Family Income to Respond to Significant Transitions Act

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 469, the Produced Water Utilization Act of 2009. I had the pleasure of working with Chairman Bart Gordon on this and introduced H.R. 469 in the 110th Congress as H.R. 2339. In July of 2008, the bill was reported out of the Committee on Science and Technology by a voice vote and then was passed by the House of Representatives again by a voice vote on July 30. It comes to the floor today virtually unchanged. Only the short title and the authorization years have been updated.

For those who are not familiar with the term, the Department of the Interior defines ``produced water'' as mainly salty water trapped in reservoir rock and brought up along with oil or gas during production. Produced water cannot, in its current form, be used for any purposes, and it is most commonly reinjected into the ground at great expense to small producers across the country. Each barrel of oil that is produced generates approximately 10 barrels of produced water, and we currently produce over 5 billion gallons of produced water a day in the U.S. That is enough water to accommodate 14.3 million homes a day.

As we face shortages in energy and water, this bill could not be more timely. H.R. 469 is legislation that has two main purposes, first, to increase domestic energy production by lowering production costs for small producers and, second, to increase the amount of water available for agricultural, irrigational, municipal and industrial uses by making produced water stable. The Produced Water Utilization Act will provide important funding for research, development, demonstration and commercial application of technologies to purify and use the produced water.

There is a critical interdependency between energy and water. Water is needed to produce energy, and the treatment and distribution of water requires energy. And as our population grows, so will the demands on both. According to a report by the Department of Energy on the Interdependency of Energy and Water ``the lack of integrated energy and water planning and management has already impacted energy production in many basins and regions across the country. For example, in three of the fastest-growing regions in the country, the Southeast, Southwest and the Northwest, new power plants have been opposed because of potential negative impacts on water supplies. Also, recent droughts and emerging limitations of water resources have many States, including my State of Texas, also South Dakota, Wisconsin and Tennessee, scrambling to develop water use priorities for different water use sectors.''

We obviously need to take a serious look at how we can avoid a water/ energy crisis, and this bill certainly helps.

Mr. Speaker, produced water is currently considered an expensive nuisance by oil and gas producers, but it needs to be considered a valuable, usable commodity. With the research and development set forth in the Produced Water Utilization Act, we can make it happen. I urge my colleagues to vote for the bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

Will the gentleman yield?

You are ranking member on Energy and Commerce and former chairman of Energy and Commerce.

And you are not on the conference committee?

Is that unusual?

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the distinguished ranking member. I assume I'm rising in support of the bill, so I guess I need to compliment our distinguished chairman and our ranking member on this excellent legislative work.

But what I really want to talk about is the no-conference conference on the stimulus package. I just came out of a meeting with Leader Boehner, the minority leader. There is going to be some sort of a conference meeting at 3

o'clock this afternoon in the LBJ room on the other side of the Capitol. We've been told, though, that the Speaker and the majority leader have locked the conference down, and they want to have it voted on and passed by 6 o'clock Friday afternoon so that the Speaker can go on her trip to Italy and Afghanistan.

So, in this meeting in Leader Boehner's office, since I'm not a conferee, even though we've got about $200 billion of jurisdiction on the Energy and Commerce Committee, things like Medicare and broadband and something called electricity decoupling, where people that actually use less electricity are going to pay more for it, I'm not sure I understand how that's stimulative to the economy.

But I asked what the agenda was and nobody seems to know. The good news is there actually is going to be a conference meeting, although the decision has already been made. So my question to the majority in this body is, how do you move an $800 billion package, which is larger than the entire economy of the nation of Australia, with almost no transparency, no accountability, and a conference committee that's already been pre-ordained what they're going to report out some time tonight or tomorrow? Somehow that strikes me as a bad thing for democracy, a bad thing for the House and the Senate, and a bad deal for the American people.

So if I were a conferee, and there was a real conference I would ask questions, how does electricity decoupling really work? Why should we ask our consumers to use less electricity and pay for more the electricity that they use? Why is that a good thing? And why was it put in a bill that we haven't had a hearing on and most of the Members of the body on both sides of the aisle don't even know what the concept of electricity decoupling is.

So I guess, Mr. Speaker, I will end up by saying I wish that we ran the whole House like Chairman Gordon and Ranking Member Hall run the Science Committee, where there really is cooperation, there really is bipartisanship, and the result is that bills come to the floor that both sides can support.

I would be happy to yield.

That's correct.

I am not.

It's unprecedented.

Madam Speaker, tomorrow is the 17th anniversary of the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). This landmark legislation, signed by President Clinton, established for the first time a minimum labor protection to help families balance their work and family lives. Under the law today, covered workers are entitled to up to twelve weeks of job-protected unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for themselves or for a seriously ill family member.

Recently, legislation authored by Senator Christopher Dodd and myself to provide FMLA for military families has been signed into law. These are the only changes to the FMLA in its history, but as a result covered workers are entitled to up to twenty-six weeks of unpaid leave to care for seriously injured or ill family members in the armed services. In addition, workers are also entitled to up to twelve weeks of leave for matters relating to the deployment of a family member. And in 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law provisions Senator Dodd and I had introduced in this Congress entitling family members of wounded or ill veterans the same twenty-six weeks of leave accorded active servicemembers.

More than hundred million job-protected leaves have been taken as a result of the

FMLA. However, only a small percentage of those workers entitled to the leave actually utilize it, and the number one reason why is that it is unpaid.

We lag far behind other countries in providing ``family friendly'' policies, such as paid leave, to our workers. That's why in successive Congresses I have introduced H.R. 3047, The Balancing Act, which establishes a host of supports families need to balance their work and family lives.

President Obama recognizes the need for ``family-friendly'' supports, and I was also pleased to learn that his budget for Fiscal Year 2011 proposes $50 million for a State Paid Leave Fund that will provide competitive grants to help states launch paid-leave programs. In May 2009, I introduced H.R. 2339, the Family Income to Respond to Significant Transitions (FIRST) Act, which provides $1.5 billion to states to start or improve paid-leave programs

On this anniversary of the FMLA, it's good to reflect on how far we have come. But with half of women in the workplace, we need to move forward and enact legislation that provides paid leave and other supports to working families.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 469) to encourage research, development, and demonstration of technologies to facilitate the utilization of water produced in connection with the development of domestic energy resources, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 469, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I'm pleased the House will consider today H.R. 469, the Produced Water Utilization Act. And I would like to thank my good friend and ranking member, Mr. Hall, for his legislation and interest in this field of research.

H.R. 469, the Produced Water Utilization Act, creates a research, development and demonstration program to promote the beneficial reuse of water produced in connection with oil and gas exploration, something that Mr. Hall knows a lot about.

In the United States, up to 2.3 billion gallons per day of produced water is generated. Unfortunately, this water is not of sufficient quality to be used to meet our many needs for water. This legislation will provide innovative treatment technologies that will enable the reuse of this water in an environmentally responsible way.

Once again, I thank Mr. Hall for bringing this to our attention and for passing it out of our committee on a unanimous vote.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time and urge passage of this bill.