Providing for Consideration of Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act and Protecting States Rights to Promote American Energy Security Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, for this body to spend the final week before a week-long break, one of the final weeks of the year, the third-to-last week of the legislative year, considering messaging bills that aren't going anywhere is a disservice to this country and one of the reasons that this institution is as unpopular as it is. Rather than taking on immigration reform, rather than protecting Americans from employment discrimination, both of which bills passed the Senate with strong majorities, including many Republicans, we are instead debating a bill to move backward rather than forward.

H.R. 1965 and H.R. 2728, the Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act and the so-called Protecting States' Rights to Promote Energy Security Act, circumvent future Federal regulations designed to keep people safe and healthy by handing over jurisdiction to States that have any guidance, even a few words of guidance, regarding hydraulic fracturing. We will be talking about the example and what this means in my home State of Colorado in a few moments. But neither bill will become law. Unlike immigration reform, unlike ENDA, which would end workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians across our country, these bills will not become law.

Similar legislation to H.R. 1965 was considered last Congress. This legislation was opposed by the administration. It was not brought up by the Senate, and yet here we are debating it again in the House of Representatives when we have real business to take care of.

These are not the issues that my constituents are calling in demanding that I take action on. They are demanding that I work to fix our broken immigration system. They are demanding that I work to balance the budget. They are calling in demanding that we work to improve upon health care delivery in this country; yet, instead, we are discussing bills that are detrimental to the economy of the district that I represent and destroy jobs.

Let me discuss H.R. 1965 first. This bill's central premise is to allow oil and gas companies to drill wherever and whenever they want to drill on public lands. This bill is completely irresponsible and prioritizes the needs of the oil and gas industry over every other use of our public lands, including the drivers of jobs in my district: hunting, fishing, skiing, and off-road vehicle recreating.

This bill sets arbitrary deadlines for the BLM to approve drilling applications and requires the BLM to lease at least 25 percent of lands nominated by the oil and gas industry each year.

In addition, the underlying bill offers millions of acres of public lands for lease to companies that are trying to develop a fuel source that has not even proven to be viable--oil shale--without regard to the impact on water or our local economy or environment.

I represent the district that includes popular destinations like Vail and Breckenridge and Winter Park, Colorado. People from across the country come to enjoy our skiing in winter, our outdoor recreation, our hunting, our fishing, and white water rafting. When you use areas of land for extraction and you create oil rigs, the heavy truck traffic and roads associated with the extraction industry, people are less likely to want to come visit for these other purposes. It will hurt our ability to attract tourists from the rest of the country if we don't have adequate safeguards around the Federal lands which are part of Eagle and Summit Counties and on which our economy relies.

Now, on H.R. 1965, I did offer several amendments to try to improve these bills, but only one of my amendments was made in order under this rule. I am pleased at least my amendment with the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman) is in order, which requires the National Academy of Sciences to study and report to Congress about the impact of flooding on oil and gas facilities and leaks and spills from tanks, wells, and pipelines.

My district recently fell victim to horrendous floods. We call it our 100-year flood in Boulder, Larimer, and Weld Counties. A number of drilling operations were impacted, and we are continuing to assess the damage, not only with regard to drilling operations and potential contamination, but of course our people are digging out with regard to their homes and their offices as well. The September floods in Colorado caused an unprecedented level of destruction to thousands of oil and gas facilities in northern and eastern Colorado. As a result, over 43,000 gallons of oil and over 26,000 gallons of produced water spilled from the tanks, wells, and pipelines into the floodwater.

That is why I joined Representative DeFazio, the ranking member of Natural Resources, in sending a letter on September 25 to Chairman Hastings requesting a hearing to fully understand the consequences resulting from the flooding. That hearing hasn't been scheduled yet, but I am hopeful that we can resolve this issue, hold congressional hearings, understand how this issue affects my district, but also affects other districts that might be subject to flooding that house drilling operations.

With regard to the oil shale amendment, I am disappointed that the other amendment I offered with Mrs. Napolitano was not made in order. It would have simply required a study. The U.S. Geological Survey would have studied the impacts of oil shale leasing on the quantity and quality of water available in the West. My friend from Utah knows that water in the West is a very important thing. You know, gold is for looking at, and water is for fighting over. Frankly, when we look at the impact and the potential impact that a very heavy use of water would have with some of the extraction techniques that are being explored for oil shale production, we need to look at the impact that would have on water that we need for agriculture, for homeowners, and for recreation. And a simple study would be a first step in doing that.

