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CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995
(House of Representatives - May 11, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H4802-H4868] CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995 The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). Pursuant to House Resolution 140 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill, H.R. 961. {time} 1040 in the committee of the whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill (H.R. 961) to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, with Mr. Hobson (Chairman pro tempore) in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. When the Committee of the Whole rose on Wednesday, May 10, 1995, the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert] had been disposed of, and [[Page H4803]] title III was open to amendment at any point. Are there further amendments to title III? amendments offered by mr. traficant Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I offer 2 amendments, and I ask unanimous consent that the amendments, one in title III and one in title V, be considered en bloc. The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Clerk will report the amendments. The Clerk read as follows: Amendments offered by Mr. Traficant: Page 35, after line 23, insert the following: ``(2) Limitation and Notice.--If the Administrator or a State extends the deadline for point source compliance and encourages the development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology under paragraph (1), the Administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extend practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. In providing an extension under this subsection, the Administrator or State shall provide to the recipient of such extension a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by this paragraph. Page 35, line 24, strike ``(2)'' and insert ``(3)''. Page 35, line 7, strike ``(3)'' and insert ``(4)''. Page 35, line 18, strike ``(4)'' and insert ``(5)''. Page 216, line 12, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 217, line 7, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 219, after line 18, insert the following: SEC. 512. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. Title V (33 U.S.C. 1361-1377) is further amended by inserting before section 522, as redesignated by section 510 of this Act, the following: ``SEC. 521. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. ``(a) Purchase of American-Made Equipment and Products.--It is the sense of Congress that, to the greatest extent practicable, all equipment and products purchased with funds made available under this Act should be American-made. ``(b) Notice to Recipients of Assistance.--In providing financial assistance under this Act, the Administrator, to the greatest extent practicable, shall provide to each recipient of the assistance a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by subsection (a).'' Conform the table of contents of the bill accordingly. Mr. TRAFICANT (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be considered as read and printed in the Record. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, these are basically Buy American amendments. This one, though, deals with the fact that if the administrator or State extends the deadline for point source compliance, and encourages development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology, under paragraph 1, the administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extent practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. That would encourage more technology development in our country to deal with these issues. It has been worked out. The second amendment is a standard ``Buy American'' amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. We have reviewed these, and we think these are good amendments. We support them. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I have no reason to object to the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio. Mr. TRAFICANT. With that, Mr. Chairman, I urge a vote in favor of the amendments. The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant]. The amendments were agreed to. The CHAIRMAN. Are there other amendments to title III of the bill? amendment offered by mr. pallone Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows'. Amendment offered by Mr. Pallone: Strike title IX of the bill (pages 323 through 326). Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would strike provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for sewage treatment plants in certain coastal communities which discharge into ocean water. There are two major steps to wastewater treatment which I think many of us know. One is the physical primary treatment, which is the removal of suspended solids. The second is the biological or secondary treatment, which is the removal of dissolved waste by bacteria. Secondary treatment, in my opinion, is very important, because it is critical to the removal of organic material from sewage. It is the material linked to hepatitis and gastroenteritis for swimmers. It is also the common denominator. Secondary treatment sets a base level of treatment that all must achieve, putting all facilities on equal ground. Today almost 15,000 publicly owned treatment works around the country apply secondary treatment. It makes no sense to exempt many of these facilities. Under existing law, a national standard of secondary treatment for public owned treatment works was established by Congress in the original 1972 Clean Water Act. There was a window of time during which facilities could apply for ocean discharge as an alternative to secondary treatment. However, this window has closed. A bill was passed last year, October 31, that allows the city of San Diego to apply for a waiver, even though that window has closed. The EPA has a year pursuant to that legislation to make a decision on their application, and at present it looks likely that San Diego would be granted such a waiver. However, despite these concessions that have been made, a provision has been included in H.R. 961 that would grant such a waiver to San Diego without the necessary EPA review. I am concerned, Mr. Chairman, that we are going toward what I would call a slippery slope on the issue of secondary treatment. {time} 1045 The San Diego waiver was for ocean outfalls at least 4 miles out and 300 feet deep. This was the only provision in the original H.R. 961. But in committee this section was expanded. Other towns can now apply for 10-year permits that would allow for ocean discharge only 1 mile out and at 150 feet of depth. This new expansion of the section applies to at least six facilities in California, two in Hawaii, and there may be two dozen other facilities that it could apply. Also, communities under 10,000 are now eligible for permits, and there are about 6,500 facilities of 63 percent of all facilities that could be eligible under this under 10,000 provision. Soon Puerto Rico may also be able to apply for a waiver of secondary treatment because of the legislation the committee marked. I think that this is a terrible development. I would like to know what is next. What other waivers and weakening amendments are going to exist to the Clean Water Act? Ultimately, if we proceed down this slippery slope, secondary treatment may in fact disappear in many parts of the country. Secondary treatment may be costly, but it will cost more to clean up the mess after the fact, if we can clean it up at all. The ultimate problem I have, and I am trying to correct with this amendment, is this idea that somehow the ocean is out of sight, out of mind, that is, a sort of endless sink that we can continue to dump material in. It is not true. The material comes back and ocean water quality continues to deteriorate. Please do not gut the Clean Water Act. Let us not start down the slippery slope of allowing ocean discharge without secondary treatment, and please support this amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment strikes all of the secondary treatment [[Page H4804]] provisions in the bill. During the debate on the unfunded mandates, secondary treatment was cited as one of the most costly unfunded mandates to States and localities. Our bill provides relief from this mandate, but it provides relief only where it is also an unfunded mandate. Our bill allows a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean discharges, but only where secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. Let me emphasize that. We allow for a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean benefits but only when secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. This waiver must be approved by either the State water quality authority people or by the EPA, so this is not some willy-nilly waiver that a locality can give itself. It must go through the rigorous procedure of first showing that by getting the waiver, they are providing no environmental benefit, and, second, getting the approval of the EPA or the State. The bill also allows certain alternative wastewater treatment technologies for small cities to be deemed secondary treatment if, and this is a big if, if they will contribute to the attainment of water quality standards. This flexibility, Mr. Chairman, is badly needed because traditional centralized municipal wastewater treatment systems do not always make economic sense to small communities. We need to provide the flexibility to the States and to EPA to allow the use of alternatives, for example, like constructed wetlands or lagoons, where they make both economic and environmental sense. Perhaps the most egregious example of the problems we would face if we were to adopt this amendment is the situation in San Diego to spend $3 billion on secondary treatment facilities when indeed the California EPA and the National Academy of Sciences says it is unnecessary. So this flexibility is needed not only for San Diego but for many of the cities across America. I strongly urge defeat of this amendment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. (Mr. MINETA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, the idea of waiving secondary treatment standards sounds alarms because the successes of the Clean Water Act over the past 23 years are attributable in large part to the act's requirements for a baseline level of treatment--secondary treatment, in the case of municipal dischargers. There are several reasons that these waivers should be stricken from the bill: First, they are not based on sound science; second, they threaten to degrade water quality and devastate the shoreline; third, they are unfair; and, fourth, they are unnecessary. Not Based on Sound Science Several of the bill's secondary waiver provisions abandon the basic requirement that the applicant demonstrate that a waiver will not harm the marine environment. The bill abandons this requirement, even though it makes sense, and has been met by more than 40 communities that have obtained waivers. This congressional waiver of scientific standards is at direct odds with the themes of sound science and risk analysis that were embraced in the Contract With America. The consequences could be devastating to the environment. Harmful To Water Quality and the Marine Environment For example, the secondary waiver provision intended for Los Angeles provides for waivers if the discharge is a mere 1 mile offshore, and 150 feet deep. Unfortunately, history has taught us that sewage discharges at about 1 mile offshore can wreak havoc. In 1992, San Diego's sewage pipe ruptured two-thirds of a mile offshore, spewing partially treated sewage containing coliform and other bacterias and viruses, and closing more than 4 miles of beaches. This environmental disaster happened just one-third of a mile closer to shore than the 1-mile-offshore standard for municipal discharges under one of the waivers in this bill. In addition, it appears that this waiver provision, although intended for Los Angeles, picks up at least 19 other cities as well. And, the waiver for small communities makes thousands more communities eligible for waivers, even though many of them are already meeting secondary requirements and could seek to reduce current treatment under this provision. Since the number of waivers authorized under this bill is potentially quite large, the environmental impact also can be expected to be substantial, particularly for waste discharged just 1 mile from shore. The San Diego and Los Angeles provisions both provide for enhanced primary treatment in place of secondary. We would think for a minute about what primary treatment is. It is not really treatment at all--you just get the biggest solids out by screening or settling, and the rest goes through raw, untreated. Chemically enhanced primary means you add a little chlorine to the raw sewage before discharging it. This means that even when the system is operating properly--without any breaks in the pipe spewing sewage onto our beaches--the bill could result in essentially raw human waste being dumped a mile out from our beaches. Most Californians do not want essentially raw sewage dumped 1 mile from their beaches. unfair The waiver provisions are unfair because they grant preferential treatment to select communities. This favoritism has direct consequences for the thousands of communities that most of us represent: those that have expended, or are in the process of spending, substantial resources to comply with secondary requirements. Some communities, such as the city of San Jose which I represent, have gone well beyond secondary. The waiver provisions say to all of these communities that they were fools for having complied with the law, because if they had just dragged their feet, they, too, could have escaped these requirements. unnecessary In the case of San Diego, the inequity of allowing a third bite at the apple is heightened by the fact that San Diego will obtain a secondary waiver treatment without the bill. Yes, the bill's waiver provision is completely unnecessary for San Diego because San Diego was singled out for preferential treatment just last year. In October 1994 President Clinton signed into law a bill that was passed in the closing days of the 103d Congress. Of the thousands of communities required to achieve secondary treatment, only San Diego was authorized to apply for a waiver last year. San Diego submitted its application last month, an EPA has publicly announced its commitment to act quickly and both EPA and the city expect that a waiver will be granted. Why, then, is San Diego now receiving another waiver? Because this year's waiver would provide even a better deal than last year's--it would be permanent, and would excuse Dan Diego from baseline requirements that last year San Diego agreed that it could and would meet. Mr. Chairman. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. (Mr. BILBRAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I would have to say, as someone who has spent 18 years fighting to clean up the pollution in San Diego County, it concerns me when my colleague from California speaks of the pollution problems in San Diego, when in fact we can recognize that one of the major problems we have had is that the regulation has taken precedence over the science and the need to protect the public health. This bill as presented by the chairman reflects the scientific data that shows that not only does having chemically enhanced primary not hurt the environment, but it also shows that the studies that have been done by many, many scientific groups, in fact every major scientific study in the San Diego region has shown that if we go to secondary, as my colleague from California would suggest, that the secondary mandate would create more environmental damage than not going to secondary. [[Page H4805]] This is a big reason why a gentleman from Scripps Institute, a Dr. Revell, came to me and personally asked me to intervene. My colleagues may not think that I have any credentials in the environmental field, but I would point out that Dr. Revell is one of the most noted oceanographers that has ever lived in this century. He just passed away. He was saying strongly that the secondary mandate on the city of San Diego was going to be a travesty, a travesty to the people of San Diego but, more important, a damage to the environment of our oceans and our land. My colleague from San Jose has pointed out that there may be a problem giving waivers. I think we all agree that there are appropriate procedures, but those procedures should follow science. The city of San Jose has gone to extensive treatment, Mr. Chairman, but when the science said that you could dispose of that in the estuary of southern San Francisco Bay, my colleague's city of San Jose was given a waiver to be able to do that, and will continue to do it because the science says that it is okay. Our concern with this is the fact that the process should follow the path toward good environment. What we have today now is a process that diverts the attention of those of us in San Diego and the EPA away from real environmental problems and puts it toward a product that is 26 pounds of reports, 1.5 million dollars' worth of expenses. It is something that I think that we really have to test those of us here: Do we care about the environment of America or do we care about the regulations of Congress? When the science and the scientists who have worked strongly on this stand up and say, ``Don't require secondary sewage in San Diego,'' we really are put to the test. Are we more wedded to our regulation than we are to our environment? {time} 1100 Now if you do not believe me, though I have fought hard at trying to clean up Mexican sewage and trying to get the sewage to stay in pipes, while the EPA has ignored that, they have concentrated on this process. I would ask my colleague to consider his own colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner], who has worked with me on this and lives in the community and has talked to the scientists, and Mr. Filner can tell you quite clearly that this is not an issue of the regulations with the environment, this is one of those situations where the well- intentioned but misguided mandate of the 1970's has been interpreted to mean we are going to damage the environment of San Diego, and I would strongly urge that the environment takes precedence here. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleague from San Diego, Mr. Filner, to respond to the fact that is it not true that the major marine biologists, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, one of the most noted institutes in the entire country on the ocean impacts, supports our actions on this item? Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being here with the Congressman from my adjacent district, San Diego. Before I answer the question, I do want to point out that for many years we had adjacent districts in local government, Mr. Bilbray being a county supervisor and myself being a San Diego city councilman. We have worked together for many, many years on this very issue. We have fought about it, we have argued about it, we have come to an agreement about how we should handle this, and I think it is very appropriate that we are both now in the Congress to try to finally give San Diego some assurance to try to deal satisfactorily with the environment, and yet do it in a cost- effective manner. The gentleman from California asked me about good science. The gentleman from San Jose talked about good science. The most respected scientists who deal with oceanography in the world at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography have agreed with our conclusions. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Filner and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, the scientists from the Scripps Institute have lobbied this Congress for this change. The Federal judge in charge of the case has lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. And I would ask my colleague to continue that thought. Mr. BILBRAY. I would like to point out, Mr. Chairman, my experience with Mr. Filner was as the director of the public health department for San Diego, and as he knows, this is not something I am not involved with. I happened to be personally involved with the water quality there. I surf, my 9- and 8-year-old children surf. We have water contact; we care about the environment. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I do not understand though, since the existing bill that was passed last year actually allows for you to have a waiver, assuming certain conditions are met, and EPA I understand has already gone through that application process, why do you find it necessary in this bill to grant an absolute waiver? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of the Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. BILBRAY. Why would I ask? Mr. PALLONE. In other words, my understanding, you tell me if I am wrong, is that pursuant to this legislation, I will call it special legislation if you will that passed last year, San Diego can now apply for a waiver. It may be the only municipality that can. And EPA is now in the process of looking at that application for a waiver, and if in fact what Mr. Filner and you say is the case that the waiver then is likely to be granted, why do we need to take that one exception that is already in the law for San Diego and now expand it to many others, thousands possibly of other municipalities around the country? Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that it is costing $1.5 million. The fact is, it is only a 4- to 5-year waiver, and the fact that under our bill all monitoring, the EPA will monitor it, the Environmental Protection Agency of California will monitor it. We have developed a system that scientists say will be the most cost-effective way of approaching this. All of the monitoring, all of the public health protections are there. As long as the environment continues not to be injured, we will continue to move forward. And you have to understand, too, one thing you do not understand that Mr. Filner and I do understand, we have had at the time of this process, this bureaucratic process has been going on, we have had our beaches closed and polluted from other sources that the EPA has ignored. Mr. PALLONE. I understand, and you have gone through that with me and I appreciate that. My only point is I do not want to go down the slippery slope of the possibility of getting applications and waivers granted. Mr. BILBRAY. There is no slippery slope. What it says is those that have proven scientifically there is no reasonable reason to think there is environmental damage that is going to occur should not have to go through a process of having to go through EPA and the Federal bureaucracy. I think you would agree if we in the 1970's were told by scientists there is no foreseeable damage or foreseeable problem with water quality, this law would never have been passed. In San Diego the scientists have said that, and I think you need to reflect it. Mr. PALLONE. My point is the exemption for San Diego applies to 3 miles out, certain feet. Mr. BILBRAY. Four miles, 300 feet. Mr. PALLONE. Now you have another exemption for certain towns. Mr. BILBRAY. Totally different. [[Page H4806]] Mr. PALLONE. Though you have another exemption, towns under 10,000, no scientific basis for that. All these things are thrown into the bill. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for an additional 2 minutes). Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is here it is outcome-based. In fact the water quality is not violated as long as scientists at EPA say there is not damage. My concern to you is if the monitoring is done, if the environment is protected, if EPA and all of the scientists say it is fine, why, then why is the process with a million and a half dollars and 26 pounds of paper so important to you to make sure those reports have been filed? Mr. PALLONE. The difference is you are going through that process and you may actually achieve it in convincing the EPA pursuant to the existing law that that is the case. But what this bill has done is go beyond that, it has said that there is an absolute waiver for San Diego, they do not really have to do anything else at this point. Mr. BILBRAY. Yes, with all the monitoring that would have to be done under existing law, the same review process and public testimony the same way. Mr. PALLONE. Then it goes on to take another category, 1 mile and 150 is OK, and for a third category if you are under 10,000 it is OK. For another category for Puerto Rico we are going to do the study. You know you may make the case, we will have to see, that your exception makes sense. You may be able to do that to the EPA, but why do we have to gut the entire bill and make all those other exceptions? It makes no sense to carry one San Diego case that is now going through proper channels. This says they get the waiver; they do not need to go through the process in the previous bill, and now we have all these other exemptions. Mr. BILBRAY. You have to read the bill and all the conditions of being able to meet the triggers of the EPA. Mr. PALLONE. I have the bill in front of me. It has four different categories. The San Diego category, then it goes for the ones who go 1 mile and 150, then the ones that are 10,000 or fewer, and then it goes to Puerto Rico. All of these categories. Mr. BILBRAY. And you have monitoring that basically says that you have to prove, bring monitoring that you do not, that you are not degrading the environment. That is what we are talking about; we are talking about an outcome basis. Does it hurt the environment? Not the regulations. Is the environment hurt here. Mr. PALLONE. I do not see any scientific basis. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] be allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I will not do so now, but if we are going to move this along, I think we should all try to stay within the rules of the House and the time allotment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I was just asking for unanimous consent for the gentleman from San Diego, Mr. Bilbray, to be given an additional 2 minutes, and I would like to be able to ask a question of him since he also referred to the city of San Jose, and I happen to be the former mayor of San Jose. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Chair will inquire once again, is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? There was no objection. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield. Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, my objection is this: that last year we worked to grant the city of San Diego the opportunity to apply under previously expired provisions to apply for a waiver. I thought we did that in good faith, with the city of San Diego also agreeing to certain conditions. Things like the need for alternative uses for their water and say that this would be a waiver that would only be good for a certain period of time. It is my understanding that the waiver is indefinite, except that there is a requirement for a report to be done every 5 years. And that to me is a reasonable kind of an approach. Also in terms of any waiver for the city of San Jose, I am not familiar with what the gentleman is referring to, because we are at tertiary treatment in terms of our discharge into San Francisco Bay. Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that San Jose opens into an open trench into 20 feet of water in an estuary; it does not place it 350 feet deep and 4\1/2\ miles out in an area where scientists say not only does it not hurt the environment, it helps it. And so you do have a waiver to be able to do that rather than being required to have to use other outfall systems but it is because you were able to show that. But the trouble here with this process is that all reasonable scientific data shows that there is no reason to have to spend the 26 pounds of reports, the $1\1/2\ million, and when you get into it, EPA will be the trigger to decide if that process needs to go. What EPA told me as a public health director when I say this is a waste of money, the Government did not mean to do this, they said Congress makes us do it. They do not give us the latitude to be able to make a judgment call based on reasonable environmental regulations they have mandated to us. So I am taking the mandate away from them. Mr. BORSKI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my strong support for this amendment to strike the waivers of secondary treatment requirements. This is an issue of protecting our Nation's beaches and coastal waters. It is a matter of protecting the tourist economies of many States and of protecting the health of the American people. Do we want our ocean waters to be a disposal area for sewage that has received only the barest minimum of treatment? For 20 years, we have done better than that as the secondary treatment requirement has stood as one of the pillars of the Clean Water Act. This bill started with a waiver for one city--San Diego. Then it moved to two dozen more in California and another possible six in Florida. Then we added Puerto Rico. Where will this race to lower standards end? H.R. 961 tells those who complied with the Clean Water Act that they should have waited. Maybe, they could have gotten a waiver. It tells those who waited that they were smart. They could keep putting their untreated sewage in the ocean. The beaches of New Jersey had frequent water problems several years ago before New York City finished its secondary treatment plant. The problems in New Jersey should be a warning that we should stick to the secondary treatment requirements and not put poorly treated sewage in the ocean. This provision of H.R. 961 sends us back more than 20 years. Since 1972, secondary treatment has been the standard that all communities have been required to meet. That basic standard of the Clean Water Act should not be changed. We should keep moving forward on the effort to clean up our waters. