Senator Paul Simon Water For The World Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, with the passage of the Paul Simon Water for the World Act, the Senate will take an important step in fighting poverty and saving the lives of the world's poor by increasing access to the most fundamental human need--clean water.

I introduced this bill in honor of my friend and mentor, the man whose seat I now occupy in the Senate, the late Senator Paul Simon. Solving the global water crisis was his last great campaign and the topic of a book he authored called ``Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It.''

If he were here today, he would be proud of the Senate's action.

I was joined in this effort by Senators BOB CORKER, PATTY MURRAY and 31 other cosponsors from both sides of the aisle--and would like to thank all of them for their support and commitment to addressing one of the defining challenges of the 21st century.

I would also like to thank Senator TOM COBURN for working constructively with me to advance legislation that we both could agree upon. And finally I would like to express my appreciation to Foreign Relations Committee Chairman JOHN KERRY and Ranking Member RICHARD LUGAR for their critical support of this bill.

While we have made progress in recent years on clean water and sanitation, tragically nearly 1 billion people around the world still lack access to clean, safe water. More than 2 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Most of these people live on less than $2 a day.

They are the voiceless and the powerless of the world, but today the U.S. Senate sent a clear message to them, ``We hear you, we see what you're going through, and we want to help with this most basic of human needs.''

We want to help because the global water crisis is not just a problem for Africa or the Middle East, but rather a problem for all of humanity.

Mr. President, competition for water is often at the heart of international conflict--just look at the conflict in Darfur.

The burdens of water in the developing world fall most solidly on the women. So many thousands of women in Africa spend hours every day carrying water back and forth.

Young girls are often denied the opportunity to go to school because they have work to do. They have to carry water, often walking several hours both ways.

And sick children miss nearly 300 million school days a year from water-related causes. An estimated 320 million productive work days are lost to illness resulting from unsafe drinking water and lack of access to sanitation.

Quite simply, the global water crisis is a quiet killer. In the developing world, water-related diseases claim the lives of 5,000 children every day.

During my trips overseas, I have seen the hardships that befall populations without clean water and sanitation, and I've also seen the transformation that gaining access to these basic human needs creates.

Earlier this year I traveled to Africa with Senator SHERROD BROWN where we visited a number of countries, including Ethiopia. We visited a slum outside Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, where we were greeted by two beautiful little girls who gave us flowers and invited us to a coffee ceremony.

The 380 inhabitants of this area lived without running water until a nongovernmental organization called AMREF installed a simple but critical water kiosk that now provides safe drinking water, showers, toilet facilities, and even jobs to the community.

The same two girls who greeted us beamed with pride as we looked at the source of water and sanitation that did not exist before. What seems so ordinary to us in the developed world, access to water and sanitation, changed the lives of these two young girls living in squalor outside Addis Ababa.

But you do not have to travel halfway around the world to see the devastating consequences of a lack of clean water and sanitation--travel just 90 minutes from Miami to Haiti.

There are no public sewage treatment or disposal systems anywhere in the country. Even in the capital, Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million people, the drainage canals are choked with garbage and sewage.

And this was before the earthquake.

It is no wonder that Haiti has the highest infant and child mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere. One-third of Haiti's children do not live to see the age of five.

The leading killer? Water-borne diseases: hepatitis, typhoid and diarrhea.

The goal of the bill passed today is to reach an additional 100 million of the world's poorest people with sustainable, first-time access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation over the next 6 years.

This would represent the largest single commitment of any donor country to meeting the Millennium Development Goal on water, which is to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015.

I believe American leadership in helping provide the world's poor with such a fundamental human need as clean water is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do.

In fact, for every $1 invested in safe drinking water and sanitation, an estimated $8 is saved in work time, productivity and health care costs in poor countries.

Throughout history, civilized nations have put aside political differences to address compelling issues of life and survival. Today, on this issue, by passing the Paul Simon Water for the World Act, the Senate did just that.

I now urge my colleagues in the House to work with Representatives EARL BLUMENAUER and DONALD PAYNE, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman HOWARD BERMAN and Ranking Member ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, and Speaker PELOSI to do the same.

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