Unfortunately, under this rule and this closed process, we were not allowed to bring forth this amendment to discuss a study of how oil shale production would affect water uses. Many of the test processes use enormous amounts of water to develop oil shale. It is very concerning because the largest known deposits of oil shale are in the Green River formation, which include portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, all three of our States experiencing over the last several years drought conditions and have scarce water resources that are relied upon by our residents and by our farmers.

Thirty million users of water, including farmers, ranchers, and municipalities, depend on water from the Colorado River basin. My amendment would ensure that we have a better understanding of how much water oil shale would use and could pollute or otherwise impact through the quantities used of the water available for other purposes.

Now, I would like to turn to H.R. 2728. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a national issue. It is something that we need to address here in Congress. It is something my constituents are demanding of me that we address here in Congress, but H.R. 2728 is not what my constituents had in mind.

In this election this month, earlier here in November, four of the five largest municipalities in my district--Fort Collins, Boulder, Lafayette, and Broomfield--passed measures that put bans or moratoriums on fracking.

Never before in my time in public service have I ever seen an issue that has been the number one issue on the ballot in four of the top five municipalities. And I should add, it was scheduled to be on the ballot of the fifth, but it was deferred. The petitions to put it on the ballot were deferred, and we expect it will be on the ballot at Loveland at this point if the citizens continue with their push for an initiative there.

We have seen tremendous growth in natural gas development due to fracking and directional drilling in the last decade alone. That is a great thing. It is a great thing for American energy independence. It is a great thing for American manufacturing. It is a great thing for reducing our energy costs.

In Colorado alone, 50,000 wells have been drilled, and many more have been drilled nationally. These drilling activities, however, in a district such as mine, a district that is an extraction district, are occurring very close to where people live, work, and where they raise families, yet our State doesn't have any meaningful regulation to protect homeowners.

It meets the definition of having fracking rules; it certainly does. Unfortunately, the fracking rules are overseen by an oil and gas commission that is heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry. They don't have at their disposal the independence or the ability to enact real penalties for violations of our laws, and their charge is not first and foremost to protect homeowners and families and health. That has led to this backlash, which is why even very conservative towns in my district--one of the towns that had a 5-year moratorium on fracking elected a very conservative mayoral candidate by a 60-40 margin, which is not unusual for this town. These are folks who are fundamentally conservative voting for a conservative candidate for mayor, who won, and yet, at that same election, that same year, they passed a moratorium on fracking in Broomfield County.

This is of great concern to the people in my district. The growth of fracking without commonsense Federal guidelines, without commonsense State guidelines, has caused an enormous amount of friction between the American Dream of homeowners in my district and our Nation's need for energy.

State and local rules are an important part of the equation, but we also need standards at the Federal level, particularly as relates to Federal lands--namely, BLM lands--which are an important part of the equation to address impacts that go beyond any particular community, such as keeping our air free from pollution, keeping pollution out of our lungs, our waterways, and our drinking water.

Some State and local laws addressing oil and gas extraction are woefully unprepared. The extraction industry hit before they had the chance to even create a local regulatory framework, or they have one that is woefully outdated and relates to the extraction technologies that were prevalent decades ago rather than the new extraction technologies that are being deployed today.

Colorado is trying to update its oil and gas rules, but they really haven't done anything to create a meaningful framework to protect homeowners and families, which is why four of the five largest municipalities in my district have either banned or put a moratorium on fracking.

We have a State issue, and the State has actually threatened to sue some of these same municipalities for that ban. That is not a Federal issue, but this has been an enormous issue in my district. The citizens in my district want more protection, not less, when it comes to fracking.

The industry reaction has been extremely counterproductive. The desire for my citizens to see more protection--somehow the industry interprets this as the citizens need more information or need more marketing about how great fracking is. That is not what they need. They have got plenty of that. The opponents of these ballot initiatives, the oil and gas initiatives, spent millions of dollars educating my constituents about how wonderful and harmless fracking is. That is not what they are asking for. If we could take some of that money and instead apply it to recapturing gases from the well sites and ensuring that we have closed systems for the water recovery instead of the marketing campaigns, we would actually make progress with regard to increasing consumer confidence and the confidence of my citizens in the process. But that is not what we have seen to date, and this bill will not help bring it about.

For almost 5 years, I have represented Colorado's Second Congressional District. In that time, I have witnessed exponential growth in natural gas extraction in and around our district. I have met with too many families and communities that have been forced from their homes and devastated by nearby fracking activity.

Fracking has occurred hundreds of feet from homes, schools, and playgrounds. I have been powerless to stop it. We tried to ask an oil and gas company not to frack near a school in Erie, Colorado, Red Hawk Elementary, but the response that I got at my office after two letters continues to be a formulaic response from their attorneys that ``we have the right to frack here and we will.''

