Waters of the United States

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I would be pleased to yield for a question, but let me make one point first.

I think it is not insignificant that each Senator who spoke against this proposed regulation hails from a landlocked State. Coastal States such as Maryland and Rhode Island have quite a different perspective because we have bays--in Senator Cardin's case, the Chesapeake Bay; in my case, Narragansett Bay.

You don't have to look much farther than the Gulf Coast to see an example of what happens when landlocked States up the river overload flowing waters with chemicals, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, that have a beneficial use as fertilizer in those landlocked, upland States, but when they run off and come down into smaller tributaries and end up in the mighty Mississippi River and stream down through the middle of our great country and out into the Gulf of Mexico, they create, literally, dead zones in which nothing lives because the water has become anaerobic, meaning it does not carry enough oxygen to support life. Some of these can be vast dead zones, and very often they result in fish kills and crab kills because the species don't have a chance to get out of the way. Suddenly, they are strangling, they are suffocating in their own waters. That is not something we can overlook.

I am willing to listen to my colleagues with upland, landlocked agricultural States tell me how important it is that they be able to load up with fertilizer, grow their crops, and do all of those things. I appreciate and understand that point of view. That is not the only point of view. There are sister States for which that creates a real problem, and it is not fair to come to this conversation and assume that we have nothing to say, that our coasts have no stake in these decisions, and that there is only one side to this argument; that is, how much stuff you can dump out on your agricultural properties. That isn't fair, it isn't accurate, it is not scientific, and it is not good for our country. I think we need to have a good debate in which the coastal States and their imperatives and their perils are also part of the equation.

I yield for Senator Hoeven's question.

I ask that the time used for Senator Hoeven's question be charged against Republican time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Reclaiming the floor, let me say that--first, a little bit of history as to how we got here because I think that bears very much on the Senator's questions. We had quite a clear set of regulations under the Clean Water Act. Most everybody understood them. There was a standard operating practice that had developed, and into that relatively stable situation came these two Supreme Court decisions that Senator Cardin referred to, and they cast a constitutional and statutory pall over the scope of the EPA's authority for nonnavigable waters. But--and the Supreme Court gets to do this if they want--they provided very little clarity. So there was vast uncertainty about what was going on now in the wake of these decisions.

So Members of Congress, businesses, agricultural groups, environmental groups, and many other stakeholders asked for this rulemaking. They asked for this rulemaking so that the administrative agency that was going to enforce these provisions could be given the first cut at figuring out how they apply. That is what they did in this rulemaking. They answered the call that came from Congress, agricultural interests, environmental interests, and they came up with a proposed rule. The rule preserves and reiterates all of the current water exemptions and exclusions that preexisted, and it adds even new clarification that excludes certain water features--as Senator Cardin pointed out--and excludes them outright.

This is the clarification that Congress asked for. This is the clarification that agricultural and environmental interests asked for. And I would submit to my friend Senator Hoeven that if he doesn't like this result, he should wait until there is actually a result, participate in the administrative process, and let the EPA know what his feelings are.

If they come out with a final rule--this is just a proposed rule--that he finds intolerable for his landlocked upland agricultural interests, then we will have that debate and we will have an actual rule to argue about. But while he has an open invitation from EPA that says, let me know what your thoughts are and we will consider changing our rule, we shouldn't trump that process. They are the experts in this type of enforcement. We are going to hand it back to them, anyway, because we legislate very broadly.

So let's let them do the process. Let's let them come up with the rule, and then I am ready for this debate all day long. But don't forget our coastal States. Don't forget our bays.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I ask the Senator from Maryland to comment on another point.

We are having a conversation right here and right now on the floor about a specific EPA regulation. But those of us who are here on the floor a lot and those of us who pay attention to these issues can't not see this conversation in the context of a larger conversation that is taking place in the Senate. That causes me to inquire: When will a Republican come to the floor and ever support EPA on anything? When will that happen?

I was just speaking in the House at a hearing, and Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the committee that I was testifying before, pointed out that they were coming up on the House Republicans' 500th vote attacking the environment in the House. Now, we know they have tried to repeal ObamaCare 50-plus times--but 500 attacking environmental regulations? I can't not see this in that larger context of a party that has simply thrown over its proud environmental history and just consistently takes the position of the polluter almost as a reflex.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It is an anomaly. It is a historical anomaly that the present-day Republican party finds itself in this position where they will only come to the floor to attack and try to discredit the EPA. The only time they come to talk about the EPA is to oppose what the EPA is doing. They will never come to the floor and admit climate change is real and we should do something about it. They will never do that. The position that is articulated most frequently on this floor is the position that climate change is a hoax. Even young Republicans think that idea is preposterous, but that is as far as we get in trying to have a conversation on that issue. The other side has just gone dark on dealing with climate change. They simply won't discuss it or they send out as their champions the people who claim it is not real. That makes things a little bit awkward. And always--always--where there are two sides of the ledger, they look just at the one side. They look just at the polluters' side. They look just at the upland farmers and their nitrogen and their phosphorus, and they won't look at what that means to our coastal bays and coasts and harbors. They look only at the money that a polluter has to spend to clean up their powerplant, and they don't look at the savings to the rest of the public from that cleaned-up powerplant.

Senator Cardin mentioned the savings from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. I can be specific about the Clean Air Act savings. It is $30 in value to all regular American families for every $1 the polluters had to spend to clean up their act. So for every $1 spent by polluters to clean up their act, it paid $30 in benefit to the American public. Yet they will only look at the $1. They never talk about the rest. They have blinders on that oblige them only to consider the point of view of the polluters. I never hear anything else.

I urge and I challenge my colleagues to get out of that trap. The American people are not with you on this. You are wrong on the science. This general attack on the environment at this stage in our history will stain the party's brand if it is not corrected. They have got to come back and join the debate on a platform of fact and in a context of willingness to look at both sides of the ledger.

Madam President, I see colleagues on the floor who I am sure seek time, so I will yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source