Volume 162, No. 45 covering the 2nd Session of the 114th Congress (2015 - 2016) 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.
“WORLD WATER DAY” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1542-H1545 on March 22, 2016.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WORLD WATER DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Graves of Louisiana). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 30 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to welcome the Congressman and doctor, Dan Benishek, from Michigan's First District, which encompasses Marquette and Mackinac Island and Traverse City, to name a few famous towns and island. I welcome him to participate this evening as well as our other colleagues from the Great Lakes.
I rise tonight to mark the occasion of World Water Day. As such, I would like to discuss the Great Lakes, an American freshwater treasure, irreplaceable on our globe. Actually, it is the largest source of freshwater in the United States and represents about 20 percent of the world's freshwater supply.
The district that I represent, which is a little south of Michigan, down in Ohio, sits nestled across Lake Erie's entire south coast, extending from Cleveland all the way west to Toledo and encompasses all of Ohio's ports but for one.
There should be a sign, actually, on the Ohio Turnpike nearby that marks our shoreline as the step-off point, since Lake Erie is the most southern of all the lakes, as the largest body of freshwater on the face of the Earth.
I see our dear colleague, the co-chair of the Great Lakes Task Force with me, Congressman Mike Kelly of Erie, Pennsylvania, who has joined us. It is also a great port city, nestled along these Great Lakes.
Let me begin by saying, since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, Lake Erie itself has been on a path to recovery. It got very sick back in the 20th century.
Point sources of pollution, such as inadequate wastewater treatment facilities and infrastructure and industrial outfalls have been slowly coming. Since back then and the passage of the Clean Water Act and the establishment of Earth Day, they have been coming into EPA compliance.
One needs no further proof in tracking the rebirth of America's symbol, the bald eagle, than to really track Lake Erie's health. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the lakes; and, therefore, it is kind of the canary in the coal mine. What happens there will happen in the other lakes subsequently.
The bald eagle had actually become an endangered species by the time of the 1970s, and only two eagles were left on our great lake, Lake Erie. There were no eaglets being born.
Due to the Clean Water Act's passage and literally the banning of DDT and the repair of many of the industrial outfalls, which we are still working on, and the combined sewer overflows, what happened, as we moved into the 21st century, was human progress.
Today hundreds of baby eaglets are being born across Lake Erie, and they are flying other places around the country. Amazingly, the bald eagle has been taken off the endangered species list. So progress is possible. Humans can really repair the environment if they are dedicated to us.
For those of us who live in Lake Erie's western basin, which is the far western part of the State, the health of our lake is a living reality and access to freshwater has become the background noise of our daily lives, becoming more pronounced when tragedy strikes, as it did most recently in Flint, Michigan, and Sebring, Ohio, with lead in freshwater.
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Our region works and plays with a new normal that includes very frequent water quality reports now, updates on beach postings--whether you can swim or not--water utility fee increases, and a general concern about a troubling set of scientific questions that still go unanswered.
Unfortunately, this administration has not recognized these concerns and seeks to cut Federal support to Great Lakes States by $148 million for next year. Some would call that an oxymoron; it makes no sense in view of what is happening across our region, but it is happening.
This evening--and I am going to yield to my colleagues before I get into these topics--I would like to address the water infrastructure needs of the Great Lakes, harmful algal blooms, which literally shut down the city of Toledo's water system a year-and-a-half ago, denying fresh water for 3 days to citizens, to businesses, and to institutions in that region because of something called microcystin, which is the toxic part of certain types of algal blooms which we are trying to address. So harmful algal blooms will be one of my topics.
Another topic will be the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which is so important to all of us in helping to improve our Great Lakes.
Stopping the Asian carp is another topic.
The next topic will be the Great Lakes navigation system itself, an antiquated system that has to be updated for this 21st century.
Finally, I will discuss the harbor maintenance fund. These are all major issues across the Great Lakes region, which we would like to place on the Record this evening.
I would like to ask my colleagues to join me. Congressman Benishek, I thank you again so very much for being a leader for the Great Lakes and for coming down this evening.
I now yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Benishek).
Mr. BENISHEK. I thank Ms. Kaptur very much for setting up this time for us to come together on the floor to talk about the importance of the Great Lakes. I also thank Mr. Kelly for being here as well.
