WASHINGTON -- Rep. Norman Y. Mineta, Ranking Democratic Member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said today 'Corrections Day' legislation approved this morning by the Committee sets a bad precedent for House procedures, and for Clean Water standards in the United States.

H.R. 1943, which had no hearings in the Committee, is the first of the so-called 'Corrections Day' measures to be approved for consideration by the entire House. 'Corrections Day,' according to the House Republican leadership, is designed to correct current law. Much of the substance of H.R. 1943, however, was enacted in the last Congress, and San Diego is already getting the waiver it has sought under that law.

H.R. 1943, as approved by the Committee, would grant the City of San Diego a waiver from tougher secondary treatment requirements of the Clean Water Act, as would last year's enacted bill. The difference is that last year's bill set specific lower standards so that San Diego would not be allowed to provide less treatment than it provides today. H.R. 1943, however, would allow San Diego not only to do less than secondary treatment, it would also allow them to do substantially less treatment than they do today.

An amendment offered by Rep. Bob Filner of San Diego to specify that San Diego could not do less treatment than it does today was defeated in a party-line vote.

Mineta made the following statement during the consideration of H.R. 1943 this morning:

Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to this bill. H.R. 1943 should not be approved by this Committee, or by the House under Corrections Day procedures or any other procedures.

The issue is not whether San Diego should receive a waiver from secondary treatment. San Diego will receive its waiver. Under legislation very ably advocated by Bob Filner, passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton last year, San Diego got the right to seek a waiver and has applied for a waiver from secondary treatment. EPA has publicly announced that it fully expects to grant the waiver in the near future, after the normal process which includes the opportunity for public comment. No further legislative action is necessary for San Diego to be relieved from the secondary treatment requirements of the Clean Water Act. What then is the purpose of H.R. 1943? It is to allow San Diego to do less than the commitments it made last year when special legislation was passed to allow for the waiver, and to create the second special exception for San Diego in less than one year. (MORE)

Last year's bill, signed into law, will allow San Diego to go on doing the level of treatment it is doing today, which is less than the secondary treatment that virtually every other city has to do. That is all that San Diego has ever said it wants. But this bill would allow them to do far less than they are doing today.

That is not a correction, it is a massive new loophole that would allow San Diego to do far less treatment than it is doing today. The present secondary treatment standards which virtually everybody has to meet are 85% removal of BOD and 85% removal of suspended solids. Last year's enacted bill would allow San Diego to drop that to 58% and 80%, which it meets at present. This bill would drop that further to a totally undefined term called "enhanced primary". That means do primary treatment, which is just 30% and 30%, then add a few chemicals. The result could be far less treatment than they are doing today. It could mean sewage which is very nearly raw - - sewage that no one has agreed would be harmless.

The only protection in this bill is that the effluent has to be "in compliance with all local and state water quality standards for the receiving waters." That provision is a fraud, since the discharge would be 4 miles out, where no state or local water quality standards apply!

Instead of approving this ill-advised bill, we should allow the regular order to take its course so that San Diego can get its secondary treatment waiver under the recently enacted bill and the environment can be assured of protection.

A second issue I will raise, Mr. Chairman, is the inequity of taking up H.R. 1943 when there are far greater issues to be addressed in the Clean Water Act.

Why is it that San Diego, which will receive a waiver from secondary treatment with no further legislation, is getting a bill considered separately, and yet thousands of communities which are in technical violation of the law for failure to have stormwater permits cannot receive separate legislative attention?

Why is it that the hundreds of cities looking for approval of EPA's Combined Sewer Overflow Policy cannot receive separate legislative action?

None of these communities will receive any assistance by the action which we are taking today. Thousands of communities which need legislation are being told that they must wait for the larger bill to be considered. Yet the one city which needs no further legislative action to receive the relief which it wants is getting a special bill, just for it. The thousands of other communities can wait.

Mr. Chairman, this is yet another example of the "haves" getting what they need, and the "have nots" being left behind. Unfortunately, the "have nots" are the communities which most of us represent. Yet, it is San Diego which is getting singled out for special treatment -- special treatment for the second time in less than a year.

This bill is proof that in this Congress, it is not who you are that counts, it is who you know. San Diego secondary treatment is not what needs "correcting", it is the priorities of this House that need correcting.