Political Quotes

“Today the Senate will pass legislation to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to give State and local communities the flexibility to ensure that consumers have safe drinking water, and send it to the President for his signature. For the past several years, I have worked closely with communities in my State to support legislation that throws out the one-size-fits-all approach and the costly mandates of the current law, and to replace it with greater flexibility and a commonsense approach. Today all the hard work of these communities paid off. Several years ago, I began working with communities across my State that were frustrated with the one-size-fits-all approach of current law. The current law tied the hands of the State to work with local communities by mandating prohibitively expensive treatment technologies on the smallest of water systems--the cost of which would have bankrupt some of our State's smaller communities. In 1994, I held a safe drinking water forum in Moses Lake, WA to hear first hand from local leaders how to fix the current law. Over 100 people turned out for that hearing, and their message was clear--the current law was broken and in need of repair.”