During his 18 years in the Senate, he has admirably served his constituents in New Jersey but he has also served Americans nationwide. With his acute understanding of the issues, his principled nature, and his strong, effective leadership, he has stood firm for families. He has worked tirelessly to build a strong economy, to better the education and mentoring of our children, to rebuild the infrastructure, and ensure equal rights and equal opportunity for all Americans. He leaves a legacy of legislative success from which the nation will benefit long into the future. Today, however, I would like to pay special tribute to his work to preserve our environment.
In our time together on the Environmental and Public Works Committee, Senator Lautenberg has achieved great things. One that stands out is the role he played in renewing and improving the Superfund program. His insistence that people living near hazardous waste sites be protected from health risks motivated him to address the broader threat posed by poisons seeping into the earth.
Senator Lautenberg must also be credited for another noteworthy achievement: public access to information about toxic chemicals manufactured, used or transported in our communities or released into the environment. His leadership was instrumental in the establishment of the Toxics Release Inventory, which, as part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act and the Pollution Prevention Act, requires a publicly accessible toxic chemical database to be developed and maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In great part, because of Senator Lautenberg's vigilance, Americans now have access to this valuable source of information that both encourages companies to better manage their toxic substances and provides citizens with the data necessary with which to challenge violators.
My colleague's love for the environment did not stop with his work to clean up the land. It extended to the air we breathe and the waterways that sustain us. As a longtime advocate for clean air, he led the fight to include a section in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments that set specific limits on the allowable levels of specific hazardous air pollutants. This was a significant achievement in Congress' efforts to improve air quality, since before 1990, EPA had not regulated the majority of these chemicals. The language Senator Lautenberg drafted left no uncertainty, and we began to remove these toxins from our skies.
For Senator Lautenberg, the quality of indoor air was equally as important. He championed the ban on smoking on domestic airline flights, an accomplishment that literally allows traveling Americans to breathe easier every day.
He has likewise been a strong advocate of clean coastal areas for the safety and enjoyment of our citizens. My friend wrote legislation to ban ocean dumping of sewage and to clear beach areas of rubbish. He responded to constituent complaints of syringes littering the beaches and actively promoted legislation to control medical wastes. And he worked to stop offshore oil drilling and to prevent oil spills from polluting the water fronts and endangering wildlife.
Finally, Senator Lautenberg's abiding interest in transportation has improved the safety and quality of life for Americans coast to coast. He successfully encouraged states to raise the national drinking age to 21 and has since sponsored legislation to lower the national standard over which a driver is presumed drunk to a blood alcohol level of 0.08. He demonstrated particular leadership in the battle to authorize and fund a national Intelligent Transportation Systems program to reduce traffic congestion and speed motorists to their destinations and successfully sought to block the expanded use of the larger, triple trailer trucks. This was a special victory, for he felt passionately that longer, combination vehicles endangered the lives of others on the road. We must also be grateful for the Senator's longtime commitment to a passenger rail system and mass transit investment. He championed the Boston to D.C. high-speed rail which will open as early as Thanksgiving and sponsored legislation for a major federal investment in the development of high-speed rail corridors across the nation.
Through these and many other efforts, the Senator from New Jersey has helped to ensure that Americans live in a cleaner, safer and healthier environment. I commend him for his significant and lasting accomplishments and thank him for his dedication and leadership. It has been an honor to work by his side, and I wish him great happiness in his future endeavors.