Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge support for my amendment, including in the En Bloc Amendment, that would provide the Office of Tribal Affairs created in this bill with the responsibility of ensuring that the Department of Transportation has in place and enforces federal government wide requirement for regular and meaningful consultation and collaboration with Tribes and Tribal officials as outlined in Executive Order 13175 issued by President Clinton in 2000.

I thank the chairman for its inclusion in En Bloc Amendment No. 1.

The reality is while Executive Order 13175 was groundbreaking, it has never quite lived up to its promise. Too many federal agencies have failed (and still fall short today) to executive its directive to ensure that tribes have a say in federal activities that impact them.

Why was this Order needed? Because, unfortunately, history has shown that failure by the federal government to consider the impact on tribal communities or to include their voices in federal decision making has all too often led to undesirable and, at times, devastating policy.

Consultation and engagement is a basic must for maintaining a strong and productive Federal-tribal relationship.

A key part of protecting sovereignty and self-determination is to make sure that federal agencies actively gather, listen, and heed the input of tribes relating to federal projects and activities that will impact them. Providing this responsibility to this new office within a Department that supports tens of billions of dollars of projects in every part of our country makes sense.

Among other requirements, Executive Order 13175 called on each federal agency to ``have an accountable process to ensure meaningful and timely input by tribal officials in the development of regulatory policies that have tribal implications.'' It further went on to require each federal agency to designate an official to lead the agency's implementation of the Order's requirements.

I believe the new Tribal Office created in this bill would be perfectly position to carry out those duties and ensure that the Department of Transportation and its agencies implement an effective tribal consultation process, including pushing the Department to follow up on its commitment to tell tribes how their input was or was not actually used, a flaw pointed out in a 2019 report by the GAO.

The impact of the transportation programs authorized in this bill and on tribal lands goes beyond the tribal programs authorized in this legislation. Therefore, this new office should also be able to look broadly across the Department and work to monitor and fix problems with how the Department in general works with tribes on projects and activities, regardless of funding source.

No single office can fix this problem but by creating a point for accountability and transparency, it will move us closer to the goal wonderfully articulated in Executive Order 13175 but which has proved so elusive ever since.

With that, I urge support for my amendment and the larger En Bloc package.

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Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my amendment which has been included in this En Bloc Amendment. As we debate this bill, our nation is experiencing a resurrection in COVID-19 cases, with record or near record one day totals occurring almost daily. While this may not be the time to rehash rash decisions to reopen in the face of public health advice, it does again remind us of the need to continue to provide tools to communities to help identify, track, and treat those affected by this deadly virus.

Tracking COVID-19 in the community is extremely important in the fight to stop this deadly killer which has already infected over 2.5 million Americans and killed over 125,000.

As noted by the Water Research Foundation, ``wastewater surveillance of COVID-19 could be an early, cost-effective, unbiased community-level indicator of the presence of COVID-19.''

Research is underway in our nation and around the world to try and use sewage samples to spot any potential surge or other trends in caseloads in a community. It is believed that the virus will show up in sewer samples even for patients that show no outward symptoms.

For example, in late March, samples from one wastewater utility in Massachusetts found that the amount of SARS-Co V-2 particles indicated a far higher number of people likely infected with Covid-19 than the area's reported cases

My amendment would formally authorize a more robust EPA research program to help develop guidance and procedures to help identify and measure SARS-Co V-2 levels in wastewater.

There are still a lot of unknowns associated with this evolving tool. The EPA is well positioned to offer key guidance and information to wastewater utilities interested in helping support such research. While it has undertaken some activities in this area, more can be done to inform sample collection, analysis, and interpretation of results of this research.

The EPA can also help support greater coordination in ongoing research to prevent duplicative effort, help close knowledge gaps, and support better communication of the results of such testing to the public, public health officials, and others.

As our nation continues to respond to the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, this is an evolving field that shows promise at providing real time or near real time community wide surveillance that isn't directly tied to testing (although we still need to do that and do that better).

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment.

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