Max Baucus: “I worked often, and long hours and days, with the Senator from Arizona over this project and many others. The people of…”

“I worked often, and long hours and days, with the Senator from Arizona over this project and many others. The people of Arizona should be proud of the hard work of the Senator from Arizona. He has worked diligently and spent many opportunities to speak with me and others in the committee about this project, and others very important to Arizona. It is also clear, Mr. President, that border problems are very serious. The pollution along the border is unbelievable. I myself visited not Nogales, but in the summer 2 years ago, the colonias along El Paso and over in Tijuana, and Juarez, across the border from El Paso. When you see these colonias, you are just astounded how people live there. Colonias essentially are small communities where there are squatters; namely, people looking for jobs come to the border areas and they build up small communities. They just build tar-paper shacks, tens of thousands, all in these little sections. No running water, no drinking water, no sewage. The colonias I happened to visit did have electric power. That was it. It was dusty, hot; just squalid conditions. People were out there carrying water on their backs for communities to drink and to wash clothes, whatnot. The conditions are deplorable. In addition to that, Mr. President, because there is no sewer, the raw sewage flows down into the river, into the Rio Grande. Alongside the Rio Grande is another river called Agua Negres, black ditch, because it is all sewage.”