[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1478 Introduced in House (IH)]
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118th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 1478
Recognizing access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling,
broadband communications, and public transportation as basic human
rights and public services that must be accessible, safe, justly
sourced and sustainable, acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate
resilient, and reliable for every person.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
September 19, 2024
Ms. Tlaib (for herself, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Omar, Mr. Carson, Ms.
Lee of California, Ms. Lee of Pennsylvania, Mrs. Ramirez, Mr. Huffman,
Ms. Pressley, Mrs. Watson Coleman, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, Ms. Bush,
and Mr. Bowman) submitted the following resolution; which was referred
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the
Committees on Natural Resources, and Transportation and Infrastructure,
for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case
for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of
the committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Recognizing access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling,
broadband communications, and public transportation as basic human
rights and public services that must be accessible, safe, justly
sourced and sustainable, acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate
resilient, and reliable for every person.
Whereas every person requires access to water, sanitation, electricity, heating,
cooling, broadband communications, and public transportation to survive
and live a life with dignity;
Whereas decades-old infrastructure systems, including centralized utilities,
disconnected wells, septic systems, unpiped systems, the electric grid,
and related power infrastructure, have reached their breaking points in
safety and reliability in the midst of compounding crises of the climate
emergency and fossil fuel-driven climate disasters, racial injustices,
disinvestment in existing systems, and economic inequities that endanger
the public's health and safety;
Whereas these crises are exacerbated by privatization of public goods and
utilities by for-profit corporations that prioritize earnings and
shareholders over the welfare of people, the planet, and public health,
all while readily accepting public funding from Federal infrastructure
programs;
Whereas millions of households collectively accrued more than $20,000,000,000 of
energy utility debt by 2023, utility bills are growing faster than
household incomes, with water prices increasing 56 percent from 2012 to
2023 and becoming unaffordable for one in six households nationwide, and
broadband prices typically rising faster than the rate of inflation, and
utilities have become profoundly unaffordable for millions of people,
causing over 34 percent of all households to cut back on basic needs to
pay energy bills;
Whereas utilities are engaging in punitive residential customer payment
collection practices including mass-scale service shutoffs, shutting off
water service to an estimated 15,000,000 people in a typical year and
electricity service to households well over 5,700,000 times between 2020
and 2022;
Whereas many utilities send overdue water bills and associated late fees to tax
authorities to impose liens, which can lead to tax sales of properties,
contributing to property foreclosures that can evict people from their
homes and lead to bankruptcy;
Whereas investor-owned utilities, fossil-fuel energy companies, and their
industry associations fund and coordinate the obstruction of renewable
energy policies and programs, including rooftop and community solar
requirements and incentives;
Whereas utilities often rely on predatory collection agencies to pursue payment
on unaffordable bills and debts that damage credit scores and cause
long-term harm to households' ability to access affordable credit;
Whereas utility shutoffs and unaffordable bills have led to increasing numbers
of vulnerable people dying from uncontrollable household temperatures
and inaccessible water and sanitation after being denied access to
utility services, thus posing substantial threats to general public and
community health, as exemplified in a paper from Duke University
researchers that found a nationwide utility shutoff moratorium could
have prevented 15 percent of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, with similar
findings in a published study from Cornell University;
Whereas disconnection from water, sanitation, electricity, heating, cooling, and
broadband services increases housing and utility insecurity and exposure
to eviction, homelessness, and resulting incarceration because of the
criminalization of being unhoused;
Whereas disconnection from water, sanitation, electricity, heating, and cooling
can expose families to State-enforced separation due to conditioning
parental or guardian's ability to care for minor children or
incapacitated adults on ensuring access to these essential services
while, contradictorily, still allowing these services to be disconnected
from people living in poverty;
Whereas the United States is the largest historical contributor to global
greenhouse gas pollution, responsible for approximately 25 percent of
cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since 1870, which is accelerating
climate disasters and destabilizing ecosystems;
Whereas the climate emergency is causing widespread harm and acts as a
multiplier of harmful exposures, and it has already begun to generate
more intense storms, sea level rise and extreme weather events that
place greater demand on and cause significant harm to the aging
infrastructure, including overloading outdated stormwater and wastewater
systems and threatening public health through flooding, sewage backups
into homes, and sewage spills into public spaces, which
disproportionately impact places where Black, Brown, and Indigenous
people live, particularly among low-income communities and other groups
who are economically vulnerable;
Whereas aging drinking water and wastewater systems need at least
$1,279,000,000,000 in improvements over the next 20 years to comply with
existing Federal water quality regulations, according to the latest
needs assessments from the Environmental Protection Agency;
Whereas 2023 was the hottest year on record and the need for cooling, air
filtration, and public water fountains and refill stations will continue
to increase as a result of the climate emergency, accelerating the need
to assist vulnerable people during heat waves, drought, extreme
wildfire, and other heat- and air-quality-related emergencies;
Whereas environmental justice communities experience disparate and cumulative
health impacts from climate change, air pollution, soil contamination,
unsafe drinking water sources (including lead service lines and
contaminated water supplies), and inadequate sanitation systems;
Whereas fossil-fuel energy primarily delivered by centralized utilities is
driving the climate crisis and pollution;
Whereas the climate emergency poses a substantial threat to critical utility
infrastructure and broadband communications networks vital to
connectivity during times of emergency and rebuilding;
Whereas increased electricity rates and dirty electricity sources have
disproportionately impacted communities of color;
Whereas the United States has joined a global pledge to transition away from
