Time Bombs Ticking

Floor Speech

Time Bombs Ticking -- (House of Representatives - March 24, 2009)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. We have a lot of controversies here in Washington, D.C. There's even controversy over whether some of us should be legislators or communicators. But there's one area that we all can be policymakers, come together, make the economy stronger, and improve the quality of life for all Americans.

In every congressional office there's a copy of the Congressional Quarterly Weekly. The current issue on page 656 has an article about the EPA dealing with the Pentagon pollution. I invite every Member, every legislative director, every staff member who's responsible for dealing with defense or dealing with the environment to pick up this article and read the two pages.

It illustrates a bigger issue here--not just a dustup in the last administration between EPA and the Department of Defense--but the role that we will all play with thousands of time bombs literally ticking in every State and most of our congressional districts.

It's embarrassing that we still have almost 10,000 toxic sites with unexploded ordnance and military toxin scattered in every State of the Union, and 3,449 of these sites are Superfund sites. Amazingly, 2,600 of them are formerly used defense sites that, at the current rate--these are bases that have been closed--at the current rate, it will take more than half a century to get rid of these dangerous elements and return the land to productive use.

This is not just a serious problem for every State and almost every community. First and foremost, it is a danger to our military, to their families, and to their neighbors, having these toxic and unexploded ordnance lying around. It also is a serious problem for military readiness.

One of the reasons that States and local governments are resisting the expanding training footprint that our military needs today is because we, the federal government hasn't been a very good neighbor. People don't know how long they are going to be left with a landscape that is littered with explosives and toxic substances.

Three times since I have been in Congress, we have had to pull forest firefighters out of raging flames in the forests because bombs were exploding because past military training had left shells behind. There's a subdivision in Pennsylvania on a former military site that does not have fire service because they're afraid that the heat from a fire will explode a bomb.

This is a problem of military readiness now. It's also an opportunity--if we solve this problem--with the techniques and technology that will help us determine whether it's a 105-millimeter shell or it's a hub cab, can also be used to make our soldiers safer overseas from improvised explosive devices. It will save money in the long run because as these shells and contaminants break down and leach into the groundwater, it will be more expensive to solve the dangerous pollution in the future.

It's not just a problem of the Department of Defense and the Pentagon and administrations past and present--it's a problem for Congress. We have been missing in action. It's time for us to put a reasonable amount of money in cleaning up these Superfund sites and getting rid of the unexploded ordnance.

I don't want to read another story of where there are children, like those in San Diego, who found a bomb playing in a field behind their subdivision. It exploded killing two of them. News accounts of a bomb washing up on a beach in Florida or explosives discovered near a school are stories that we don't want to hear again.

It's past time that we own up to our responsibilities, that we solve the problem that will help military readiness today, technology that will save the lives of our servicemembers overseas, make our servicemembers at home and their families and the people who work with them safer, and meet our responsibilities to the environment. Oh, by the way. We will put tens of thousands of people to work cleaning up land and returning it to productive capacity all across America.

It's time that Congress is no longer missing in action in this serious problem of military contamination. Look at the Congressional Quarterly Weekly that is on your desk, page 656. Thank you.

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