John Shimkus

Madam Chair, I claim time in opposition.

Madam Chair, this amendment is anything but simple. It is highly complex. Per- and polyfluorinated compounds, there are probably 5,000 different permutations, and my colleagues act like it is one formulation; and it is multiple.

So what they want to do is, in essence, do a de facto ban by claiming a class of 5,000 chemicals as qualified for toxic and in the Superfund; and that is a de facto ban of all these applications.

We are all going to fly home tonight. We are going to close the door to the plane. We are going to have this seal, and this seal is what is used to protect--the seal around the airplane door--us, so we don't get sucked out. Banned, toxic Superfund.

No one disputes our colleagues' concerns and maybe my concern about former installations, current installations, and water in ditches from firefighting foam. So let's deal with that issue.

Let's not do what this amendment and other amendments will do which is throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

So what do we use some of these formulations of per-and polyfluorinated compounds--again, some 5,000--for? We use it to save the lives of people.

Here is a stent, which are in millions of people. PFAS banned, de facto banned, because it falls under a Superfund. No one is going to make them because they don't want to be held legally liable if this stent eventually goes into a landfill. So we don't need that anymore.

More kids than I know are born with a hole in their heart. So what is the chemical compound that helps plug the hole, so these children can grow and mature? Oh, it is a PFAS-formulated compound. So let's have a de facto ban on this device.

Remember, these medical devices are approved by our Food and Drug Administration. They say they are safe to be inserted into the human body. So why would we then say, if it is safe to be inserted into the human body, these medical devices are now going to be unsafe in a landfill, and then you have a Superfund act and, again, a de facto ban?

This shouldn't be in this debate. I have great respect for the chairman and the ranking member, but this is a National Defense Authorization Act. It is not an Energy and Commerce Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee act; and I hope we will take that up.

EPA deals with toxicologists, analytical chemists, organic chemists, epidemiologists, chemical biologists, material scientists, theoretical chemists. Those are the ones who are going to help us decide which of the 5,000 permutations of PFAS are actually good and which ones are actually harmful.

But this says they are all bad. It is like--my folks don't want me to use this example. It is like saying, an orange is bad. Let's ban all fruit.

Okay. No, we are going to take the peeling of a banana and throw it in a dump. Oh, no, that is going to be a toxic dump under Superfund, and no

one is going to have and harvest bananas anymore. That is just ridiculous.

It is moved by emotion. We understand that. It is moved by real problems and groundwater contamination. We are not against that.

My plea is, let's use the committee process, and help you and help me and these other communities affect change and provide safe drinking water to our communities.

We have got the water communities who are afraid of this amendment. They are afraid of this amendment because of previous practices, and then them falling under Superfund liability, and then having to raise rates based upon providing sludge to farmers who put it on their ground, and then they get held up in this Superfund trap.

So I have all the waterway councils, all the water works, the municipal utilities that are saying, this is not the way to go to ban a whole class, and this is going to put us on the hook, and it is going to raise water rates.

I also have a list of 20 or so manufacturing sectors. They said, let's clean up the water. Let's not ban a whole class.

July 11, 2019.

To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives: We,

the undersigned associations, believe that Congress should

act to address contamination associated with per- and

polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in a manner that

prioritizes cleanups over bureaucracy. For this reason, we

oppose Amendment 440 offered by Reps. Kildee and Dingell, and

Amendment 48, offered by Rep. Pappas, to H.R. 2500, the

``National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020.''

PFAS are a large and diverse class of chemicals with unique

properties that have been used in a broad number of

beneficial applications for decades. Heightened attention to

potential health effects of certain PFAS chemicals has

understandably led to increased public concern and interest

in new regulatory protections in this area.

We support action to address these concerns, and are

committed to proactively working with Congress, regulators,

and other stakeholders to establish risk-based standards for

PFAS that protect human health and the environment.

We applaud the leadership of Reps. Kildee, Dingell, and

Pappas for pushing Congress to address PFAS contamination.

Amendments 440 and 48, however well-intentioned, are

unproductive approaches to expeditiously address PFAS

contamination.

Amendment 440 would require the Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) to designate all PFAS as hazardous substances

under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation,

and Liability Act (CERCLA), or Superfund, within one year.

Similarly, Amendment 48 would require EPA to add all PFAS to

the list of toxic pollutants regulated by the Clean Water Act

and establish effluent and pretreatment standards, which

could trigger ``back door'' CERCLA designations.

