Foreign Emissions and Nonattainment Clarification for Economic Stability Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. FULCHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6409, the FENCES Act. I thank my good friend from Alabama for holding this debate.
You may not think of my home State of Idaho as a border State when you start thinking about border States, but Idaho is a border State. We share an international border with Canada in the northern panhandle of the State of Idaho.
There is a lot of timber on both sides of that borderline. Especially in a dry year like this--and this is going to be a dry year for us--it is not uncommon to have wildfire break out on one side or the other. It has happened many times before. Unfortunately, it will probably happen again, where, on the Canadian side, a wildfire breaks out.
Oftentimes, that smoke, those pollutants, blow right over the border, and there is absolutely nothing that the State of Idaho can do with that. Sometimes, we share some firefighting resources, but the bottom line is that it didn't break out in our forest.
It is true that the Clean Air Act has a provision to address that. What is not being brought up, at least consistently, is that there is also a conflict with that through the EPA. The EPA guidance, largely enforced with the previous administration, conflicts with the Clean Air Act provision allowing States to adjust their emission plans. Every time one of those fires breaks out, we become at risk of falling out of our emissions standards.
Mr. Speaker, this is really a pretty simple bill. All it does is ensure a fair and consistent ability for these air quality designations to be put in place.
I stand in strong support of that. That is just one example. There are many other examples that some of my colleagues have brought up already.
It is not fair for States to be penalized for something that is out of their control. This simply takes steps in order to put fair and consistent air quality designations in place. That is it.
Mr. Speaker, I stand in strong support of H.R. 6409, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
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