On the recordApril 29, 2021
my neighbor, I want to take a few minutes this morning--additional minutes this morning to discuss the water issues facing rural America, and the Presiding Officer comes from the Garden State, and a lot of people who have heard Senator Coons and me talk about our State think of us as the poultry State. We think, for about every person who lives in Delaware, we have got about 300 chickens. We raise a lot of the corn and soybeans to feed those chickens. So almost every State is a rural State in one way or the other. But the issues facing rural America often do not get the same level of attention or assistance with drinking water and wastewater programs that larger, more urban or suburban areas receive. As our Committee on Environment and Public Works was drafting the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021, the legislation before us today, many of us focused on the need to invest in small, rural, and disadvantaged communities because they often--to be honest with you, often get left behind. These communities are overlooked or overburdened when it comes to addressing the drinking water and wastewater needs of their residents too often. Most of our country's drinking water and wastewater utilities are small. Approximately, 80 percent of the country's almost 17,000 wastewater utilities serve a population of fewer than 10,000 people. More than 90 percent of the country's 43,000 community water systems serve a population of fewer than 10,000 people.…
