On the recordJuly 9, 2013
I urge my colleagues to support the amendment offered by my good friend from Virginia. I urge them to strike section 112. There's no one in this Chamber that owns this world. We borrow it from those who come behind us in the future, and we owe them a duty to see to it that we return it in proper form. The bill, as drafted, forbids the Federal Government from seeing to it that all manner of defilement is not dumped into the navigable waters of the United States. This is having an appalling consequence, destroying waters, killing fish, polluting the water sources of our communities and cities. But beyond that, it's doing something else. A race of unscrupulous people are sawing the tops off our mountains in the Appalachians and other places, and they're taking that spoil and dropping it in river valleys and filling them up, the result of which is that the water flowing through that valley becomes highly acidic, and it produces severe danger, not just to fish and wildlife, but to human beings. These are the waters of the United States that are being defiled. The amendment would at least afford a moderate level of authority to the Federal Government, which has always been that authority of the Federal Government, to protect one of the greatest treasures this Nation has: its flowing waters. My colleagues on the other side think that that is a question of jobs.…
