Peter Deutsch: “Mr. Chairman, I have been supportive of this type of legislation. I have voted for it when I was in the State…”

“Mr. Chairman, I have been supportive of this type of legislation. I have voted for it when I was in the State legislature. I have been supportive since I have been in Congress. What is in front of us right now, though, is specifically the Towns amendment, and what it deals with in terms of interstate pollution. Mr. Chairman, as has been pointed out previously, for Members here who are from upwind States or upriver States, it is not quite the same type of intensity that it has in States like Florida. Florida in many ways is the ultimate downriver state. As far as I am aware, we have no rivers that flow into other States. We are the repository of downstream pollution from other States, whether it be Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi. In a State like Florida, and in a district like my own, which is the downstream end of the downstream State representing the south end, the tip of the State, Florida Bay and the Everglades area, where it is the downstream end of the downstream State, we have very little control over what occurs upstream. Specifically, again, Mr. Chairman, if we focus on what this amendment is about, in parts of this country like Florida, without this amendment passing a very well-intentioned bill and a very good bill will have some exceptionally bad results.”