It is nice to know there are some issues that are truly bipartisan. I believe that protecting our Great Lakes is really one of those.
The Great Lakes are a vital part of our life in Michigan, particularly my district. I have more Great Lakes frontage than any other district in the country. I have three Great Lakes in my district with over 1,500 miles of frontage on three of the Great Lakes. We have more shoreline than any district in the country other than the State of Alaska, but that is all saltwater up there.
I do not think there is a person in my district who does not consider the lakes a vital part of their lives, whether it is fishing or swimming or sailing or kayaking or just plain sitting by the water. We love our lakes. It is a pure Michigan experience. I encourage you all to visit.
Since coming to Congress, one of my top priorities has been working to keep the Great Lakes clean so that future generations may also enjoy them. I want my grandkids and their kids to experience the joy of their first local fishing derby on a summer day or going ice fishing with their buddies in the winter. The joys of living on or near the Great Lakes inspire us all to ensure that they stay clean for future generations.
However, we treasure our Great Lakes not only for their beauty and recreation they provide, but the incredible value they provide to our economy. In Michigan alone, outdoor recreation generates $18.7 billion in consumer spending and supports nearly 200,000 jobs.
Protecting the Great Lakes requires action on many fronts, which only makes sense. As Ms. Kaptur said, these five Great Lakes represent more than 20 percent of all the fresh water in the world. That is why I have worked along with so many other of my midwestern colleagues to provide adequate funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, something the President always seems to cut back on in his budget.
This bipartisan effort, which must be renewed every year to guarantee that this important program continues, gives local communities across the Great Lakes the ability to clean up local beaches, preserve natural wildlife habitats, and to restore local watersheds, among many other useful products for the Great Lakes.
In my district alone, GLRI funds support projects like the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed Protection Project and the Beaver Island Archipelago Invasive Species Initiative. These programs help protect the Great Lakes while at the same time providing a boost to the local economy.
The Soo Locks also have a major impact on our economy. Maintaining the integrity of the current lock system and ensuring the construction of a second lock is vital for both our national economy and our national security. Some people do not even realize that these locks exist. They are basically the Panama Canal of America. Much of the iron ore that is made into steel, which a lot of the industry in America depends on, passes through this lock. It would cause a major crisis if it should fail.
I am proud to have led a trip with other Members of Congress to the Soo Locks last summer to raise the importance about the importance of these locks. While we have secured funding for a new Economic Reevaluation Report from the Corps of Engineers, we must continue to raise awareness about the importance of this project while we await the publication of this report.
Another issue that concerns all of us in the Great Lakes region is the threat of invasive species. From sea lampreys to quagga mussels that are already present in the Great Lakes, to the Asian carp which we are currently trying to prevent from gaining access, invasive species present a constant threat to this precious resource.
I have worked closely with the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson) to reorganize the Congressional Invasive Species Caucus, and we are working to make invasive species a priority in this Congress.
While I will be leaving Congress at the end of this term, it is my hope that we can continue to work together this year in a bipartisan and constructive manner to protect the Great Lakes. I am willing to partner with anyone who is willing to do that. I thank Ms. Kaptur for doing this Special Order hour.
Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Congressman Benishek very, very much. I thank him for his leadership on Great Lakes issues. That is a vast district that he represents and one that is vital to our country. I thank him for participating this evening.
Before I yield to Congressman Mike Kelly of the Third District of Pennsylvania, I just want to say that the region that we are talking about, the Great Lakes, actually, if it were a country on its own, would be the third largest economy in the world. We are talking about a vast and important part of our Nation with more fresh water than any other part of the continent.
The Great Lakes navigation system, including the Soo Locks that Congressman Benishek referenced, encompasses this vast region, and the Seaway that is a part of this that was actually built by President Eisenhower--it was built back in the 1950s--constitutes through the locks the shortest distance between the heartland of America and the ports of northern Europe and many other global destinations.
Most people have never been through the Soo Locks because we tend to move commerce through the locks. We have some tourism, obviously, but it really is a busy industrial corridor and has the lowest cost transportation. Waterborne transportation is the lowest cost mode of transportation. So you have the big containers and so forth that move through the Seaway, and then we have the interlake trade, which is heavily industrial, as Congressman Benishek referenced.