Many families are fleeing those communities not because of lack of information, not because the oil and gas company hasn't done everything they can to have wonderful ambassadors in our community creating a lot of great literature, advertising all over our airwaves. That is not why families are fleeing. They are fleeing because they don't want to live next to an oil rig or have their kids going to school next to a fracking pad or oil rig. That is just common sense. There is no amount of marketing or information that will change their minds, and that is the fundamental flaw in the reasoning process that many in the oil and gas industry have had to date.

I have heard many stories from families about getting fracked, and as a result, I had introduced the BREATHE Act in the last Congress and the FRAC Act, requiring disclosure of fracking fluids, removing the exemption that fracking has from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, the small-site exemption.

I, unfortunately, have gotten to experience fracking firsthand here in this last year. For more than a decade, I have had a peaceful family farm, about 50 acres, near Berthoud, Colorado, where my father-in-law lives. That is our house there. Fracking, without any notice to us, because, of course, it wasn't required under State law, occurred hundreds of feet from our home. In July, overnight, without any warning, a towering drill rig arose, literally across the street from where my father-in-law lives. You can see it right here.

The sounds of the 24-hour-a-day-and-night operation led us to invite my father-in-law to have to stay with us in Boulder in our apartment on our couch during the active phase of the drilling process. The rig was spewing black smog and making loud noises at all hours of the day. And when the drilling rig went up without notice or warning, our little dream and our life became a nightmare and was thrown into turmoil.

Last night, at the Rules Committee hearing, Chairman

SESSIONS and Chairman Hastings spoke about a Web site, www.fracfocus.org, that supposedly reveals all the chemicals used during the fracking process. But FracFocus is actually not revealing at all. It gives operators sole discretion to decide what information they display and what they don't display.

This is actually an example of a well. This is the one that is very close to our house. You will see that, of course, many of the ingredients of the fracking fluids are completely noncontroversial. We know they are largely water, sand, and quartz. We are not talking about that. That is not the issue. As you will see, they have ``proprietary'' listed next to several vague terms. They have surfactants here, proprietary. So people in the neighborhood don't even know what environmental contaminants to measure for or to look for.

Again, from a marketing perspective, the oil and gas companies are saying it is not leaching into groundwater, there are not surface spills; but, at the same time, they are refusing to provide the information that would allow the independent verification of their claims and safety.

When I looked up the drilling site near my house on FracFocus, there were many ingredients that were listed as proprietary, including surfactants and polymers; and because of the lenient policy of FracFocus, the company that drilled near my house withheld the only information that we were actually interested in in terms of what was being used in the ground.

We need to look at a commonsense approach to fracking. The constituents in my district are demanding it. We could have voted on such a balanced approach to fracking. I introduced, as an amendment to H.R. 2728, the BREATHE Act. The BREATHE Act was identical to a bill that I introduced earlier this Congress. It would have reversed the oil and gas industry's loophole to a provision in the Clean Air Act that protects the public from small air pollution sources that might individually be de minimus but, in the aggregate, released large volumes of toxic substance into the air.

We have to talk about the concentration of this operation. In Weld County, Colorado, there are close to 50,000 wells. Again, for any particular fracking pad, the emission profile is small; but, if you have a number, a dozen, two dozen, 100, in a limited area, the emission profile is going to look a lot more like a factory or even a coal-burning plant than it does something that can be rounded down to zero. We need to look at the fact that the concentration of thousands of wellheads in a very limited geographic area has a profound potential impact and cumulative impact on air quality that affects our health and our quality of life.

My amendment is critical because there is significant evidence that oil and gas wells and their associated infrastructure, including heavy truck traffic and diesel engines, contribute to air pollution. Chemicals such as benzene and volatile organic compounds and methane are associated with oil and gas production sites and should not be subject to an exemption from the Clean Air Act. Despite the growing proof that the oil and gas industry causes air pollution, oil and gas operators are still exempt from the basic Federal protection afforded by the Clean Air Act.

I offer this amendment and introduced the BREATHE Act because people who live near oil and gas developments deserve the protections of the

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Clean Air Act, just as other Americans do who live near factories, just as other Americans do who live near coal-burning plants. We have 55 sponsors for the BREATHE Act, yet it has not received a hearing or a markup; and on a party-line vote yesterday in the Rules Committee, it was not allowed to be considered as an amendment to this bill.