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to hold the line on secondary treatment and vote for this amendment. Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have to admit that I have seen some alternatives around the world that do intrigue me. If we are going to go to this broad of an exemption from secondary treatment, for instance in Hong Kong, I was there and on the ferry early one morning, and I noticed how they deal with it, they do not require secondary; in many cases they do not require primary treatment. They are a little oversubscribed to their sewer system. They have nifty boats that go around the harbor with nets in the front and they scoop up everything that floats, and if it does not float, it is not a problem. So I guess [[Page H4807]] you know if we cannot support the Pallone amendment, we can say we are headed in that direction. We can buy some of the nifty little boats from Hong Kong with the nets on the front and drive them around the beachfront areas in the morning before people go in for that swim, and you know if you cannot see it, it is not a problem. {time} 1115 Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Oregon knows that on almost every environmental issue, we are in total agreement. Are you familiar with the percentage of solid removal in the system that San Diego now uses? Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, my understanding is you attempt to achieve 84 percent. Mr. FILNER. It is not an attempt. We achieve 84 percent. Mr. DeFAZIO. I will tell you, reclaiming my time, in my metropolitan wastewater facility, of which I was on the board of directors as a county commissioner, we built it for $110 million. We get 100 percent out. We do secondary and we do tertiary treatment. Theoretically, if one wanted to, one could drink the outfall. I do not want to drink the outfall. I do not know that we have to drive everything to that standard. But to think of the ocean as an endless dump close in proximity, I realize you have a big problem with Mexico, basically you are saying Mexico can dump all their stuff in there, why cannot we not just dump in a small amount of our stuff. I do not think that is the solution. I think we should be forcing Mexico to clean up so the people in California can go to the beach every day in the future. Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will yield, that is exactly our policy. As a matter of fact, those of us who live in San Diego and who completely depend on the beaches not only for our own enjoyment but for tourism and economic help, we could never possibly see the ocean as merely a dumping ground. We believe it, as you do, we believe that money to get that infinitesimal increase in solid removal required by the EPA to put into water reclamation, to put into tertiary, to deal with the Mexican sewage is the way we ought to spend our money, not be required to spend billions of dollars on something which gives us very little marine environment protection. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, do you think 16 percent is infinitesimal? Mr. FILNER. No, it is not 16 percent. You know what secondary requirements are? Mr. DeFAZIO. I am talking about the difference between the 84 percent and the 100 percent. Mr. FILNER. The law requires us to do 85 percent. We are doing 84 percent. Should we spend $5 billion to get an infinitesimal increase in that solid removal with enormous damage to the land environment, because we would have to put in extra energy to do that for sludge. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time. Mr. FILNER. It is not environmentally sound. Mr. DeFAZIO. Does this exemption go narrowly to that 1 percent for San Diego, or does exemption go beyond that? Mr. FILNER. I am certainly supporting it as the section in the bill that applies to San Diego. Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Ms. HARMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I spoke yesterday generally about this bill and my objections to it. I am rising today to support the Pallone amendment, and also to make some more specific comments about that portion of the bill providing a waiver for full secondary treatment. That portion of the bill was drafted by my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn], and his district is just south of mine, and we agree on most everything, except for this. I want to explain why we disagree and also to say that we worked together. His office was extremely helpful to me in providing information in support of his amendment, and I hope he understands that my demur has to do specifically with what I believe are the unintended consequences of his amendment on Santa Monica Bay. Santa Monica Bay is the largest bay in southern California, and most of it is in my congressional district. I wrote to EPA so that I could understand better whether good science was involved in his amendment and how it would affect Santa Monica Bay. The letter that I received the other day from the assistant administrator of EPA says, in part: This amendment does not appear to be based upon sound science. We are not aware of any scientific documentation which suggests that discharges through outfalls that are 1 mile and 150 feet deep are always environmentally benign. To the contrary, a 1993 study by the National Research Council recommended that, ``Coastal wastewater management strategy should be tailored to the characteristics, values, and uses of the particular receiving environment.'' Thus, we believe this blanket exemption is neither scientifically nor environmentally justifiable, and could result in harm to the people who depend upon the oceans and coasts for their livelihood and enjoyment. And the letter goes on to say specifically that with respect to the Santa Monica Bay Restoration project, a project worked on by all sorts of agencies and individuals in California and supported by California's Governor, Pete Wilson, this blanket exemption could derail the key element of the restoration plan. For those careful and specific reasons, I oppose the Horn language, and I support the Pallone amendment. And let me add just one thing, Mr. Chairman. Somewhere here is a chart that was provided to me by EPA, and it shows the consequences of not going to full secondary treatment. The suspended solids that can be discharged are the biggest problem, and the chart has this broken out by area of Los Angeles. In the L.A. County sanitation district, which would be directly affected by this exemption, the suspended solids are the highest portion of this chart, and it is a big problem specifically for Los Angeles. Let me finally say one more thing. The gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has sent, I think today, a ``Dear Colleague'' letter, and he makes a point with which I agree, and I want to apologize to him. He says that in a different ``Dear Colleague'' letter circulated by some of us, we said that his amendment could result in raw sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. That was an error. I apologize for that. The amendment would result in partially treated sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. I urge my colleagues to support the Pallone amendment. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend for yielding. The San Diego situation is a classic example of regulatory overkill. But regardless of how you feel about San Diego, you should vote ``no'' on this amendment, because it guts all of the provisions that allow flexibility on secondary treatment, including the flexibility for small communities across America. We have worked on all of these provisions with State officials, wastewater and environmental engineers, and we should resoundingly defeat this amendment not only because of San Diego but because of what it does across America. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to this amendment to strike the provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for certain coastal communities which discharge into deep waters. I successfully offered this provision in the committee markup of H.R. 961. My reasons for doing so were based on sound scientific reasons, and they are environmentally responsible. I was delighted, and I am delighted to take the apology of my distinguished colleague from southern California. That letter she quotes from the assistant administrator of EPA talks in broad generalities. It does not talk about the specifics of the Los Angeles [[Page H4808]] area situation, and I want to go into that. There is no permanent waiver in this provision. It would be good for 10 years. It would be subject to renewal after that period. The driving force behind this amendment is simply good science. This Congress is moving forward to implement cost/benefit analysis and risk assessment across all environmental statutes. Deep ocean outfalls that meet all water quality standards are an obvious place to apply these principles. Now, to obtain this waiver, publicly owned treatment works must meet a stringent high-hurdles test, and I have not heard one word about that today. Outfalls must be at least 1 mile long, 150 feet deep. The discharge must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards, and I do not think anyone is going to tell us that California has low water quality standards. We have high standards, just as we do in air pollution. Now, the publicly owned treatment works must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. The application must have an EPA-approved pretreatment plan, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. Effluent must have received at least a chemically enhanced primary treatment level, and at least 75 percent of suspended solids must have been removed. That is exactly what we have. This provision is not any broad loophole. Indications also are that only five publicly owned treatment works in the country would meet this high-hurdles test. They are Honolulu, Anchorage, Orange County, and Los Angeles Country, and the city of Los Angeles. The first three cities already have waivers. As I said in committee, the program under which the original waivers were given to the city and country, that has expired. The country of Los Angeles is being forced to spend $400 million to go to full secondary treatment. Now, if that money went to improving the environment or cleaning up real environmental problems, and we have hundreds of them where usually the lawyers are getting the fees and we are not cleaning up the problems, that would all be understandable. But it is not. This provision simply assures that we are spending local and Federal dollars wisely, not forcing communities to take steps that simply make no sense, which begs the question: Why should we force communities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to meet a standard where that standard is already being met? The city of Los Angeles treatment already meets the requirements of secondary treatment. So why spend millions of the taxpayers' hard- earned dollars to require Los Angeles to build facilities that already meet that required standard? The effluent from the county of Los Angeles far exceeds the rigorous State ocean plan developed by the State of California for every single measured area, including suspended solids, toxics, and heavy metals. I have some attached graphs here some of you might want to wander up and look at. The current requirements to force the publicly owned treatment works to full secondary treatment is not justified when meeting that standard will bring no environmental improvement to the ocean but will cost local ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Chairman, the science behind this provision is irrefutable. No one is advocating pumping untreated wastewater into deep oceans off of Santa Monica Bay or in Santa Monica Bay or elsewhere. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, going to full secondary treatment will not have any positive environmental benefit. Instead, we will be spending, as I have said earlier, hundreds of millions of dollars of the citizens of the county and city of Los Angeles, local taxpayer money, for no good reason. We simply cannot afford to be wasting money on problems that do not exist. If municipal wastewater treatment facilities are meeting the high- hurdles test, including in H.R. 961, it serves the public interest, it serves the interests of the local taxpayers, and it serves the interests of the Nation to keep this waiver intact, and all else is really nonsense. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Pallone and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I wanted to ask is: We had the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman] read from some sections of this letter from the EPA from a Mr. Perciasepe. I do not know if the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has seen this or not. Mr. HORN. I have not. Mr. PALLONE. And also from the EPA I received a list of another, I do not know, another 10 to 20 municipalities beyond 6 in California and the extra 2 in Hawaii you mentioned. My concern is this; this is the crux of it. Clearly, San Diego is one situation. They already have a waiver pursuant to existing law. But the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] which now goes to the 150-foot depth and the 1 mile. Mr. HORN. And 5 miles, I might add, is the other one. One is 1 mile out, one is 150; the other is 5 miles out, 150. Mr. PALLONE. This begins to open the door, if you will, to a whole different group of municipal sewage treatment plants beyond the San Diego waiver and is, of course, of greater concern to me than even that one. You mentioned scientific evidence. Clearly, this letter from the EPA assistant administrator indicates that they are very concerned that this exemption that you have now put in is not based on sound science, plus the EPA has given us a strong indication that beyond the 6 or so California and the 2 Hawaii ones, we are talking now possibly about another 20 or 30. We do not know how many. It is a major concern. I just have not heard anything from the gentleman to verify scientific basis for this new exemption that goes beyond San Diego. Mr. HORN. I know of no one that disagrees that the city and county of Los Angeles have met the scientific standards. EPA has never said it. If they are suddenly coming in at the last minute with a little sideswiping and saying all of these cities will be eligible for it, that is nonsense. {time} 1130 My language is very specific. It applies to one situation: The city and county of Los Angeles, that already have the waste treatment, that goes out to sea. There has not been any complaints that they are violating any standard of science. They test regularly. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Hunter and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. chairman, my point is, again, I heard the San Diego argument, I heard the Los Angeles argument. I do not agree with it, but I am hearing it. You are opening the door, and you have opened it to the six California and two Hawaii ones, to eliminating secondary treatment requirements for a whole slew of other municipalities. That is a problem. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, may I say to the gentleman from New Jersey, we are not opening the door. The language is very specific. The hurdles are quite specific as to the outfalls 1 mile long, 150 feet deep, that must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards and must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place. That is exactly what we have. These charts show that we are way below the level of concern. The question if very simple, folks. For the sake of the ego of EPA, do we have the taxpayers of Los Angeles spend $400 million when it will not improve the situation one iota, because [[Page H4809]] they already meet it? So the full secondary bit has been met in the pre-secondary, and that is why we should not be spending $400 million more. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me say I support him in his efforts to inject some common sense into this arbitrary application of law that defies science. The best scientists in the world have supported our situation in San Diego, where they say nature takes care of this; you do not have to spend $2 billion, EPA, we can spend it somewhere else where we desperately need it. Science also supports the gentleman from Long Beach. The point is, the gentleman says this opens the door. Let me say to my friend from New Jersey, the door should always be open to reason, common sense, and science. That is precisely what we are injecting in this argument today. With all the programs, good programs, that must take reductions because of the deficit problem, the idea that you do not use common sense to reduce spending where it does not have to be done makes no sense. So I support the gentleman. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, not to beat a dead horse or a dead sewage system, as the case may be, I do rise in strong opposition to the amendment offered by my friend the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone]. This amendment raises the possibility that San Diego will be forced to waste, yes, waste, billions of dollars to change a sewage system that this Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, a Federal District Court judge, the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, the world renowned scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, have all agreed does no harm and in fact may benefit the marine environment. Mr. Chairman, the one-size-fits-all requirement of the Clean Water Act just does not make sense for San Diego. It does not make scientific sense, it does not make economic sense, nor does it make environmental sense. It is simply a bureaucratic requirement to provide a level of treatment that is unnecessary, costly, and provides no beneficial impact to the marine environment. This is not simply my personal opinion. The option, as we stated over and over again, is stated by scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and from the National Academy of Sciences. It is supported by reams of scientific data collected over the years. These studies have shown there is no degradation of water quality or the ecology of the ocean due to the discharge of the plant's chemically enhanced treated waste water. Let me point out, this is not merely a chlorine treated primary situation. This is an alternative to secondary treatment that includes a much higher level of technology that my friend, if I can yield to my friend from California [Mr. Bilbray], might explain. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I think the problem is understanding the technical issues here. The fact that what was interpreted as being chlorination, San Diego is not using the chlorination. Chemically enhanced primary treatment was actually brought to San Diego by members of the Sierra Club as a much more cost effective and environmentally safe way of getting to secondary treatment. It is where you use chemicals to remove the solids to fulfill the standard. What it does is say look, back in the seventies we thought there was only one way to able to clean up the water. Now scientists have come up with new technologies. If we look at a 1970 car and a 1990 car, we will agree there is a difference. The other issue, the chemical, what is called chemical enhanced primary, the fact is primary really is talking about a secondary treatment that does not use injected air and bubbling sewage around, biological activity. In a salt water environment scientists say there is no problem with this, it does the job. The only difference is the BOD, the biochemical oxygen demand, which in a deep salt water environment does not create any problem according to the scientists. I would like to point out, too, as my colleague has, we are talking about this can only be done if the facility's discharges are consistent with the ocean plan for the State of California, one of the most strict water quality programs in the entire Nation, if not the most. So we are saying how you do it we do not mind, as long as the finished product does not hurt the environment and gets the job done. I appreciate my colleagues who are going through a transition here. We are getting away from command and control, Washington knows the answer to everything. What we are trying to get down to is saying, local people, if you can find a better answer to get the job done that we want done, you not only have a right to do that, you have a responsibility, and we will not stand in the way of you doing that. I would like to point out that the monitoring continues. If there is a pollution problem, if the EPA sees there is a hassle, if the monitoring problem shows there is an environmental problem, this waiver immediately ceases and we go back to the same process. That should assure everyone who cares about the environment. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I do want to thank the chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for understanding the issues for San Diego, for helping us last year get our waiver, and for guaranteeing a success this year. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. FILNER. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, I would like my colleagues in the Congress to recognize that this has been an issue that has been before the Congress for as long as I have served in Congress, for 12 years and more. We have been working on this issue of trying to resolve the problems that San Diego has had. If we are to follow the general policy that is now taking place in the Congress, where we evaluate every requirement and every mandate and every regulation on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, there is absolutely no question that we would never impose a multibillion-dollar process on San Diego. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Filner was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, there is no way that this project, as it would be required to go to secondary treatment, could possibly pass a cost-benefit analysis, and thus we ought to really allow the flexibility that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Shuster] has put in the bill that would allow the City of San Diego to meet their requirements in an environmentally sound way. I strongly urge that the Congress approve the bill as it is written and reject this amendment. There is a bipartisan issue for this. The entire delegation from San Diego, of whom I am one, has recommended we disapprove this amendment. It is certainly important to us that we do not impose a $12 billion cost on the people of San Diego. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to Mr. Pallone's amendment to the clean water reauthorization bill. This amendment plays right into the environmentalists' chicken little cries that our environmental protection system is falling. On the contrary, chairman Shuster's amendments to the clean water bill provide communities the flexibility they need to better protect our natural resources. Specifically, Mr. Pallone claims that allowing San Diego a permanent waiver to the EPA's burdensome secondary sewage requirements jeopardizes southern California's water resources. The facts just do not support this assertion. San Diego's location on southern California's beautiful coastline allows the city to take advantage of deep ocean outfall capabilities. Scientific studies conclude that San Diego's sewage treatment efforts are both effective and environmentally sound. In fact, the surrounding ecosystem flourishes partly as a result of the outfall effluence. Yet, the EPA continues to shove their Federal mandates from Washington down the throats of San Diego taxpayers. They continue [[Page H4810]] to require San Diego to spend up to $12 billion on an unnecessary and potentially environmentally damaging secondary sewage treatment plant. Year after year, San Diego officials battle Federal bureaucrats who require the city to submit a costly, time consuming waiver application. The last one cost $1 million and was more than 3,000 pages long. The American people are tired of this kind of bureaucratic bullying Far from the Chicken Little cries of the environmentalists, the American people cry out for a little commonsense. Chairman Shuster's bill and the San Diego waiver provision bring a level of rationality to the environmental protection process. Since I began my service in Congress, I have worked as a former member of Chairman Shuster's committee to do just that. Now as part of a Republican majority, I am pleased to see my efforts come to fruition. Republicans love the environment as much as anyone. My district in southern California contains some of the most beautiful natural resources in the country. I would never vote for a bill which would damage those resources in any way. I just think the people who live on the coast, or in the forests, or canyons or grasslands have a better sense of how to protect their resources than some bureaucrat sitting in an office in Washington. The situation in San Diego demonstrates this most clearly. For that reason, I oppose Mr. Pallone's amendment. Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, there is an issue on which I would like to engage in a colloquy and get the support of the chairman of the committee. I understand that section 319(h)(7)(F) identifies the scope for which a State may use clean water grants. Mr. Chairman, in my State of Florida, the excessive growth of nonindigenous, noxious aquatic weeds, like hydrilla, is an extremely serious impairment of our waters. Funds available for control of these weeds are presently very limited. This provision authorizes States like Florida to utilize a portion of their nonpoint source funds, should they choose to do so, for the control of excessive growth of these nonindigenous aquatic weeds. Although this is an important use, Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the utilization of funds for aquatic weed control should not deplete the funds available for other nonpoint source programs. Is that the understanding of the chairman of the committee? Mr. SHUSTER. If the gentlewoman will yield, Mr. Chairman, that is correct. Mrs. FOWLER. I thank the chairman of the committee for his support and clarification of this section. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. H.R. 961 is a dangerous piece of legislation for my district, which includes the beautiful Santa Monica Bay. For years the people of Los Angeles have worked to clean the bay and make it safe for swimmers, divers, and the thousands of people who eat local seafood. The city of Los Angeles, however, deserves very little credit for this. City bureaucrats have dragged their feet and done everything they could to avoid tougher controls. But our community was so committed that it overruled the bureaucrats and twice voted by overwhelming margins to stop the Los Angeles sewage system from dumping poorly treated sewage into the bay. As a result, we have spent over $2 billion to bring full secondary treatment to the Hyperion treatment plant. Let me repeat that, because it is important to understand our situation. We have already spent $2 billion to stop dangerous pollution. To complete the project, we need to spend $85 million more. Well, under this bill, we will never spend that $85 million, and we will never be able to clean up the bay. H.R. 961 would overturn our local decision and relieve the sewage system from meeting its obligation under the Clean Water Act to treat sewage. This is a bizarre situation. This Congress is going to overturn a local decision made by Los Angeles voters, and in the process throw $2 billion down the drain and condemn the Santa Monica Bay to a cons

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CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995
