Innovative Stormwater Infrastructure Act of 2018

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3906) to establish centers of excellence for innovative stormwater control infrastructure, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous on H.R. 3906, as amended.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Bill Shuster; the ranking member, Congressman DeFazio; and my good friend the ranking member of the subcommittee, Mrs. Napolitano, for their work in progressing this bipartisan legislation.

Mr. Speaker, as we know, with the additional development that is occurring in this country, with the additional water and stormwater systems that are being built, heavy rains end up transiting or transferring pollutants, heavy metals, trash, bacteria, and many other things into our water system.

Mr. Speaker, I represent south Louisiana. The watershed that I represent drains from Montana to two Canadian provinces to New York. It is one of the largest watersheds in the world. Of course, all of that stormwater runoff ends up coming down right through my home State and contributes to one of the largest dead zones in the Nation--in fact, the largest dead zone in the Nation--which is not very compatible with us having some of the top commercial and recreational fishing and one of the largest or most productive estuaries in the United States.

So I want to thank Mr. Heck for introducing this legislation, for working with Congressman Katko in putting this together in a bipartisan manner.

What this legislation does is it recognizes that stormwater runoff does actually transfer, or does contribute to pollutants, in our waterways, and it recognizes that this is a problem. But it also recognizes that it is a problem that needs to be solved by local, by State, and by Federal agencies, by Federal officials.

So this legislation creates a new task force to look at innovative financing, to look at new funding streams, to look at how we can do a better job integrating the various funding streams to actually achieve this objective that we all share on a bipartisan basis to help reduce the amount of pollutants and trash and other things that get into our waterways. This is an important step forward.

Mr. Speaker, in a previous life, I managed a large infrastructure program where we built tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure. One of the first things I realized is how important it was for us to look at all the funding streams that are available, and the possible funding streams that are available, pulling those together to make sure that they are being used in a complementary manner, not managed in silos, and certainly not managed in a contradictory or in a conflicting manner.

The gentleman's legislation helps to address that. It helps look at the revenue streams that are available today, whether they are Federal, whether they are State, whether they are local funds, or perhaps even private or not-for-profit, looking at the different regulatory structures that are out there, looking at opportunities for us to achieve this bipartisan goal of reducing pollutants, of helping reduce trash, of helping reduce the dead zone and other adverse outcomes as a result of stormwater runoff from heavy rains.

Again, I want to point out that this is bipartisan legislation, that this passed the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee unanimously, that my good friend from California Mrs. Napolitano worked with us on changes in the committee. I thank, again, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Heck) and Mr. Katko for working together on something that is an important issue, for coming up with a bipartisan solution, and looking forward to ensuring that this passes the House and passes the Senate as well to where we can get it to the President's desk.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, Congressman Heck recently brought up the shellfish industry. Just this week, the Louisiana Oyster Task Force is coming to town. We are going to be meeting with them, talking to them about this and a number of other priority issues because their industry has been impacted by water quality and many other challenges.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that this legislation helps to make sure that all of the various levels of government, together with our nongovernment partners in the private sector and the not-for-profit organizations that are out

there, that we are all working together; that we are ensuring that the regulatory structure that is out there is actually complementary to this effort to help ensure clean water not just now, but for generations to come; that we are using better technology; that we are using better mechanisms, such as vegetative plantings and buffers and other things, to ensure that we are not polluting our waters but that we are cleaning them; that we have safe drinking water; that we have safe, productive ecosystems for generations to come.

Mr. Speaker, I again want to thank Congressman Heck, Congressman Katko, my friend Congresswoman Napolitano, and many others who were involved in this legislation. This is going to help us to ensure that the various funding streams that are out there, that we are using them in a complementary manner, not in a stovepipe manner.

Mr. Speaker, I again urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 3906, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3906, the ``Innovative Storm water Infrastructure Act of 2018.''

H.R. 3906 directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish a stormwater infrastructure funding task force to study and develop recommendations to improve the availability of public and private sources of funding for stormwater infrastructure.

Houston area residents understand the importance of infrastructure that can mitigate the effects of storm water.

After making landfall, circled back and held in place for nearly four days, Hurricane Harvey dropped an unprecedented amount of rain in the Houston area--so much rain, in fact, that the flood area itself began to act like an inland sea, feeding moisture back into the storm to be dropped as yet more rain.

Hurricane Harvey brought more than 64 inches of rain to the Houston area, flooding 203,000 homes, 13 Superfund sites, and more than 800 wastewater treatment facilities.

The damage caused by Hurricane Harvey exceeds $125 billion.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, second only to Hurricane Katrina.

Nine out of 19 of the official river gauges in Harris County, Texas, recorded all-time-high water levels.

