Dick Durbin: “Seeing no one on the floor, I would like to say a word about an amendment which will be voted on. I believe it is the…”

“Seeing no one on the floor, I would like to say a word about an amendment which will be voted on. I believe it is the second in the queue, and it is the amendment I have offered relative to petcoke. Petcoke is the product derived from the refining of Canadian tar sands, and if you happen to live in some communities in America, petcoke can be a real problem. This is the city of Chicago, IL. You can see some of the bungalows and houses here, and right across the railroad tracks you can see mounds of petcoke coming in from the British Petroleum refinery. They generate somewhere in the range of 6,000 tons a day of this petcoke and pile it up right here. It is ultimately transported to different places, but it sits here. It obviously is a hazard to people who live nearby. It blows in the wind, creating public health issues and real concern for families with children with asthma, respiratory disease. I have an amendment, and it is very basic. No. 1, the amendment talks about making sure there are standards and rules for the storage enclosure of petcoke. Most of the cities--whether it is Long Beach, CA; or Detroit, MI; or Chicago, IL--are trying to find established standards to enclose this petcoke so it doesn't blow freely in the atmosphere. Senator Hoeven spoke earlier and said it was not carcinogenic. Those findings related not to the breathing in of this dust but to the ingestion of petcoke itself.…”