fossil fuels and triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by
2030; and
Whereas clean, renewable energy, distributed power, energy efficiency, and
battery storage present nonpolluting, affordable, climate-resilient
energy and opportunities for energy democracy: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) recognizes access to water, sanitation, electricity,
heating, cooling, broadband communications, and public
transportation as basic human rights and public services that
must be accessible, safe, justly sourced and sustainable,
acceptable, sufficient, affordable, climate resilient, and
reliable for every person;
(2) affirms that access to utility services should be
guaranteed for all people and should not be denied to any
person based on ability to pay, housing status, immigration
status, race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual
orientation or identity, (dis)ability, employment status,
credit history, or incarceration status or history, and affirms
that all agencies must enforce antidiscrimination language in
existing laws and ensure language access through translation
and interpretation to provide adequate communication with
people in the language they speak at home;
(3) affirms that utilities should be held under public
control, with equitable and transparent asset-management
planning systems with policy-setting public involvement and
intentional community engagement, based on the public interest
and seeking to repair legacies of harm and pollution in
environmental justice communities;
(4) calls for a full ban on water privatization and
supports ending privatization contracts and franchises and
municipalizing privatized systems;
(5) commits to the elimination of Federal funding and
subsidies for private water corporations;
(6) commits to the development and expansion of accountable
Federal public power providers and Federal support for
municipalities, cooperatives, and communities to produce,
procure, and deliver clean, renewable energy, storage, and
energy efficiency, and meaningful public accountability over
any remaining private utilities to deliver the same package of
climate-resilient energy;
(7) calls for public municipalities, cooperatives, and
smaller broadband providers to explore public ownership options
and other means to provide better, more equitable, and
affordable choices than incumbent for-profit companies alone
provide;
(8) affirms that utility services must be affordable for
every person based on their ability to pay;
(9) calls for all public utility commissions to create
processes to grant policy-setting powers to community-based
organizations representing the most vulnerable populations
within the utility service area, and to require racial and
economic equity impact assessments to determine project
prioritization;
(10) commits to a full ban on all punitive collection
practices for unpaid household utility bills including--
(A) disconnections of water, wastewater,
stormwater, electricity, heating, cooling, and
broadband service;
(B) the use of property or tax foreclosures or
evictions;
(C) the sale of any uncollected household debt to
collection agencies; and
(D) the filing of an adverse report with a credit-
reporting agency;
(11) commits to provide and prioritize direct payments to
environmental justice and impacted frontline communities for
water, sanitation, distributed solar, and broadband projects;
(12) commits to eliminate policies that criminalize a
person's inability to afford utility services, including
unauthorized utility reconnections and a person's inability to
improve home septic systems and other utility infrastructure;
(13) commits to provide utility access to unhoused people
for a basic level of service for the public good, including
water for drinking, bathing, and sanitation, shelter from
inclement weather, wildfire, floods, and extreme temperatures,
access to public transportation, and access to internet
communication;
(14) affirms that utility services should be safe for all
people, providing high-quality drinking water free from lead,
arsenic, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and
other contaminants, safe heating and cooling sources that do
not rely on fuel oil, propane, or dangerous methane gas, and
safe situating of lines and infrastructure that protects
workers and communities;
(15) affirms that policies facilitating the commodification
and financialization of water resources, services, and systems
such as private water bottling, interbasin diversions, and
water futures trading should be banned;
(16) recognizes that, while short-term water access must be
maintained in instances of public health risk, including
through the distribution of prepackaged water, such a project
is neither a long-term or sustainable solution to
infrastructure-related public health crises;
(17) commits to direct Federal grants to support capital
improvements and operations, including the compensation
packages necessary to attract and retain a qualified unionized
workforce, forgive outstanding municipal utility debt and
household utility bill debt, and otherwise scale up the
capacity of publicly-controlled utility services such as
drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems;
(18) commits to requiring climate adaptation planning to
reduce risk and cost burden on taxpayers and climate-resilient
utility solutions, including--
(A) enhanced clean, renewable energy and energy
efficiency technologies (including rooftop and
community solar, storage, microgrids, weatherization
technologies, heat pumps, and other efficient cooling
and heating technologies); and
(B) updated indoor air-quality standards and
expanded water conservation measures (including green
infrastructure and stormwater management);
(19) affirms that investments in new and existing
infrastructure should prioritize local, responsibly sourced,
and clean, renewable energy while divesting from all global
extractive and fossil-fuel processes that harm local
communities, economies, and cultures in the United States, in
the Global South, and across Tribal communities, which
disproportionately bear the climate burdens and consequences of
extractive capitalism of Western nations;
(20) commits to provide direct grant investments in
environmental justice and frontline communities that have been
historically burdened to increase the availability,
affordability, safety, reliability, and accessibility of
electricity, broadband, water, wastewater, stormwater,
sanitation, heating, and cooling needs, while supporting high-
quality, family-sustaining union jobs and requiring community
benefit agreements and local hiring and job training for
residents in affected communities, project labor agreements,
labor peace agreements, and living wages;
(21) commits to upholding Tribal treaties for self-
governance and self-determination;
(22) commits to creating a Federal database that requires
utilities to standardize regularly issued reports for water
quality, noncompliance events, disruptions, disconnections, and
includes data on length of disconnections, amount of
arrearages, demographics, and income levels of affected
communities; and
(23) commits to establishing an interagency task force
composed of relevant experts to develop and submit to Congress,
and publish publicly, a plan, including timelines, for
implementation of the activities committed to under paragraphs
(5), (6), (10), (11), (12), (13), (17), (18), (20), (21), and
(22).
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