Nederland, Texas recorded 60.58 inches of rainfall, making Hurricane Harvey the highest total rainfall ever recorded in the continental United States. Rainfall within a tenth of an inch of that total was recorded in Groves, a neighboring community.

These both exceed the previous U.S. rainfall record of 52 inches, set by Hurricane Hiki in Hawaii in 1950.

Eighteen locations in southeastern Texas broke previous tropical rainfall records in the contiguous United States, which was set by Tropical Storm Amelia in Medina, Texas in 1978.

Six to ten feet was the maximum water levels above the ground, which occurred near the areas where Harvey made landfall.

Fifty-seven tornadoes were reported during the Hurricane Harvey storm, about half of which occurred near or south of the Houston metro area.

At its peak on September 1, 2017, one-third of Houston was underwater.

Over 300,000 structures flooded in southeastern Texas, where extreme rainfall hit many areas that are densely populated.

Hurricane Harvey is the largest housing disaster to strike the U.S. in our nation's history.

Hurricane Harvey damaged 203,000 homes, of which 12,700 were completely destroyed.

Texans continue to work to recover, but thousands still are not able to return to flood damaged homes.

Next month marks a year since floodwaters swamped America's fourth- largest city, the extent of this environmental assault is beginning to surface, while questions about the long-term consequences for human health remain unanswered.

As disasters become more frequent and populations living in vulnerable areas increase, interest in the health effects of exposure to the combination of natural and technological disasters has grown.

According to experts, when rain falls on the roofs of our homes, streets, and parking lots in cities and their suburbs, the water is unable to soak into the ground as it should.

When a rainstorm occurs, rainwater hits the streets and gravity takes it on the path of least resistance.

Stormwater drains through gutters, storm sewers, and other engineered collection systems and is discharged into nearby water bodies.

Across the country, in every community, rain mixes with chemicals, oils, and other harmful pollutants to flood into our waterways.

Further, higher flows resulting from heavy rains can also cause erosion and flooding in urban streams, damaging habitat, property, and infrastructure.

H.R. 3906 will establish a stormwater infrastructure funding task force program such as the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Stormwater Program (NPDES).

This program is designed to prevent stormwater runoff from washing harmful pollutants into local waterbodies.

Some 500 chemical plants, 10 refineries and more than 6,670 miles of intertwined oil, gas and chemical pipelines line the nation's largest energy corridor.

Nearly 500 Million gallons of industrial wastewater mixed with storm water surged out of just one chemical plant in Baytown, east of Houston, on the upper shores of Galveston Bay.

Benzene, vinyl chloride, butadiene, and other known human carcinogens were among

the dozens of tons of industrial toxic substances released into surrounding neighborhoods and waterways following Harvey's torrential rains.

In addition, NPDES will study and develop recommendations to improve the availability of public and private sources of funding for stormwater infrastructure.

The EPA Administrator will ensure that these programs promote the use of innovative stormwater control infrastructure in and coordinate the integration of innovative stormwater control infrastructure into permitting programs, planning efforts, research, technical assistance, and funding guidance.

Mr. Speaker, a stronger investment in stormwater prevention programs allows for the implementations of cutting edge solutions and puts our communities in a path to healthier waters.

I urge my colleges to join me in voting for H.R. 3906.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, because I rise in support of H.R. 3906, the Innovative Stormwater Infrastructure Act of 2018.

This bipartisan bill, as was pointed out, was introduced by our colleague from Washington, Congressman Heck, aimed at addressing one of the ongoing concerns facing our communities, an unfunded mandate--very unfunded: how to address and pay for controlling ongoing sources of stormwater that empty into our local water bodies.

According to EPA, runoff from urbanized areas is a leading source of water quality impairments on local water bodies. In urban and suburban areas, buildings and pavement cover much of the land and prevent rain and snowmelt from soaking into the ground. Instead, these developed areas rely on storm drains to carry large amounts of water runoff from roofs and paved areas to nearby waterways, and with it, as was pointed out again, high levels of pollution, such as oil, dirt, chemicals, and lawn fertilizers released directly into local streams and rivers.

Congress needs to do more to help communities come into compliance with the goals of the Clean Water Act, the unfunded mandate. We need to encourage the development of new technologies and practices for addressing stormwater runoff. We need to encourage the implementation of cost-effective, low-impact development and nature-based infrastructure alternatives.

Finally, we need to provide additional Federal assistance to communities to help address their local water quality challenges. Many of the communities are small and could not afford them. It will bankrupt them if they have to follow the letter of the law.

Mr. Speaker, while H.R. 3906, as introduced, would have addressed some of these challenges, the bill was modified by the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. This modification removed the authorization of a new EPA stormwater grant program and replaced it with a new study on how existing sources of Federal, State, local, and private funds are being used to address local stormwater challenges.

