Volume 156, No. 72 covering the 2nd Session of the 111th Congress (2009 - 2010) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT HEARING ON THE REAUTHORIZATION OF STATE REVOLVING FUNDS” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E842-E843 on May 13, 2010.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT HEARING ON THE
REAUTHORIZATION OF STATE REVOLVING FUNDS
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HON. BOBBY L. RUSH
of illinois
in the house of representatives
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Mr. RUSH. Madam Speaker, I submit the following.
Chairman Waxman, Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Barton, Ranking Member Upton and all of my distinguished colleagues that sit on the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, thank you all for allowing me to make these remarks for the record on this important hearing on the reauthorization of State Revolving Funds within the ``The Assistance, Quality, and Affordability Act of 2010.''
Chairman Markey, I would especially like to thank you and your staff for working with my office over the past year to tighten the regulations within the SRF that govern water security to ensure that the incident that happened in my congressional district of Crestwood will not be replicated and that all of our constituents will have access to clean, safe drinking water.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to briefly recount for all of my colleagues the preposterous and unbelievable events that happened in Crestwood that has brought us to the point we are today. It is a story that, unfortunately, is ripe with abuses of the public trust by crooked and corrupt public officials at a level that is hard to fathom.
And it is a story that, hopefully, with the measures that we will enact in this legislation, will never be allowed to happen again.
Mr. Chairman, the story of Crestwood began in 1986, when the Illinois EPA was notified that the well water that was being used for public consumption was contaminated and was found to be unsuitable under federal EPA standards. Officials from the Village of Crestwood told State EPA authorities that the well would no longer be used for drinking purposes, but would remain open for emergency uses only, such as fighting fires.
Unbelievably, despite the warning from the IL EPA to the Crestwood officials about using the well for public consumption, for another 20 years, from 1986-2007, untreated well water was mixed with Lake Michigan water and was piped into the homes of village residents for drinking and other uses.
Mr. Chairman, for over 20 years, the citizens of Crestwood Village were consuming water, filled with contaminants, while the IL EPA never went back in to test the water quality or ensure that Crestwood officials had followed their edict to stop using the well for public consumption.
Then, in December 2007, acting on a tip from a private citizen, Tricia Krause, the IL EPA decided to test the well water for the first time since they were first alerted to the problem in 1986.
During these tests, the IL EPA found that the well water contained unacceptable levels of perchloroethylene (PCE), a chemical linked to liver damage and neurological problems, as well as other carcinogenic chemicals that were higher than federal standards permit.
Mr. Chairman, it took the brave and courageous act of an everyday, hardworking, private citizen, Ms. Tricia Krause, to finally pull the plug on the nefarious and despicable acts of Crestwood officials. For 20 years, these officials willfully and reprehensibly lied to State authorities and fed contaminated water to the very citizens they were sworn to protect.
After Ms. Krause blew the whistle on these despicable acts and the story became public, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice executed search warrants and found that Village officials had been falsifying records regarding the purchase and delivery of water to its citizens for over 20 years.
And while we must acknowledge and praise the work of courageous citizens like Ms. Krause for taking matters into her own hands to shed light and seek justice, we must also do everything in our power to make it more difficult for immoral and despicable public officials to dupe the public again and feed contaminated and poisonous water to our citizens.
Mr. Chairman, the steps that you have taken in this bill will go a long way toward restoring the public trust in the system by requiring our State agencies, which are in many cases the last line of defense in ensuring public safety, to go that extra step to protect the public.
This language would simply compel the EPA to set up requirements for notifying the public served by a water system when different types of violations occur. The EPA would be allowed to use the same categories of violations that have already been developed under subsection (c) of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Additionally, for each category of violation, the EPA will determine what types of follow-up inspections are needed, and how many inspections the State will need to carry out. This gets right at the issue of the Illinois EPA not being required to go out and check whether the contaminated well was being used, without being overly burdensome if the violations are not related to public safety.
Mr. Chairman, as representatives of the people we serve, for most of us the actions taken by Village of Crestwood officials would be unconscionable. In all of my time as a public servant, I have rarely encountered public officials acting so egregiously against their own citizens or abusing their power in a way that puts the public safety at risk.
In March 2010, the IL Dept. of Public Health released a report that found cancer rates were ``significantly elevated'' in Crestwood residents, with higher-than-expected cases of kidney cancer in men, lung cancer in men and women, and gastrointestinal cancer in men.
While researchers could not make a definite link between the consumption of contaminated water for 20 years for the 11,000 residents of Crestwood and the elevated rates of cancer there, they determined it was possible that toxic chemicals in the drinking water caused the extra cancer cases.
Well, I'm not a researcher, but I can analyze commonsense, and for me, the coincidence between drinking cancer-causing contaminated water for 20 years and then having higher-than-normal rates of cancer appear in those same citizens shows that there must be some connection between the two.
With our actions here today and in moving this bill forward, it is my sincere hope that no other community in America will have to suffer from the reprehensible acts of a few despicable public servants who would seek to abuse the public trust.
Thank you again Mr. Chairman, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, for allowing me to participate today.
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