Foreign Emissions and Nonattainment Clarification for Economic Stability Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, when we debated this bill in committee, I was reminded of the environmental history of the Adirondack Mountains, which are located just to the north of my district in upstate New York. The Adirondacks are known for their beauty as well as the ecological damage they suffered from acid rain.

That acid rain was caused by polluting power plants in the Midwest, and that pollution didn't stop in upstate New York. It also harmed people and the environment in eastern Canada. The international pressure brought by the Canadian Government helped motivate the Bush administration and Congress to enact the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, which included a program to control sources of acid rain pollution.

In that case, American industries were the polluters, but it demonstrates how international cooperation in pursuit of our common environmental goals is, indeed, possible.

States and counties burdened by foreign pollution sources should be able to rely upon their Federal Government to address these issues through bilateral discussions with the polluting country. We should be able to have a bipartisan consensus in Congress that we would like our environmental and diplomatic efforts to prioritize these issues in our international relations.

Of course, it should be a national imperative that we collectively demand polluters in Mexico, China, or any other country that may be proven to be contributing to an area's nonattainment of a Clean Air Act standard, to do something to control their pollution.

I understand that States and counties may be frustrated by pollution sources from outside their jurisdiction, but the lungs of the people living and working in those areas don't care from whence that pollution originated. It affects their health all the same.

I don't think the answer can be to simply ignore the problem of Americans breathing unsafe levels of air pollution. States and local air agencies should continue to work with EPA to find ways to better protect people by also allowing for opportunities to prove when emissions originate from outside their borders.

Thankfully, that is already how the Clean Air Act works, making this bill unnecessary. Section 179B of the Clean Air Act currently gives States that opportunity to prove emissions came from an international source and provides regulatory relief when an area would have otherwise achieved the National Ambient Air Quality Standard.

Instead, this bill allows States to completely ignore international pollution in their State implementation plans, and it provides free passes on pollution that comes from outside the area, from exceptional events, and from mobile-source pollution.

The bill blocks EPA's ability to impose sanctions on States that fail to make progress toward reducing air pollution, including States that are not even trying to improve air quality.

Mr. Speaker, I agree that we should be working to better protect our constituents from having to breathe pollution from foreign sources, but pretending that pollution doesn't exist simply cannot be the answer.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose this bill.

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