James M. Jeffords: “I rise to raise the awareness of the Senate as to the importance of being able to pass the D.C. appropriations bill…”

“I rise to raise the awareness of the Senate as to the importance of being able to pass the D.C. appropriations bill today. The reason for that is that we have in this city a serious problem with the drinking water. And I will mention that in a little more detail in a moment. The bill is at the desk. It has passed the House. There is an appropriation in that bill to provide for immediate efforts to clean up the serious circumstances with the city's drinking water. I do not want to alarm anyone too much, but it is a health hazard to certain individuals who have immune problems as well as elderly people. In order to correct it, it is going to take some effort from private contractors, and it is going to take funds in order to contract with respect to certain pumps that may be broken in the efforts to flush the pumps out. In addition to that, we also have serious problems right now which need attention immediately, that is, we have public safety funds which have been increased in this bill. We have police cars right now on the blocks; we have fire engines in the shop and computer systems in chaos. There are funds in the bill which will allow us to do that and to get started immediately upon passage of the D.C. appropriations bill.”