In recent years, the number of passages through the locks that go all the way from Duluth all the way out through Massena, New York, going throughout these Great Lakes, this whole system has averaged about 10,000 vessels per year. That is down a bit from prior years because what has happened is the vessels got larger and they could carry more freight. But the system exists. It operates every day.
The ports and channels of the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Seaway System support over 226,000 jobs in both the United States and Canada because the Seaway is operated by both countries, and it brings a total of $33.5 billion in business revenue to the United States and Canada annually. For Ohio, our largest trading partner is Canada, and some of those goods move across the water.
In the United States alone, the system supports over 128,000 jobs and produces a total of $18.1 billion in business revenue annually. Over 42,000 of these jobs are direct jobs in the iron ore and steel industry, which Congressman Benishek referenced. The Great Lakes region produces 90 percent--90 percent--of America's iron ore, and the Great Lakes region also manufactures 58 percent of automobiles on the roads in the United States and Canada. I think Congressman Kelly knows a whole lot about the automobile industry. So this manufacturing and commodity supply chain can only function through the Great Lakes navigation system, which needs modernization.
I am more than pleased to yield to the co-chair of the Great Lakes Task Force here in the House of Representatives, the very esteemed gentleman from Pennsylvania's Third District (Mr. Kelly) centered at Erie.
Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentlewoman. I often refer to the gentlewoman not as Representative Kaptur, but as ``Our Lady of the Lakes'' because, truly, we share a lot of the same concerns when it comes to an absolutely incredible gift from God that has been given to us. It is in our stewardship now. It was put in our care and custody with the idea that we are going to pass it on to the next generation in better shape than what we received it.
I think when we look at the Great Lakes, there are so many things you can say about the Great Lakes. Oftentimes it is hard to sit back and say, what is it exactly that the Great Lakes represent?
We have already said it is one-fifth of the world's fresh water, not one-fifth of America's fresh water, not one-fifth of the continent's fresh water, but one-fifth of the world's fresh water.
It is 6 quadrillion gallons of fresh water. I have absolutely no idea what that figure would look like other than this: if you were to look at the lower 48 States and you were able to pour the water from the Great Lakes over the lower 48 States, it would cover it to a depth of 9\1/2\ feet.
So when you put it in that perspective, all of a sudden it starts to make sense and you start to focus on it, and you say this truly is a gift from God. This is truly a gift that we have to look after.
Too often it is said, well, you know, just let things go, because if you let them go, they will usually work out on their own.
My goodness, nothing could be further from the truth. We have seen the great damage to the Great Lakes, and we have also seen that over the years we all of a sudden have become very much aware of it.
I would just like to say in the district that I represent, Pennsylvania's Third District, Erie, Pennsylvania, Presque Isle was on the list, and it was one of those things that said this is an area of concern. So the attention was turned to what do we have to do to save Presque Isle.
Now, in 2012 it was the first one of these properties that was taken off the list of concern through the efforts of not only the Erie community, but through the efforts of Congress, and also through the efforts of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Now, we stand here today, and as I have said, I have always referred to the gentlewoman as ``Our Lady of the Lakes.'' There is nothing more precious to us than this great amount of water that we have, potable water. If we were to turn our backs on it or for some reason to think that it is not important or that it is not critical or that it is not a gift from God that has been put in our care and custody and is up to us to protect, then we have fallen far from where we are as a people and as a nation.
I would like to read one excerpt. A friend of mine named Art Grayhead is an Army veteran, Special Ops guy. He is also a Native American. To him, the Great Lakes represent not only a body of water, but also something precious and also something that has a much deeper religious meaning. He gave me a book called ``The Living Great Lakes.'' It is written by Jerry Dennis. I am going to read it because I think it is worded so magnificently by Mr. Dennis:
To appreciate the magnitude of the Great Lakes you must get close to them. Launch a boat on their waters or hike their beaches or climb the dunes, bluffs, and rocky outcrops that surround them, and you will see, as people have seen since the age of the glaciers that these lakes are pretty darn big. It is no wonder they are sometimes upgraded to the ``Inland Seas'' and the ``Sweetwater Seas.'' Calling them lakes is like calling the Rockies hills.
