Statements On Introduced Bills And Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

By Mr. MERKLEY (for himself, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Baucus, Mr. Tester, and Mr. Wyden):

S. 3550: A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to establish within the Environmental Protection Agency a Columbia Basin Restoration Program; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak to legislation I am introducing today, with my colleagues, Senator Crapo of Idaho, Senators Baucus and Tester of Montana, and Senator Wyden, from my home state of Oregon, to protect and restore the Columbia River Basin.

The Columbia River Basin is the great river system that defines the Pacific Northwest. It runs 1,243 miles from Columbia Lake in British Columbia to its mouth at Astoria, OR, the first permanent European settlement west of the Rocky Mountains. Its basin drains 258,000 acres in seven states, including many of great geological provinces of the West: the Yellowstone Plateau; the Rocky Mountains; the volcanic Snake River Plain; Hells Canyon, America's deepest canyon; the basalt plains and high desert of eastern Oregon and Washington; the majestic Columbia River Gorge; the volcanic slopes of the Cascade Mountains; and the temperate rain forests of the Coast Range.

The Columbia River's tributaries are the major rivers of the Northwest. The Snake River, its longest tributary, runs more than 1,000 miles from near the continental divide in Wyoming's Yellowstone Park to its mouth with the Columbia in eastern Washington. The Clark Fork is Montana's largest river by volume, draining much of western Montana and turning into the Pend Oreille River in Idaho before it flows into the Columbia just across the border in Canada.

It is also the lifeblood of our economy and has been the foundation of a trade-based economy stretching back thousands of years, even before European settlement. Today it is the cornerstone of the region's shipping network, with ports dotting the river as far upstream as Lewiston, Idaho, the farthest inland seaport in the west. It was once the world's largest wild salmon run, with as many as 30 million salmon returning to spawn in our rivers, and is still a foundation for much of our commercial and recreational fishing industries and an important source of fish for many of our Indian tribes.

The Columbia River Basin is the backbone of our energy system, with a network of dams that provide the majority of the region's electricity, more electricity than any other river in the country generates. Indeed, when we measure generating capacity, we talk about 100- and 200-Megawatt capacity wind farms and we talk about 600- and 800-Megawatt coal plants. Well, the Grand Coulee dam in central Washington state has a capacity of 6,800 Megawatts. It was the availability of low-cost power that brought the industrial era to the Northwest and brought a host of benefits to our rural residents, from rural electrification to irrigation for agriculture, as memorialized in the 1940s by Woody Guthrie. About four million acres of income-producing farm and ranch land across the Pacific Northwest are irrigated by the Columbia River, contributing $10 billion to our economy every year.

Unfortunately, the Columbia River Basin is also a river basin that faces serious challenges. Our rivers are severely polluted. When EPA completed its Columbia River Basin Fish Contaminant Survey, the agency looked for 131 chemicals in fish tissues that could be taken up by humans because of contamination entering the food chain. The study detected 70 percent of the chemicals EPA was looking for. All 11 species of fish they tested had some level of contamination in their tissue.

The contamination in these fish poses a health problem for people throughout our region, but it is the Indian tribes, our neighbors who have made this basin their home for thousands of years--including the Warm Springs, the Nez Perce, the Umatilla, and the Yakama--who are among the most affected. A survey conducted by the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission found that tribal members consume between 6 and 10 times as much fish as the national average. High consumption rates exist among all tribal members consuming fish as well as among specific high-risk groups, including breastfeeding women.

In addition, the salmon and steelhead, upon which the tribes and the fishing communities of the Northwest have so long depended, are in serious decline.

The good news is that stakeholders across the region are working to clean up and restore the river. Since the Lower Columbia River estuary was added to the National Estuary Program, a robust partnership involving 28 cities, 9 counties, and the states of Oregon and Washington has come together to coordinate habitat restoration and toxic contamination reduction in that part of the basin. The EPA has coordinated stakeholders throughout the basin, including the states of Idaho and Montana and tribal governments, working to improve toxic pollution monitoring and reduce and clean up contamination.

But more needs to be done.

While EPA has designated the Columbia River Basin as one of the nation's Great Water Bodies and has an active program in the basin, it is the only one of these Great Water Bodies that doesn't receive designated appropriations to support its restoration. Unlike the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, where Congress has authorized and funded restoration programs, the Columbia River Basin has no such program.

It is in that context that I introduce today, along with Senate colleagues from the Northwest, the Columbia River Basin Restoration Act of 2010. The bill establishes a clear stakeholder-driven process to oversee implementation of toxic contamination reduction plans. It directs EPA to provide technical support to a Working Group of stakeholders representing important constituencies and representing every geographic area in the Basin, and it allows those stakeholders to prioritize projects to implement toxic contamination reduction and to propose those projects to the EPA for funding.

We have also included an important component related to the Flathead River Basin in this bill. As my colleague the senior Senator from Montana can tell you, the Flathead is an amazing pristine gem of a water body on the far eastern edge of our basin. It forms the western and southern boundaries of the world's first international peace park, Glacier-Waterton, and it contains Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the West. Senator Baucus has made protecting the Flathead Basin a major focus and has discussed it many times in our work together on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and we have been working together for several months now to make sure we could protect the Flathead River Basin in this bill. I am glad we were able to include his provision to do so.

I would particularly like to thank my colleague Senator Crapo from our neighboring State to the east. Senator Crapo and I have been able to work together in a true collaborative partnership to propose what we believe will be an effective, stakeholder-driven program to help our constituents reduce toxic contamination in waterways that matter so much to them, and to do so in ways that our constituents design and prioritize. This bill reflects the interests and concerns of people from every State in the Northwest, and we will continue to hear and address their interests and concerns as the legislative process continues.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues from the Northwest today as we introduce this bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the RECORD

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source