Marty Walsh: “I rise actually in support of the gentlewoman's amendment and am prepared to accept it for our bill. This is a good…”

“I rise actually in support of the gentlewoman's amendment and am prepared to accept it for our bill. This is a good idea. It is a little tough on the Environmental Protection Agency because it will have to find these funds out of existing appropriated funds but, at the same time, it shows that the Congress considers this issue a very high priority. I know members of the subcommittee, including the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), has spoken long and strong in favor of doing a better, more aggressive job on leaking underground storage tanks, and especially with this issue of MTBE, which pollutes our drinking water. This amendment would also provide funds to orphaned sites where the owner cannot be located or otherwise cannot be identified. Mr. Chairman, this is a serious problem. Communities all over the country worry about this issue and suffer from this issue, and we need to do a vigilant job in protecting our groundwater supplies which, once they are polluted, can be next to impossible to abate the problem.”