So when you see them and conceptualize in your head what it is that we are talking about and what it is that we are concerned about and what it is that has been put in our care and custody, none of us can ever turn away and say: ``This doesn't fall on our watch'' or ``We don't have to worry about the Great Lakes.''
We have to worry about the Great Lakes, we have to guard the Great Lakes, and we have to pass it on to the next generation so they, too, can enjoy all the benefits from it.
We talk about the economic consequences and the environmental consequences. There is nothing in the life of everyday Americans that is more important than our Great Lakes.
I would like to thank the gentlewoman from Ohio. She certainly has fought this battle for a long, long time. She has always been a great champion of the Great Lakes. So many of our Members who live around the Great Lakes champion it every day. But it is not just for us, it is not just for those States around the Great Lakes. It is for every single American. I thank the gentlewoman so much for her concern, her dedication, and more than anything her passion.
Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Congressman Kelly so very much. I thank him for his passion and for participating this evening and for all the effort he puts forward on our Great Lakes Task Force to try to elevate this region of the country as so vital to our future.
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And when the gentlemen were talking about Great Lakes and the word
``lakes,'' there are some people who have said they should have been named the Great Seas.
I had an experience with schoolchildren a few years back. I loaded up a schoolbus with children who came from a region that wasn't close to the lake, and I took them out to Lake Erie. Their first reaction was actually fear when they saw how big it was. They said: Oh, the ocean.
So, it isn't like a little puddle jumper. These lakes are vast. You have described them well. Most Americans have not visited them, so they don't have a complete understanding of how massive these lakes really are. There is nothing else like them on the face of the Earth.
Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I can remember as a child my parents taking us to Lake Erie for summer vacation. I had no idea what I was going to see, but as we got closer to Erie, my dad said: See, Mike, there it is. There is the lake. I said: It looks like it is going to come crashing on us.
Because, you know, as you get closer to those bodies of water, as the horizon, the water and the sky meet together, and as you are approaching it, it looks like: My goodness, I can't imagine anything this big.
In the eyes of a child, I looked at it and I was completely taken away. I couldn't believe it. That has only increased as I have aged and I have watched that marvelous, marvelous gift from God that we have and that we have to protect.
Again, I thank the gentlewoman. It is always a pleasure being with her on the floor talking about our Great Lakes. It is always a pleasure working with her. The passion she has to protect our Great Lakes is absolutely incredible.
Ms. KAPTUR. The gentleman has the same passion.
Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. KAPTUR. This is a moment I am glad that is actually being broadcast because we are down here tonight on a bipartisan basis discussing a vital resource that this Nation shares with Canada. We work well together. Most of the news is about how Members of Congress don't work together, they don't do this, and here we are participating, after hours--we are not required to be here--and we are talking about something we believe to be truly irreplaceable for our country.
I thank the gentleman for his leadership, and I will share this story with him.
When I was a little girl, I still remember the seventh grade when our grandparents and parents took us to Erie, Pennsylvania, to Presque Isle. I remember that. It was such a big deal. It was a long trip from Toledo, Ohio, to Erie, Pennsylvania, and I still remember our relatives there and understanding how big that waterway really is, how we went swimming at Presque Isle back in those days--the 1950s, I guess.
So I have always had an affinity for Erie, Pennsylvania, remembering back to those early times and what a good time we had. The people of Erie were so hospitable.
It is great to have the gentleman as a leader in the Great Lakes Task Force and coming down here this evening to make time for the Great Lakes. I thank him very much. I thank him for his concerted leadership and all he has done to be a champion not just for Presque Isle, not just for Lake Erie, but for our entire Great Lakes system.
I yield to gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), the vice chair of the Great Lakes Task Force, who has come to Congress with all this energy and intelligence and capacity to make a difference for the country. And then what was handed him in this last 2 months was the terrible tragedy in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, with lead in the water pipes and the water system there. So many people in Flint are so unnecessarily ill and the community is damaged. All of America wants to help Flint.
I thank Congressman Kildee so much for coming down tonight.
Mr. KILDEE. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her leadership. Congresswoman Kaptur has always been a great ally for me and even my predecessor, my uncle, on working to preserve and protect this incredible natural asset that we have--the Great Lakes.
Listening to Congresswoman Kaptur and Congressman Kelly refer to your childhood, we all--those of us from the Great Lakes region--remember and recall, from our childhood, our introduction to the Great Lakes.
