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“EXECUTIVE CALENDAR” mentioning John Boozman was published in the Senate section on pages S2210-S2211 on April 27.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
EXECUTIVE CALENDAR
The clerk will report the nomination.
The bill clerk read the nomination of Colin Hackett Kahl, of California, to be Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
The Senator from Maryland.
Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, shortly, we are going to be taking up S. 914, the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act, and I would urge my colleagues to approve this legislation promptly.
The Environment and Public Works Committee reported this legislation by a unanimous vote. We don't get too many unanimous votes here on substantive, important legislation, and we were able to get that because this bill is truly bipartisan.
I want to congratulate the leadership of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairman Carper, for the management of the committee to bring us together, and Senator Capito, the ranking Republican member. The two of them set the climate for us to work together to bring out a drinking water and wastewater infrastructure bill. I also want to compliment my counterpart in regards to the Subcommittee on Infrastructure, Senator Cramer, who is the ranking member--I am the chair--and Senator Duckworth, who is the chair of the Water Subcommittee, and Senator Lummis. All six of us worked together so that this Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act really does represent the views of all the Members of the Senate, and it is a bill that is desperately needed by our communities.
Water infrastructure is critically important to our Nation. It is important for drinking water. It is important for how we treat our waste, wastewater. The needs are tremendous. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives us a report card grade of D in 2021. The gaps are billions of dollars a year necessary to bring our water infrastructure up to standard.
This legislation will move us in the right direction. It authorizes
$35 billion of water infrastructure, which is desperately needed in our communities. It will allow us to upgrade aging infrastructure, address the threat of climate change, invest in new technologies, and help marginal communities in dealing with these needs.
COVID-19 has made the challenges even more dramatic for our communities. Water utilities have incurred additional costs. I think that is quite obvious. They had to deal with the protective equipment for their workers to deal with COVID-19. They had workers who were out as a result of COVID-19. They had to deal with changing the way they operated their business. There was a demand for greater water during COVID-19, just the washing of our hands frequently. It requires us to have access to more clean water.
The ability of our customers to pay their bills was challenged during COVID-19. As we know, American families' incomes were very stressed and are still stressed as a result of COVID-19. The gap between the ability of the public support for water infrastructure and what ratepayers are asked to pay is getting larger and larger. We haven't made the money available from the public side for water infrastructure, and to put more pressure on the rate when customers are already having a difficult time paying their bills is not a viable option. That makes S. 914 even more urgent.
I want to talk about a couple provisions that are included in S. 914 that are bipartisan that I worked on that I think are extremely important parts of this legislation.
One, working with Senator Wicker, we have in this bill a pilot program that will establish 40 grants around the Nation so that we can establish programs to help low-income households. By way of comparison, this is similar to the LIHEAP program that we use to help our low-
income families deal with their utility bills for heating their homes and air-conditioning their homes. This will provide similar help for low-income families in dealing with the price of their water bills.
Having been through Maryland and some of our centers, I can tell you that there are many communities where individuals literally cannot afford their water bills. It is an essential utility. We need to do something to fill the gap. So this bill will establish a program so that we can take some of the pressure off of the ratepayers and therefore allow local utilities to be able to use rates to do some of their improvements without adversely affecting low-income families. This pilot program, to me, is long overdue, but I am pleased to see it is included in this legislation.
Another provision that is included in this legislation is legislation that I have authored with Senator Capito, the Clean Water Infrastructure Resiliency and Sustainability Program. The two of us recognize that in the State of West Virginia and the State of Maryland, we have extreme weather events that are affecting our ability to handle drinking water and wastewater. That is true in every State in the Nation. I could tell you about Maryland and the community of Ellicott City, where they have had two 100-year floods in a period of less than 2 years.
These frequent, extreme weather events are happening in this Nation on a regular basis, and it is putting additional stress on our water infrastructure. The President had a recent summit on climate, and this is one of the issues that were brought up.
Wastewater treatment plants and drinking water systems--we need to increase their resiliency and add that ability. That is what this provision will do by providing grants that will assist in planning, designing, construction, implementation, operation, or maintenance of the facilities.
Stormwater runoff is one of the largest sources of pollutants in our environment. We have over 600,000 miles of rivers and streams in America, 13 million acres of lakes, reservoirs, and ponds. I can speak personally about the impact that runoff has on the Chesapeake Bay, a national treasure. The fastest growing source of pollutant into the Chesapeake Bay comes from storm runoff.
This grant program on resiliency will help all of us plan for how we deal with water infrastructure in a way that can deal with our modern challenges.
Another provision in this bill comes from legislation that was authored by Senator Boozman and myself, the Water Resources Research Amendments Act. This provides help for research so that we can find effective and efficient new ways to deal with water treatment facilities.
In Maryland, we are proud that we have the Maryland Water Resources Research Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, that does this type of research that will help us to the next generation of how we can use technology to help deal with our water infrastructure in America.
The bottom line is that S. 914 is a bill that will help us preserve and provide drinking water to the people of this Nation and deal with wastewater. It is a very important bill for water infrastructure. It is bipartisan. It will be on the floor. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation, which is clearly part of building America back better. I hope we can act on this bill this week and send to it the House and get this bill to the President for his signature. I can tell you, our local water systems desperately need the help.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Arizona.
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