Lower Energy Costs Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chair, the so-called ``Lower Energy Costs Act'' is an attempt by the majority to strip environmental protections fought for by Congress over decades. The current leadership wishes to allow broad polluting, strip limitations on greenhouse gas emissions, and remove provisions of the Clean Water Act that not only protect our Nation's waters, but also affect the clean drinking water of everyday Americans.

Division C, the Water Quality Certification and Energy Project Improvement Act, will neither improve energy projects nor streamline the water quality certification process.

This section guts the Clean Water Act section 401 authority. The previous administration tried to significantly limit this authority in the interest of preventing oversight and accountability for those who polluted water sources. Now the majority is, again, attempting to gut this critical protection authority in favor of unclear, imprecise, and irresponsible policy, which would allow significant increases in water pollution without holding polluters accountable.

This issue is particularly important to the District of Columbia because we are entirely reliant on the Potomac River for our drinking water. Under this bill, the headwaters of the Potomac River can be freely polluted in West Virginia, jeopardizing the water source of most of Northern Virginia, all of D.C., and much of southern Maryland.

We are no strangers to this kind of pollution. Before the Clean Water Act, the Potomac River was rife with agricultural runoff, trash, and other pollution. But today it is a much cleaner and healthier river and used for all manner of recreational activities. This bill would jeopardize all the progress we have made for the entire Potomac River ecosystem.

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Ms. NORTON. Under this bill, a project could threaten water quality, water supply, fish populations, or many other things, and D.C. and other jurisdictions would not get any say in preventing it. Polluters can act freely and to the extreme detriment of their neighbors downstream, affecting the accessibility of clean water.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

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