The very shape of my home State of Michigan is defined by the lakes. Lake Huron is on the east, Lake Michigan is on the west, a touch of Lake Erie, and, of course, Lake Superior to the north. It defines the shape of our State.
As a child, I still remember the first time experiencing the lakes, and they did seem as though they were something that were so big, they was almost impossible to comprehend. But it was also something that, as a child, I took for granted. We all took for granted that the lakes would always be there, that they would always be pure, that they would always be clear and cold--the way we recalled them as children.
Of course, what we come to know, as policymakers, is that we can't be put in a position to take that for granted. We have to actively protect that incredible gift that has been handed to us simply as a creation of God. We have this enormously special stewardship.
Two things I want to point out that I think are part of the stewardship responsibility that we have to and for the Great Lakes. One, of course, is to defend the lakes against any threat that might manifest now or might manifest generations from now, whether that is working to protect the lakes from invasive species like Asian carp or a very special obligation that I think we have right now, working with our friends across the border on the Canadian side, and that is to protect the lakes from unnecessary and unwarranted threats.
There has been, in the planning stages, the possibility of a nuclear waste storage facility that would be on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. It would be six-tenths of a mile from the shore of that lake. I am pleased to see that our friends within the new Canadian Government have sort of taken a pause to reevaluate whether that site is the best site. Of course, my position and the position of many Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, has been that there is a special line that we must draw when it comes to protecting the lakes.
We have a chance to ask that--in this case, the Canadian Government, and specifically the Ontario Power Generation--they reconsider the location of a nuclear waste storage facility so that now, 100 or 200 years from now, if some event may occur that would release some of that material, we would never put the lakes at risk.
That is something that we can do. It is a tangible set of steps that we can take. But it is just an example of the special responsibility that I know I now have as a Member of Congress representing the Great Lakes region.
It is not until you are sworn into office and take an oath to uphold the Constitution and represent the people that you live with back home that you come to understand the magnitude of that responsibility, especially for maintaining the lakes.
Of course, the other point that Congresswoman Kaptur mentioned is that we also have a special responsibility to continue to take advantage of the fact that we have been given this gift, and we have to use it in a way that is sustainable but also allows us to use the pure and clear lake water in a way that protects us.
Of course, the very bad decisions that were made at the State government level that led to the crisis in my hometown of Flint were decisions to move temporarily away from using lake water for our drinking water to using river water in the Flint River as our primary drinking water source. It is almost unimaginable that that would happen, considering that we are literally surrounded by the greatest source, the largest source of surface freshwater on the planet and that a community would temporarily use that drinking water.
It also makes the point that the protections of our water resources are special protections that we have to make sure are adhered to. This crisis in Flint, or any other crisis, such as the issue that I know Congresswoman Kaptur is very familiar with--you may have already addressed the algal bloom that you dealt with in the lake that affected drinking water in Toledo and other places--we have a special responsibility to make sure that we are, through our Environmental Protection Agency and State environmental quality agencies, aggressively defending the Great Lakes, not just to maintain their natural beauty, not just to maintain them as recreational assets, but to make sure that, when we use that water for something as fundamental as drinking water, we know it will always be safe and protected.
I want to thank the gentlewoman for her leadership on the issue of the Great Lakes and for including me as a part of this bipartisan effort to make sure that we always take care of this unique and special stewardship responsibility to protect the greatest freshwater source on the planet.
Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Congressman Kildee so very, very much for coming down. He has his hands full in trying to repair the damage in Flint. We respect him so much for the leadership he has shown there, because that could happen anywhere. Sadly, it happened in Flint, Michigan, and he and the delegation and the entire Great Lakes region have really provided stellar leadership.
We all are here to try and help him and the citizens of Flint. He is focusing national attention on the importance of water infrastructure and what can happen when systems age. You have brought this to the attention of the American people. We can all learn from the experience in Flint.
I want to thank my colleagues for coming to the floor tonight to discuss the important challenges that still remain in the Great Lakes of water infrastructure improvement, addressing the harmful algal blooms, making sure there is significant support in the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, stopping the Asian carp from coming into the Great Lakes, improving our Great Lakes navigation system, and making sure that the harbor maintenance trust fund is available for the Great Lakes.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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