Austin American-Statesman
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
July 27, 1999
Cleaning Up the Colonias
U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, last week toured La Paloma colonia in Hidalgo County. She helped secure $300 million over five years for water and wastewater improvements in these impoverished areas. The Senate has included $20 million for further improvements: the appropriation awaits House action. Following are excerpts from Hutchison's remarks at La Paloma, which is in a preliminary stage for improvements:
I don't want to ever see anyone living like the people that I have seen today. This is not right. It's not right for America.
Every person who lives in our country should have clean, decent living conditions, and I don't see that here, and we're going to change it. I also want to thank Senator Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, your own Senator. He was the one who took the lead on the Senate side and he said, "We're going to do something once and for all." So when I came in, I had a press conference and I said that I would support Senator Lucio's bill (and) Representative Henry Cuellar's, D-Laredo, bill, because this takes all of us working as a team.
But I want to say that when I was elected in 1993 and I first went to Washington, I was stunned that the federal government had never taken responsibility for the living conditions in colonias on the border. The first thing I did when I went into office was pass an amendment to the appropriations bill that added $50 million just for clean up on the colonias. And that was the first time, and I want to mention that the way I learned firsthand about colonias was Elida Bocanegra (of Valley Interfaith, an advocacy group for poor neighborhoods), who took me on a tour of my first colonia. And I will never forget the feeling that I had after walking through the mud and the sludge . . . I saw Elida the next year when I came to a big Valley Interfaith meeting, and she just handed me a picture, and she didn't have to say a word. The picture was of the same colonia that we had walked through, and it was all clean and nice. I'll never forget it.
Valley Interfaith came to my office, and they said, "We want to work with you because we believe that you an do something." And Valley Interfaith has been with me ever since, and we have worked together and we've now put $300 million of federal money on the line for colonias in our country so that I never have to walk through a neighborhood again that doesn't have clean water and sewer hookups. Never again. That is my vow. Never again. So with the help of your state senator, your state representative, the governor, your county judge, we're going to stop the new ones and we're going to put the federal money in with the state money to clean up the old ones, so in five years when we have a good Valley Interfaith meeting, I want you to show me a great big picture of all the clean colonias.
I thank all of you, and I want you to know that help is on the way. Thank you.