Emanuel Cleaver: “In the committee report for this bill, the appropriations committee included some language expressing concerns in regard…”

“In the committee report for this bill, the appropriations committee included some language expressing concerns in regard to the Environmental Protection Agency's Urban Waters Initiative and provides no funding in the bill for this program for fiscal year 2012. I understand the committee's reluctance to extend funding for new broad, cross-cutting initiatives, given our economic situation. However, I feel this initiative has immense value to millions of people who live in urban centers and who rely on the government to ensure that they have clean water to drink and use in their daily lives. This amendment would restore partial funding for the Urban Waters Initiative for fiscal year 2012. This amendment does not increase the spending by one single penny. Cities share one key characteristic: they're full of people, buildings, and businesses. Because everyone shares the same relative space, air and water environmental impacts are concentrated in smaller areas, including waterways. Urban waters take on large amounts of pollution from a variety of sources, including industrial discharges, mobile sources, such as cars and trucks, residential/commercial wastewater, trash and polluted stormwater runoff from urban landscapes. As urban populations often share centralized water sources, this pollution creates public and environmental health hazards like lowered drinking water quality and water bodies that aren't safe for human swimming.…”