State Water Rights Amendment

Floor Speech

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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I remember sitting in a House Oversight Committee hearing years ago on the Flint water crisis. At the time, my oldest daughter Abigail was just a year old.

I remember looking out into the audience and seeing just a hand holding a baby bottle up from the middle of a crowd in that hearing room. That baby bottle looked exactly like the one that my own baby drank out of. It was a little bottle with a pink top.

But unlike my daughter's bottle, the water in this one was brown, a muddy, murky brown.

I couldn't, and all these years later I still can't, begin to imagine what it would have been like to have to drink that water while I was pregnant or to have no choice but to give it to my baby because the system that I trusted to provide my family with clean, safe drinking water had failed me.

But that kind of nightmare remains the everyday reality for far, far too many parents across this country.

It has been 7 years since the leaders of the city of Flint tried to save a few dollars by swapping out its drinking water supply from Detroit's system to the Flint River, setting off a chain of events that poisoned nearly 9,000 kids in just 18 months.

But the damage inflicted on that community will never go away, and while Flint was a tragedy, it was not an anomaly. According to both the EPA and CDC, there is no known safe level of lead in a child's blood. Yet more than 6 million homes continue to get water from lead service lines, including in my own home State of Illinois, which has more known lead service lines than any other State in the country.

And despite lead service lines being banned nearly 35 years ago, as of 2019, roughly half a million children under the age of 6 still had elevated levels of lead in their blood--something that can cause permanent brain damage.

And lead is just one of the many issues that communities struggle with every day due to our outdated and dilapidated water systems.

But instead of working to address these known issues, the Federal Government's share of capital spending in the water sector fell from 63 percent in 1977 to a meager 9 percent in 2017.

And now, our dwindling Federal and State investments into our water infrastructure are allowing countless Americans to be exposed to pollutants, whether it is from taking a sip from their kitchen faucets or even just living near an outdated stormwater system.

Part of the problem with water infrastructure is that it is expensive and no one sees it--out of sight, out of mind. But that only lasts until there is a major problem, like in Texas, where over 15 million people were temporarily left without access to clean water.

Well, we have to stop waiting for our infrastructure to fail before we invest in it. We cannot wait around for another crisis to sicken our families before we decide to put real State and Federal dollars into rebuilding our drinking water and wastewater systems.

Imagine if your child was one of those who had gotten sick because legislators refused to take action on such an obvious crisis. Imagine if you had to be the one to get your newborn to sip on water too opaque to see through.

We should not let even one more parent suffer through that worst-case scenario. Access to clean water is a human right, and every American deserves access to clean water, no matter their ZIP Code, the color of their skin, or the size of their income.

It is long, long past time that we turn that right into a reality by investing in the kinds of projects that would put Americans back to work rebuilding our crumbling water infrastructure. We must dramatically increase Federal investments to provide every family access to the most basic human needs--clean water.

That is one reason why I introduced the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021. If our Nation truly wants to build back better, we can't only pour money into fixing our roads while failing to repair the pipes beneath them.

Because water infrastructure is infrastructure, everyone needs it in every corner of this country.

My bipartisan bill would invest significant Federal dollars to help States, communities, and schools fix and upgrade aging water systems to improve water quality, while fostering economic growth throughout the country.

Our legislation seeks to reauthorize and enhance State revolving loan funds, which are the most effective tools we have to provide States with Federal investments that empower local leaders to modernize water systems, implement lead reduction projects, and rebuild stormwater overflow infrastructure.

Our bill would also continue getting shovels into the ground and support quality jobs by reauthorizing the WIFIA financing program, an initiative that already helped finance nearly $20 billion for water infrastructure projects and created 49,000 jobs in just under 7 years.

It would provide more than $700 million in lead testing and reduction programs, in part through a program very close to my heart, the voluntary lead testing in schools and childcare facilities program, expanding it to go beyond testing to include lead reduction

Of course, it is not sufficient to simply increase investment levels--we must enact policies that effectively distribute critical dollars in a fair and just manner that prioritizes the most vulnerable Americans, and the most pressing public health and safety needs.

That is why my bipartisan legislation prioritizes environmental justice by providing direct help to small, disadvantaged, rural and tribal communities that have been ignored for far too long.

By lowering non-Federal cost-shares, creating new grants and allowing for debt forgiveness, we can help communities that typically struggle to afford traditional loans. This includes Centerville, IL, a community that needs resources to kick start projects that will rebuild their catastrophically failing systems that allow sewage to seep into my constituents' homes whenever it rains.

Look, we must face the awful reality that a community's racial and economic composition are the top predictors of waste facility locations--and we should be outraged that these environmental justice communities are often neglected in favor of wealthy areas that are home to rate payers that can cover the cost of safe water.

Congress cannot abandon American communities simply because they cannot afford to update their water infrastructure . . . especially when we know that the Federal Government failed to prevent this crisis from happening.

Concerns about the health effects of lead pipes date back all the way back to the late 1800's--yet Congress didn't ban the use of lead service lines until 1986! And even then, the Federal Government allowed lead pipes already in the ground to remain . . . forcing too many of our communities to essentially drink through a ``lead straw'' to this very day.

We helped create this problem. Now, it's on us to help fix it.

Our mission lies right before us: work together to protect the health of our most vulnerable neighbors and achieve a reality where: no elementary-schooler is scared to use their school's drinking fountain;

no parent questions whether it's safe to give their child a glass of water before bedtime; and

no family comes to expect that their house will be flooded by sewage every time it rains.

At the end of the day, it's simple the condition of our water infrastructure is a crisis. It is a crisis that is daunting, yes, and devastating, certainly--yet it's a crisis that is solvable. Every dollar we spend improving our water systems can help save the health of our future generations. And that is why I hope my colleagues will join me in voting yes on the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021

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