(House of Representatives - May 11, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H4802-H4868] CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995 The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). Pursuant to House Resolution 140 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill, H.R. 961. {time} 1040 in the committee of the whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill (H.R. 961) to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, with Mr. Hobson (Chairman pro tempore) in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. When the Committee of the Whole rose on Wednesday, May 10, 1995, the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert] had been disposed of, and [[Page H4803]] title III was open to amendment at any point. Are there further amendments to title III? amendments offered by mr. traficant Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I offer 2 amendments, and I ask unanimous consent that the amendments, one in title III and one in title V, be considered en bloc. The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Clerk will report the amendments. The Clerk read as follows: Amendments offered by Mr. Traficant: Page 35, after line 23, insert the following: ``(2) Limitation and Notice.--If the Administrator or a State extends the deadline for point source compliance and encourages the development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology under paragraph (1), the Administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extend practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. In providing an extension under this subsection, the Administrator or State shall provide to the recipient of such extension a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by this paragraph. Page 35, line 24, strike ``(2)'' and insert ``(3)''. Page 35, line 7, strike ``(3)'' and insert ``(4)''. Page 35, line 18, strike ``(4)'' and insert ``(5)''. Page 216, line 12, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 217, line 7, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 219, after line 18, insert the following: SEC. 512. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. Title V (33 U.S.C. 1361-1377) is further amended by inserting before section 522, as redesignated by section 510 of this Act, the following: ``SEC. 521. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. ``(a) Purchase of American-Made Equipment and Products.--It is the sense of Congress that, to the greatest extent practicable, all equipment and products purchased with funds made available under this Act should be American-made. ``(b) Notice to Recipients of Assistance.--In providing financial assistance under this Act, the Administrator, to the greatest extent practicable, shall provide to each recipient of the assistance a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by subsection (a).'' Conform the table of contents of the bill accordingly. Mr. TRAFICANT (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be considered as read and printed in the Record. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, these are basically Buy American amendments. This one, though, deals with the fact that if the administrator or State extends the deadline for point source compliance, and encourages development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology, under paragraph 1, the administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extent practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. That would encourage more technology development in our country to deal with these issues. It has been worked out. The second amendment is a standard ``Buy American'' amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. We have reviewed these, and we think these are good amendments. We support them. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I have no reason to object to the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio. Mr. TRAFICANT. With that, Mr. Chairman, I urge a vote in favor of the amendments. The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant]. The amendments were agreed to. The CHAIRMAN. Are there other amendments to title III of the bill? amendment offered by mr. pallone Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows'. Amendment offered by Mr. Pallone: Strike title IX of the bill (pages 323 through 326). Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would strike provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for sewage treatment plants in certain coastal communities which discharge into ocean water. There are two major steps to wastewater treatment which I think many of us know. One is the physical primary treatment, which is the removal of suspended solids. The second is the biological or secondary treatment, which is the removal of dissolved waste by bacteria. Secondary treatment, in my opinion, is very important, because it is critical to the removal of organic material from sewage. It is the material linked to hepatitis and gastroenteritis for swimmers. It is also the common denominator. Secondary treatment sets a base level of treatment that all must achieve, putting all facilities on equal ground. Today almost 15,000 publicly owned treatment works around the country apply secondary treatment. It makes no sense to exempt many of these facilities. Under existing law, a national standard of secondary treatment for public owned treatment works was established by Congress in the original 1972 Clean Water Act. There was a window of time during which facilities could apply for ocean discharge as an alternative to secondary treatment. However, this window has closed. A bill was passed last year, October 31, that allows the city of San Diego to apply for a waiver, even though that window has closed. The EPA has a year pursuant to that legislation to make a decision on their application, and at present it looks likely that San Diego would be granted such a waiver. However, despite these concessions that have been made, a provision has been included in H.R. 961 that would grant such a waiver to San Diego without the necessary EPA review. I am concerned, Mr. Chairman, that we are going toward what I would call a slippery slope on the issue of secondary treatment. {time} 1045 The San Diego waiver was for ocean outfalls at least 4 miles out and 300 feet deep. This was the only provision in the original H.R. 961. But in committee this section was expanded. Other towns can now apply for 10-year permits that would allow for ocean discharge only 1 mile out and at 150 feet of depth. This new expansion of the section applies to at least six facilities in California, two in Hawaii, and there may be two dozen other facilities that it could apply. Also, communities under 10,000 are now eligible for permits, and there are about 6,500 facilities of 63 percent of all facilities that could be eligible under this under 10,000 provision. Soon Puerto Rico may also be able to apply for a waiver of secondary treatment because of the legislation the committee marked. I think that this is a terrible development. I would like to know what is next. What other waivers and weakening amendments are going to exist to the Clean Water Act? Ultimately, if we proceed down this slippery slope, secondary treatment may in fact disappear in many parts of the country. Secondary treatment may be costly, but it will cost more to clean up the mess after the fact, if we can clean it up at all. The ultimate problem I have, and I am trying to correct with this amendment, is this idea that somehow the ocean is out of sight, out of mind, that is, a sort of endless sink that we can continue to dump material in. It is not true. The material comes back and ocean water quality continues to deteriorate. Please do not gut the Clean Water Act. Let us not start down the slippery slope of allowing ocean discharge without secondary treatment, and please support this amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment strikes all of the secondary treatment [[Page H4804]] provisions in the bill. During the debate on the unfunded mandates, secondary treatment was cited as one of the most costly unfunded mandates to States and localities. Our bill provides relief from this mandate, but it provides relief only where it is also an unfunded mandate. Our bill allows a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean discharges, but only where secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. Let me emphasize that. We allow for a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean benefits but only when secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. This waiver must be approved by either the State water quality authority people or by the EPA, so this is not some willy-nilly waiver that a locality can give itself. It must go through the rigorous procedure of first showing that by getting the waiver, they are providing no environmental benefit, and, second, getting the approval of the EPA or the State. The bill also allows certain alternative wastewater treatment technologies for small cities to be deemed secondary treatment if, and this is a big if, if they will contribute to the attainment of water quality standards. This flexibility, Mr. Chairman, is badly needed because traditional centralized municipal wastewater treatment systems do not always make economic sense to small communities. We need to provide the flexibility to the States and to EPA to allow the use of alternatives, for example, like constructed wetlands or lagoons, where they make both economic and environmental sense. Perhaps the most egregious example of the problems we would face if we were to adopt this amendment is the situation in San Diego to spend $3 billion on secondary treatment facilities when indeed the California EPA and the National Academy of Sciences says it is unnecessary. So this flexibility is needed not only for San Diego but for many of the cities across America. I strongly urge defeat of this amendment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. (Mr. MINETA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, the idea of waiving secondary treatment standards sounds alarms because the successes of the Clean Water Act over the past 23 years are attributable in large part to the act's requirements for a baseline level of treatment--secondary treatment, in the case of municipal dischargers. There are several reasons that these waivers should be stricken from the bill: First, they are not based on sound science; second, they threaten to degrade water quality and devastate the shoreline; third, they are unfair; and, fourth, they are unnecessary. Not Based on Sound Science Several of the bill's secondary waiver provisions abandon the basic requirement that the applicant demonstrate that a waiver will not harm the marine environment. The bill abandons this requirement, even though it makes sense, and has been met by more than 40 communities that have obtained waivers. This congressional waiver of scientific standards is at direct odds with the themes of sound science and risk analysis that were embraced in the Contract With America. The consequences could be devastating to the environment. Harmful To Water Quality and the Marine Environment For example, the secondary waiver provision intended for Los Angeles provides for waivers if the discharge is a mere 1 mile offshore, and 150 feet deep. Unfortunately, history has taught us that sewage discharges at about 1 mile offshore can wreak havoc. In 1992, San Diego's sewage pipe ruptured two-thirds of a mile offshore, spewing partially treated sewage containing coliform and other bacterias and viruses, and closing more than 4 miles of beaches. This environmental disaster happened just one-third of a mile closer to shore than the 1-mile-offshore standard for municipal discharges under one of the waivers in this bill. In addition, it appears that this waiver provision, although intended for Los Angeles, picks up at least 19 other cities as well. And, the waiver for small communities makes thousands more communities eligible for waivers, even though many of them are already meeting secondary requirements and could seek to reduce current treatment under this provision. Since the number of waivers authorized under this bill is potentially quite large, the environmental impact also can be expected to be substantial, particularly for waste discharged just 1 mile from shore. The San Diego and Los Angeles provisions both provide for enhanced primary treatment in place of secondary. We would think for a minute about what primary treatment is. It is not really treatment at all--you just get the biggest solids out by screening or settling, and the rest goes through raw, untreated. Chemically enhanced primary means you add a little chlorine to the raw sewage before discharging it. This means that even when the system is operating properly--without any breaks in the pipe spewing sewage onto our beaches--the bill could result in essentially raw human waste being dumped a mile out from our beaches. Most Californians do not want essentially raw sewage dumped 1 mile from their beaches. unfair The waiver provisions are unfair because they grant preferential treatment to select communities. This favoritism has direct consequences for the thousands of communities that most of us represent: those that have expended, or are in the process of spending, substantial resources to comply with secondary requirements. Some communities, such as the city of San Jose which I represent, have gone well beyond secondary. The waiver provisions say to all of these communities that they were fools for having complied with the law, because if they had just dragged their feet, they, too, could have escaped these requirements. unnecessary In the case of San Diego, the inequity of allowing a third bite at the apple is heightened by the fact that San Diego will obtain a secondary waiver treatment without the bill. Yes, the bill's waiver provision is completely unnecessary for San Diego because San Diego was singled out for preferential treatment just last year. In October 1994 President Clinton signed into law a bill that was passed in the closing days of the 103d Congress. Of the thousands of communities required to achieve secondary treatment, only San Diego was authorized to apply for a waiver last year. San Diego submitted its application last month, an EPA has publicly announced its commitment to act quickly and both EPA and the city expect that a waiver will be granted. Why, then, is San Diego now receiving another waiver? Because this year's waiver would provide even a better deal than last year's--it would be permanent, and would excuse Dan Diego from baseline requirements that last year San Diego agreed that it could and would meet. Mr. Chairman. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. (Mr. BILBRAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I would have to say, as someone who has spent 18 years fighting to clean up the pollution in San Diego County, it concerns me when my colleague from California speaks of the pollution problems in San Diego, when in fact we can recognize that one of the major problems we have had is that the regulation has taken precedence over the science and the need to protect the public health. This bill as presented by the chairman reflects the scientific data that shows that not only does having chemically enhanced primary not hurt the environment, but it also shows that the studies that have been done by many, many scientific groups, in fact every major scientific study in the San Diego region has shown that if we go to secondary, as my colleague from California would suggest, that the secondary mandate would create more environmental damage than not going to secondary. [[Page H4805]] This is a big reason why a gentleman from Scripps Institute, a Dr. Revell, came to me and personally asked me to intervene. My colleagues may not think that I have any credentials in the environmental field, but I would point out that Dr. Revell is one of the most noted oceanographers that has ever lived in this century. He just passed away. He was saying strongly that the secondary mandate on the city of San Diego was going to be a travesty, a travesty to the people of San Diego but, more important, a damage to the environment of our oceans and our land. My colleague from San Jose has pointed out that there may be a problem giving waivers. I think we all agree that there are appropriate procedures, but those procedures should follow science. The city of San Jose has gone to extensive treatment, Mr. Chairman, but when the science said that you could dispose of that in the estuary of southern San Francisco Bay, my colleague's city of San Jose was given a waiver to be able to do that, and will continue to do it because the science says that it is okay. Our concern with this is the fact that the process should follow the path toward good environment. What we have today now is a process that diverts the attention of those of us in San Diego and the EPA away from real environmental problems and puts it toward a product that is 26 pounds of reports, 1.5 million dollars' worth of expenses. It is something that I think that we really have to test those of us here: Do we care about the environment of America or do we care about the regulations of Congress? When the science and the scientists who have worked strongly on this stand up and say, ``Don't require secondary sewage in San Diego,'' we really are put to the test. Are we more wedded to our regulation than we are to our environment? {time} 1100 Now if you do not believe me, though I have fought hard at trying to clean up Mexican sewage and trying to get the sewage to stay in pipes, while the EPA has ignored that, they have concentrated on this process. I would ask my colleague to consider his own colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner], who has worked with me on this and lives in the community and has talked to the scientists, and Mr. Filner can tell you quite clearly that this is not an issue of the regulations with the environment, this is one of those situations where the well- intentioned but misguided mandate of the 1970's has been interpreted to mean we are going to damage the environment of San Diego, and I would strongly urge that the environment takes precedence here. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleague from San Diego, Mr. Filner, to respond to the fact that is it not true that the major marine biologists, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, one of the most noted institutes in the entire country on the ocean impacts, supports our actions on this item? Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being here with the Congressman from my adjacent district, San Diego. Before I answer the question, I do want to point out that for many years we had adjacent districts in local government, Mr. Bilbray being a county supervisor and myself being a San Diego city councilman. We have worked together for many, many years on this very issue. We have fought about it, we have argued about it, we have come to an agreement about how we should handle this, and I think it is very appropriate that we are both now in the Congress to try to finally give San Diego some assurance to try to deal satisfactorily with the environment, and yet do it in a cost- effective manner. The gentleman from California asked me about good science. The gentleman from San Jose talked about good science. The most respected scientists who deal with oceanography in the world at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography have agreed with our conclusions. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Filner and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, the scientists from the Scripps Institute have lobbied this Congress for this change. The Federal judge in charge of the case has lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. And I would ask my colleague to continue that thought. Mr. BILBRAY. I would like to point out, Mr. Chairman, my experience with Mr. Filner was as the director of the public health department for San Diego, and as he knows, this is not something I am not involved with. I happened to be personally involved with the water quality there. I surf, my 9- and 8-year-old children surf. We have water contact; we care about the environment. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I do not understand though, since the existing bill that was passed last year actually allows for you to have a waiver, assuming certain conditions are met, and EPA I understand has already gone through that application process, why do you find it necessary in this bill to grant an absolute waiver? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of the Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. BILBRAY. Why would I ask? Mr. PALLONE. In other words, my understanding, you tell me if I am wrong, is that pursuant to this legislation, I will call it special legislation if you will that passed last year, San Diego can now apply for a waiver. It may be the only municipality that can. And EPA is now in the process of looking at that application for a waiver, and if in fact what Mr. Filner and you say is the case that the waiver then is likely to be granted, why do we need to take that one exception that is already in the law for San Diego and now expand it to many others, thousands possibly of other municipalities around the country? Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that it is costing $1.5 million. The fact is, it is only a 4- to 5-year waiver, and the fact that under our bill all monitoring, the EPA will monitor it, the Environmental Protection Agency of California will monitor it. We have developed a system that scientists say will be the most cost-effective way of approaching this. All of the monitoring, all of the public health protections are there. As long as the environment continues not to be injured, we will continue to move forward. And you have to understand, too, one thing you do not understand that Mr. Filner and I do understand, we have had at the time of this process, this bureaucratic process has been going on, we have had our beaches closed and polluted from other sources that the EPA has ignored. Mr. PALLONE. I understand, and you have gone through that with me and I appreciate that. My only point is I do not want to go down the slippery slope of the possibility of getting applications and waivers granted. Mr. BILBRAY. There is no slippery slope. What it says is those that have proven scientifically there is no reasonable reason to think there is environmental damage that is going to occur should not have to go through a process of having to go through EPA and the Federal bureaucracy. I think you would agree if we in the 1970's were told by scientists there is no foreseeable damage or foreseeable problem with water quality, this law would never have been passed. In San Diego the scientists have said that, and I think you need to reflect it. Mr. PALLONE. My point is the exemption for San Diego applies to 3 miles out, certain feet. Mr. BILBRAY. Four miles, 300 feet. Mr. PALLONE. Now you have another exemption for certain towns. Mr. BILBRAY. Totally different. [[Page H4806]] Mr. PALLONE. Though you have another exemption, towns under 10,000, no scientific basis for that. All these things are thrown into the bill. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for an additional 2 minutes). Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is here it is outcome-based. In fact the water quality is not violated as long as scientists at EPA say there is not damage. My concern to you is if the monitoring is done, if the environment is protected, if EPA and all of the scientists say it is fine, why, then why is the process with a million and a half dollars and 26 pounds of paper so important to you to make sure those reports have been filed? Mr. PALLONE. The difference is you are going through that process and you may actually achieve it in convincing the EPA pursuant to the existing law that that is the case. But what this bill has done is go beyond that, it has said that there is an absolute waiver for San Diego, they do not really have to do anything else at this point. Mr. BILBRAY. Yes, with all the monitoring that would have to be done under existing law, the same review process and public testimony the same way. Mr. PALLONE. Then it goes on to take another category, 1 mile and 150 is OK, and for a third category if you are under 10,000 it is OK. For another category for Puerto Rico we are going to do the study. You know you may make the case, we will have to see, that your exception makes sense. You may be able to do that to the EPA, but why do we have to gut the entire bill and make all those other exceptions? It makes no sense to carry one San Diego case that is now going through proper channels. This says they get the waiver; they do not need to go through the process in the previous bill, and now we have all these other exemptions. Mr. BILBRAY. You have to read the bill and all the conditions of being able to meet the triggers of the EPA. Mr. PALLONE. I have the bill in front of me. It has four different categories. The San Diego category, then it goes for the ones who go 1 mile and 150, then the ones that are 10,000 or fewer, and then it goes to Puerto Rico. All of these categories. Mr. BILBRAY. And you have monitoring that basically says that you have to prove, bring monitoring that you do not, that you are not degrading the environment. That is what we are talking about; we are talking about an outcome basis. Does it hurt the environment? Not the regulations. Is the environment hurt here. Mr. PALLONE. I do not see any scientific basis. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] be allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I will not do so now, but if we are going to move this along, I think we should all try to stay within the rules of the House and the time allotment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I was just asking for unanimous consent for the gentleman from San Diego, Mr. Bilbray, to be given an additional 2 minutes, and I would like to be able to ask a question of him since he also referred to the city of San Jose, and I happen to be the former mayor of San Jose. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Chair will inquire once again, is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? There was no objection. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield. Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, my objection is this: that last year we worked to grant the city of San Diego the opportunity to apply under previously expired provisions to apply for a waiver. I thought we did that in good faith, with the city of San Diego also agreeing to certain conditions. Things like the need for alternative uses for their water and say that this would be a waiver that would only be good for a certain period of time. It is my understanding that the waiver is indefinite, except that there is a requirement for a report to be done every 5 years. And that to me is a reasonable kind of an approach. Also in terms of any waiver for the city of San Jose, I am not familiar with what the gentleman is referring to, because we are at tertiary treatment in terms of our discharge into San Francisco Bay. Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that San Jose opens into an open trench into 20 feet of water in an estuary; it does not place it 350 feet deep and 4\1/2\ miles out in an area where scientists say not only does it not hurt the environment, it helps it. And so you do have a waiver to be able to do that rather than being required to have to use other outfall systems but it is because you were able to show that. But the trouble here with this process is that all reasonable scientific data shows that there is no reason to have to spend the 26 pounds of reports, the $1\1/2\ million, and when you get into it, EPA will be the trigger to decide if that process needs to go. What EPA told me as a public health director when I say this is a waste of money, the Government did not mean to do this, they said Congress makes us do it. They do not give us the latitude to be able to make a judgment call based on reasonable environmental regulations they have mandated to us. So I am taking the mandate away from them. Mr. BORSKI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my strong support for this amendment to strike the waivers of secondary treatment requirements. This is an issue of protecting our Nation's beaches and coastal waters. It is a matter of protecting the tourist economies of many States and of protecting the health of the American people. Do we want our ocean waters to be a disposal area for sewage that has received only the barest minimum of treatment? For 20 years, we have done better than that as the secondary treatment requirement has stood as one of the pillars of the Clean Water Act. This bill started with a waiver for one city--San Diego. Then it moved to two dozen more in California and another possible six in Florida. Then we added Puerto Rico. Where will this race to lower standards end? H.R. 961 tells those who complied with the Clean Water Act that they should have waited. Maybe, they could have gotten a waiver. It tells those who waited that they were smart. They could keep putting their untreated sewage in the ocean. The beaches of New Jersey had frequent water problems several years ago before New York City finished its secondary treatment plant. The problems in New Jersey should be a warning that we should stick to the secondary treatment requirements and not put poorly treated sewage in the ocean. This provision of H.R. 961 sends us back more than 20 years. Since 1972, secondary treatment has been the standard that all communities have been required to meet. That basic standard of the Clean Water Act should not be changed. We should keep moving forward on the effort to clean up our waters. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to hold the line on secondary treatment and vote for this amendment. Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have to admit that I have seen some alternatives around the world that do intrigue me. If we are going to go to this broad of an exemption from secondary treatment, for instance in Hong Kong, I was there and on the ferry early one morning, and I noticed how they deal with it, they do not require secondary; in many cases they do not require primary treatment. They are a little oversubscribed to their sewer system. They have nifty boats that go around the harbor with nets in the front and they scoop up everything that floats, and if it does not float, it is not a problem. So I guess [[Page H4807]] you know if we cannot support the Pallone amendment, we can say we are headed in that direction. We can buy some of the nifty little boats from Hong Kong with the nets on the front and drive them around the beachfront areas in the morning before people go in for that swim, and you know if you cannot see it, it is not a problem. {time} 1115 Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Oregon knows that on almost every environmental issue, we are in total agreement. Are you familiar with the percentage of solid removal in the system that San Diego now uses? Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, my understanding is you attempt to achieve 84 percent. Mr. FILNER. It is not an attempt. We achieve 84 percent. Mr. DeFAZIO. I will tell you, reclaiming my time, in my metropolitan wastewater facility, of which I was on the board of directors as a county commissioner, we built it for $110 million. We get 100 percent out. We do secondary and we do tertiary treatment. Theoretically, if one wanted to, one could drink the outfall. I do not want to drink the outfall. I do not know that we have to drive everything to that standard. But to think of the ocean as an endless dump close in proximity, I realize you have a big problem with Mexico, basically you are saying Mexico can dump all their stuff in there, why cannot we not just dump in a small amount of our stuff. I do not think that is the solution. I think we should be forcing Mexico to clean up so the people in California can go to the beach every day in the future. Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will yield, that is exactly our policy. As a matter of fact, those of us who live in San Diego and who completely depend on the beaches not only for our own enjoyment but for tourism and economic help, we could never possibly see the ocean as merely a dumping ground. We believe it, as you do, we believe that money to get that infinitesimal increase in solid removal required by the EPA to put into water reclamation, to put into tertiary, to deal with the Mexican sewage is the way we ought to spend our money, not be required to spend billions of dollars on something which gives us very little marine environment protection. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, do you think 16 percent is infinitesimal? Mr. FILNER. No, it is not 16 percent. You know what secondary requirements are? Mr. DeFAZIO. I am talking about the difference between the 84 percent and the 100 percent. Mr. FILNER. The law requires us to do 85 percent. We are doing 84 percent. Should we spend $5 billion to get an infinitesimal increase in that solid removal with enormous damage to the land environment, because we would have to put in extra energy to do that for sludge. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time. Mr. FILNER. It is not environmentally sound. Mr. DeFAZIO. Does this exemption go narrowly to that 1 percent for San Diego, or does exemption go beyond that? Mr. FILNER. I am certainly supporting it as the section in the bill that applies to San Diego. Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Ms. HARMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I spoke yesterday generally about this bill and my objections to it. I am rising today to support the Pallone amendment, and also to make some more specific comments about that portion of the bill providing a waiver for full secondary treatment. That portion of the bill was drafted by my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn], and his district is just south of mine, and we agree on most everything, except for this. I want to explain why we disagree and also to say that we worked together. His office was extremely helpful to me in providing information in support of his amendment, and I hope he understands that my demur has to do specifically with what I believe are the unintended consequences of his amendment on Santa Monica Bay. Santa Monica Bay is the largest bay in southern California, and most of it is in my congressional district. I wrote to EPA so that I could understand better whether good science was involved in his amendment and how it would affect Santa Monica Bay. The letter that I received the other day from the assistant administrator of EPA says, in part: This amendment does not appear to be based upon sound science. We are not aware of any scientific documentation which suggests that discharges through outfalls that are 1 mile and 150 feet deep are always environmentally benign. To the contrary, a 1993 study by the National Research Council recommended that, ``Coastal wastewater management strategy should be tailored to the characteristics, values, and uses of the particular receiving environment.'' Thus, we believe this blanket exemption is neither scientifically nor environmentally justifiable, and could result in harm to the people who depend upon the oceans and coasts for their livelihood and enjoyment. And the letter goes on to say specifically that with respect to the Santa Monica Bay Restoration project, a project worked on by all sorts of agencies and individuals in California and supported by California's Governor, Pete Wilson, this blanket exemption could derail the key element of the restoration plan. For those careful and specific reasons, I oppose the Horn language, and I support the Pallone amendment. And let me add just one thing, Mr. Chairman. Somewhere here is a chart that was provided to me by EPA, and it shows the consequences of not going to full secondary treatment. The suspended solids that can be discharged are the biggest problem, and the chart has this broken out by area of Los Angeles. In the L.A. County sanitation district, which would be directly affected by this exemption, the suspended solids are the highest portion of this chart, and it is a big problem specifically for Los Angeles. Let me finally say one more thing. The gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has sent, I think today, a ``Dear Colleague'' letter, and he makes a point with which I agree, and I want to apologize to him. He says that in a different ``Dear Colleague'' letter circulated by some of us, we said that his amendment could result in raw sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. That was an error. I apologize for that. The amendment would result in partially treated sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. I urge my colleagues to support the Pallone amendment. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend for yielding. The San Diego situation is a classic example of regulatory overkill. But regardless of how you feel about San Diego, you should vote ``no'' on this amendment, because it guts all of the provisions that allow flexibility on secondary treatment, including the flexibility for small communities across America. We have worked on all of these provisions with State officials, wastewater and environmental engineers, and we should resoundingly defeat this amendment not only because of San Diego but because of what it does across America. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to this amendment to strike the provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for certain coastal communities which discharge into deep waters. I successfully offered this provision in the committee markup of H.R. 961. My reasons for doing so were based on sound scientific reasons, and they are environmentally responsible. I was delighted, and I am delighted to take the apology of my distinguished colleague from southern California. That letter she quotes from the assistant administrator of EPA talks in broad generalities. It does not talk about the specifics of the Los Angeles [[Page H4808]] area situation, and I want to go into that. There is no permanent waiver in this provision. It would be good for 10 years. It would be subject to renewal after that period. The driving force behind this amendment is simply good science. This Congress is moving forward to implement cost/benefit analysis and risk assessment across all environmental statutes. Deep ocean outfalls that meet all water quality standards are an obvious place to apply these principles. Now, to obtain this waiver, publicly owned treatment works must meet a stringent high-hurdles test, and I have not heard one word about that today. Outfalls must be at least 1 mile long, 150 feet deep. The discharge must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards, and I do not think anyone is going to tell us that California has low water quality standards. We have high standards, just as we do in air pollution. Now, the publicly owned treatment works must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. The application must have an EPA-approved pretreatment plan, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. Effluent must have received at least a chemically enhanced primary treatment level, and at least 75 percent of suspended solids must have been removed. That is exactly what we have. This provision is not any broad loophole. Indications also are that only five publicly owned treatment works in the country would meet this high-hurdles test. They are Honolulu, Anchorage, Orange County, and Los Angeles Country, and the city of Los Angeles. The first three cities already have waivers. As I said in committee, the program under which the original waivers were given to the city and country, that has expired. The country of Los Angeles is being forced to spend $400 million to go to full secondary treatment. Now, if that money went to improving the environment or cleaning up real environmental problems, and we have hundreds of them where usually the lawyers are getting the fees and we are not cleaning up the problems, that would all be understandable. But it is not. This provision simply assures that we are spending local and Federal dollars wisely, not forcing communities to take steps that simply make no sense, which begs the question: Why should we force communities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to meet a standard where that standard is already being met? The city of Los Angeles treatment already meets the requirements of secondary treatment. So why spend millions of the taxpayers' hard- earned dollars to require Los Angeles to build facilities that already meet that required standard? The effluent from the county of Los Angeles far exceeds the rigorous State ocean plan developed by the State of California for every single measured area, including suspended solids, toxics, and heavy metals. I have some attached graphs here some of you might want to wander up and look at. The current requirements to force the publicly owned treatment works to full secondary treatment is not justified when meeting that standard will bring no environmental improvement to the ocean but will cost local ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Chairman, the science behind this provision is irrefutable. No one is advocating pumping untreated wastewater into deep oceans off of Santa Monica Bay or in Santa Monica Bay or elsewhere. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, going to full secondary treatment will not have any positive environmental benefit. Instead, we will be spending, as I have said earlier, hundreds of millions of dollars of the citizens of the county and city of Los Angeles, local taxpayer money, for no good reason. We simply cannot afford to be wasting money on problems that do not exist. If municipal wastewater treatment facilities are meeting the high- hurdles test, including in H.R. 961, it serves the public interest, it serves the interests of the local taxpayers, and it serves the interests of the Nation to keep this waiver intact, and all else is really nonsense. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Pallone and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I wanted to ask is: We had the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman] read from some sections of this letter from the EPA from a Mr. Perciasepe. I do not know if the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has seen this or not. Mr. HORN. I have not. Mr. PALLONE. And also from the EPA I received a list of another, I do not know, another 10 to 20 municipalities beyond 6 in California and the extra 2 in Hawaii you mentioned. My concern is this; this is the crux of it. Clearly, San Diego is one situation. They already have a waiver pursuant to existing law. But the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] which now goes to the 150-foot depth and the 1 mile. Mr. HORN. And 5 miles, I might add, is the other one. One is 1 mile out, one is 150; the other is 5 miles out, 150. Mr. PALLONE. This begins to open the door, if you will, to a whole different group of municipal sewage treatment plants beyond the San Diego waiver and is, of course, of greater concern to me than even that one. You mentioned scientific evidence. Clearly, this letter from the EPA assistant administrator indicates that they are very concerned that this exemption that you have now put in is not based on sound science, plus the EPA has given us a strong indication that beyond the 6 or so California and the 2 Hawaii ones, we are talking now possibly about another 20 or 30. We do not know how many. It is a major concern. I just have not heard anything from the gentleman to verify scientific basis for this new exemption that goes beyond San Diego. Mr. HORN. I know of no one that disagrees that the city and county of Los Angeles have met the scientific standards. EPA has never said it. If they are suddenly coming in at the last minute with a little sideswiping and saying all of these cities will be eligible for it, that is nonsense. {time} 1130 My language is very specific. It applies to one situation: The city and county of Los Angeles, that already have the waste treatment, that goes out to sea. There has not been any complaints that they are violating any standard of science. They test regularly. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Hunter and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. chairman, my point is, again, I heard the San Diego argument, I heard the Los Angeles argument. I do not agree with it, but I am hearing it. You are opening the door, and you have opened it to the six California and two Hawaii ones, to eliminating secondary treatment requirements for a whole slew of other municipalities. That is a problem. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, may I say to the gentleman from New Jersey, we are not opening the door. The language is very specific. The hurdles are quite specific as to the outfalls 1 mile long, 150 feet deep, that must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards and must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place. That is exactly what we have. These charts show that we are way below the level of concern. The question if very simple, folks. For the sake of the ego of EPA, do we have the taxpayers of Los Angeles spend $400 million when it will not improve the situation one iota, because [[Page H4809]] they already meet it? So the full secondary bit has been met in the pre-secondary, and that is why we should not be spending $400 million more. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me say I support him in his efforts to inject some common sense into this arbitrary application of law that defies science. The best scientists in the world have supported our situation in San Diego, where they say nature takes care of this; you do not have to spend $2 billion, EPA, we can spend it somewhere else where we desperately need it. Science also supports the gentleman from Long Beach. The point is, the gentleman says this opens the door. Let me say to my friend from New Jersey, the door should always be open to reason, common sense, and science. That is precisely what we are injecting in this argument today. With all the programs, good programs, that must take reductions because of the deficit problem, the idea that you do not use common sense to reduce spending where it does not have to be done makes no sense. So I support the gentleman. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, not to beat a dead horse or a dead sewage system, as the case may be, I do rise in strong opposition to the amendment offered by my friend the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone]. This amendment raises the possibility that San Diego will be forced to waste, yes, waste, billions of dollars to change a sewage system that this Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, a Federal District Court judge, the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, the world renowned scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, have all agreed does no harm and in fact may benefit the marine environment. Mr. Chairman, the one-size-fits-all requirement of the Clean Water Act just does not make sense for San Diego. It does not make scientific sense, it does not make economic sense, nor does it make environmental sense. It is simply a bureaucratic requirement to provide a level of treatment that is unnecessary, costly, and provides no beneficial impact to the marine environment. This is not simply my personal opinion. The option, as we stated over and over again, is stated by scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and from the National Academy of Sciences. It is supported by reams of scientific data collected over the years. These studies have shown there is no degradation of water quality or the ecology of the ocean due to the discharge of the plant's chemically enhanced treated waste water. Let me point out, this is not merely a chlorine treated primary situation. This is an alternative to secondary treatment that includes a much higher level of technology that my friend, if I can yield to my friend from California [Mr. Bilbray], might explain. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I think the problem is understanding the technical issues here. The fact that what was interpreted as being chlorination, San Diego is not using the chlorination. Chemically enhanced primary treatment was actually brought to San Diego by members of the Sierra Club as a much more cost effective and environmentally safe way of getting to secondary treatment. It is where you use chemicals to remove the solids to fulfill the standard. What it does is say look, back in the seventies we thought there was only one way to able to clean up the water. Now scientists have come up with new technologies. If we look at a 1970 car and a 1990 car, we will agree there is a difference. The other issue, the chemical, what is called chemical enhanced primary, the fact is primary really is talking about a secondary treatment that does not use injected air and bubbling sewage around, biological activity. In a salt water environment scientists say there is no problem with this, it does the job. The only difference is the BOD, the biochemical oxygen demand, which in a deep salt water environment does not create any problem according to the scientists. I would like to point out, too, as my colleague has, we are talking about this can only be done if the facility's discharges are consistent with the ocean plan for the State of California, one of the most strict water quality programs in the entire Nation, if not the most. So we are saying how you do it we do not mind, as long as the finished product does not hurt the environment and gets the job done. I appreciate my colleagues who are going through a transition here. We are getting away from command and control, Washington knows the answer to everything. What we are trying to get down to is saying, local people, if you can find a better answer to get the job done that we want done, you not only have a right to do that, you have a responsibility, and we will not stand in the way of you doing that. I would like to point out that the monitoring continues. If there is a pollution problem, if the EPA sees there is a hassle, if the monitoring problem shows there is an environmental problem, this waiver immediately ceases and we go back to the same process. That should assure everyone who cares about the environment. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I do want to thank the chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for understanding the issues for San Diego, for helping us last year get our waiver, and for guaranteeing a success this year. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. FILNER. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, I would like my colleagues in the Congress to recognize that this has been an issue that has been before the Congress for as long as I have served in Congress, for 12 years and more. We have been working on this issue of trying to resolve the problems that San Diego has had. If we are to follow the general policy that is now taking place in the Congress, where we evaluate every requirement and every mandate and every regulation on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, there is absolutely no question that we would never impose a multibillion-dollar process on San Diego. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Filner was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, there is no way that this project, as it would be required to go to secondary treatment, could possibly pass a cost-benefit analysis, and thus we ought to really allow the flexibility that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Shuster] has put in the bill that would allow the City of San Diego to meet their requirements in an environmentally sound way. I strongly urge that the Congress approve the bill as it is written and reject this amendment. There is a bipartisan issue for this. The entire delegation from San Diego, of whom I am one, has recommended we disapprove this amendment. It is certainly important to us that we do not impose a $12 billion cost on the people of San Diego. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to Mr. Pallone's amendment to the clean water reauthorization bill. This amendment plays right into the environmentalists' chicken little cries that our environmental protection system is falling. On the contrary, chairman Shuster's amendments to the clean water bill provide communities the flexibility they need to better protect our natural resources. Specifically, Mr. Pallone claims that allowing San Diego a permanent waiver to the EPA's burdensome secondary sewage requirements jeopardizes southern California's water resources. The facts just do not support this assertion. San Diego's location on southern California's beautiful coastline allows the city to take advantage of deep ocean outfall capabilities. Scientific studies conclude that San Diego's sewage treatment efforts are both effective and environmentally sound. In fact, the surrounding ecosystem flourishes partly as a result of the outfall effluence. Yet, the EPA continues to shove their Federal mandates from Washington down the throats of San Diego taxpayers. They continue [[Page H4810]] to require San Diego to spend up to $12 billion on an unnecessary and potentially environmentally damaging secondary sewage treatment plant. Year after year, San Diego officials battle Federal bureaucrats who require the city to submit a costly, time consuming waiver application. The last one cost $1 million and was more than 3,000 pages long. The American people are tired of this kind of bureaucratic bullying Far from the Chicken Little cries of the environmentalists, the American people cry out for a little commonsense. Chairman Shuster's bill and the San Diego waiver provision bring a level of rationality to the environmental protection process. Since I began my service in Congress, I have worked as a former member of Chairman Shuster's committee to do just that. Now as part of a Republican majority, I am pleased to see my efforts come to fruition. Republicans love the environment as much as anyone. My district in southern California contains some of the most beautiful natural resources in the country. I would never vote for a bill which would damage those resources in any way. I just think the people who live on the coast, or in the forests, or canyons or grasslands have a better sense of how to protect their resources than some bureaucrat sitting in an office in Washington. The situation in San Diego demonstrates this most clearly. For that reason, I oppose Mr. Pallone's amendment. Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, there is an issue on which I would like to engage in a colloquy and get the support of the chairman of the committee. I understand that section 319(h)(7)(F) identifies the scope for which a State may use clean water grants. Mr. Chairman, in my State of Florida, the excessive growth of nonindigenous, noxious aquatic weeds, like hydrilla, is an extremely serious impairment of our waters. Funds available for control of these weeds are presently very limited. This provision authorizes States like Florida to utilize a portion of their nonpoint source funds, should they choose to do so, for the control of excessive growth of these nonindigenous aquatic weeds. Although this is an important use, Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the utilization of funds for aquatic weed control should not deplete the funds available for other nonpoint source programs. Is that the understanding of the chairman of the committee? Mr. SHUSTER. If the gentlewoman will yield, Mr. Chairman, that is correct. Mrs. FOWLER. I thank the chairman of the committee for his support and clarification of this section. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. H.R. 961 is a dangerous piece of legislation for my district, which includes the beautiful Santa Monica Bay. For years the people of Los Angeles have worked to clean the bay and make it safe for swimmers, divers, and the thousands of people who eat local seafood. The city of Los Angeles, however, deserves very little credit for this. City bureaucrats have dragged their feet and done everything they could to avoid tougher controls. But our community was so committed that it overruled the bureaucrats and twice voted by overwhelming margins to stop the Los Angeles sewage system from dumping poorly treated sewage into the bay. As a result, we have spent over $2 billion to bring full secondary treatment to the Hyperion treatment plant. Let me repeat that, because it is important to understand our situation. We have already spent $2 billion to stop dangerous pollution. To complete the project, we need to spend $85 million more. Well, under this bill, we will never spend that $85 million, and we will never be able to clean up the bay. H.R. 961 would overturn our local decision and relieve the sewage system from meeting its obligation under the Clean Water Act to treat sewage. This is a bizarre situation. This Congress is going to overturn a local decision made by Los Angeles voters, and in the process throw $2 billion down the drain and condemn the Santa Monica Bay

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CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995
