Clean Boating Act of 2008

CLEAN BOATING ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 22, 2008)

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Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to begin my remarks by thanking the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Oberstar, and I will have a little more to say about the body on the other side and how it contrasts with how Mr. Oberstar and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on this side operates.

I also thank the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) for his dogged pursuit of this, and all of the other Members that Mr. Oberstar mentioned; and in addition one who he by oversight forgot, Candice Miller of Michigan, who was in the boat business before she came to Congress. And like most of us who live up on the Great Lakes, when she goes home, she hears about this.

I actually saw a couple of boaters the weekend before last, and they said that with all that is going on with fuel prices, they paid $500 to fill up their tanks to go out and boat, and they certainly didn't need an incidental discharge permit authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency to go out walleye fishing.

Relative to the way the two bodies work, when this matter was brought to the chairman's attention, he immediately said well, draft a piece of legislation, put it in, let's find out everybody that is interested. We will have hearings. We did in the subcommittee and the full committee. We had a markup, we prepared the bill, and then we waited and we waited and we waited.

Then today, I know some people who may keep track of the schedule of the House of Representatives may have seen the schedule for today's suspension calendar printed, and it said we would be considering H.R. 5949, and I just would ask people to not adjust their television sets, it is not a mistake, we are in fact doing the Senate bill because the great slumbering dinosaur that is the august body on the other side of the Capitol awoke from that slumber earlier this morning and in fact passed Senate 2766, which I am happy to say is identical word for word with the House bill and so we are going to consider the Senate bill because unlike others, we have no pride of authorship, we are more interested in getting this bill to the President for his signature to help alleviate the pain that some 13 million, 14 million boaters would have.

The original House bill was introduced to exempt recreational boaters from having to obtain an EPA permit for incidental discharges that are determined to be normal to the operation of the vehicle. The House passage today will prevent 16 million recreational boaters from being subject to Federal fines of up to $32,500. And let me repeat that, $32,500 a day for a guy who owns a 19-foot Starcraft that has an incidental discharge in Lake Erie.

What is an incidental discharge? An incidental discharge is if it rains and water pours off the deck of your boat; if you are out fishing and you have a cooler and you want to dump the melted ice over the side of the boat, that is an incidental discharge. In my part of the Great Lakes basin, we are a little heartier and maybe a little cruder than others, and sometimes we will go out with a cooler filled with liquid refreshments while we walleye fish, and sometimes that leads to a call of nature. That is an incidental discharge from a recreational boat that would have been subject to this discharge permit because of this judge in California.

And the Congress had to act because the judge indicated that these regulations go into effect in September. The EPA has already drafted model regulations so they were ready to go. And although the matter is on appeal, if we don't take action and get the President to sign it, it is going to be a big problem.

So again, I am very, very thankful to Mr. Oberstar and the other members of our committee. I am very thankful for the prompt action of the House of Representatives and thankful for the action of the United States Senate earlier today. I urge everybody to support this piece of legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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