Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member and the chairman of the committee and subcommittee for their work on this very important issue.

This en bloc amendment includes two amendments that I offered that would provide specific relief to my hometown. Many of you have heard me on the floor of this House talk about the incredible challenge that my hometown of Flint, Michigan, faces.

Through no fault of its own, during a time when a State-appointed emergency manager was literally running every aspect of city government, a terrible decision, a thoughtless and really not science- based decision was made to use river water to replace water from the Great Lakes as the drinking water source. That decision caused a series of events that led to lead leaching into the water and, quite literally, poisoning a city of 100,000 people. The impact of this event will be long felt in my hometown.

We all have an obligation. Even though the principal responsibility lies with the State, we all have an obligation to contribute to the efforts that this city will painfully go through in order to recover. The amendments within this en bloc amendment that I offered will help.

The committee has already done great work to provide some flexibility to States in administering the clean drinking water revolving loan fund, the state revolving loan fund, which in this case would provide the State of Michigan with tools to assist the City of Flint in making the kinds of changes to its water system to prevent this from ever happening again and correct the problem in the first place.

There is another amendment that would actually allow the city some help in transitioning to a permanent water source derived from Lake Huron and away from dependence on either the Detroit water system or this river water, which was the source of the problem.

I will just say this: It will take a lot more to fix this problem and a lot of commitment from the State and the Federal Government, but it means a lot to the people back home.

I just want to express my gratitude to the ranking member and to Chairman Calvert for their work on this. It will help my hometown of Flint, but it will also potentially be of value to other communities facing water emergencies.

I urge my colleagues to support this en bloc amendment.

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