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“THE LAST OF THE ``SLUDGE'' FROM THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S9205-S9207 on Sept. 10, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE LAST OF THE ``SLUDGE'' FROM THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am on the floor of the Senate today to speak to an issue that is right in Washington D.C., in our midst. It is something that I think few of us realize, but it has begun to get the attention of the American public. We have seen several news articles on it in the last month.
Mr. President, the Bush administration inherited an environmental mess from previous administrations over the past good number of years. As I have said, it is right here in the backyard of Washington, DC. The Washington Aqueduct, which is operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, is in violation of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. Millions of pounds of sludge, laced with alum, are created when the Potomac River water is treated for drinking water for the Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia area.
I have a picture of the release of the aqueduct into the Potomac River. Rather than send the sludge to a landfill, as other cities are required to do, it is dumped back into the Potomac River. Strangely enough, Mr. President, it is dumped into the river at night. Why? I suspect so that the public will not see it or ask the question: What is it? Therefore, it is dumped through the Chesapeake and the Ohio Canal National Historic Park.
The Corps claims that to alter this process so that it functions like other water treatment facilities will take years to plan, to build, and to become operational. The only problem is that they have been saying that now for decades.
The Corps has stated that if it were prohibited from dumping millions of pounds of toxic sludge into the river to protect an endangered species would create a security crisis. What would the crisis be? Well, it would deprive the White House, the Congress, the courts, and the Pentagon of adequate drinking water.
Mr. President, I have to be honest. That kind of an argument and that situation outrages me. I believe that no one should be above the law, including the Nation's Capital. Of all the places that I thought we would never hear the phrase, ``not in my backyard,'' we are hearing it repeatedly said right here in Washington by the Army Corps of Engineers. A situation of this nature would never have occurred in the West because the Endangered Species Act would have trumped all of the other needs first. In fact, a community would be taxed beyond its capacity to finance a new facility and that facility would be ordered to be built by a court. There would be no arbitrary frustration of national security or that we simply can't get there in a timely fashion.
Let me give you an example in McCall, ID. The drinking water source from the community is cleaner than the standards of the Safe Water Drinking Act. However, the community has been struggling for the last decade to finance a new drinking water system in order to comply with Federal regulations.
I strongly feel that no one entity should operate as if it was above the law and especially in our Nation's Capital. If changes need to be made to the Washington Aqueduct, then the Corps should be taking steps to work with the affected communities to establish a new plan. That is what is expected of all of the communities in my State, in the West, and across the Nation, and no less should be expected by our Nation's Capital.
A new discharge permit would require the current illegal discharge to cease, and that, of course, is the problem. This new permit has not been issued because there is a concern by local residents who do not want the dump trucks hauling the sludge through their community; thus, a resulting belief that ratepayers would prefer that the sludge be dumped into the river rather than pay for the cost of the facilities to treat it. At least that appears to be the attitude at this moment.
I have a hard time believing that the residents of any community would want to pollute the water of their community and especially through the middle of a national park. However, this is the typical response of ``not in my backyard.'' We now affectionately call it NIMBY or being ``NIMBYfied.''
Clearly, in this instance, Washington is silent in its NIMBYism. The situation, I repeat, would not be tolerated in the West because a Federal court would order a community to stand down and be responsible under the regulations of the law.
According to the Army Corps, the volume of chemically treated sludge discharged into the primary, if not the only, spawning habitat of the endangered shortnose sturgeon is large enough to require 15 dump truckloads a day to haul it away from the area.
This chart is a picture taken at dawn of the sludge pouring into the river. While it is hard to see, in the distance lies the natural quality of the water. This is the chemical sludge that pours into the Potomac River during the night. Of course, this is a picture that is not very handsome, and I am sure the Army Corps of Engineers would not like to have it dramatized, but in reality, this is exactly what goes on. This dumping represents 15 truckloads of material that should be hauled away on a daily basis.
It has been concluded that a single enormous discharge that includes several million pounds of solids, often done under the cover of night, as I have mentioned, or in inclement weather, may contain the equivalent of a significant amount of the total annual discharge of phosphorous and nitrogen by the city's sewer treatment facilities. This gives you the magnitude of the problem with which we are dealing.
