Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations ACt, 2007

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. In my home State of New Jersey, tourism supports nearly 500,000 jobs and indirectly generates $16.6 billion in wages and $5.5 billion in State tax revenues. Much of that enormous economic engine is driven by our coastline which we have worked hard to protect.

All it takes is one incident from an industrial drilling rig sitting in the ocean to put this entire economic engine at risk. What this amendment would do is open up OCS areas as close as 3 miles from shore to drilling. There is no buffer here, no minimum barrier. If we pass this amendment, we can see drilling rigs as close as 3 miles from our shores. And for what?

This will do nothing for the price of oil. It takes up to 7 years to begin producing from an offshore lease.

And I would also like to know why the oil industry is so keen on getting these areas open for drilling when they have thousands of leases already in place, both onshore and offshore that they haven't bothered to explore.

Mr. Chairman, our coasts are simply too valuable to risk like this. If we had to do a balancing act, there is no way you could support this amendment.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment. Vote to protect our coasts.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I am introducing this amendment with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) to protect local communities' rights to know what toxic chemicals are being dumped in their backyards.

Eighteen years ago Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which established the Toxics Release Inventory Program. This simple program does not force companies to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals they use. Rather, it requires that they disclose the types and amounts of chemicals used at a particular facility and how those substances were disposed of, recycled, or released into the environment.

This critical disclosure requirement lets communities know specifically how much of which chemicals are being dumped where. For citizens concerned about their health, this information can be critical. It is also valuable to a host of other constituencies, including workers who could be affected on the job site, first responders and others who need to plan for incidents at specific facilities.

Not only does the program provide this important information to those who need it, it also has been extremely successful at getting companies to voluntarily reduce their toxic releases. Since the program started, overall toxic releases are down 59 percent around the country.

In fact, the chemical industry themselves thinks this is a good program. Earlier this year the Washington Post quoted Michael Walls, manager of Regulatory and Technical Affairs for the American Chemistry Council, saying, ``It's one of the most successful regulatory programs we have been involved in.''

Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, the EPA does not seem to agree. Last year they proposed a set of changes that would seriously undermine the intent of the program.

First, they are proposing to eliminate reporting for more than 22,000 facilities that release up to 5,000 pounds of toxic chemicals every year. These facilities would switch to a simple form merely indicating what chemicals they have on site, not how they are released and in what quantities.

Second, the EPA is proposing to eliminate the same type of detailed reporting from facilities that manage up to 500 pounds per year of persistent bioaccumulative chemicals, some of the deadliest substances used in industry today. These chemicals, which include mercury and lead, can cause serious harm even in tiny quantities.

And, third, EPA is proposing to require that companies report only every other year rather than every year as the program currently requires. This final change makes the least sense of all. EPA themselves point out that data for certain chemicals can swing widely from year to year depending on the actions of one particular facility such as a large mining operation.

The EPA would gut the intent of the TRI program, and I would like to remind my colleagues that this program was created in the wake of the Bhopal disaster in India, where an explosion at a Union Carbide facility more than 20 years ago killed thousands. We have the program so we know where we might have the potential for another Bhopal, but also so we know where slow, silent releases of toxic chemicals could pose serious threats to public health.

So I would like to emphasize again to my colleagues that our amendment is really about protecting community right to know. It is about standing up for the principle that your constituents should be able to find out what toxic chemicals might be getting dumped in area streams, pumped out into the air, or trucked to a nearby landfill. And it is also about protecting a highly successful program, one of the few that has been consistently recognized even by industry as being effective and worthwhile.

So, again, I ask that my colleagues join me in supporting this amendment, and I would like to thank Chairman Taylor for being open to discuss this issue, and I hope that we can continue to work together.

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