Safe Drinking Water Act Improved Compliance Awareness Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILDEE. I thank Mr. Tonko for his comments and his support and leadership on this issue.

And I would like him to please extend my thanks to Ranking Member Pallone for his effort and his support. I know he is dealing with a difficult time himself right now, and we extend our best wishes to him.

I want to thank all of my Michigan colleagues for joining as original cosponsors of this legislation; and I particularly thank Chairman Upton for his help, his guidance, his assistance and, really, collaboration on getting a piece of legislation put together that we think is very helpful in preventing another situation such as what has occurred in my hometown from ever happening again in the United States.

I again thank Mr. Upton for his assistance and leadership on this.

Flint is my home. The people I represent are the people I grew up with in Flint, Michigan. It is a great community. It has been through some struggles, for sure, in the last few decades, but we have never dealt with anything quite like this, something so fundamental as safe drinking water that we take for granted.

You turn on the faucet, as Mr. Upton said, you expect the water that comes out of that faucet to be safe for yourself, for your children, to make formula, to cook food, to drink. And because of a series of decisions that really are almost incomprehensible in their impact, people in Flint, Michigan, can't drink their water; 100,000 people can't drink the water.

The thing that makes me most upset--sad, yes, but also angry--is that this crisis, this situation, which will last for decades in its impact, was completely avoidable.

Unlike a lot of other struggles that my hometown has faced as a result of big changes in the economy--development patterns, et cetera-- this was a series of decisions that we can easily identify that could easily have been prevented with just more thought and more care and, in this case, a stronger set of requirements for disclosure when lead levels are elevated in a drinking water system.

So this legislation is one step. It is not the total solution. We really have to deal--and I hope my colleagues will also join us--with putting together a response to the crisis being felt by the people in Flint right now.

This bill, unfortunately, is too late to help them, but it can help the next Flint, perhaps. This would require the EPA to provide notice if the State agency responsible for enforcement of the clean drinking water laws does not act to provide notice to the citizens affected and to the water system.

Let me just be clear on that. The State of Michigan, in the case of the Flint situation, has primacy in terms of enforcement of these laws. It is their obligation to ensure that the clean drinking water laws are enforced, to collect data, to do sampling and testing, and to provide remediation, to provide intervention, if, in fact, it is not the case.

So, yes, there has been a failure of government, but I think we have to take care not to attempt to create some sort of false sense of equivalency of responsibility.

The city of Flint, for example, which is the most local level of government and where the water system is operated, was under the control of an emergency manager, a State official appointed to overtake operation of the city of Flint. So to the extent that the city was responsible, the city was the State in this regard.

In terms of the Federal role, there was apparent confusion or disagreement as to whether the EPA had authority, absent State notification to the public of the data that they had, whether the EPA had authority to go public, to make it clear that there was a problem. This legislation addresses that.

This legislation strengthens the hand of those who work at the EPA and actually requires them--not simply allows, but requires them--to provide notice to the public and to a water system operator in the event that the State fails to do so. Had that happened, it would not have prevented the bad decisions that led to this crisis, but it would have prevented them from going on for months and months and months with no action to protect the people in Flint.

This is important legislation. We need more. We need help for the people of Flint. But this is a step in the right direction in preventing what happened in Flint from happening to another community.

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Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. I appreciate all the comments and the support, especially the sympathy and, really, unity with the people of my hometown of Flint.

I do want to ensure, though, that we are properly characterizing the legislation, its reasoning, and its impact.

The legislation would actually not just require EPA to provide notice, but would require the local jurisdiction, the State agency, to provide them with the opportunity to do what they should do anyway, that is, to provide notice. Absent their willingness to do so, the EPA would then be required.

It is an important distinction because, in this case, the State of Michigan has primacy in enforcement of these rules.

The EPA in the case of Flint did take action when they learned of the elevated lead levels. The action was to repeatedly reach out to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and insist that they enforce the lead and copper rule.

Actually, they went so far as to insist that they initiate corrosion control, which is the mechanism by which lead leaching would have been prevented.

Not only did the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality fail to act, they actually told the EPA almost a year ago that they actually had initiated corrosion control when they had not.

I think it would be a mistake to create some sort of equivalency between the role of the EPA and the role of the State of Michigan in this. It was the State of Michigan that had prime responsibility that failed.

The EPA, while I would have preferred that they had shouted from the mountaintop that they were having this problem getting the lead agency to enforce the rule, there was at least confusion as to whether or not they had the authority to do so. Even today, the State of Michigan continues to push back on the EPA's attempts to test water to insist on enforcement. It is an important distinction to make.

Regarding my friend Mr. Sanford's comments, I appreciate his reflection on the financial situation within the city of Flint. While that is a set of questions that clearly needs attention, the truth of the matter is, had the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality insisted on the use of corrosion control in the Flint water system, as the law would require, the cost would have been $140 a day. All of this could have been prevented by the State simply requiring that $140 a day be spent.

This legislation is important in preventing this from happening again so that an agency of a State that refuses to enforce the law at least can't do so in the dark; and if the State won't give public notice, it would require the EPA to do so. This is an important step. We have crafted this legislation to make sure that each level of government is transparent when it comes to these issues.

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