In the mid-1990's, area residents managed to get the Congress to require that Federal agencies give special attention to the concerns of the local residents when the facility was repermitted and thwarted the EPA's issuance of a new permit that would have halted the dumping. In other words, there was an effort at one point, but local citizens and, quietly, the EPA in the mid-90'S winked and nodded and said--``Not In Our Backyard.'' This is the Nation's Capital and it would create a national security problem, and so you are permitted. No new permit, though, has been issued since the old one expired. They just let it roll on. The expired permit has no limits on the total suspended solids, alum, and iron, discharged by the aqueduct. No other city in the Nation would get away with that, nor would there be a wink and a nod. The aqueduct discharges under continuation of the old permit pending issuance of a new one.
The Department of Justice contends this is not a violation of the ESA to dump millions of pounds of chemically treated sludge into the primary spawning habitat of an endangered species that may be present at the exact location of the dumping in the Potomac River.
None of this is going on in the Columbia and Snake Rivers, and yet we have five listed endangered species of salmon there. That water must be maintained in a near or pristine quality, and we have all kinds of activities going on up and down the stretch of the rivers to improve the water quality, but not in Washington and not for the shortnose sturgeon.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service have stated that the discharge may also result in chemo-sensory disruption and EPA documents state that the discharges may result in what we call bio-accumulation of harmful chemicals. I am getting a little more technical than is necessary.
This picture is worth a thousand more words than I can express about the situation that is going on.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is allowing the project to proceed on the basis that the fish has not been verified in the upper tidals of the Potomac. Yet the regional director of the National Marine Fisheries Service stated more than 2 years ago that studies funded by the Corps that were critical to the analysis of the sturgeon status in the Potomac would commence that spring.
It was determined that the fish are in the river. Only four species have been verified, not counting reports of sturgeon caught by sports fishermen. In fact, at one time, sturgeon was so abundant in the river, along with other fish, that it created a commercial fishery. George Washington took advantage of that commercial fishery with his own fleet of fishing boats. In fact, I am oftentimes told, and I have even looked at the transcripts from Mount Vernon, that one of the most lucrative parts of the Mount Vernon operation was fishing in the Potomac. We know that cannot happen nor would it happen today.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has concluded that the fish is present in the general area because commercial fishermen turned in the sturgeon they happened to catch in their nets in response to a reward program for another species of sturgeon that was known to be in the area.
The bottom line is, there are threatened and endangered fish in the Potomac River, and yet the Army Corps has done nothing in response to the need to cooperate.
In my State of Idaho, or any other State in the Nation, this is a practice that would not be tolerated, and that is why I have come to the floor today. We pass laws, you and I, Mr. President, and the administration writes the regulations to administer those laws. The Endangered Species Act over the last three decades has been touted by some to be the most progressive environmental law in our Nation, and clearly it has saved species of threatened and endangered plants, animals, fish.
My State has been largely reshaped by it. Federal land use plans in my State are much more prescriptive today and controlled by the very issue of the Endangered Species Act. But here, by a wink and by a nod, nothing happens. It is a river that you and I, Mr. President, for years have worked to pass legislation that would progressively clean it up and improve it, moving it back toward a time when it was a viable fishery on the east coast. But with the millions of pounds of sludge dumped daily into this river in the dark of night under a permit that has not been reissued since 1994--really, how long do we allow something like this to go on? How long do we allow the Army Corps of Engineers to continue to operate because it is in our best interest in the Nation's Capital, the city that ought to lead by example but can get away with a direct violation of the law or by ignoring the enforcement of the law?
I do not think that should be the case. That is why I stand in the Chamber to dramatize this issue and to speak more clearly to it. While I believe the Endangered Species Act needs to be reformed, there is not any way I could write it to reform it that would justify this, nor would I try. Nor would any Senator vote for that kind of a reform.
Yes, we would expect the Endangered Species Act to be more practical in its application, and, yes, we would want a more cooperative relationship with local communities of interest, but never would we ever tolerate the kind of an aggressive act that goes on in Washington on a daily basis, as I have said, oftentimes in the dark of night by this city and by our own agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, which is primarily responsible for the water treatment of this city.
The application of the Endangered Species Act, as we see it, is good for the country and good for the West. It ought to be the same act and it ought to be enforced in the same way in our Nation's Capital. This is simply not being done.
I am in the Chamber to speak to that issue and to recognize I have been involved with others in trying to bring about the conformity of the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act as we rebuild the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. This is one of many issues where there seems to be this attitude, well, if it is the Government doing it, somehow the Government can get away with it, and if it is in or near our Nation's Capital, where national security and the importance of the Congress are involved, then surely we can wink and nod and we can let the law be bypassed.
I think not, Mr. President, and I think you agree with me.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Thomas.
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