(House of Representatives - May 11, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H4802-H4868] CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995 The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). Pursuant to House Resolution 140 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill, H.R. 961. {time} 1040 in the committee of the whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill (H.R. 961) to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, with Mr. Hobson (Chairman pro tempore) in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. When the Committee of the Whole rose on Wednesday, May 10, 1995, the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert] had been disposed of, and [[Page H4803]] title III was open to amendment at any point. Are there further amendments to title III? amendments offered by mr. traficant Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I offer 2 amendments, and I ask unanimous consent that the amendments, one in title III and one in title V, be considered en bloc. The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Clerk will report the amendments. The Clerk read as follows: Amendments offered by Mr. Traficant: Page 35, after line 23, insert the following: ``(2) Limitation and Notice.--If the Administrator or a State extends the deadline for point source compliance and encourages the development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology under paragraph (1), the Administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extend practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. In providing an extension under this subsection, the Administrator or State shall provide to the recipient of such extension a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by this paragraph. Page 35, line 24, strike ``(2)'' and insert ``(3)''. Page 35, line 7, strike ``(3)'' and insert ``(4)''. Page 35, line 18, strike ``(4)'' and insert ``(5)''. Page 216, line 12, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 217, line 7, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 219, after line 18, insert the following: SEC. 512. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. Title V (33 U.S.C. 1361-1377) is further amended by inserting before section 522, as redesignated by section 510 of this Act, the following: ``SEC. 521. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. ``(a) Purchase of American-Made Equipment and Products.--It is the sense of Congress that, to the greatest extent practicable, all equipment and products purchased with funds made available under this Act should be American-made. ``(b) Notice to Recipients of Assistance.--In providing financial assistance under this Act, the Administrator, to the greatest extent practicable, shall provide to each recipient of the assistance a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by subsection (a).'' Conform the table of contents of the bill accordingly. Mr. TRAFICANT (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be considered as read and printed in the Record. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, these are basically Buy American amendments. This one, though, deals with the fact that if the administrator or State extends the deadline for point source compliance, and encourages development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology, under paragraph 1, the administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extent practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. That would encourage more technology development in our country to deal with these issues. It has been worked out. The second amendment is a standard ``Buy American'' amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. We have reviewed these, and we think these are good amendments. We support them. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I have no reason to object to the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio. Mr. TRAFICANT. With that, Mr. Chairman, I urge a vote in favor of the amendments. The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant]. The amendments were agreed to. The CHAIRMAN. Are there other amendments to title III of the bill? amendment offered by mr. pallone Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows'. Amendment offered by Mr. Pallone: Strike title IX of the bill (pages 323 through 326). Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would strike provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for sewage treatment plants in certain coastal communities which discharge into ocean water. There are two major steps to wastewater treatment which I think many of us know. One is the physical primary treatment, which is the removal of suspended solids. The second is the biological or secondary treatment, which is the removal of dissolved waste by bacteria. Secondary treatment, in my opinion, is very important, because it is critical to the removal of organic material from sewage. It is the material linked to hepatitis and gastroenteritis for swimmers. It is also the common denominator. Secondary treatment sets a base level of treatment that all must achieve, putting all facilities on equal ground. Today almost 15,000 publicly owned treatment works around the country apply secondary treatment. It makes no sense to exempt many of these facilities. Under existing law, a national standard of secondary treatment for public owned treatment works was established by Congress in the original 1972 Clean Water Act. There was a window of time during which facilities could apply for ocean discharge as an alternative to secondary treatment. However, this window has closed. A bill was passed last year, October 31, that allows the city of San Diego to apply for a waiver, even though that window has closed. The EPA has a year pursuant to that legislation to make a decision on their application, and at present it looks likely that San Diego would be granted such a waiver. However, despite these concessions that have been made, a provision has been included in H.R. 961 that would grant such a waiver to San Diego without the necessary EPA review. I am concerned, Mr. Chairman, that we are going toward what I would call a slippery slope on the issue of secondary treatment. {time} 1045 The San Diego waiver was for ocean outfalls at least 4 miles out and 300 feet deep. This was the only provision in the original H.R. 961. But in committee this section was expanded. Other towns can now apply for 10-year permits that would allow for ocean discharge only 1 mile out and at 150 feet of depth. This new expansion of the section applies to at least six facilities in California, two in Hawaii, and there may be two dozen other facilities that it could apply. Also, communities under 10,000 are now eligible for permits, and there are about 6,500 facilities of 63 percent of all facilities that could be eligible under this under 10,000 provision. Soon Puerto Rico may also be able to apply for a waiver of secondary treatment because of the legislation the committee marked. I think that this is a terrible development. I would like to know what is next. What other waivers and weakening amendments are going to exist to the Clean Water Act? Ultimately, if we proceed down this slippery slope, secondary treatment may in fact disappear in many parts of the country. Secondary treatment may be costly, but it will cost more to clean up the mess after the fact, if we can clean it up at all. The ultimate problem I have, and I am trying to correct with this amendment, is this idea that somehow the ocean is out of sight, out of mind, that is, a sort of endless sink that we can continue to dump material in. It is not true. The material comes back and ocean water quality continues to deteriorate. Please do not gut the Clean Water Act. Let us not start down the slippery slope of allowing ocean discharge without secondary treatment, and please support this amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment strikes all of the secondary treatment [[Page H4804]] provisions in the bill. During the debate on the unfunded mandates, secondary treatment was cited as one of the most costly unfunded mandates to States and localities. Our bill provides relief from this mandate, but it provides relief only where it is also an unfunded mandate. Our bill allows a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean discharges, but only where secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. Let me emphasize that. We allow for a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean benefits but only when secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. This waiver must be approved by either the State water quality authority people or by the EPA, so this is not some willy-nilly waiver that a locality can give itself. It must go through the rigorous procedure of first showing that by getting the waiver, they are providing no environmental benefit, and, second, getting the approval of the EPA or the State. The bill also allows certain alternative wastewater treatment technologies for small cities to be deemed secondary treatment if, and this is a big if, if they will contribute to the attainment of water quality standards. This flexibility, Mr. Chairman, is badly needed because traditional centralized municipal wastewater treatment systems do not always make economic sense to small communities. We need to provide the flexibility to the States and to EPA to allow the use of alternatives, for example, like constructed wetlands or lagoons, where they make both economic and environmental sense. Perhaps the most egregious example of the problems we would face if we were to adopt this amendment is the situation in San Diego to spend $3 billion on secondary treatment facilities when indeed the California EPA and the National Academy of Sciences says it is unnecessary. So this flexibility is needed not only for San Diego but for many of the cities across America. I strongly urge defeat of this amendment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. (Mr. MINETA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, the idea of waiving secondary treatment standards sounds alarms because the successes of the Clean Water Act over the past 23 years are attributable in large part to the act's requirements for a baseline level of treatment--secondary treatment, in the case of municipal dischargers. There are several reasons that these waivers should be stricken from the bill: First, they are not based on sound science; second, they threaten to degrade water quality and devastate the shoreline; third, they are unfair; and, fourth, they are unnecessary. Not Based on Sound Science Several of the bill's secondary waiver provisions abandon the basic requirement that the applicant demonstrate that a waiver will not harm the marine environment. The bill abandons this requirement, even though it makes sense, and has been met by more than 40 communities that have obtained waivers. This congressional waiver of scientific standards is at direct odds with the themes of sound science and risk analysis that were embraced in the Contract With America. The consequences could be devastating to the environment. Harmful To Water Quality and the Marine Environment For example, the secondary waiver provision intended for Los Angeles provides for waivers if the discharge is a mere 1 mile offshore, and 150 feet deep. Unfortunately, history has taught us that sewage discharges at about 1 mile offshore can wreak havoc. In 1992, San Diego's sewage pipe ruptured two-thirds of a mile offshore, spewing partially treated sewage containing coliform and other bacterias and viruses, and closing more than 4 miles of beaches. This environmental disaster happened just one-third of a mile closer to shore than the 1-mile-offshore standard for municipal discharges under one of the waivers in this bill. In addition, it appears that this waiver provision, although intended for Los Angeles, picks up at least 19 other cities as well. And, the waiver for small communities makes thousands more communities eligible for waivers, even though many of them are already meeting secondary requirements and could seek to reduce current treatment under this provision. Since the number of waivers authorized under this bill is potentially quite large, the environmental impact also can be expected to be substantial, particularly for waste discharged just 1 mile from shore. The San Diego and Los Angeles provisions both provide for enhanced primary treatment in place of secondary. We would think for a minute about what primary treatment is. It is not really treatment at all--you just get the biggest solids out by screening or settling, and the rest goes through raw, untreated. Chemically enhanced primary means you add a little chlorine to the raw sewage before discharging it. This means that even when the system is operating properly--without any breaks in the pipe spewing sewage onto our beaches--the bill could result in essentially raw human waste being dumped a mile out from our beaches. Most Californians do not want essentially raw sewage dumped 1 mile from their beaches. unfair The waiver provisions are unfair because they grant preferential treatment to select communities. This favoritism has direct consequences for the thousands of communities that most of us represent: those that have expended, or are in the process of spending, substantial resources to comply with secondary requirements. Some communities, such as the city of San Jose which I represent, have gone well beyond secondary. The waiver provisions say to all of these communities that they were fools for having complied with the law, because if they had just dragged their feet, they, too, could have escaped these requirements. unnecessary In the case of San Diego, the inequity of allowing a third bite at the apple is heightened by the fact that San Diego will obtain a secondary waiver treatment without the bill. Yes, the bill's waiver provision is completely unnecessary for San Diego because San Diego was singled out for preferential treatment just last year. In October 1994 President Clinton signed into law a bill that was passed in the closing days of the 103d Congress. Of the thousands of communities required to achieve secondary treatment, only San Diego was authorized to apply for a waiver last year. San Diego submitted its application last month, an EPA has publicly announced its commitment to act quickly and both EPA and the city expect that a waiver will be granted. Why, then, is San Diego now receiving another waiver? Because this year's waiver would provide even a better deal than last year's--it would be permanent, and would excuse Dan Diego from baseline requirements that last year San Diego agreed that it could and would meet. Mr. Chairman. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. (Mr. BILBRAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I would have to say, as someone who has spent 18 years fighting to clean up the pollution in San Diego County, it concerns me when my colleague from California speaks of the pollution problems in San Diego, when in fact we can recognize that one of the major problems we have had is that the regulation has taken precedence over the science and the need to protect the public health. This bill as presented by the chairman reflects the scientific data that shows that not only does having chemically enhanced primary not hurt the environment, but it also shows that the studies that have been done by many, many scientific groups, in fact every major scientific study in the San Diego region has shown that if we go to secondary, as my colleague from California would suggest, that the secondary mandate would create more environmental damage than not going to secondary. [[Page H4805]] This is a big reason why a gentleman from Scripps Institute, a Dr. Revell, came to me and personally asked me to intervene. My colleagues may not think that I have any credentials in the environmental field, but I would point out that Dr. Revell is one of the most noted oceanographers that has ever lived in this century. He just passed away. He was saying strongly that the secondary mandate on the city of San Diego was going to be a travesty, a travesty to the people of San Diego but, more important, a damage to the environment of our oceans and our land. My colleague from San Jose has pointed out that there may be a problem giving waivers. I think we all agree that there are appropriate procedures, but those procedures should follow science. The city of San Jose has gone to extensive treatment, Mr. Chairman, but when the science said that you could dispose of that in the estuary of southern San Francisco Bay, my colleague's city of San Jose was given a waiver to be able to do that, and will continue to do it because the science says that it is okay. Our concern with this is the fact that the process should follow the path toward good environment. What we have today now is a process that diverts the attention of those of us in San Diego and the EPA away from real environmental problems and puts it toward a product that is 26 pounds of reports, 1.5 million dollars' worth of expenses. It is something that I think that we really have to test those of us here: Do we care about the environment of America or do we care about the regulations of Congress? When the science and the scientists who have worked strongly on this stand up and say, ``Don't require secondary sewage in San Diego,'' we really are put to the test. Are we more wedded to our regulation than we are to our environment? {time} 1100 Now if you do not believe me, though I have fought hard at trying to clean up Mexican sewage and trying to get the sewage to stay in pipes, while the EPA has ignored that, they have concentrated on this process. I would ask my colleague to consider his own colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner], who has worked with me on this and lives in the community and has talked to the scientists, and Mr. Filner can tell you quite clearly that this is not an issue of the regulations with the environment, this is one of those situations where the well- intentioned but misguided mandate of the 1970's has been interpreted to mean we are going to damage the environment of San Diego, and I would strongly urge that the environment takes precedence here. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleague from San Diego, Mr. Filner, to respond to the fact that is it not true that the major marine biologists, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, one of the most noted institutes in the entire country on the ocean impacts, supports our actions on this item? Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being here with the Congressman from my adjacent district, San Diego. Before I answer the question, I do want to point out that for many years we had adjacent districts in local government, Mr. Bilbray being a county supervisor and myself being a San Diego city councilman. We have worked together for many, many years on this very issue. We have fought about it, we have argued about it, we have come to an agreement about how we should handle this, and I think it is very appropriate that we are both now in the Congress to try to finally give San Diego some assurance to try to deal satisfactorily with the environment, and yet do it in a cost- effective manner. The gentleman from California asked me about good science. The gentleman from San Jose talked about good science. The most respected scientists who deal with oceanography in the world at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography have agreed with our conclusions. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Filner and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, the scientists from the Scripps Institute have lobbied this Congress for this change. The Federal judge in charge of the case has lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. And I would ask my colleague to continue that thought. Mr. BILBRAY. I would like to point out, Mr. Chairman, my experience with Mr. Filner was as the director of the public health department for San Diego, and as he knows, this is not something I am not involved with. I happened to be personally involved with the water quality there. I surf, my 9- and 8-year-old children surf. We have water contact; we care about the environment. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I do not understand though, since the existing bill that was passed last year actually allows for you to have a waiver, assuming certain conditions are met, and EPA I understand has already gone through that application process, why do you find it necessary in this bill to grant an absolute waiver? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of the Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. BILBRAY. Why would I ask? Mr. PALLONE. In other words, my understanding, you tell me if I am wrong, is that pursuant to this legislation, I will call it special legislation if you will that passed last year, San Diego can now apply for a waiver. It may be the only municipality that can. And EPA is now in the process of looking at that application for a waiver, and if in fact what Mr. Filner and you say is the case that the waiver then is likely to be granted, why do we need to take that one exception that is already in the law for San Diego and now expand it to many others, thousands possibly of other municipalities around the country? Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that it is costing $1.5 million. The fact is, it is only a 4- to 5-year waiver, and the fact that under our bill all monitoring, the EPA will monitor it, the Environmental Protection Agency of California will monitor it. We have developed a system that scientists say will be the most cost-effective way of approaching this. All of the monitoring, all of the public health protections are there. As long as the environment continues not to be injured, we will continue to move forward. And you have to understand, too, one thing you do not understand that Mr. Filner and I do understand, we have had at the time of this process, this bureaucratic process has been going on, we have had our beaches closed and polluted from other sources that the EPA has ignored. Mr. PALLONE. I understand, and you have gone through that with me and I appreciate that. My only point is I do not want to go down the slippery slope of the possibility of getting applications and waivers granted. Mr. BILBRAY. There is no slippery slope. What it says is those that have proven scientifically there is no reasonable reason to think there is environmental damage that is going to occur should not have to go through a process of having to go through EPA and the Federal bureaucracy. I think you would agree if we in the 1970's were told by scientists there is no foreseeable damage or foreseeable problem with water quality, this law would never have been passed. In San Diego the scientists have said that, and I think you need to reflect it. Mr. PALLONE. My point is the exemption for San Diego applies to 3 miles out, certain feet. Mr. BILBRAY. Four miles, 300 feet. Mr. PALLONE. Now you have another exemption for certain towns. Mr. BILBRAY. Totally different. [[Page H4806]] Mr. PALLONE. Though you have another exemption, towns under 10,000, no scientific basis for that. All these things are thrown into the bill. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for an additional 2 minutes). Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is here it is outcome-based. In fact the water quality is not violated as long as scientists at EPA say there is not damage. My concern to you is if the monitoring is done, if the environment is protected, if EPA and all of the scientists say it is fine, why, then why is the process with a million and a half dollars and 26 pounds of paper so important to you to make sure those reports have been filed? Mr. PALLONE. The difference is you are going through that process and you may actually achieve it in convincing the EPA pursuant to the existing law that that is the case. But what this bill has done is go beyond that, it has said that there is an absolute waiver for San Diego, they do not really have to do anything else at this point. Mr. BILBRAY. Yes, with all the monitoring that would have to be done under existing law, the same review process and public testimony the same way. Mr. PALLONE. Then it goes on to take another category, 1 mile and 150 is OK, and for a third category if you are under 10,000 it is OK. For another category for Puerto Rico we are going to do the study. You know you may make the case, we will have to see, that your exception makes sense. You may be able to do that to the EPA, but why do we have to gut the entire bill and make all those other exceptions? It makes no sense to carry one San Diego case that is now going through proper channels. This says they get the waiver; they do not need to go through the process in the previous bill, and now we have all these other exemptions. Mr. BILBRAY. You have to read the bill and all the conditions of being able to meet the triggers of the EPA. Mr. PALLONE. I have the bill in front of me. It has four different categories. The San Diego category, then it goes for the ones who go 1 mile and 150, then the ones that are 10,000 or fewer, and then it goes to Puerto Rico. All of these categories. Mr. BILBRAY. And you have monitoring that basically says that you have to prove, bring monitoring that you do not, that you are not degrading the environment. That is what we are talking about; we are talking about an outcome basis. Does it hurt the environment? Not the regulations. Is the environment hurt here. Mr. PALLONE. I do not see any scientific basis. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] be allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I will not do so now, but if we are going to move this along, I think we should all try to stay within the rules of the House and the time allotment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I was just asking for unanimous consent for the gentleman from San Diego, Mr. Bilbray, to be given an additional 2 minutes, and I would like to be able to ask a question of him since he also referred to the city of San Jose, and I happen to be the former mayor of San Jose. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Chair will inquire once again, is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? There was no objection. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield. Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, my objection is this: that last year we worked to grant the city of San Diego the opportunity to apply under previously expired provisions to apply for a waiver. I thought we did that in good faith, with the city of San Diego also agreeing to certain conditions. Things like the need for alternative uses for their water and say that this would be a waiver that would only be good for a certain period of time. It is my understanding that the waiver is indefinite, except that there is a requirement for a report to be done every 5 years. And that to me is a reasonable kind of an approach. Also in terms of any waiver for the city of San Jose, I am not familiar with what the gentleman is referring to, because we are at tertiary treatment in terms of our discharge into San Francisco Bay. Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that San Jose opens into an open trench into 20 feet of water in an estuary; it does not place it 350 feet deep and 4\1/2\ miles out in an area where scientists say not only does it not hurt the environment, it helps it. And so you do have a waiver to be able to do that rather than being required to have to use other outfall systems but it is because you were able to show that. But the trouble here with this process is that all reasonable scientific data shows that there is no reason to have to spend the 26 pounds of reports, the $1\1/2\ million, and when you get into it, EPA will be the trigger to decide if that process needs to go. What EPA told me as a public health director when I say this is a waste of money, the Government did not mean to do this, they said Congress makes us do it. They do not give us the latitude to be able to make a judgment call based on reasonable environmental regulations they have mandated to us. So I am taking the mandate away from them. Mr. BORSKI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my strong support for this amendment to strike the waivers of secondary treatment requirements. This is an issue of protecting our Nation's beaches and coastal waters. It is a matter of protecting the tourist economies of many States and of protecting the health of the American people. Do we want our ocean waters to be a disposal area for sewage that has received only the barest minimum of treatment? For 20 years, we have done better than that as the secondary treatment requirement has stood as one of the pillars of the Clean Water Act. This bill started with a waiver for one city--San Diego. Then it moved to two dozen more in California and another possible six in Florida. Then we added Puerto Rico. Where will this race to lower standards end? H.R. 961 tells those who complied with the Clean Water Act that they should have waited. Maybe, they could have gotten a waiver. It tells those who waited that they were smart. They could keep putting their untreated sewage in the ocean. The beaches of New Jersey had frequent water problems several years ago before New York City finished its secondary treatment plant. The problems in New Jersey should be a warning that we should stick to the secondary treatment requirements and not put poorly treated sewage in the ocean. This provision of H.R. 961 sends us back more than 20 years. Since 1972, secondary treatment has been the standard that all communities have been required to meet. That basic standard of the Clean Water Act should not be changed. We should keep moving forward on the effort to clean up our waters. