Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to H.R. 3898, the PERMIT Act, and in opposition to the underlying bill.

For the last fifty years, the Clean Water Act has provided the federal government with the means to hold polluters accountable for contaminating our Nation's wetlands, rivers, lakes, and sources of drinking water. The Clean Water Act, in many cases, has been the sole reason why decades of pollution threatening the health of our communities has been reversed and why countless bodies of water throughout the country are now being preserved for future generations. The PERMIT Act will reverse progress and give polluters the ability to, once again, contaminate our waters by minimizing many of the critical protections in the Clean Water Act. This legislation establishes blanket Clean Water Act exemptions for toxic and cancer-causing chemicals stemming from pesticide use, agriculture, and wildfire management. This legislation also shields polluters from liability for pollutants that they do not disclose on their permit applications, even if they know that their operations result in the introduction of these pollutants.

In Southeastern Virginia, one of our region's most critical resources is the Chesapeake Bay. The Bay provides our local economy with many opportunities in recreation, business, education, and tourism. Throughout the watershed, the Bay brings in nearly $14.3 billion in annual revenue and supports nearly one million jobs. The federal government and the states in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed recognize that our communities rely on the health of the Bay and signed the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement to regulate pollutants and implement standards like the Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL. It is extremely concerning that the PERMIT Act includes language specifically targeting the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement's TMDL by weakening the federal government's role in its implementation. My amendment strikes this language from the bill. The long-standing collaboration between the federal government and the states should not be diminished.

I would like to thank the twelve members who cosponsored my amendment to strike this language. Because this amendment is not included and because of the various provisions in the underlying bill that endanger the protection of our Nation's waters, I oppose passage of this legislation.

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