Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I offer my amendment along with Representative Huffman from California. It is a very simple amendment. It would require the National Academy of Sciences to study and report to Congress about the impact of flooding on oil and gas facilities and the resulting instances of leaking and spills from tanks, wells, and pipelines.

Sadly, this is an issue that hits very close to home. In my district in Colorado, we recently suffered from the great flood of 2013. Many counties in my district were declared Federal disaster areas. Many of those counties are also home to significant extraction operations. Floods can happen anywhere, and this one occurred well outside of a floodplain; but it is important to understand how to minimize damage to oil and gas infrastructure in the event of a flood. Constituents in my district in Colorado are rebuilding. We are working hard, and we wish we had the kind of information that this study would produce years before the flood so we could have better prepared with regard to our oil and gas infrastructure and the safeguards around it.

We do know a few things about the impact of the floods so far with regard to oil and gas facilities in northern and northeastern Colorado. Over 43,000 gallons of oil and 26,000 gallons of produced water have spilled from the tanks, wells, and pipelines in the floodwater.

If we learn a lot from this experience, I hope that future areas impacted by flooding, as well as ours, because we never know whether the next flood is decades or years or centuries away, will be able to avoid these kinds of spills in our communities.

On September 25, I did join Representative DeFazio in sending a letter to Chairman Hastings requesting a hearing to understand the consequences resulting from the flood. I continue to hope that the gentleman will be open to scheduling that hearing with regard to the impact of flooding, or perhaps more generally disasters, and how we can better safeguard our oil and gas infrastructure in this country.

The floods in Colorado did shed a light on the need to better understand how we can safeguard our oil and gas infrastructure from disasters generally and, in our case, a terrible flood that had seven confirmed fatalities and hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage.

We would all benefit from learning more about how disasters like the Colorado flood can impact communities, States, and, indeed, the Federal Government. Local elected officials, first responders, experts in oil and gas technology innovation, and the Academy of Sciences can help enhance our understanding of how to prevent damage to oil and gas infrastructure and avert spills and leaks in other communities. We don't want our communities to have to learn the hard way, as ours has done. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, again, regarding the language of the amendment, of course it is not designed to apply narrowly to Colorado. That would be considered an earmark, prohibited under the rules of the House. In addition, it is not designed just to serve the needs of my district.

This amendment is designed to learn from this so other areas of the country don't go through the same damage from flooding to our oil and gas infrastructure that occurred in my district.

The language is very limiting with regard to the report to Congress, very boilerplate language that we have used for other studies which have been successfully accomplished by the Academy of Sciences, reporting to Congress ``on the effect of flooding on oil and gas facilities, and the resulting instances of leaking and spills from tanks, wells, and pipelines,'' precisely what has occurred as a result of the flooding in Colorado and could, of course, occur as a result of flooding in other areas of the country that have a significant presence of the extraction industry.

I hope that my colleagues will support this measure that Mr. Huffman and I have brought forward. I think it would be a commonsense report that would be of great value to this Congress in protecting our infrastructure and our environment from the impact of flooding.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I do want to again elaborate a little bit. The gentleman from Washington brought up germaneness and jurisdictional issues.

This amendment has been advanced to the floor by the Rules Committee with the necessary waivers granted, so it does not need to go through any other committee. It is here for the full House to consider. I appreciate it being included in the rule. I encourage Members to make the decision on the merits. It has been granted the necessary waivers to be considered on the House floor. Again, I do think this study would be of value to Congress, if, in fact, the 43,000 gallons of oil don't represent any kind of danger or risk that will be included in the report.

The National Academy of Sciences will have access to the information that we as policymakers will need and my State will need for future planning and other States that have an extraction industry will benefit from in the event of a flood. This can save the health of people, it can save lives, and it can save costly infrastructure in the oil and gas industry. It is a commonsense measure, a useful study.

I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.

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