Water Quality Investment Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. Chairman, anyone who drives on our bridges and roads, ships freight through our rivers and locks, or who has the responsibility to maintain our water quality knows that our country's infrastructure system needs attention. We as a Nation have allowed important components of our economic security to fall into disrepair.

Maintaining municipal water infrastructure has long been a local responsibility. It's a difficult task. Around the country, many communities have gotten behind.

To address this problem, we need a collective effort that focuses both on reducing cost and on increasing investment in water infrastructure at all levels, including Federal, State and local governments, local ratepayers and the private sector. No one element will be able to carry this responsibility alone.

The Congress believes in helping those communities that need help to get back into control of their wastewater management program and developing good management practices to ensure that the Federal Government does not become the financing mechanism of choice for these systems.

Our Nation's quality of life and economic well-being rely on clean water. However, that challenge to continue providing clean water is substantial, as our existing national wastewater structure is aging, deteriorating and in need of repair, replacement and upgrading.

As a Nation, we are not investing enough in our wastewater infrastructure to ensure that we will continue to keep our waters clean. Unless we act, we could lose the significant gains in water quality that have been achieved over the last 30 years.

In addition to reauthorizing the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, the bill also extends the pilot program under the Clean Water Act for alternative water source projects. Many communities are finding that their water needs cannot be met by existing water supplies. As a result, they are looking at alternative ways to alleviate their water shortages and enhance water supplies to meet their future water needs.

Some of these approaches they are looking at involve reclaiming, reusing or conserving water that has already been used. This bill helps them do that.

H.R. 1262 provides an authority to help communities meet some of their critical water supply needs through water reclamation, reuse, conservation and management. The bill authorizes $250 million over 5 years for the EPA to make grants to water resource development agencies for these sorts of alternative water source projects.

Another provision of H.R. 1262 reauthorizes grants to help communities address the widespread problem in our country of sewer overflows. As a result of inadequate or outdated wastewater infrastructure, raw sewage can flow into rivers or back up into people's basements. To provide communities some assistance to meet these needs, the bill authorizes additional resources for EPA to make sewer overflow control grants totaling $1.8 billion to States and local communities.

The Water Quality Investment Act also contains a provision to improve the public's confidence in the quality of our Nation's waters and protect public health and safety. This provision requires that communities monitor for potential overflows in their sewer systems and notify the public whenever a release would threaten public health and safety. The public has a right to know when their lives are threatened by sewer releases.

Also included in this reauthorization is a reauthorization of the Great Lakes Legacy Act, authored by Vern Ehlers and enacted in 2002. The Great Lakes Legacy Act authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out qualified sediment remediation projects and conduct research and development of innovative approaches, technologies and techniques for the remediation of contaminated sediment in the Great Lakes.

While I agree very much with the clean water goals of H.R. 1262, I am disappointed that the majority included language that requires Davis-Bacon wage rates to be used for all projects receiving any money from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Even projects paid for with State contributed funds will be subject to the higher wage rates.

I am not a supporter of Davis-Bacon, because it will make clean water projects cost more. It will especially hurt small disadvantaged communities who are trying to clean up their local waters, and it will force States that do not have their own prevailing wage rate law to adopt the expensive Federal Davis-Bacon requirement. The result will be fewer projects, fewer jobs and less clean water.

Despite my concerns with Davis-Bacon, I believe this to be a very, very good bill, a very, very good underlying bill, and I very much support it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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