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to hold the line on secondary treatment and vote for this amendment. Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have to admit that I have seen some alternatives around the world that do intrigue me. If we are going to go to this broad of an exemption from secondary treatment, for instance in Hong Kong, I was there and on the ferry early one morning, and I noticed how they deal with it, they do not require secondary; in many cases they do not require primary treatment. They are a little oversubscribed to their sewer system. They have nifty boats that go around the harbor with nets in the front and they scoop up everything that floats, and if it does not float, it is not a problem. So I guess [[Page H4807]] you know if we cannot support the Pallone amendment, we can say we are headed in that direction. We can buy some of the nifty little boats from Hong Kong with the nets on the front and drive them around the beachfront areas in the morning before people go in for that swim, and you know if you cannot see it, it is not a problem. {time} 1115 Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Oregon knows that on almost every environmental issue, we are in total agreement. Are you familiar with the percentage of solid removal in the system that San Diego now uses? Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, my understanding is you attempt to achieve 84 percent. Mr. FILNER. It is not an attempt. We achieve 84 percent. Mr. DeFAZIO. I will tell you, reclaiming my time, in my metropolitan wastewater facility, of which I was on the board of directors as a county commissioner, we built it for $110 million. We get 100 percent out. We do secondary and we do tertiary treatment. Theoretically, if one wanted to, one could drink the outfall. I do not want to drink the outfall. I do not know that we have to drive everything to that standard. But to think of the ocean as an endless dump close in proximity, I realize you have a big problem with Mexico, basically you are saying Mexico can dump all their stuff in there, why cannot we not just dump in a small amount of our stuff. I do not think that is the solution. I think we should be forcing Mexico to clean up so the people in California can go to the beach every day in the future. Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will yield, that is exactly our policy. As a matter of fact, those of us who live in San Diego and who completely depend on the beaches not only for our own enjoyment but for tourism and economic help, we could never possibly see the ocean as merely a dumping ground. We believe it, as you do, we believe that money to get that infinitesimal increase in solid removal required by the EPA to put into water reclamation, to put into tertiary, to deal with the Mexican sewage is the way we ought to spend our money, not be required to spend billions of dollars on something which gives us very little marine environment protection. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, do you think 16 percent is infinitesimal? Mr. FILNER. No, it is not 16 percent. You know what secondary requirements are? Mr. DeFAZIO. I am talking about the difference between the 84 percent and the 100 percent. Mr. FILNER. The law requires us to do 85 percent. We are doing 84 percent. Should we spend $5 billion to get an infinitesimal increase in that solid removal with enormous damage to the land environment, because we would have to put in extra energy to do that for sludge. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time. Mr. FILNER. It is not environmentally sound. Mr. DeFAZIO. Does this exemption go narrowly to that 1 percent for San Diego, or does exemption go beyond that? Mr. FILNER. I am certainly supporting it as the section in the bill that applies to San Diego. Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Ms. HARMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I spoke yesterday generally about this bill and my objections to it. I am rising today to support the Pallone amendment, and also to make some more specific comments about that portion of the bill providing a waiver for full secondary treatment. That portion of the bill was drafted by my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn], and his district is just south of mine, and we agree on most everything, except for this. I want to explain why we disagree and also to say that we worked together. His office was extremely helpful to me in providing information in support of his amendment, and I hope he understands that my demur has to do specifically with what I believe are the unintended consequences of his amendment on Santa Monica Bay. Santa Monica Bay is the largest bay in southern California, and most of it is in my congressional district. I wrote to EPA so that I could understand better whether good science was involved in his amendment and how it would affect Santa Monica Bay. The letter that I received the other day from the assistant administrator of EPA says, in part: This amendment does not appear to be based upon sound science. We are not aware of any scientific documentation which suggests that discharges through outfalls that are 1 mile and 150 feet deep are always environmentally benign. To the contrary, a 1993 study by the National Research Council recommended that, ``Coastal wastewater management strategy should be tailored to the characteristics, values, and uses of the particular receiving environment.'' Thus, we believe this blanket exemption is neither scientifically nor environmentally justifiable, and could result in harm to the people who depend upon the oceans and coasts for their livelihood and enjoyment. And the letter goes on to say specifically that with respect to the Santa Monica Bay Restoration project, a project worked on by all sorts of agencies and individuals in California and supported by California's Governor, Pete Wilson, this blanket exemption could derail the key element of the restoration plan. For those careful and specific reasons, I oppose the Horn language, and I support the Pallone amendment. And let me add just one thing, Mr. Chairman. Somewhere here is a chart that was provided to me by EPA, and it shows the consequences of not going to full secondary treatment. The suspended solids that can be discharged are the biggest problem, and the chart has this broken out by area of Los Angeles. In the L.A. County sanitation district, which would be directly affected by this exemption, the suspended solids are the highest portion of this chart, and it is a big problem specifically for Los Angeles. Let me finally say one more thing. The gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has sent, I think today, a ``Dear Colleague'' letter, and he makes a point with which I agree, and I want to apologize to him. He says that in a different ``Dear Colleague'' letter circulated by some of us, we said that his amendment could result in raw sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. That was an error. I apologize for that. The amendment would result in partially treated sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. I urge my colleagues to support the Pallone amendment. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend for yielding. The San Diego situation is a classic example of regulatory overkill. But regardless of how you feel about San Diego, you should vote ``no'' on this amendment, because it guts all of the provisions that allow flexibility on secondary treatment, including the flexibility for small communities across America. We have worked on all of these provisions with State officials, wastewater and environmental engineers, and we should resoundingly defeat this amendment not only because of San Diego but because of what it does across America. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to this amendment to strike the provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for certain coastal communities which discharge into deep waters. I successfully offered this provision in the committee markup of H.R. 961. My reasons for doing so were based on sound scientific reasons, and they are environmentally responsible. I was delighted, and I am delighted to take the apology of my distinguished colleague from southern California. That letter she quotes from the assistant administrator of EPA talks in broad generalities. It does not talk about the specifics of the Los Angeles [[Page H4808]] area situation, and I want to go into that. There is no permanent waiver in this provision. It would be good for 10 years. It would be subject to renewal after that period. The driving force behind this amendment is simply good science. This Congress is moving forward to implement cost/benefit analysis and risk assessment across all environmental statutes. Deep ocean outfalls that meet all water quality standards are an obvious place to apply these principles. Now, to obtain this waiver, publicly owned treatment works must meet a stringent high-hurdles test, and I have not heard one word about that today. Outfalls must be at least 1 mile long, 150 feet deep. The discharge must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards, and I do not think anyone is going to tell us that California has low water quality standards. We have high standards, just as we do in air pollution. Now, the publicly owned treatment works must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. The application must have an EPA-approved pretreatment plan, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. Effluent must have received at least a chemically enhanced primary treatment level, and at least 75 percent of suspended solids must have been removed. That is exactly what we have. This provision is not any broad loophole. Indications also are that only five publicly owned treatment works in the country would meet this high-hurdles test. They are Honolulu, Anchorage, Orange County, and Los Angeles Country, and the city of Los Angeles. The first three cities already have waivers. As I said in committee, the program under which the original waivers were given to the city and country, that has expired. The country of Los Angeles is being forced to spend $400 million to go to full secondary treatment. Now, if that money went to improving the environment or cleaning up real environmental problems, and we have hundreds of them where usually the lawyers are getting the fees and we are not cleaning up the problems, that would all be understandable. But it is not. This provision simply assures that we are spending local and Federal dollars wisely, not forcing communities to take steps that simply make no sense, which begs the question: Why should we force communities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to meet a standard where that standard is already being met? The city of Los Angeles treatment already meets the requirements of secondary treatment. So why spend millions of the taxpayers' hard- earned dollars to require Los Angeles to build facilities that already meet that required standard? The effluent from the county of Los Angeles far exceeds the rigorous State ocean plan developed by the State of California for every single measured area, including suspended solids, toxics, and heavy metals. I have some attached graphs here some of you might want to wander up and look at. The current requirements to force the publicly owned treatment works to full secondary treatment is not justified when meeting that standard will bring no environmental improvement to the ocean but will cost local ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Chairman, the science behind this provision is irrefutable. No one is advocating pumping untreated wastewater into deep oceans off of Santa Monica Bay or in Santa Monica Bay or elsewhere. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, going to full secondary treatment will not have any positive environmental benefit. Instead, we will be spending, as I have said earlier, hundreds of millions of dollars of the citizens of the county and city of Los Angeles, local taxpayer money, for no good reason. We simply cannot afford to be wasting money on problems that do not exist. If municipal wastewater treatment facilities are meeting the high- hurdles test, including in H.R. 961, it serves the public interest, it serves the interests of the local taxpayers, and it serves the interests of the Nation to keep this waiver intact, and all else is really nonsense. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Pallone and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I wanted to ask is: We had the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman] read from some sections of this letter from the EPA from a Mr. Perciasepe. I do not know if the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has seen this or not. Mr. HORN. I have not. Mr. PALLONE. And also from the EPA I received a list of another, I do not know, another 10 to 20 municipalities beyond 6 in California and the extra 2 in Hawaii you mentioned. My concern is this; this is the crux of it. Clearly, San Diego is one situation. They already have a waiver pursuant to existing law. But the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] which now goes to the 150-foot depth and the 1 mile. Mr. HORN. And 5 miles, I might add, is the other one. One is 1 mile out, one is 150; the other is 5 miles out, 150. Mr. PALLONE. This begins to open the door, if you will, to a whole different group of municipal sewage treatment plants beyond the San Diego waiver and is, of course, of greater concern to me than even that one. You mentioned scientific evidence. Clearly, this letter from the EPA assistant administrator indicates that they are very concerned that this exemption that you have now put in is not based on sound science, plus the EPA has given us a strong indication that beyond the 6 or so California and the 2 Hawaii ones, we are talking now possibly about another 20 or 30. We do not know how many. It is a major concern. I just have not heard anything from the gentleman to verify scientific basis for this new exemption that goes beyond San Diego. Mr. HORN. I know of no one that disagrees that the city and county of Los Angeles have met the scientific standards. EPA has never said it. If they are suddenly coming in at the last minute with a little sideswiping and saying all of these cities will be eligible for it, that is nonsense. {time} 1130 My language is very specific. It applies to one situation: The city and county of Los Angeles, that already have the waste treatment, that goes out to sea. There has not been any complaints that they are violating any standard of science. They test regularly. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Hunter and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. chairman, my point is, again, I heard the San Diego argument, I heard the Los Angeles argument. I do not agree with it, but I am hearing it. You are opening the door, and you have opened it to the six California and two Hawaii ones, to eliminating secondary treatment requirements for a whole slew of other municipalities. That is a problem. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, may I say to the gentleman from New Jersey, we are not opening the door. The language is very specific. The hurdles are quite specific as to the outfalls 1 mile long, 150 feet deep, that must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards and must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place. That is exactly what we have. These charts show that we are way below the level of concern. The question if very simple, folks. For the sake of the ego of EPA, do we have the taxpayers of Los Angeles spend $400 million when it will not improve the situation one iota, because [[Page H4809]] they already meet it? So the full secondary bit has been met in the pre-secondary, and that is why we should not be spending $400 million more. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me say I support him in his efforts to inject some common sense into this arbitrary application of law that defies science. The best scientists in the world have supported our situation in San Diego, where they say nature takes care of this; you do not have to spend $2 billion, EPA, we can spend it somewhere else where we desperately need it. Science also supports the gentleman from Long Beach. The point is, the gentleman says this opens the door. Let me say to my friend from New Jersey, the door should always be open to reason, common sense, and science. That is precisely what we are injecting in this argument today. With all the programs, good programs, that must take reductions because of the deficit problem, the idea that you do not use common sense to reduce spending where it does not have to be done makes no sense. So I support the gentleman. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, not to beat a dead horse or a dead sewage system, as the case may be, I do rise in strong opposition to the amendment offered by my friend the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone]. This amendment raises the possibility that San Diego will be forced to waste, yes, waste, billions of dollars to change a sewage system that this Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, a Federal District Court judge, the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, the world renowned scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, have all agreed does no harm and in fact may benefit the marine environment. Mr. Chairman, the one-size-fits-all requirement of the Clean Water Act just does not make sense for San Diego. It does not make scientific sense, it does not make economic sense, nor does it make environmental sense. It is simply a bureaucratic requirement to provide a level of treatment that is unnecessary, costly, and provides no beneficial impact to the marine environment. This is not simply my personal opinion. The option, as we stated over and over again, is stated by scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and from the National Academy of Sciences. It is supported by reams of scientific data collected over the years. These studies have shown there is no degradation of water quality or the ecology of the ocean due to the discharge of the plant's chemically enhanced treated waste water. Let me point out, this is not merely a chlorine treated primary situation. This is an alternative to secondary treatment that includes a much higher level of technology that my friend, if I can yield to my friend from California [Mr. Bilbray], might explain. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I think the problem is understanding the technical issues here. The fact that what was interpreted as being chlorination, San Diego is not using the chlorination. Chemically enhanced primary treatment was actually brought to San Diego by members of the Sierra Club as a much more cost effective and environmentally safe way of getting to secondary treatment. It is where you use chemicals to remove the solids to fulfill the standard. What it does is say look, back in the seventies we thought there was only one way to able to clean up the water. Now scientists have come up with new technologies. If we look at a 1970 car and a 1990 car, we will agree there is a difference. The other issue, the chemical, what is called chemical enhanced primary, the fact is primary really is talking about a secondary treatment that does not use injected air and bubbling sewage around, biological activity. In a salt water environment scientists say there is no problem with this, it does the job. The only difference is the BOD, the biochemical oxygen demand, which in a deep salt water environment does not create any problem according to the scientists. I would like to point out, too, as my colleague has, we are talking about this can only be done if the facility's discharges are consistent with the ocean plan for the State of California, one of the most strict water quality programs in the entire Nation, if not the most. So we are saying how you do it we do not mind, as long as the finished product does not hurt the environment and gets the job done. I appreciate my colleagues who are going through a transition here. We are getting away from command and control, Washington knows the answer to everything. What we are trying to get down to is saying, local people, if you can find a better answer to get the job done that we want done, you not only have a right to do that, you have a responsibility, and we will not stand in the way of you doing that. I would like to point out that the monitoring continues. If there is a pollution problem, if the EPA sees there is a hassle, if the monitoring problem shows there is an environmental problem, this waiver immediately ceases and we go back to the same process. That should assure everyone who cares about the environment. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I do want to thank the chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for understanding the issues for San Diego, for helping us last year get our waiver, and for guaranteeing a success this year. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. FILNER. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, I would like my colleagues in the Congress to recognize that this has been an issue that has been before the Congress for as long as I have served in Congress, for 12 years and more. We have been working on this issue of trying to resolve the problems that San Diego has had. If we are to follow the general policy that is now taking place in the Congress, where we evaluate every requirement and every mandate and every regulation on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, there is absolutely no question that we would never impose a multibillion-dollar process on San Diego. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Filner was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, there is no way that this project, as it would be required to go to secondary treatment, could possibly pass a cost-benefit analysis, and thus we ought to really allow the flexibility that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Shuster] has put in the bill that would allow the City of San Diego to meet their requirements in an environmentally sound way. I strongly urge that the Congress approve the bill as it is written and reject this amendment. There is a bipartisan issue for this. The entire delegation from San Diego, of whom I am one, has recommended we disapprove this amendment. It is certainly important to us that we do not impose a $12 billion cost on the people of San Diego. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to Mr. Pallone's amendment to the clean water reauthorization bill. This amendment plays right into the environmentalists' chicken little cries that our environmental protection system is falling. On the contrary, chairman Shuster's amendments to the clean water bill provide communities the flexibility they need to better protect our natural resources. Specifically, Mr. Pallone claims that allowing San Diego a permanent waiver to the EPA's burdensome secondary sewage requirements jeopardizes southern California's water resources. The facts just do not support this assertion. San Diego's location on southern California's beautiful coastline allows the city to take advantage of deep ocean outfall capabilities. Scientific studies conclude that San Diego's sewage treatment efforts are both effective and environmentally sound. In fact, the surrounding ecosystem flourishes partly as a result of the outfall effluence. Yet, the EPA continues to shove their Federal mandates from Washington down the throats of San Diego taxpayers. They continue [[Page H4810]] to require San Diego to spend up to $12 billion on an unnecessary and potentially environmentally damaging secondary sewage treatment plant. Year after year, San Diego officials battle Federal bureaucrats who require the city to submit a costly, time consuming waiver application. The last one cost $1 million and was more than 3,000 pages long. The American people are tired of this kind of bureaucratic bullying Far from the Chicken Little cries of the environmentalists, the American people cry out for a little commonsense. Chairman Shuster's bill and the San Diego waiver provision bring a level of rationality to the environmental protection process. Since I began my service in Congress, I have worked as a former member of Chairman Shuster's committee to do just that. Now as part of a Republican majority, I am pleased to see my efforts come to fruition. Republicans love the environment as much as anyone. My district in southern California contains some of the most beautiful natural resources in the country. I would never vote for a bill which would damage those resources in any way. I just think the people who live on the coast, or in the forests, or canyons or grasslands have a better sense of how to protect their resources than some bureaucrat sitting in an office in Washington. The situation in San Diego demonstrates this most clearly. For that reason, I oppose Mr. Pallone's amendment. Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, there is an issue on which I would like to engage in a colloquy and get the support of the chairman of the committee. I understand that section 319(h)(7)(F) identifies the scope for which a State may use clean water grants. Mr. Chairman, in my State of Florida, the excessive growth of nonindigenous, noxious aquatic weeds, like hydrilla, is an extremely serious impairment of our waters. Funds available for control of these weeds are presently very limited. This provision authorizes States like Florida to utilize a portion of their nonpoint source funds, should they choose to do so, for the control of excessive growth of these nonindigenous aquatic weeds. Although this is an important use, Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the utilization of funds for aquatic weed control should not deplete the funds available for other nonpoint source programs. Is that the understanding of the chairman of the committee? Mr. SHUSTER. If the gentlewoman will yield, Mr. Chairman, that is correct. Mrs. FOWLER. I thank the chairman of the committee for his support and clarification of this section. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. H.R. 961 is a dangerous piece of legislation for my district, which includes the beautiful Santa Monica Bay. For years the people of Los Angeles have worked to clean the bay and make it safe for swimmers, divers, and the thousands of people who eat local seafood. The city of Los Angeles, however, deserves very little credit for this. City bureaucrats have dragged their feet and done everything they could to avoid tougher controls. But our community was so committed that it overruled the bureaucrats and twice voted by overwhelming margins to stop the Los Angeles sewage system from dumping poorly treated sewage into the bay. As a result, we have spent over $2 billion to bring full secondary treatment to the Hyperion treatment plant. Let me repeat that, because it is important to understand our situation. We have already spent $2 billion to stop dangerous pollution. To complete the project, we need to spend $85 million more. Well, under this bill, we will never spend that $85 million, and we will never be able to clean up the bay. H.R. 961 would overturn our local decision and relieve the sewage system from meeting its obligation under the Clean Water Act to treat sewage. This is a bizarre situation. This Congress is going to overturn a local decision made by Los Angeles voters, and in the process throw $2 billion down the drain and condemn the Santa Monica Bay to a cons

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CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995
