Marcy Kaptur: “I thank the ranking member, Mr. Rahall, for his great leadership and consider it a privilege to speak today. Let me…”

“I thank the ranking member, Mr. Rahall, for his great leadership and consider it a privilege to speak today. Let me inform this House why it should vote down this death bill-- yes, death bill. This is a jar of algae, toxic to humans and animals. It was just drawn from Lake Erie, one of our great freshwater lakes, a drinking source for some 11 million people. On August 2, this green muck filled with toxic microcystin surrounded the Toledo drinking water intake, leaving over half a million people with no safe drinking water for 3 days. It almost seemed surreal. One of America's biggest cities and regions with no fresh drinking water. Now, the region that our watershed drains is 85 percent agricultural. How fortunate we are. In fact, it is the largest watershed in the entire Great Lakes, but allowing farm field runoff of manures and fertilizers, applied at four times the rate of 20 years ago, with excessive phosphorous and nitrogen that feed the growth of this green muck, is simply no longer acceptable. The number of people who live in our tristate watershed totals 2 million, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and of course, with Canada even more; but the number of animals in the watershed is 10 to 15 times the human population. The manure load of those animals--compared to 20 years ago--spread on the land, even in the wintertime, contributes, with increasing rainfall, to the pollution that then drains to places like Toledo.…”