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Clean Estuaries Act Of 2010

Floor Speech

Date: April 15, 2010
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Environment

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Mr. BACA. Mr. Chair, I rise and ask unanimous consent to address the House for one minute.

I support the reauthorization of the National Estuary Program, NEP, through the adoption of H.R. 4715, the Clean Estuaries Act of 2010.

Estuaries are bodies of water that receive both outflows from rivers and tidal inflows from the ocean.

They are transition zones between fresh water from rivers and saline water from the ocean. The mixing of fresh and salt water provides a unique environment that supports diverse habitats for a wide variety of living resources, including plants, fish, and wildlife.

Estuaries provide habitat for 75 percent of the U.S. commercial fish catch and 80 to 90 percent of the recreational fish catch.

Coastal counties for 40 percent of the employment and 49 percent of the economic output for the nation. Estuaries are also vital to the health of our beaches, which produce between $6 billion and $30 billion for coastal communities each year.

We need this bill because many of the Nation's estuaries are currently in poor ecological health.

This bill requires the Administrator of the EPA to undertake a programmatic evaluation of EPA's overall National Estuaries Program to asses its effectiveness in improving water quality, natural resources, and sustainable uses of included estuaries. In addition, the bill requires the EPA to submit a report to Congress on the results of this evaluation.

H.R. 4715 includes evaluation and update requirements to ensure accountability.

With this legislation, all approved estuary programs will be evaluated and will now update their management plans on a periodic basis, increasing program transparency and improving program performance.

In addition this bill requires that Federal agencies participate in the management planning process, incorporate local priorities into their activities and actions and increase coordination within the estuary.

I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4715, Clean Estuaries Act.

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