Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the Hydropower Policy Modernization Act of 2017 because it weakens States' rights to protect their own water quality. Under the Clean Water Act, States have the right to protect their water by setting water quality conditions on hydropower licenses. This bill would constrain that authority, forcing States to issue rushed conditions using incomplete scientific data, or surrender their authority to issue conditions at all. In short, the choice that States have to protect their water and their people is to either do it poorly or not at all. We had a fix for this. We had an amendment to H.R. 3043, but it was not made in order. It would have preserved the critical role States play in protecting local water quality by exempting their rights under the Clean Water Act from the bill. For Marylanders in my State, this issue is bipartisan and hits close to home. FERC is currently considering the relicensing of a hydroelectric dam on the Susquehanna River. The Susquehanna provides 50 percent of all of the freshwater that reaches the Chesapeake Bay, making it a critical driver of the Bay's water quality. Any new FERC license will need to have conditions that protect the Susquehanna and the Bay from the sediment and nutrient pollution built up behind the dam.…”