CERCLA listing decisions are not political questions that

Congress is best positioned to address. EPA should retain its

traditional authority to study potentially hazardous

substances and to ascertain whether they should be designated

under CERCLA. The Superfund program has a strong track

record, and EPA's career scientists have the requisite

expertise to examine PFAS.

Moreover, Amendments 440 and 48 would likely lead to slower

cleanups because of an overwhelmed EPA and the potentially

needless reopening of vast amounts of remediated sites. Such

an approach could also undermine the nascent progress towards

clean up at some of the prevalent, known contaminated sites.

We are disappointed that an amendment proposed by Rep.

Fitzpatrick, with Reps. Boyle, Upton, McKinley, Rouda, and

Blunt Rochester, will not come up for a vote in the House.

The approach of this bipartisan amendment, which mirrors

provisions of the defense authorization bill passed by the

full Senate, would have encouraged the development of a

consistent approach and clear timelines for assessing and

regulating specific PFAS across all relevant federal agencies

to ensure that government regulations, actions, and

communications are consistent and coordinated for maximum

effectiveness.

Congress's goal should be to create conditions for cleanups

to occur as expeditiously as practicable. While we oppose

Amendments 440 and 48, we applaud the work of the amendments'

sponsors and the other leaders of PFAS issues in both parties

for their important contributions. We look forward to working

with you on this important matter as the legislative process

continues.

Sincerely,

Airlines for America; Airports Council International--

North America; Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers;

American Chemistry Council; American Forest & Paper

Association; Council of Industrial Boiler Owners;

Flexible Packaging Association; International Liquid

Terminals Association; National Association of Chemical

Distributors; Plastics Industry Association; Petroleum

Marketers Association of America; Society of Chemical

Manufacturers and Affiliates; TRSA, the Linen, Uniform,

and Facility Services Association; U.S. Chamber of

Commerce.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chair, if this amendment were limited to the 18 per- and polyfluorinated compounds that EPA knows about and has rendered a judgment on, we would be having a different debate. Formulations like PFOA and PFOS, for example, have been studied and have already been taken out of commercial use.

But this amendment, like others we will be debating, emotionally and politically requires severe action on an entire class of chemicals, maybe as many as 5,000 substances. It does so without due diligence and scientific inquiry.

Nobody denies that there are real concerns and frustration in communities affected by PFAS contamination. My colleague has raised those concerns, and we certainly want to help those communities, especially those that host our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. The use of firefighting foam in those areas has caused PFAS to enter into ditches and canals and seep into groundwater formations.

But while we can and should take action to limit or even prohibit uncontrolled releases of PFAS-containing firefighting foam, we can't lose sight of why this foam is used in the first place. If you or your loved one are on a nuclear submarine that is carrying nuclear weapons under the Arctic icecap or involved in a fiery aircraft accident on the runway, you want the best firefighting foam available, not the second best.

The concern of these communities needs to be addressed, but this is not what is happening in this process.

Many of the compounds targeted by these amendments are parts of manufactured goods that when disposed of are not soluble in water.

Let me highlight a couple that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to be inserted into the human body as medical devices. Yes, lifesaving PFAS-related chemicals have been approved by the FDA. They are in medical devices and have been approved to be inserted into the body.

Mr. Chair, to the ranking member and to the chairman, the reason for the importance of going through regular order in the committee process is because we understand the chemicals. We deal with healthcare.

As far as lifesaving equipment, we are going to go through a couple of those. Many recognize what a stent is. This stent is there to open up arteries, and it saves lives and allows people to live a normal lifestyle.

This is one that was brought into my office a couple of weeks ago. Many more children than we would ever guess are born with holes in their heart. It is tough, but modern medicine and technology have allowed these children to lead and live normal lives.

How? Well, there is a medical device that is part of these 5,000 compounds of the PFAS community that saves these children's lives and allows the heart to repair itself, and they go on to live a normal life.

This is a National Defense Authorization bill, not a healthcare bill, not a chemical, science, EPA bill. So let's look at national defense.

Here is the F-16, with all the components that have per- or poly- fluorinated compounds as part of the F-16 platform. Do we really want to essentially ban all these parts that would eventually go into some landfill, and they are not soluble, and create a Superfund situation for the landfill into which they go?

We have heard a lot from municipal landfills that are disposing of legal nonsoluble items in regulated landfills. Do we really want to place farm land under the Superfund designation because a farmer used wastewater treatment sludge as a fertilizer?

That is why we must do our due diligence and go through regular order through the committee of jurisdiction.

