Frank Pallone: “I just wanted to take my 2 minutes if I could to talk about the economic impact of this bill. It is interesting because…”

“I just wanted to take my 2 minutes if I could to talk about the economic impact of this bill. It is interesting because I think that many of the proponents have been making the argument, looking at the so-called cost-benefit or the risk assessment provisions and suggesting that somehow we need to revise the Clean Water Act during this reauthorization to look at cost-benefit and risk and other things which I might characterize as monetizing the Clean Water Act, something that was mentioned in the New York Times. From my perspective though and I think from that from many of the coastal states and other parts of the country, by severely weakening the Clean Water Act as this bill does it is jeopardizing many of our most important industries, most notably the tourism industry. In my part of New Jersey, in fact New Jersey as a whole, tourism is the No. 1 industry and we know that estimates are something like $400 billion a year in this country nationwide comes from the travel and tourism industry. We also have to note that clean water is very important to the fishing industry, a $55 billion a year industry in this great Nation and also concerns about drinking water.”