Rob Portman: “I thank my colleague from Ohio for his good work on this bill. He helped to improve this legislation and make it more…”

“I thank my colleague from Ohio for his good work on this bill. He helped to improve this legislation and make it more effective. It is about having the EPA play a bigger role on not only how we monitor but also how we treat the water and how we establish when there is a problem. This is needed, it is needed now, and it is immediate. This is a photograph that was taken about 8 days ago--not this past week but the weekend before--on the lake. The jar in the photograph was collected by the charter boat captain. He is actually one of the charter boat captains who go out every day and collect samples that are then used by the experts to determine not just where the algal blooms are but the level of toxicity. This is what we found. As you can see, that doesn't look very appetizing. It is thick and green. It is filled with the kinds of toxins that can affect people in very negative ways if they get in the drinking water. We know that people are getting rashes right now from some other freshwater reservoirs in our area, from being in contact with the water. If we don't deal with this issue, we know we are going to have more of this. We know it has already cost our communities a lot to mitigate it. In Grand Lake St. Marys, as I mentioned earlier, they have already shut down some of the beaches because of this. The city of Celina spends $450,000 annually to deal with this. So this is also a taxpayer issue.…”