(House of Representatives - May 11, 1995)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H4802-H4868] CLEAN WATER AMENDMENTS OF 1995 The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). Pursuant to House Resolution 140 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill, H.R. 961. {time} 1040 in the committee of the whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill (H.R. 961) to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, with Mr. Hobson (Chairman pro tempore) in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. When the Committee of the Whole rose on Wednesday, May 10, 1995, the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert] had been disposed of, and [[Page H4803]] title III was open to amendment at any point. Are there further amendments to title III? amendments offered by mr. traficant Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I offer 2 amendments, and I ask unanimous consent that the amendments, one in title III and one in title V, be considered en bloc. The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Clerk will report the amendments. The Clerk read as follows: Amendments offered by Mr. Traficant: Page 35, after line 23, insert the following: ``(2) Limitation and Notice.--If the Administrator or a State extends the deadline for point source compliance and encourages the development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology under paragraph (1), the Administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extend practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. In providing an extension under this subsection, the Administrator or State shall provide to the recipient of such extension a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by this paragraph. Page 35, line 24, strike ``(2)'' and insert ``(3)''. Page 35, line 7, strike ``(3)'' and insert ``(4)''. Page 35, line 18, strike ``(4)'' and insert ``(5)''. Page 216, line 12, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 217, line 7, strike ``521'' and insert ``522''. Page 219, after line 18, insert the following: SEC. 512. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. Title V (33 U.S.C. 1361-1377) is further amended by inserting before section 522, as redesignated by section 510 of this Act, the following: ``SEC. 521. AMERICAN-MADE EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTS. ``(a) Purchase of American-Made Equipment and Products.--It is the sense of Congress that, to the greatest extent practicable, all equipment and products purchased with funds made available under this Act should be American-made. ``(b) Notice to Recipients of Assistance.--In providing financial assistance under this Act, the Administrator, to the greatest extent practicable, shall provide to each recipient of the assistance a notice describing the sense of Congress expressed by subsection (a).'' Conform the table of contents of the bill accordingly. Mr. TRAFICANT (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be considered as read and printed in the Record. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, these are basically Buy American amendments. This one, though, deals with the fact that if the administrator or State extends the deadline for point source compliance, and encourages development and use of an innovative pollution prevention technology, under paragraph 1, the administrator or State shall encourage, to the maximum extent practicable, the use of technology produced in the United States. That would encourage more technology development in our country to deal with these issues. It has been worked out. The second amendment is a standard ``Buy American'' amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. We have reviewed these, and we think these are good amendments. We support them. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I have no reason to object to the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio. Mr. TRAFICANT. With that, Mr. Chairman, I urge a vote in favor of the amendments. The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant]. The amendments were agreed to. The CHAIRMAN. Are there other amendments to title III of the bill? amendment offered by mr. pallone Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows'. Amendment offered by Mr. Pallone: Strike title IX of the bill (pages 323 through 326). Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would strike provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for sewage treatment plants in certain coastal communities which discharge into ocean water. There are two major steps to wastewater treatment which I think many of us know. One is the physical primary treatment, which is the removal of suspended solids. The second is the biological or secondary treatment, which is the removal of dissolved waste by bacteria. Secondary treatment, in my opinion, is very important, because it is critical to the removal of organic material from sewage. It is the material linked to hepatitis and gastroenteritis for swimmers. It is also the common denominator. Secondary treatment sets a base level of treatment that all must achieve, putting all facilities on equal ground. Today almost 15,000 publicly owned treatment works around the country apply secondary treatment. It makes no sense to exempt many of these facilities. Under existing law, a national standard of secondary treatment for public owned treatment works was established by Congress in the original 1972 Clean Water Act. There was a window of time during which facilities could apply for ocean discharge as an alternative to secondary treatment. However, this window has closed. A bill was passed last year, October 31, that allows the city of San Diego to apply for a waiver, even though that window has closed. The EPA has a year pursuant to that legislation to make a decision on their application, and at present it looks likely that San Diego would be granted such a waiver. However, despite these concessions that have been made, a provision has been included in H.R. 961 that would grant such a waiver to San Diego without the necessary EPA review. I am concerned, Mr. Chairman, that we are going toward what I would call a slippery slope on the issue of secondary treatment. {time} 1045 The San Diego waiver was for ocean outfalls at least 4 miles out and 300 feet deep. This was the only provision in the original H.R. 961. But in committee this section was expanded. Other towns can now apply for 10-year permits that would allow for ocean discharge only 1 mile out and at 150 feet of depth. This new expansion of the section applies to at least six facilities in California, two in Hawaii, and there may be two dozen other facilities that it could apply. Also, communities under 10,000 are now eligible for permits, and there are about 6,500 facilities of 63 percent of all facilities that could be eligible under this under 10,000 provision. Soon Puerto Rico may also be able to apply for a waiver of secondary treatment because of the legislation the committee marked. I think that this is a terrible development. I would like to know what is next. What other waivers and weakening amendments are going to exist to the Clean Water Act? Ultimately, if we proceed down this slippery slope, secondary treatment may in fact disappear in many parts of the country. Secondary treatment may be costly, but it will cost more to clean up the mess after the fact, if we can clean it up at all. The ultimate problem I have, and I am trying to correct with this amendment, is this idea that somehow the ocean is out of sight, out of mind, that is, a sort of endless sink that we can continue to dump material in. It is not true. The material comes back and ocean water quality continues to deteriorate. Please do not gut the Clean Water Act. Let us not start down the slippery slope of allowing ocean discharge without secondary treatment, and please support this amendment. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment strikes all of the secondary treatment [[Page H4804]] provisions in the bill. During the debate on the unfunded mandates, secondary treatment was cited as one of the most costly unfunded mandates to States and localities. Our bill provides relief from this mandate, but it provides relief only where it is also an unfunded mandate. Our bill allows a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean discharges, but only where secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. Let me emphasize that. We allow for a waiver of secondary treatment for deep ocean benefits but only when secondary treatment provides no environmental benefit. This waiver must be approved by either the State water quality authority people or by the EPA, so this is not some willy-nilly waiver that a locality can give itself. It must go through the rigorous procedure of first showing that by getting the waiver, they are providing no environmental benefit, and, second, getting the approval of the EPA or the State. The bill also allows certain alternative wastewater treatment technologies for small cities to be deemed secondary treatment if, and this is a big if, if they will contribute to the attainment of water quality standards. This flexibility, Mr. Chairman, is badly needed because traditional centralized municipal wastewater treatment systems do not always make economic sense to small communities. We need to provide the flexibility to the States and to EPA to allow the use of alternatives, for example, like constructed wetlands or lagoons, where they make both economic and environmental sense. Perhaps the most egregious example of the problems we would face if we were to adopt this amendment is the situation in San Diego to spend $3 billion on secondary treatment facilities when indeed the California EPA and the National Academy of Sciences says it is unnecessary. So this flexibility is needed not only for San Diego but for many of the cities across America. I strongly urge defeat of this amendment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. (Mr. MINETA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, the idea of waiving secondary treatment standards sounds alarms because the successes of the Clean Water Act over the past 23 years are attributable in large part to the act's requirements for a baseline level of treatment--secondary treatment, in the case of municipal dischargers. There are several reasons that these waivers should be stricken from the bill: First, they are not based on sound science; second, they threaten to degrade water quality and devastate the shoreline; third, they are unfair; and, fourth, they are unnecessary. Not Based on Sound Science Several of the bill's secondary waiver provisions abandon the basic requirement that the applicant demonstrate that a waiver will not harm the marine environment. The bill abandons this requirement, even though it makes sense, and has been met by more than 40 communities that have obtained waivers. This congressional waiver of scientific standards is at direct odds with the themes of sound science and risk analysis that were embraced in the Contract With America. The consequences could be devastating to the environment. Harmful To Water Quality and the Marine Environment For example, the secondary waiver provision intended for Los Angeles provides for waivers if the discharge is a mere 1 mile offshore, and 150 feet deep. Unfortunately, history has taught us that sewage discharges at about 1 mile offshore can wreak havoc. In 1992, San Diego's sewage pipe ruptured two-thirds of a mile offshore, spewing partially treated sewage containing coliform and other bacterias and viruses, and closing more than 4 miles of beaches. This environmental disaster happened just one-third of a mile closer to shore than the 1-mile-offshore standard for municipal discharges under one of the waivers in this bill. In addition, it appears that this waiver provision, although intended for Los Angeles, picks up at least 19 other cities as well. And, the waiver for small communities makes thousands more communities eligible for waivers, even though many of them are already meeting secondary requirements and could seek to reduce current treatment under this provision. Since the number of waivers authorized under this bill is potentially quite large, the environmental impact also can be expected to be substantial, particularly for waste discharged just 1 mile from shore. The San Diego and Los Angeles provisions both provide for enhanced primary treatment in place of secondary. We would think for a minute about what primary treatment is. It is not really treatment at all--you just get the biggest solids out by screening or settling, and the rest goes through raw, untreated. Chemically enhanced primary means you add a little chlorine to the raw sewage before discharging it. This means that even when the system is operating properly--without any breaks in the pipe spewing sewage onto our beaches--the bill could result in essentially raw human waste being dumped a mile out from our beaches. Most Californians do not want essentially raw sewage dumped 1 mile from their beaches. unfair The waiver provisions are unfair because they grant preferential treatment to select communities. This favoritism has direct consequences for the thousands of communities that most of us represent: those that have expended, or are in the process of spending, substantial resources to comply with secondary requirements. Some communities, such as the city of San Jose which I represent, have gone well beyond secondary. The waiver provisions say to all of these communities that they were fools for having complied with the law, because if they had just dragged their feet, they, too, could have escaped these requirements. unnecessary In the case of San Diego, the inequity of allowing a third bite at the apple is heightened by the fact that San Diego will obtain a secondary waiver treatment without the bill. Yes, the bill's waiver provision is completely unnecessary for San Diego because San Diego was singled out for preferential treatment just last year. In October 1994 President Clinton signed into law a bill that was passed in the closing days of the 103d Congress. Of the thousands of communities required to achieve secondary treatment, only San Diego was authorized to apply for a waiver last year. San Diego submitted its application last month, an EPA has publicly announced its commitment to act quickly and both EPA and the city expect that a waiver will be granted. Why, then, is San Diego now receiving another waiver? Because this year's waiver would provide even a better deal than last year's--it would be permanent, and would excuse Dan Diego from baseline requirements that last year San Diego agreed that it could and would meet. Mr. Chairman. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. (Mr. BILBRAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I would have to say, as someone who has spent 18 years fighting to clean up the pollution in San Diego County, it concerns me when my colleague from California speaks of the pollution problems in San Diego, when in fact we can recognize that one of the major problems we have had is that the regulation has taken precedence over the science and the need to protect the public health. This bill as presented by the chairman reflects the scientific data that shows that not only does having chemically enhanced primary not hurt the environment, but it also shows that the studies that have been done by many, many scientific groups, in fact every major scientific study in the San Diego region has shown that if we go to secondary, as my colleague from California would suggest, that the secondary mandate would create more environmental damage than not going to secondary. [[Page H4805]] This is a big reason why a gentleman from Scripps Institute, a Dr. Revell, came to me and personally asked me to intervene. My colleagues may not think that I have any credentials in the environmental field, but I would point out that Dr. Revell is one of the most noted oceanographers that has ever lived in this century. He just passed away. He was saying strongly that the secondary mandate on the city of San Diego was going to be a travesty, a travesty to the people of San Diego but, more important, a damage to the environment of our oceans and our land. My colleague from San Jose has pointed out that there may be a problem giving waivers. I think we all agree that there are appropriate procedures, but those procedures should follow science. The city of San Jose has gone to extensive treatment, Mr. Chairman, but when the science said that you could dispose of that in the estuary of southern San Francisco Bay, my colleague's city of San Jose was given a waiver to be able to do that, and will continue to do it because the science says that it is okay. Our concern with this is the fact that the process should follow the path toward good environment. What we have today now is a process that diverts the attention of those of us in San Diego and the EPA away from real environmental problems and puts it toward a product that is 26 pounds of reports, 1.5 million dollars' worth of expenses. It is something that I think that we really have to test those of us here: Do we care about the environment of America or do we care about the regulations of Congress? When the science and the scientists who have worked strongly on this stand up and say, ``Don't require secondary sewage in San Diego,'' we really are put to the test. Are we more wedded to our regulation than we are to our environment? {time} 1100 Now if you do not believe me, though I have fought hard at trying to clean up Mexican sewage and trying to get the sewage to stay in pipes, while the EPA has ignored that, they have concentrated on this process. I would ask my colleague to consider his own colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner], who has worked with me on this and lives in the community and has talked to the scientists, and Mr. Filner can tell you quite clearly that this is not an issue of the regulations with the environment, this is one of those situations where the well- intentioned but misguided mandate of the 1970's has been interpreted to mean we are going to damage the environment of San Diego, and I would strongly urge that the environment takes precedence here. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleague from San Diego, Mr. Filner, to respond to the fact that is it not true that the major marine biologists, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, one of the most noted institutes in the entire country on the ocean impacts, supports our actions on this item? Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being here with the Congressman from my adjacent district, San Diego. Before I answer the question, I do want to point out that for many years we had adjacent districts in local government, Mr. Bilbray being a county supervisor and myself being a San Diego city councilman. We have worked together for many, many years on this very issue. We have fought about it, we have argued about it, we have come to an agreement about how we should handle this, and I think it is very appropriate that we are both now in the Congress to try to finally give San Diego some assurance to try to deal satisfactorily with the environment, and yet do it in a cost- effective manner. The gentleman from California asked me about good science. The gentleman from San Jose talked about good science. The most respected scientists who deal with oceanography in the world at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography have agreed with our conclusions. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Filner and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, the scientists from the Scripps Institute have lobbied this Congress for this change. The Federal judge in charge of the case has lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. The local environmental groups have lobbied us for the change. And I would ask my colleague to continue that thought. Mr. BILBRAY. I would like to point out, Mr. Chairman, my experience with Mr. Filner was as the director of the public health department for San Diego, and as he knows, this is not something I am not involved with. I happened to be personally involved with the water quality there. I surf, my 9- and 8-year-old children surf. We have water contact; we care about the environment. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I do not understand though, since the existing bill that was passed last year actually allows for you to have a waiver, assuming certain conditions are met, and EPA I understand has already gone through that application process, why do you find it necessary in this bill to grant an absolute waiver? The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of the Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. BILBRAY. Why would I ask? Mr. PALLONE. In other words, my understanding, you tell me if I am wrong, is that pursuant to this legislation, I will call it special legislation if you will that passed last year, San Diego can now apply for a waiver. It may be the only municipality that can. And EPA is now in the process of looking at that application for a waiver, and if in fact what Mr. Filner and you say is the case that the waiver then is likely to be granted, why do we need to take that one exception that is already in the law for San Diego and now expand it to many others, thousands possibly of other municipalities around the country? Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that it is costing $1.5 million. The fact is, it is only a 4- to 5-year waiver, and the fact that under our bill all monitoring, the EPA will monitor it, the Environmental Protection Agency of California will monitor it. We have developed a system that scientists say will be the most cost-effective way of approaching this. All of the monitoring, all of the public health protections are there. As long as the environment continues not to be injured, we will continue to move forward. And you have to understand, too, one thing you do not understand that Mr. Filner and I do understand, we have had at the time of this process, this bureaucratic process has been going on, we have had our beaches closed and polluted from other sources that the EPA has ignored. Mr. PALLONE. I understand, and you have gone through that with me and I appreciate that. My only point is I do not want to go down the slippery slope of the possibility of getting applications and waivers granted. Mr. BILBRAY. There is no slippery slope. What it says is those that have proven scientifically there is no reasonable reason to think there is environmental damage that is going to occur should not have to go through a process of having to go through EPA and the Federal bureaucracy. I think you would agree if we in the 1970's were told by scientists there is no foreseeable damage or foreseeable problem with water quality, this law would never have been passed. In San Diego the scientists have said that, and I think you need to reflect it. Mr. PALLONE. My point is the exemption for San Diego applies to 3 miles out, certain feet. Mr. BILBRAY. Four miles, 300 feet. Mr. PALLONE. Now you have another exemption for certain towns. Mr. BILBRAY. Totally different. [[Page H4806]] Mr. PALLONE. Though you have another exemption, towns under 10,000, no scientific basis for that. All these things are thrown into the bill. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Mineta and by unanimous consent, Mr. Bilbray was allowed to proceed for an additional 2 minutes). Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is here it is outcome-based. In fact the water quality is not violated as long as scientists at EPA say there is not damage. My concern to you is if the monitoring is done, if the environment is protected, if EPA and all of the scientists say it is fine, why, then why is the process with a million and a half dollars and 26 pounds of paper so important to you to make sure those reports have been filed? Mr. PALLONE. The difference is you are going through that process and you may actually achieve it in convincing the EPA pursuant to the existing law that that is the case. But what this bill has done is go beyond that, it has said that there is an absolute waiver for San Diego, they do not really have to do anything else at this point. Mr. BILBRAY. Yes, with all the monitoring that would have to be done under existing law, the same review process and public testimony the same way. Mr. PALLONE. Then it goes on to take another category, 1 mile and 150 is OK, and for a third category if you are under 10,000 it is OK. For another category for Puerto Rico we are going to do the study. You know you may make the case, we will have to see, that your exception makes sense. You may be able to do that to the EPA, but why do we have to gut the entire bill and make all those other exceptions? It makes no sense to carry one San Diego case that is now going through proper channels. This says they get the waiver; they do not need to go through the process in the previous bill, and now we have all these other exemptions. Mr. BILBRAY. You have to read the bill and all the conditions of being able to meet the triggers of the EPA. Mr. PALLONE. I have the bill in front of me. It has four different categories. The San Diego category, then it goes for the ones who go 1 mile and 150, then the ones that are 10,000 or fewer, and then it goes to Puerto Rico. All of these categories. Mr. BILBRAY. And you have monitoring that basically says that you have to prove, bring monitoring that you do not, that you are not degrading the environment. That is what we are talking about; we are talking about an outcome basis. Does it hurt the environment? Not the regulations. Is the environment hurt here. Mr. PALLONE. I do not see any scientific basis. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] has again expired. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] be allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I will not do so now, but if we are going to move this along, I think we should all try to stay within the rules of the House and the time allotment. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I was just asking for unanimous consent for the gentleman from San Diego, Mr. Bilbray, to be given an additional 2 minutes, and I would like to be able to ask a question of him since he also referred to the city of San Jose, and I happen to be the former mayor of San Jose. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Chair will inquire once again, is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? There was no objection. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield. Mr. BILBRAY. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. MINETA. Mr. Chairman, my objection is this: that last year we worked to grant the city of San Diego the opportunity to apply under previously expired provisions to apply for a waiver. I thought we did that in good faith, with the city of San Diego also agreeing to certain conditions. Things like the need for alternative uses for their water and say that this would be a waiver that would only be good for a certain period of time. It is my understanding that the waiver is indefinite, except that there is a requirement for a report to be done every 5 years. And that to me is a reasonable kind of an approach. Also in terms of any waiver for the city of San Jose, I am not familiar with what the gentleman is referring to, because we are at tertiary treatment in terms of our discharge into San Francisco Bay. Mr. BILBRAY. The fact is that San Jose opens into an open trench into 20 feet of water in an estuary; it does not place it 350 feet deep and 4\1/2\ miles out in an area where scientists say not only does it not hurt the environment, it helps it. And so you do have a waiver to be able to do that rather than being required to have to use other outfall systems but it is because you were able to show that. But the trouble here with this process is that all reasonable scientific data shows that there is no reason to have to spend the 26 pounds of reports, the $1\1/2\ million, and when you get into it, EPA will be the trigger to decide if that process needs to go. What EPA told me as a public health director when I say this is a waste of money, the Government did not mean to do this, they said Congress makes us do it. They do not give us the latitude to be able to make a judgment call based on reasonable environmental regulations they have mandated to us. So I am taking the mandate away from them. Mr. BORSKI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my strong support for this amendment to strike the waivers of secondary treatment requirements. This is an issue of protecting our Nation's beaches and coastal waters. It is a matter of protecting the tourist economies of many States and of protecting the health of the American people. Do we want our ocean waters to be a disposal area for sewage that has received only the barest minimum of treatment? For 20 years, we have done better than that as the secondary treatment requirement has stood as one of the pillars of the Clean Water Act. This bill started with a waiver for one city--San Diego. Then it moved to two dozen more in California and another possible six in Florida. Then we added Puerto Rico. Where will this race to lower standards end? H.R. 961 tells those who complied with the Clean Water Act that they should have waited. Maybe, they could have gotten a waiver. It tells those who waited that they were smart. They could keep putting their untreated sewage in the ocean. The beaches of New Jersey had frequent water problems several years ago before New York City finished its secondary treatment plant. The problems in New Jersey should be a warning that we should stick to the secondary treatment requirements and not put poorly treated sewage in the ocean. This provision of H.R. 961 sends us back more than 20 years. Since 1972, secondary treatment has been the standard that all communities have been required to meet. That basic standard of the Clean Water Act should not be changed. We should keep moving forward on the effort to clean up our waters. