Water Resources Development Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank Congressman Joyce for yielding, and I urge strong support of his amendment. I thank him for his vigilant and necessary championing of our Great Lakes, the largest body of freshwater on the face of the Earth. I want to thank Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member DeFazio, and Subcommittee Chairman Gibbs for helping us to elevate to national importance and to large numbers of our citizenry the sheer magnitude of what these freshwater seas actually represent for our country and the world.

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has been very effective in beginning to address the severe and unique concerns confronting our Great Lakes. During the first 5 years of GLRI, Federal agencies and their partners removed 42 beneficial-use-impairment listings in 17 areas of concern, quadrupling the number of beneficial use impairments removed in the preceding 22 years. For example, this year the Environmental Protection Agency made an important designation at the Black River area of concern near Lorain, Ohio. It is the largest EPA GLRI investment, and it will bring that area of concern to completion, an area so critically damaged by decades of industrial waste that drains directly into Lake Erie, our life source.

Programs like the GLRI, which have proven effective, deserve our praise and support. As such, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of Mr. Joyce's amendment to protect one of our greatest national and global treasures, the Great Lakes, which represent and contain 20 percent of the world's freshwater. Just to put it on the record, God isn't making any more freshwater. This equals 20% of all that exists.

We have to take care of it and shepherd it into the future.

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