As amended, H.R. 3906 would direct the EPA administration to partner with Federal, State, and local agencies and stakeholders in the creation of a new stormwater infrastructure funding task force. This new task force will look at funding and affordability issues related to the construction, rehabilitation, operation and maintenance of the stormwater infrastructure necessary to meet the goals of the Clean Water Act.

The task force will be required to inventory the available public and private sources of funding for stormwater infrastructure and to assess how the use of these sources of funding might affect the affordability of the infrastructure to a municipality, which sometimes is floundering.

While there may be several financing options available to communities to address local stormwater challenges, the actual cost of these options to a community may vary greatly.

For example, it is far cheaper for a community to obtain a Federal grant for water infrastructure than a loan, but it may also be more affordable for a community to borrow from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund than to borrow the same amount from the private market. So the question is not simply about whether funding is available to the community, but is that funding also affordable to the community.

I expect that the results of the task force will show how the Federal Government needs to be an active player in financing affordable stormwater infrastructure. Perhaps this information will guide future Congresses to take a greater role in financing our water infrastructure challenges.

Mr. Speaker, while I am disappointed that this legislation does not provide additional Federal resources so desperately needed to address our local water infrastructure challenges, the bill is a very good first step in further refining the scope of the stormwater challenges facing our Nation.

I am pleased to support the bill, and I heartily urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Heck).

Mr. Speaker, just one last word, I think this is a very important bill. We have been dealing with the stormwater issue for at least 7 years in my area, and because it is an unfunded mandate, the cities are crying out for help. I think the two cases set forth by my colleagues point out the need for Federal help.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pretty simply put, this bill is about addressing the single largest source of water pollution in America, which is stormwater runoff.

It is a nationwide issue from D.C., to Los Angeles, to Milwaukee, to Louisiana. But it is also one that is acutely felt in my home State of Washington, because there, it really does rain a lot. When that rain falls, the rain runs off the roofs. The rain runs down the streets. The rain runs into the storm drainage system. Along the way, it picks up all sorts of nasty, toxic stuff that has been alluded to earlier, stuff like fertilizers, metals, oils, and pesticides. That stuff, all that bad stuff, runs into our lakes and our rivers and, ultimately, in my region of the country, into Puget Sound, which is the largest estuary, by water volume, in the United States.

It has been estimated by scientists that stormwater accounts for up to 80 percent of all water pollution. Gone are the days of the easy-fix solutions of point-source pollution, where we could just pass a law saying: You can't do that anymore. Figure it out.

This is a lot more difficult. It is a lot more decentralized. It is a lot more pervasive. Frankly, it is no less harmful.

And it hurts not just our environment. Let's be clear, this hurts our businesses as well, especially those that depend on clean water.

In our State, we have a robust shellfish industry that employs thousands of people. Stormwater can kill a salmon in a matter of hours. We actually have time-lapse films from underwater showing this, and it is not very much time that has elapsed. This isn't something where they ingest the metal, and then months or years later they die. You can literally watch them die as the stormwater hits the water.

And they are fundamental. Salmon are fundamental to the economy and the culture of the Pacific Northwest and especially to the Native people, who have depended on them since time immemorial.

Salmon support, in fact, in our region of the country, a $30 billion a year economy.

Salmon are also the prey of choice of our beloved southern resident orcas, which we are precariously close to losing altogether. Frankly, we can't save the orcas if we don't save the salmon, and we can't save the salmon if we don't save Puget Sound, and we can't save Puget Sound if we don't deal with stormwater runoff.

Every region has its own story. The gentleman from Louisiana told his most eloquently, and I thank him, about how stormwater is punishing our waterways and, along with it, our way of life and our economy.

That is why State and local governments are implementing green stormwater infrastructure, like rain gardens and permeable pavement, and are building new gray stormwater infrastructure to reduce combined sewer outflows. But that is not enough. It is not enough by a long shot.

State and local governments are stretched thin, and that is why we need the Federal Government to step up and do its partnership role in this.

Back in my State, we estimate that the stormwater problem could be solved with $19 billion in investment between now and 2036; and, frankly, almost all of that is in the Puget Sound region, 98 percent.

That is a lot of money and that is why H.R. 3906 is an important first step to help the experts and the stakeholders come together and come up with innovative ways not to be duplicative and to think outside the box.

Mr. Speaker, I conclude by thanking Chairman Shuster; Ranking Member DeFazio; along with Subcommittee Chairman Graves; Ranking Member Napolitano; my colleague and my friend from New York, Congressman Katko; and their staffs for their work on this bill. I appreciate their help to bring greater attention to the problem of stormwater runoff.

But let's be clear: We have to do more; we have to do a lot more. I look forward to continuing to work with the committee to increase the Federal Government's partnership role in tackling this urgent threat, which, again, is the number one cause of water pollution in America.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the bill.