Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the problem with the supposition on behalf of the Taylor amendment is that it is a supposition that the subject matter is reducing effluent into rivers and streams; therefore, it is automatically good legislation and good policy and not subject to any kind of practical, including financial, review. As I have indicated, the Rio Grande runs through the middle of Albuquerque. I am entirely sympathetic to what the gentleman from Mississippi is raising, but there have even been other experiences with our location. Several years ago the Congress of the United States gave native American tribes in pueblos the power essentially to enact the water standards for water that passes along their shores to be enforced by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. A pueblo just south of Albuquerque said the standard they wanted for the Rio Grande was drinking water standards that you ought to be able to drink the water right out of the Rio Grande, and it ought to be healthy and safe. According to experts I have talked to, the water in the Rio Grande has never been up to that standard, even before any kind of industrialization or buildup in the area occurred, there would be natural contaminants in the river that would make it unsafe, unsafe to drink raw right out of the river.”