James Oberstar: “We have engaged in spacecraft missions to the Moon, to Mars, to Saturn, to the asteroid belt in quest of water. The very…”

“We have engaged in spacecraft missions to the Moon, to Mars, to Saturn, to the asteroid belt in quest of water. The very first effort is to look for water on distant planetary objects in our system, for primitive life forms that may exist in that water, and yet we have not looked closely enough at the water here on Earth. This recognition of the 35th anniversary of the Clean Water Act will give us that opportunity to stop, to reflect upon the journey that we have made over these three and a half decades, and the journey yet ahead of us to clean up that remaining one-third, to protect that other two-thirds of water, to pass on to the next generation this priceless heritage of fresh water, that we do not have to go wandering in space looking for water that we may have destroyed on Earth so that we may bring it from some extraterrestrial planetary system to replenish our fresh water on Earth. No, let us be custodians of that fresh water that we have. It's only 2 percent of all the water on Earth. Let us resolve and renew our efforts.…”