Cory Booker

The site I stood on had severe flooding which then carried much of those contaminants that were otherwise isolated back into our water table.

Both orphan sites, as we said, are shovel-ready but remediation hasn't started because of lack of funding.

So you are not representing that all of these 89 are just because of non-funding related issues. You are saying you'd have to evaluate them?

We know there are people living and residing within a mile of both of those sites.

In fact, it really disturbed me that a lot of unanticipated weather events have further added to the health concerns on the sites we are not moving on simply because of lack of money.

I think those are important to include in the record as well.

Thank you for that valuable testimony. You give a lot of gratitude to me but I want to thank our Ranking Member Inhofe for including you as well.

That is a very good point.

Ms. Bodine, that was very helpful. I am a vegetarian so forgive the analogy, but that had a lot of meat on it, so I appreciate it.

I am going to let the Ranking Member ask his questions. When I have a chance, I'd like to followup some more.

Across the United States, we have far too many unremediated, dangerous Superfund sites sitting in our neighborhoods, properties that are literally poisoning residents.

this hearing is of great importance.

This is a direct threat to our national security and towns and cities across the Country.

I seem to see them now about every other year in New Jersey.

I appreciate the two of you coming and providing testimony on what I believe are unacceptable public health crises in our Nation right now in which the anguish and the pain of families dealing with the health consequences are made real by…

Today, Senator Boxer and I are requesting that the GAO update their 2010 report.

Based on your experience in New Jersey, are there sites with unacceptable ongoing risks of human exposure that need additional funding?

I was amazed with the things they control for, age, whether the people smoked or not and concluded that there was a 20 percent increase in birth defects before cleanups of Superfund sites compared to after the remediation.

Let me repeat, that is 3-4 million children in the United States who live within one mile of a Superfund site.

I'd like to get an update on the cleanup status of some of the Superfund sites actually in New Jersey.

The President's budget suggests doing it both ways. I would like your response to focusing on those polluting industries that produce tar sands, arsenic and the like.

Nobody should have to sacrifice a family member because they picked the wrong zip code and happen to live near a Superfund site that doesn't have the funds to be cleaned up.

If we had more funding in the removal branch, which goes out first to these imminent threats, and gave them more funding to be able to go in and get these sites moving quicker, these sites would be cleaned up quicker.

Site after site after site in New Jersey where we have significant a chemical presence and a tremendous amount of poison are not being acted upon by the simple fact that we don't have the resources to act upon them.

I agree with you 100 percent. You can call it whatever you want, we have lots of fancy names for revenue in the Senate, as I am quickly learning, but as you said, it is value neutral, the resources.