I serve as the ranking member on the Committee on Environment and Climate Change. It is our duty to have oversight over the USEPA; it is our duty to protect our communities; and it is our responsibility not to overreact.

Chairman Tonko and I are actively engaged on this issue. As I have raised this, it is very complicated, but it is not impossible.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to reject these shortcuts and allow the committee process to work. That is the only way we can hope to address PFAS concerns without the significant unintended consequences this and these other amendments would create. Please vote against the amendment. Please allow bipartisan discussions to continue.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I want to start talking about science and jurisdiction and why it is important to go through regular order.

We just heard my colleagues talk about PFAS or PFOS or PFOA, three different things that mean three different things. What my colleagues have done is lumped them all into one category. If you eliminate one class of chemicals, you take the F-16 and you ground it. You have got Ethernet cables, fiber channel assemblies, round cable assemblies, shielded twisted pair, EMI.

This is a National Defense Authorization bill, and the Rules Committee has allowed an amendment on the National Defense Authorization bill that would ground the F-16s without doing due justice to science and the committees of jurisdiction.

There are a couple of other problems with the en bloc amendment.

Again, this amendment requires action on all PFAS, all of it. There may be 3,000 to 5,000 different permutations of this chemical. All these substances are not alike.

Also, EPA has said it knows little of the PFAS class and only has a valid tool to really identify 18 out of the 3,000 to 5,000 formulations. If EPA can only identify right now 18, how do you identify 1,500 permutations of this chemical?

Second, the amendment skirts scientific risk criteria and dismisses expert administration review, especially the provisions banning PFAS in MREs--we heard that--and containers.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, I mentioned this earlier on another amendment, this would ban substances used in assembling and packaging, which there is no known safety concern. The FDA approves packaging for food, but we are going to ban packaging for food when it is the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration, which is not the jurisdiction of HASC.

Third, as drafted, these amendments could create confusion, overreach, and mismatched responsibility among Federal partners. The PFAS ban and the MRE language requires the Defense Logistics Agency to implement it, but MREs are sold at commercial grocery stores. So are we going to have the Defense Logistics Agency police PFAS MRE packaging in the local Piggly Wiggly or Walmart or other guns and knives stores?

The incineration provisions require the Secretary of Defense to administer and enforce requirements on incineration of items.

So we have been attacking the administration of the Department of Defense saying they can't do their job, they don't meet the IG standards, and now we are going to put them in control of air emissions and clean air standards.

That is what this does when you allow amendments to a bill that are not germane to the underlying committee.

Last, provisions require the U.S. Geological Survey to come up with PFAS detection performance standards, instituting a nationalized sampling program at PFAS-contaminated sites and own the results. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency, which only has a minor ability to consult role, has statutory responsibility for cleanup sites. USGS will be messing around with and will be dependent upon the USGS to obtain its data.

So it is the EPA that is responsible for cleanup, but we are going to give

the U.S. Geological Survey the responsibility.

Many of these amendments are not germane to the defense authorization or have received process to ensure they don't create problems. Quality work in these areas would have followed regular order. Americans deserve that we are as careful doing our jobs as they are doing theirs. We mentioned this in the other amendment.

I am working with Chairman Tonko to address perfluorinated compounds. It is a very difficult issue. We have experts in the majority; we have experts in the minority that deal with chemicals. This is not the place to do it, and I would ask people to vote against the amendment en bloc.

Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize the American Legion of Breese, IL, which is celebrating its 100th year anniversary this month.

The American Legion was commissioned by Congress as a patriotic veteran's organization. This not-for-profit organization became the nation's largest wartime veteran's service organization. The American Legion is dedicated to mentoring our youth, advocating patriotism with honor and promoting strong national security to continue their dedication to their fellow veterans.

In recognition of a 100 years of faithful service, the Breese American Legion is hosting a picnic on July 20th at 3 p.m., to celebrate with their community. Guests will enjoy great music, delicious food, games for all ages, a petting zoo, and much more. All the proceeds will be put towards benefitting community scholarships, schools, youth programs, and veterans.

It is an honor to extend my well wishes and profound congratulations to the current officers--Commander Jeff Jung, Auxiliary Rep. Julie Tebd, Sons of the American Legion Rep. Mike Haag--and many others who have upheld and played major roles to continue the success of this organization.

Madam Speaker, over the past 100 years, the Breese American Legion have supported and uplifted their communities through their many charitable programs. It is an honor to recognize this organization as it celebrates 100 momentous years of service. I am excited to see how it will continue to grow and wish it all the best in the future.