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to hold the line on secondary treatment and vote for this amendment. Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have to admit that I have seen some alternatives around the world that do intrigue me. If we are going to go to this broad of an exemption from secondary treatment, for instance in Hong Kong, I was there and on the ferry early one morning, and I noticed how they deal with it, they do not require secondary; in many cases they do not require primary treatment. They are a little oversubscribed to their sewer system. They have nifty boats that go around the harbor with nets in the front and they scoop up everything that floats, and if it does not float, it is not a problem. So I guess [[Page H4807]] you know if we cannot support the Pallone amendment, we can say we are headed in that direction. We can buy some of the nifty little boats from Hong Kong with the nets on the front and drive them around the beachfront areas in the morning before people go in for that swim, and you know if you cannot see it, it is not a problem. {time} 1115 Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Oregon knows that on almost every environmental issue, we are in total agreement. Are you familiar with the percentage of solid removal in the system that San Diego now uses? Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, my understanding is you attempt to achieve 84 percent. Mr. FILNER. It is not an attempt. We achieve 84 percent. Mr. DeFAZIO. I will tell you, reclaiming my time, in my metropolitan wastewater facility, of which I was on the board of directors as a county commissioner, we built it for $110 million. We get 100 percent out. We do secondary and we do tertiary treatment. Theoretically, if one wanted to, one could drink the outfall. I do not want to drink the outfall. I do not know that we have to drive everything to that standard. But to think of the ocean as an endless dump close in proximity, I realize you have a big problem with Mexico, basically you are saying Mexico can dump all their stuff in there, why cannot we not just dump in a small amount of our stuff. I do not think that is the solution. I think we should be forcing Mexico to clean up so the people in California can go to the beach every day in the future. Mr. FILNER. If the gentleman will yield, that is exactly our policy. As a matter of fact, those of us who live in San Diego and who completely depend on the beaches not only for our own enjoyment but for tourism and economic help, we could never possibly see the ocean as merely a dumping ground. We believe it, as you do, we believe that money to get that infinitesimal increase in solid removal required by the EPA to put into water reclamation, to put into tertiary, to deal with the Mexican sewage is the way we ought to spend our money, not be required to spend billions of dollars on something which gives us very little marine environment protection. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, do you think 16 percent is infinitesimal? Mr. FILNER. No, it is not 16 percent. You know what secondary requirements are? Mr. DeFAZIO. I am talking about the difference between the 84 percent and the 100 percent. Mr. FILNER. The law requires us to do 85 percent. We are doing 84 percent. Should we spend $5 billion to get an infinitesimal increase in that solid removal with enormous damage to the land environment, because we would have to put in extra energy to do that for sludge. Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time. Mr. FILNER. It is not environmentally sound. Mr. DeFAZIO. Does this exemption go narrowly to that 1 percent for San Diego, or does exemption go beyond that? Mr. FILNER. I am certainly supporting it as the section in the bill that applies to San Diego. Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Ms. HARMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I spoke yesterday generally about this bill and my objections to it. I am rising today to support the Pallone amendment, and also to make some more specific comments about that portion of the bill providing a waiver for full secondary treatment. That portion of the bill was drafted by my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn], and his district is just south of mine, and we agree on most everything, except for this. I want to explain why we disagree and also to say that we worked together. His office was extremely helpful to me in providing information in support of his amendment, and I hope he understands that my demur has to do specifically with what I believe are the unintended consequences of his amendment on Santa Monica Bay. Santa Monica Bay is the largest bay in southern California, and most of it is in my congressional district. I wrote to EPA so that I could understand better whether good science was involved in his amendment and how it would affect Santa Monica Bay. The letter that I received the other day from the assistant administrator of EPA says, in part: This amendment does not appear to be based upon sound science. We are not aware of any scientific documentation which suggests that discharges through outfalls that are 1 mile and 150 feet deep are always environmentally benign. To the contrary, a 1993 study by the National Research Council recommended that, ``Coastal wastewater management strategy should be tailored to the characteristics, values, and uses of the particular receiving environment.'' Thus, we believe this blanket exemption is neither scientifically nor environmentally justifiable, and could result in harm to the people who depend upon the oceans and coasts for their livelihood and enjoyment. And the letter goes on to say specifically that with respect to the Santa Monica Bay Restoration project, a project worked on by all sorts of agencies and individuals in California and supported by California's Governor, Pete Wilson, this blanket exemption could derail the key element of the restoration plan. For those careful and specific reasons, I oppose the Horn language, and I support the Pallone amendment. And let me add just one thing, Mr. Chairman. Somewhere here is a chart that was provided to me by EPA, and it shows the consequences of not going to full secondary treatment. The suspended solids that can be discharged are the biggest problem, and the chart has this broken out by area of Los Angeles. In the L.A. County sanitation district, which would be directly affected by this exemption, the suspended solids are the highest portion of this chart, and it is a big problem specifically for Los Angeles. Let me finally say one more thing. The gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has sent, I think today, a ``Dear Colleague'' letter, and he makes a point with which I agree, and I want to apologize to him. He says that in a different ``Dear Colleague'' letter circulated by some of us, we said that his amendment could result in raw sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. That was an error. I apologize for that. The amendment would result in partially treated sewage dumped into Santa Monica Bay. I urge my colleagues to support the Pallone amendment. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my good friend for yielding. The San Diego situation is a classic example of regulatory overkill. But regardless of how you feel about San Diego, you should vote ``no'' on this amendment, because it guts all of the provisions that allow flexibility on secondary treatment, including the flexibility for small communities across America. We have worked on all of these provisions with State officials, wastewater and environmental engineers, and we should resoundingly defeat this amendment not only because of San Diego but because of what it does across America. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to this amendment to strike the provisions of the bill which authorize waivers of secondary treatment requirements for certain coastal communities which discharge into deep waters. I successfully offered this provision in the committee markup of H.R. 961. My reasons for doing so were based on sound scientific reasons, and they are environmentally responsible. I was delighted, and I am delighted to take the apology of my distinguished colleague from southern California. That letter she quotes from the assistant administrator of EPA talks in broad generalities. It does not talk about the specifics of the Los Angeles [[Page H4808]] area situation, and I want to go into that. There is no permanent waiver in this provision. It would be good for 10 years. It would be subject to renewal after that period. The driving force behind this amendment is simply good science. This Congress is moving forward to implement cost/benefit analysis and risk assessment across all environmental statutes. Deep ocean outfalls that meet all water quality standards are an obvious place to apply these principles. Now, to obtain this waiver, publicly owned treatment works must meet a stringent high-hurdles test, and I have not heard one word about that today. Outfalls must be at least 1 mile long, 150 feet deep. The discharge must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards, and I do not think anyone is going to tell us that California has low water quality standards. We have high standards, just as we do in air pollution. Now, the publicly owned treatment works must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. The application must have an EPA-approved pretreatment plan, and we do in Los Angeles City and County. Effluent must have received at least a chemically enhanced primary treatment level, and at least 75 percent of suspended solids must have been removed. That is exactly what we have. This provision is not any broad loophole. Indications also are that only five publicly owned treatment works in the country would meet this high-hurdles test. They are Honolulu, Anchorage, Orange County, and Los Angeles Country, and the city of Los Angeles. The first three cities already have waivers. As I said in committee, the program under which the original waivers were given to the city and country, that has expired. The country of Los Angeles is being forced to spend $400 million to go to full secondary treatment. Now, if that money went to improving the environment or cleaning up real environmental problems, and we have hundreds of them where usually the lawyers are getting the fees and we are not cleaning up the problems, that would all be understandable. But it is not. This provision simply assures that we are spending local and Federal dollars wisely, not forcing communities to take steps that simply make no sense, which begs the question: Why should we force communities to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to meet a standard where that standard is already being met? The city of Los Angeles treatment already meets the requirements of secondary treatment. So why spend millions of the taxpayers' hard- earned dollars to require Los Angeles to build facilities that already meet that required standard? The effluent from the county of Los Angeles far exceeds the rigorous State ocean plan developed by the State of California for every single measured area, including suspended solids, toxics, and heavy metals. I have some attached graphs here some of you might want to wander up and look at. The current requirements to force the publicly owned treatment works to full secondary treatment is not justified when meeting that standard will bring no environmental improvement to the ocean but will cost local ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Chairman, the science behind this provision is irrefutable. No one is advocating pumping untreated wastewater into deep oceans off of Santa Monica Bay or in Santa Monica Bay or elsewhere. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, going to full secondary treatment will not have any positive environmental benefit. Instead, we will be spending, as I have said earlier, hundreds of millions of dollars of the citizens of the county and city of Los Angeles, local taxpayer money, for no good reason. We simply cannot afford to be wasting money on problems that do not exist. If municipal wastewater treatment facilities are meeting the high- hurdles test, including in H.R. 961, it serves the public interest, it serves the interests of the local taxpayers, and it serves the interests of the Nation to keep this waiver intact, and all else is really nonsense. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has again expired. (At the request of Mr. Pallone and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, what I wanted to ask is: We had the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman] read from some sections of this letter from the EPA from a Mr. Perciasepe. I do not know if the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has seen this or not. Mr. HORN. I have not. Mr. PALLONE. And also from the EPA I received a list of another, I do not know, another 10 to 20 municipalities beyond 6 in California and the extra 2 in Hawaii you mentioned. My concern is this; this is the crux of it. Clearly, San Diego is one situation. They already have a waiver pursuant to existing law. But the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] which now goes to the 150-foot depth and the 1 mile. Mr. HORN. And 5 miles, I might add, is the other one. One is 1 mile out, one is 150; the other is 5 miles out, 150. Mr. PALLONE. This begins to open the door, if you will, to a whole different group of municipal sewage treatment plants beyond the San Diego waiver and is, of course, of greater concern to me than even that one. You mentioned scientific evidence. Clearly, this letter from the EPA assistant administrator indicates that they are very concerned that this exemption that you have now put in is not based on sound science, plus the EPA has given us a strong indication that beyond the 6 or so California and the 2 Hawaii ones, we are talking now possibly about another 20 or 30. We do not know how many. It is a major concern. I just have not heard anything from the gentleman to verify scientific basis for this new exemption that goes beyond San Diego. Mr. HORN. I know of no one that disagrees that the city and county of Los Angeles have met the scientific standards. EPA has never said it. If they are suddenly coming in at the last minute with a little sideswiping and saying all of these cities will be eligible for it, that is nonsense. {time} 1130 My language is very specific. It applies to one situation: The city and county of Los Angeles, that already have the waste treatment, that goes out to sea. There has not been any complaints that they are violating any standard of science. They test regularly. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. Hobson). The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] has expired. (At the request of Mr. Hunter and by unanimous consent, Mr. Horn was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.) Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey. Mr. PALLONE. Mr. chairman, my point is, again, I heard the San Diego argument, I heard the Los Angeles argument. I do not agree with it, but I am hearing it. You are opening the door, and you have opened it to the six California and two Hawaii ones, to eliminating secondary treatment requirements for a whole slew of other municipalities. That is a problem. Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, may I say to the gentleman from New Jersey, we are not opening the door. The language is very specific. The hurdles are quite specific as to the outfalls 1 mile long, 150 feet deep, that must meet all applicable State and local water quality standards and must have an ongoing ocean monitoring plan in place. That is exactly what we have. These charts show that we are way below the level of concern. The question if very simple, folks. For the sake of the ego of EPA, do we have the taxpayers of Los Angeles spend $400 million when it will not improve the situation one iota, because [[Page H4809]] they already meet it? So the full secondary bit has been met in the pre-secondary, and that is why we should not be spending $400 million more. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. HORN. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me say I support him in his efforts to inject some common sense into this arbitrary application of law that defies science. The best scientists in the world have supported our situation in San Diego, where they say nature takes care of this; you do not have to spend $2 billion, EPA, we can spend it somewhere else where we desperately need it. Science also supports the gentleman from Long Beach. The point is, the gentleman says this opens the door. Let me say to my friend from New Jersey, the door should always be open to reason, common sense, and science. That is precisely what we are injecting in this argument today. With all the programs, good programs, that must take reductions because of the deficit problem, the idea that you do not use common sense to reduce spending where it does not have to be done makes no sense. So I support the gentleman. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, not to beat a dead horse or a dead sewage system, as the case may be, I do rise in strong opposition to the amendment offered by my friend the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone]. This amendment raises the possibility that San Diego will be forced to waste, yes, waste, billions of dollars to change a sewage system that this Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, a Federal District Court judge, the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, the world renowned scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, have all agreed does no harm and in fact may benefit the marine environment. Mr. Chairman, the one-size-fits-all requirement of the Clean Water Act just does not make sense for San Diego. It does not make scientific sense, it does not make economic sense, nor does it make environmental sense. It is simply a bureaucratic requirement to provide a level of treatment that is unnecessary, costly, and provides no beneficial impact to the marine environment. This is not simply my personal opinion. The option, as we stated over and over again, is stated by scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and from the National Academy of Sciences. It is supported by reams of scientific data collected over the years. These studies have shown there is no degradation of water quality or the ecology of the ocean due to the discharge of the plant's chemically enhanced treated waste water. Let me point out, this is not merely a chlorine treated primary situation. This is an alternative to secondary treatment that includes a much higher level of technology that my friend, if I can yield to my friend from California [Mr. Bilbray], might explain. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I think the problem is understanding the technical issues here. The fact that what was interpreted as being chlorination, San Diego is not using the chlorination. Chemically enhanced primary treatment was actually brought to San Diego by members of the Sierra Club as a much more cost effective and environmentally safe way of getting to secondary treatment. It is where you use chemicals to remove the solids to fulfill the standard. What it does is say look, back in the seventies we thought there was only one way to able to clean up the water. Now scientists have come up with new technologies. If we look at a 1970 car and a 1990 car, we will agree there is a difference. The other issue, the chemical, what is called chemical enhanced primary, the fact is primary really is talking about a secondary treatment that does not use injected air and bubbling sewage around, biological activity. In a salt water environment scientists say there is no problem with this, it does the job. The only difference is the BOD, the biochemical oxygen demand, which in a deep salt water environment does not create any problem according to the scientists. I would like to point out, too, as my colleague has, we are talking about this can only be done if the facility's discharges are consistent with the ocean plan for the State of California, one of the most strict water quality programs in the entire Nation, if not the most. So we are saying how you do it we do not mind, as long as the finished product does not hurt the environment and gets the job done. I appreciate my colleagues who are going through a transition here. We are getting away from command and control, Washington knows the answer to everything. What we are trying to get down to is saying, local people, if you can find a better answer to get the job done that we want done, you not only have a right to do that, you have a responsibility, and we will not stand in the way of you doing that. I would like to point out that the monitoring continues. If there is a pollution problem, if the EPA sees there is a hassle, if the monitoring problem shows there is an environmental problem, this waiver immediately ceases and we go back to the same process. That should assure everyone who cares about the environment. Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I do want to thank the chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for understanding the issues for San Diego, for helping us last year get our waiver, and for guaranteeing a success this year. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. FILNER. I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, I would like my colleagues in the Congress to recognize that this has been an issue that has been before the Congress for as long as I have served in Congress, for 12 years and more. We have been working on this issue of trying to resolve the problems that San Diego has had. If we are to follow the general policy that is now taking place in the Congress, where we evaluate every requirement and every mandate and every regulation on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, there is absolutely no question that we would never impose a multibillion-dollar process on San Diego. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Filner was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.) Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, there is no way that this project, as it would be required to go to secondary treatment, could possibly pass a cost-benefit analysis, and thus we ought to really allow the flexibility that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Shuster] has put in the bill that would allow the City of San Diego to meet their requirements in an environmentally sound way. I strongly urge that the Congress approve the bill as it is written and reject this amendment. There is a bipartisan issue for this. The entire delegation from San Diego, of whom I am one, has recommended we disapprove this amendment. It is certainly important to us that we do not impose a $12 billion cost on the people of San Diego. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to Mr. Pallone's amendment to the clean water reauthorization bill. This amendment plays right into the environmentalists' chicken little cries that our environmental protection system is falling. On the contrary, chairman Shuster's amendments to the clean water bill provide communities the flexibility they need to better protect our natural resources. Specifically, Mr. Pallone claims that allowing San Diego a permanent waiver to the EPA's burdensome secondary sewage requirements jeopardizes southern California's water resources. The facts just do not support this assertion. San Diego's location on southern California's beautiful coastline allows the city to take advantage of deep ocean outfall capabilities. Scientific studies conclude that San Diego's sewage treatment efforts are both effective and environmentally sound. In fact, the surrounding ecosystem flourishes partly as a result of the outfall effluence. Yet, the EPA continues to shove their Federal mandates from Washington down the throats of San Diego taxpayers. They continue [[Page H4810]] to require San Diego to spend up to $12 billion on an unnecessary and potentially environmentally damaging secondary sewage treatment plant. Year after year, San Diego officials battle Federal bureaucrats who require the city to submit a costly, time consuming waiver application. The last one cost $1 million and was more than 3,000 pages long. The American people are tired of this kind of bureaucratic bullying Far from the Chicken Little cries of the environmentalists, the American people cry out for a little commonsense. Chairman Shuster's bill and the San Diego waiver provision bring a level of rationality to the environmental protection process. Since I began my service in Congress, I have worked as a former member of Chairman Shuster's committee to do just that. Now as part of a Republican majority, I am pleased to see my efforts come to fruition. Republicans love the environment as much as anyone. My district in southern California contains some of the most beautiful natural resources in the country. I would never vote for a bill which would damage those resources in any way. I just think the people who live on the coast, or in the forests, or canyons or grasslands have a better sense of how to protect their resources than some bureaucrat sitting in an office in Washington. The situation in San Diego demonstrates this most clearly. For that reason, I oppose Mr. Pallone's amendment. Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, there is an issue on which I would like to engage in a colloquy and get the support of the chairman of the committee. I understand that section 319(h)(7)(F) identifies the scope for which a State may use clean water grants. Mr. Chairman, in my State of Florida, the excessive growth of nonindigenous, noxious aquatic weeds, like hydrilla, is an extremely serious impairment of our waters. Funds available for control of these weeds are presently very limited. This provision authorizes States like Florida to utilize a portion of their nonpoint source funds, should they choose to do so, for the control of excessive growth of these nonindigenous aquatic weeds. Although this is an important use, Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the utilization of funds for aquatic weed control should not deplete the funds available for other nonpoint source programs. Is that the understanding of the chairman of the committee? Mr. SHUSTER. If the gentlewoman will yield, Mr. Chairman, that is correct. Mrs. FOWLER. I thank the chairman of the committee for his support and clarification of this section. Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. H.R. 961 is a dangerous piece of legislation for my district, which includes the beautiful Santa Monica Bay. For years the people of Los Angeles have worked to clean the bay and make it safe for swimmers, divers, and the thousands of people who eat local seafood. The city of Los Angeles, however, deserves very little credit for this. City bureaucrats have dragged their feet and done everything they could to avoid tougher controls. But our community was so committed that it overruled the bureaucrats and twice voted by overwhelming margins to stop the Los Angeles sewage system from dumping poorly treated sewage into the bay. As a result, we have spent over $2 billion to bring full secondary treatment to the Hyperion treatment plant. Let me repeat that, because it is important to understand our situation. We have already spent $2 billion to stop dangerous pollution. To complete the project, we need to spend $85 million more. Well, under this bill, we will never spend that $85 million, and we will never be able to clean up the bay. H.R. 961 would overturn our local decision and relieve the sewage system from meeting its obligation under the Clean Water Act to treat sewage. This is a bizarre situation. This Congress is going to overturn a local decision made by Los Angeles voters, and in the process throw $2 billion down the drain and condemn the Santa Monica Bay