[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 797 Introduced in House (IH)]
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116th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 797
Encouraging the Environmental Protection Agency to maintain and
strengthen requirements under the Clean Water Act and reverse ongoing
administrative actions to weaken this landmark law and protections for
United States waters.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 14, 2020
Mrs. Dingell (for herself, Mr. Pappas, Ms. Norton, Ms. Kuster of New
Hampshire, Mr. Rouda, Mr. Lowenthal, Mr. Huffman, Mr. Espaillat, Ms.
Tlaib, Ms. Moore, Mr. Morelle, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. Garcia of Illinois,
Mrs. Napolitano, Mr. Lipinski, Ms. Blunt Rochester, Mr. Cartwright, Mr.
Ruppersberger, Mr. Clay, Mr. Casten of Illinois, Mr. Malinowski, Mr.
Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Mrs. Hayes, Mr. Cohen, Ms. Haaland, Mr.
Johnson of Georgia, Ms. Pingree, Mr. Foster, Mr. Khanna, Ms. Castor of
Florida, Ms. Brownley of California, Ms. McCollum, Mr. Soto, Mr.
Blumenauer, Mrs. Beatty, Mr. Vargas, Mr. Pocan, Mr. Suozzi, Mr.
Quigley, Mr. McGovern, Ms. Slotkin, Mr. Connolly, Ms. Jayapal, Mr.
Carson of Indiana, Ms. Roybal-Allard, Ms. Velazquez, Mr. Case, Mr.
Larsen of Washington, Mr. Takano, Mr. Smith of Washington, Mr.
Hastings, Mr. Neal, Mr. Lynch, Mr. Thompson of Mississippi, Mr. Cooper,
Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Kildee, Mr. McEachin, Mr. DeFazio, Ms. Stevens, Mr.
Raskin, Mr. Nadler, Mr. Higgins of New York, Mr. Scott of Virginia, Ms.
Barragan, Mr. Neguse, Mr. Price of North Carolina, Mr. Moulton, Mr.
Sires, Mr. Brown of Maryland, Ms. Wild, Ms. Wexton, Mrs. Trahan, Ms.
Mucarsel-Powell, and Ms. Meng) submitted the following resolution;
which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Encouraging the Environmental Protection Agency to maintain and
strengthen requirements under the Clean Water Act and reverse ongoing
administrative actions to weaken this landmark law and protections for
United States waters.
Whereas access to clean water is a fundamental human right;
Whereas the Federal Water Pollution Control Act was enacted into law in 1948;
Whereas the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 were enacted
with bipartisan support and significantly reorganized and expanded the
law, from then on commonly known as the Clean Water Act;
Whereas the Clean Water Act is one of the most important laws in the United
States and the Nation's principal safeguard against unregulated
pollution or destruction of United States surface waters;
Whereas the Clean Water Act's objective is to ``restore and maintain the
chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters'',
and it declared national goals of eliminating the discharge of
pollutants into the waters of the United States by 1985 and, wherever
attainable, ensuring that waters were fishable and swimmable by 1983;
Whereas the Clean Water Act provides strong and comprehensive requirements for
the control of pollutants in the Nation's waters;
Whereas the Clean Water Act authorizes Federal financial assistance for building
and upgrading municipal sewage treatment plants and other types of water
quality improvements projects;
Whereas rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, wetlands, and other waters have enormous
public health, community welfare, economic, and ecological importance to
the United States, considering--
(1) one in three people in the United States receives drinking water
from systems that draw supply from headwater, intermittent, or ephemeral
streams;
(2) according to an Environmental Protection Agency report, streams
provide the majority of water to most rivers and ``transport sediment,
wood, organic matter, nutrients, chemical contaminants, and many of the
organisms found in rivers'';
(3) chemical, physical, and biological processes in streams can convert
nitrogen and other nutrients, preventing them from causing downstream harm;
(4) wetlands prevent and minimize flooding by storing as much as
1,000,000 to 1,500,000 gallons of water per acre;
(5) wetlands and other waters in the floodplains of rivers and streams
help prevent pollution from reaching downstream waters;
(6) three-quarters of fish harvested commercially depend on wetlands;
(7) the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that
``[a]bout 91 million people over the age of 16 swim in oceans, lakes, and
rivers each year in the United States'';
(8) approximately 37 percent of water withdrawals, or 118,000,000,000
gallons per day, are used for irrigation, with 52 percent of that amount
being taken from surface waters;
(9) a recent study estimated that wetlands worldwide provide ecosystem
services, like flood prevention and pollution filtration, worth more than
$47,000,000,000,000 per year;
(10) fishing and other water sports contribute $175,000,000,000
annually to the American economy and support more than 1,500,000 jobs;
(11) companies often need clean water in their industrial processes or
as a component of their end product, such as craft beer brewers that depend
on a reliable source of clean water and add approximately $76,000,000,000
annually to the national economy while supporting more than 500,000 jobs;
(12) according to one study, the ecological restoration economy, which
includes mitigation for harms to waters due to discharges of dredged or
fill material, ``directly employs 126,000 workers and generates $9.5
billion in economic output'' per year, which ``supports an additional
95,000 jobs and $15 billion in economic output through indirect (business-
to-business) linkages and increased household spending'';
(13) over 318,000,000 people visited United States national parks to
recreate and be inspired by thundering waterfalls, streaming geysers,
desert springs, ocean beaches, and jeweled lakes, generating
$40,000,000,000 for the United States economy and over 330,000 private
sector jobs;
(14) Environmental Protection Agency reports that the Great Lakes
contain ``84% of North America's surface fresh water'' and ``about 21% of
the world's supply of surface fresh water'';
(15) restoring and protecting the Great Lakes and their tributaries
also protects a $6,000,000,000,000 regional economy and the 1,500,000 jobs
and $62,000,000,000 in wages directly connected to the Great Lakes; and
(16) the Great Lakes and their tributaries also facilitate nearly
$16,000,000,000 in annual spending by residents and the 37,000,000 hunters,
anglers, bird watchers, and other tourists who visit the region for
recreation;
Whereas water pollution and the loss of water resources can cause catastrophic
