Mr. Chairman, state and local environmental agencies have often been the leaders in developing programs to fight tough pollution problems.
My own state of New Jersey, laboring to clean up hundreds of toxic dumpsites, produced the model for the federal Superfund law. Southern California, whose climate and dependence on the automobile made it susceptible to smog, still leads the nation in fighting air pollution.
And the first models for our acclaimed Right-to-Know laws actually came from cities Philadelphia and Cleveland, to name a couple.
These states and municipalities could not wait for the federal government to act. They had pollution problems that needed to be solved and solved now.
We will always look to state and local agencies for that kind of leadership and innovation.
At the same time, we will always need to maintain a level playing-field nationwide, and there is a critical role for the federal government to play in setting minimum standards for environmental protection.
Take water pollution, for example. Water bodies do not recognize state boundaries. In the Hudson River, shared by my state and New York, both states must have the same level of protection to protect this important water body. My "Beaches" legislation this committee recently reported out also deals with the issue of consistency among the states.
Without the federal government serving to set a baseline for what is clean, the public cannot be assured that the beaches will be tested the same way, no matter what state they visit.
Even in the international arena, the key to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change will be hammering out a workable arrangement under which developing countries reduce their greenhouse gases.
In other words, it doesn't do any good to clean up your own act, if your neighbors even distant neighbors don't clean up theirs.
All that being said, I know there are things we can do to improve the way the federal government interacts with states and businesses.
For example, I've been working for years to pass legislation that would ease the cleanup of brownfields, and this year I believe we will succeed. I've also been working recently on legislation that would streamline environmental reporting at EPA, an idea that draws from the work of several states.
So I am looking forward to the testimony of our witnesses today, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.