Frank Lautenberg: “today along with Senators Daschle, Baucus, Moynihan, Graham, Harry Reid, Boxer, Wyden, Levin, Torricelli, Sarbanes, and…”

“today along with Senators Daschle, Baucus, Moynihan, Graham, Harry Reid, Boxer, Wyden, Levin, Torricelli, Sarbanes, and Breaux, I am introducing the Brownfields and Environmental Cleanup Act of 1997. This legislation is designed to foster the cleanup of potentially thousands of toxic waste sites across this country, and just as importantly this bill is about jobs, about revenue, and economic opportunity, because it will help turn abandoned industrial sites into engines of economic development. Madam President, I have been interested for a long time now in the issue of these abandoned, underutilized and contaminated industrial sites, commonly known as brownfields. Our Nation's great industrial tradition was the lifeblood of our Nation's economy. But this industrial tradition also entailed tremendous environmental costs. Sites were contaminated, and then when the manufacturers, the companies left, the legacy remained behind. Today, decaying industrial plants define the skyline and contaminate the land in many of our urban areas. Their rusting frames, like aging skyscrapers, are a silent reminder of those manufacturers that left, taking inner-city jobs and often inner-city hope with them. Yet, Madam President, in these foul fields may lie the seeds of urban revitalization, and I continue to feel as I did when I introduced similar legislation in 1993 and 1996, that a brownfields cleanup program can spur significant economic development and create jobs.”