Eleanor Holmes Norton

Now, customer urgency means what, the roof is leaking and people are complaining?

What a positive note to end this hearing on.

I couldn't be happier with your response.

We look to the EPA as the Federal agency for environmental matters.

I don't understand why that is even a problem.

But all we want to see is what we can see now. I am not asking to see what you haven't completed yet.

I appreciate that you have made us understand that there is no leaving, no exit in that sense.

I don't understand the national security concerns at all about World War I weapons.

What is the exit plan that you are using?

I want to express my appreciation for the Corps and the Army for remaining to hear you out.

Neither Congress nor the community has seen the Corps' 2 year exit plan or any evidence that the area has been cleaned.

I cannot say to you that I have been convinced yet, we have some time to go, that an independent evaluation will not be necessary.

So you appointed the first ones. As people left, then who was the decisionmaker?

Is that the most serious problem you will have to continue to monitor?

I want to alert this panel that in 20 minutes to a half hour even the voteless Delegate from the District of Columbia gets to vote.

This community is going to know what those weapons were when this is all over.

I appreciate that, beginning in my early years in Congress when I was in the minority, this committee has held every hearing that I have requested to assure that the Spring Valley neighborhood surrounding American University is cleared of…

However, Mr. Chairman, the Corps neither informed this committee, despite our oversight over the years, or me, the city's only elected congressional official.

I think that in light of your testimony about how the Corps has underestimated the cost of cleanup, that would seem to be important to do.

If there is a work plan, if we are now supposed to be in an era of transparency, why not share it?

So what would be the evidence then of whether or not there was anything harmful there if it was buried that deep?

Would the partners have an objection to an independent study? The silence is deafening.

I am looking for somebody above it all who will look at the work and say that the work has been done or not.

I recognize the position, particularly that the Corps is put in, in dealing with their own munitions very deeply buried.

You are now about to leave. As you leave, surely we could get the greatest transparency possible.