Sen. Jim Inhofe

When the national press opened the eyes of America to the lead water contamination crisis affecting Flint, Michigan, a city of roughly 100,000 people, I told my staff it was time to get to work to see what went wrong and what could be done. 

In the days following the resignation of EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman, I joined Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) in sending a letter to EPA Adm. Gina McCarthy asking for the agency to explain in detail what they knew and when. I then got to work with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) on a legislative solution to address the issue not only in Flint, but across the nation, of aging water infrastructure.

Our bill, the Drinking Water Safety and Infrastructure Act, adopts a fiscally responsible approach to provide federally backed loans to states so that they can quickly address infrastructure that is contributing to a public health crisis. In this $220 million package, $50 million would also go towards programs to identify and mitigate lead poisoning, specifically in regards to children and pregnant and nursing mothers.

When our bipartisan efforts to attach this package to a moving piece of legislation failed, I vowed to fold it into the 2016 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) that my committee was in the process of developing. As part of this process, we held a hearing on April 7 where I invited as witnesses David Berger, mayor of Lima, Ohio, and Aurel Arndt, of Pennsylvania, chair of the Water Utility Council of the American Water Works Association.

In the hearing, Berger testified that while cities are striving to provide their residents with adequate water and wastewater services, the costs to comply with federal mandates have become so “unsustainable” that cities cannot handle them in an “affordable manner.”  Ardnt further expounded on this crisis, stating that “often a large investment in infrastructure is required that is too large to be accommodated affordably in a short time frame only through local rates and charges.” 

This led Senator Barbara Boxer and I to include in WRDA 2016 not only the Drinking Water Safety and Infrastructure Act in its entirety, but also language to address the need for a better, more cohesive partnership between local governments and the federal government to ensure adequate and safe water and wastewater infrastructure across the nation.

By April 28, Boxer and I had introduced WRDA 2016 and passed it out of committee with a strong bipartisan vote of 19 to 1. In this legislation, we included new provisions to provide critical support and reforms to help small and disadvantaged communities improve access to clean and safe drinking water. The bill would also empower states and local governments to prioritize federal mandates based on the greatest health threats for their communities and to do it on a schedule that is affordable. Not only did we want to help communities in crisis now, but also to prevent future water infrastructure emergencies.

On September 15, when the Senate passed WRDA 2016 with an overwhelming vote of 95 to 3, I pledged to not let politics, or any lame-duck session, jeopardize the emergency relief in WRDA 2016 and to get this signed into law by the end of this year. I have been standing with my colleagues in Michigan from the beginning in support of our fiscally responsible solutions to help not only the Flint community, but also other communities facing drinking water emergencies and water infrastructure challenges, solutions that a Republican-majority Senate has supported strongly.

WRDA 2016 not only provides the critical support Flint needs now but it also will help to prevent future water and wastewater infrastructure crises across the nation. WRDA 2016 is the right vehicle, and I am committed to getting this bill to the president’s desk.

Sen. Jim Inhofe

My committee, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, not only writes and enacts laws to provide direction for programs within our jurisdiction; it is also our job to oversee implementation of laws by federal agencies.. Currently two laws are undergoing this process: the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) Act (P.L. 112-141), enacted with strong bipartisan support in 2012, as well as the more recent Fixing American’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act (P.L. 114-94), enacted last December.

As the lead Republican author of these two laws, I am proud of the legislative reforms we accomplished aimed at improving our Federal transportation system. In particular, MAP-21 established performance measures to ensure the most efficient use of federal transportation funds.  It focuses the program on real world outcomes rather than meaningless bureaucratic checklists, improves accountability by establishing an outcome-driven system to track performance, and directs states and local agencies to consider how they are achieving performance targets when planning for and selecting projects. The performance measures are limited to a select number of specific goals, including safety, infrastructure condition, system reliability, and freight movement. These measures will increase accountability and transparency and help ensure that our citizens are getting the most for their tax dollars.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), along with the U.S. Department of Transportation, has been working to implement these performance measures. On April 22, FHWA posted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)in the Federal Register to propose national performance management measure regulations to assess the performance of the National Highway System, freight movement on the Interstate System, and the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ) Program, as required by the MAP-21 and the FAST Act.

