Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, a day set aside to appreciate the environment. In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin recognized the power of campus activism and established Earth Day as a way to highlight the environmental problems this Nation faced--air pollution from factories, water pollution from unregulated discharges, and toxic waste dumps. After Congress passed legislation to designate April 22 as Earth Day, Congress passed several bills to protect the environment including the Clean Water Acts, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Federal Pesticides Act, the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Education Act, and the National Hiking Trails and the National Scenic Trails Acts. Because Michigan is surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, the problems plaguing the lakes have an enormous impact on Michigan. A generation ago, the Great Lakes were a huge reservoir of persistent toxic substances, but they have improved markedly since that time. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, estimates that the Great Lakes Critical Programs Act, which I sponsored in 1990, has reduced direct toxic water discharges by millions of pounds per year. In addition, since 2002, the EPA estimates that close to 900,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment have been removed under the Great Lakes Legacy Act at 5 of the 31 U.S. ``Areas of Concern'' in the Great Lakes, thirteen of which are found in Michigan.…”