentlewoman from Michigan that not every good answer comes out of Washington, D.C. In fact, many of them are best practice right in our family hometowns. In a State like Iowa and in Des Moines, who helped lead in water quality--and we want to do more--the lag time, the bureaucracy, the delay, and the permitting coming out of Washington has made it only harder.

This is a voluntary opportunity to create a pilot program that can create a new idea, make a good recommendation, capture a best practice, and help to instill it in a way that improves water quality not only at source, but downstream for every State, as well.

While I support what the EPA is trying to do at the Federal level, I think we all recognize that the EPA alone can't solve this. They need help from great leaders on the ground.

Let's empower locals to have the opportunity to also be part of the solution and not turn to, as you have noted several times, a long, delayed permitting process in Washington to be a final solution for every challenge that America faces.

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Mr. NUNN of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, in closing, this amendment is about helping States succeed to improve their water quality--not creating a new mandate and not creating a new bureaucracy. It gives States the support that they need to do the things that currently aren't being executed under current law.

This is a good, project-focused effort to help innovators at the source. It is smart. It is targeted solutions. It supports a cleaner water for our country. It is strong State leadership. It is better outcomes for communities. It is locally driven, not federally mandated.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support H.R. 3898 and my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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