Another amendment I helped offer to the underlying measure would also improve the legislation. The amendment I offered with Mr. Holt allows the Secretary of the Interior to issue regulations to minimize fugitive methane emissions on public lands.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that often leaks during the drilling and transportation of oil and gas. In fact, methane leaks are so common in oil and gas drilling that we have rural areas in the Upper Green River Basin in Wyoming that have recorded higher concentration levels than the worst pollution days in downtown Los Angeles.

Fortunately, there are already control technologies available to minimize air pollution in operations. If the oil and gas companies would use just some of the money that they spend on lobbying and on marketing and on all the wonderful advertising that they are doing on our airwaves in Colorado and, instead, upgrade their facilities to recapture methane, I think we could actually see some progress on this issue.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment when it comes up for consideration later in the afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are calling for real solutions in Congress. The people of the Second Congressional District are for an all-of-the-above approach to energy. We are for solar. We are for wind. We are for oil. We are for gas. We are for hydro. We want to make them all work. And just as there would be a zoning process around creating a windmill in a residential neighborhood that is 100 feet tall right near your home, there should be a zoning process around the extraction of oil and gas, especially near where the constituents of my district live and work.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is a messaging bill that might help the majority's relationship with oil and gas companies, but what we really need is a balanced approach that ensures that we can develop our domestic oil and gas resources in a way that doesn't destroy jobs in districts like mine and protects the health of Americans across our country.

These bills fall short on that account. And despite our effort to amend them, the rule doesn't allow many of the most important amendments that would remove the exemption from the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and ensure that we have an extraction industry that is consistent with the public health.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. I yield myself 30 seconds to respond.

To be clear, there is not an effort in Colorado, as the gentleman insinuated, to somehow prevent the extraction of fossil fuels from occurring in Colorado. In fact, quite to the contrary. Because of the lack of meaningful State regulations, many cities and counties are banning extraction; and four of the five biggest cities I represent have moratoriums or bans on fracking precisely because there are insufficient Federal and State guidelines. So it is really working with counterpurposes and hurting the very prospects for the extraction industry that the gentleman aspires to assist by not having adequate regulation to safeguard people's homes and families.

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Mr. POLIS. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to make sure we don't go home unless we finish the budget by December 13.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Colorado?

There was no objection.

Mr. POLIS. I will submit for the record, as well, a recent poll. The Denver Post published an article this past summer that states that 65 percent of Colorado residents favor protecting wilderness parks and open space and our Federal lands for future generations and 30 percent support more drilling.

It has been 144 days and 13 hours since the Senate passed its immigration reform bill, S. 744. We have introduced H.R. 15 here in the House. Each day that the House refuses to take up reform costs the country $37 million. Already there is more than $5 billion in potential lost revenue so far.

If we can take up immigration reform and pass it, I would even support allowing that revenue to be used to keep the loopholes for the oil and gas industry open--something that I have long opposed. But if we can pass immigration reform, I would accept that pay-for as a way of keeping the oil and gas loopholes open for the next several years.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the comprehensive immigration reform bill would increase our GDP by 3.3 percent, raise American wages by $470 billion, and create an average of 121,000 jobs for Americans each year. So rather than take up a job-creating bill for Americans that reduces our deficit, we are taking up a bill that hurts the economy and hurts jobs in districts like mine.

The longer we fail to act on immigration reform, the greater the cost to the American people. Take the example of the solvency of the Social Security system. As the Social Security Administration estimates, close to two-thirds of the 8 million undocumented people who are here currently work underground. No surprise. They are not allowed to work aboveground in official jobs with payroll deductions, and neither they nor their employers are able to legally declare their earnings or pay their payroll taxes.

Today, only 37 percent of undocumented immigrants pay Social Security taxes. Experts are estimating that our Nation loses about $20 billion in payroll taxes each year. We will continue to lose that money until we pass H.R. 15, comprehensive immigration reform.

The Senate has acted--with strong Republican support and strong Democratic support--and passed bipartisan immigration reform last June; and yet the House hasn't had a single moment of floor time for any immigration reform bill, despite the fact that four have been passed through the committee.

The time is now. We are here today, we are here tomorrow, we are here 2 more weeks. If we need to come back, let's do it.

The country is demanding that we create jobs. Comprehensive immigration reform will do that. The country is demanding we shore up our entitlement programs. Comprehensive immigration reform will do that. The country is demanding that we reduce our deficit. Comprehensive immigration reform will do it. Securing our borders, protecting our country from terrorists--law enforcement, the faith community all support immigration reform.

In closing, I want to again state the article I am submitting for the record says 65 percent want to protect our environment and 30 percent are for more drilling.

The people have spoken. These bills are out of touch. It is time to take up comprehensive immigration reform.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the rule and the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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