harm to communities' health and economic strength, for example--
(1) a harmful algal bloom in western Lake Erie in 2014 prompting a
three-day shutdown of Toledo, Ohio's drinking water supply, affecting
approximately 500,000 people;
(2) a spill of a toxic chemical into the Elk River in Charleston, West
Virginia, causing drinking water for approximately 300,000 people to be cut
off for several days;
(3) outbreaks of blue-green algae and red tide in Florida causing
widespread harm to businesses, and have killed substantial numbers of
aquatic animals over multiple years, with 2018 being particularly severe;
(4) the Tennessee Valley Authority's coal ash waste pit near Kingston,
Tennessee, experiencing a mammoth structural failure and releasing more
than a billion tons of waste into the Emory and Clinch Rivers in 2008, and
a 2019 analysis found that similar pits around the country routinely leak
and contaminate nearby groundwater and surface waters;
(5) beaches in multiple States, including Mississippi, New Jersey,
Washington, and New York, being forced to close this year due to outbreaks
of algae that are commonly fueled by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution;
(6) intense flooding occurring in places, like Houston, Texas, where
wetland destruction is believed to have contributed to the severity of the
flooding; and
(7) many areas of the United States are expected to experience worsened
drought conditions with climate change, making preservation of water
resources more critical;
Whereas the Clean Water Act dramatically slowed the rate of wetlands loss in the
United States, from more than half a million acres annually in the 1950s
to approximately 80,000 acres annually in the late 1990s;
Whereas the quality of numerous water bodies has substantially improved since
the adoption of the Clean Water Act, including the Charles River in
Massachusetts, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Great Lakes;
Whereas despite the improvements brought about by the Clean Water Act, the
United States still faces major water resource and pollution challenges,
including--
(1) according to the most recent State data submitted to the
Environmental Protection Agency--
G (A) 53 percent of assessed rivers and streams do not meet one or
more water quality standards, which are established to ensure waters are
clean enough for specific uses like fishing and swimming;
G (B) 71 percent of assessed lakes, reservoirs, and ponds are
impaired;
G (C) 80 percent of assessed bays and estuaries are impaired; and
G (D) 72 percent of assessed coastal shoreline waters are impaired;
and
(2) the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the
increasing frequency of harmful algal blooms is associated with increasing
temperatures and levels of nutrients in United States waters;
Whereas the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2017 Infrastructure Report Card
gave the Nation's wastewater infrastructure a grade of D+;
Whereas the most recent Clean Watersheds Needs Survey report to Congress
identified at least $271,000,000,000 in capital needs for wastewater,
stormwater, and other clean water infrastructure;
Whereas concerns about the condition of the Nation's waters consistently rank as
one of the most acute environmental worries, with 80 percent of
respondents in a March 2019 Gallup Poll indicating that they worry a
great deal or a fair amount about pollution of rivers, lakes, and
reservoirs;
Whereas the United States Commission on Civil Rights recommended further study
and analysis of Federal laws including the Clean Water Act to analyze
gaps in civil rights protections, and found, ``EPA's definition of
environmental justice recognizes environmental justice as a civil right,
fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of
race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development,
implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and
policies'';
Whereas Federal and State agencies have detected per- and polyfluoroalkyl
substances (PFAS), man-made chemicals that have known risks to human
health and the environment, in tap water and groundwater in 49 States;
Whereas experts estimate that more than 100,000,000 Americans may be exposed to
drinking PFAS in their tap water and it continues to be a growing
emerging contaminant nationwide that threatens clean water in the United
States;
Whereas the Environmental Protection Agency has initiated numerous
administrative actions that collectively would eviscerate the Clean
Water Act and other safeguards for clean water, including--
(1) repealing science-based protections for streams, wetlands, and
other waters, and excluding millions of miles of streams and tens of
millions of acres of wetlands from the Clean Water Act's pollution control
programs;
(2) easing restrictions on wastewater plants to authorize them to
release partially treated sewage during rainstorms;
(3) refusing to develop regulations mandated by the Clean Water Act
aimed at avoiding and minimizing spills of hazardous substances;
(4) weakening rules about siting, operating, monitoring, and closing
pits where coal ash and other coal combustion waste is dumped;
(5) exempting polluters who harm waterways if their discharge first
travels through groundwater from the Clean Water Act's discharge permitting
program;
(6) restricting Environmental Protection Agency experts' authority
under the Clean Water Act to stop dumping projects that cause unacceptable
harms to water bodies;
(7) delaying and weakening toxic pollution discharge limits for
powerplants; and
(8) curtailing States' and Tribal Nations' rights under the Clean Water
Act to review federally permitted projects and impose conditions or reject
the project, as appropriate, to prevent harm to their waterways; and
Whereas the United States remains far from achieving the objective of the Clean
Water Act, putting at risk critical resources that provide enormous
value to the country, and the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed
actions would substantially worsen those conditions: Now, therefore, be
it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives encourages the
Environmental Protection Agency to--
(1) maintain and strengthen, not attack, requirements that
keep United States waterways clean;
(2) end any ongoing administrative actions to weaken
existing Clean Water Act regulations and other requirements
protecting the Nation's waters; and
(3) initiate actions to reverse any already-completed
administrative actions that weaken the Federal Government's
implementation of the Clean Water Act and other requirements
protecting the Nation's waters.
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