Unfortunately, rather than implementing the law passed by Congress, FHWA is proposing to divert attention and resources away from highway and bridge conditions, performance, safety, and attainment of national ambient air quality standards by proposing to adopt a greenhouse gas (GHG) performance measure. In this instance, the Obama administration appears to be diverting FHWA’s time and resources away from achieving the performance goals set forth in law – a law that was enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress.

FHWA has no authority to establish a GHG measure. The only performance measure related to air quality is directly tied to the implementation of the CMAQ program, and the CMAQ program is limited to programs or projects to help achieve or maintain ozone, carbon monoxide, or particulate matter national ambient air quality standards. GHGs are not part of the CMAQ program and, just as FHWA has no authority to expand the performance measures listed under 23 U.S.C. §150(c), FHWA has no authority to expand the scope of the CMAQ program under 23 U.S.C. §149.

FHWA has already conceded that it does, in fact, lack the authority to implement its GHG proposal. The Federal Register notice fails to set forth any basis for statutory authority for FHWA to establish a GHG performance measure. Recently, FHWA confirmed in a final rule released for Statewide and Nonmetropolitan Transportation Planning that it does not have authority to impose additional performance measures on States and local governments, beyond those specified by Congress. I led five other Senators on my committee in raising these concerns in our comments to the proposed rule (read the letter here).

Should FHWA’s GHG proposal be adopted as a final rule, challenges to this measure will distract FHWA from implementing the measures specified by Congress. One can easily see this same pattern at EPA, which has diverted resources away from its core missions to pursue its so called Clean Power Plan, another GHG regulation, which the Supreme Court has put on hold because it likely goes beyond the authority Congress granted in the Clean Air Act.

The goal of the laws I co-authored is to improve the safety and advance the modernization of our roads and bridges.   FHWA’s proposed GHG regulation would divert the limited time and resources of States and local governments away from this goal to pursue instead the administration’s unlawful and overzealous climate agenda.

In order to effectively improve the performance of our Federal-aid highway program and provide a means to the most efficient investment of Federal transportation funds, FHWA must faithfully implement section 1203 of MAP-21, as enacted by Congress, and forego inclusion of an unauthorized GHG performance measure.

Senator Inhofe’s views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Eno Center for Transportation.

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Sens. Inhofe, Vitter, Crapo, Capito, and Rounds

Regulatory reform has been a widely discussed solution in Washington to cut bureaucratic red tape and boost our economy. In a Republican-led Congress, we achieved it.

After years of hard work and negotiations, the passage of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act marks the first time in more than a quarter of a century that Congress has sent reform of a major environmental law to the president's desk.

Over the last 40 years, American families have been exposed to untested chemicals on a daily basis due to the shortcomings of the well-intended but broken Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA). Job creators and manufacturers have also suffered from inconsistent guidance of what chemicals can be used in their products.

The Lautenberg Act is the common-sense, conservative solution, creating unified protections for American families and American businesses while providing new safeguards and oversight requirements.

When working on the Lautenberg Act, we took into account the oversight that the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is regularly conducting over the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and addressed problems we see in these laws in order to make TSCA a smarter, more conservative regulatory agent that won the support of all principal stakeholders.

As a result, the Lautenberg Act will require that the EPA's regulatory decisions be based on the best available science and require the agency to show their work to the public and Congress.

No longer can chemical regulations that are the result of cherry-picked data justifying a politically motivated regulatory outcome be forced on job creators at the state or federal level. Instead, the EPA will need to justify its decisions by a substantial evidence standard and by using transparent scientific information while also taking into account costs when proposing any potential regulation.

We also looked to the Constitution for guidance to address the unworkable and insufficiently protective regulatory patchwork under the current law. Because current law has resulted in only a very limited preemption of chemical regulations, it has empowered a couple larger, liberal states to impose its regulations on the rest of the nation.

As a result, job creators have been faced with a decision: Either embark on a costly venture to create new manufacturing facilities and distribution channels to get reformulated produces into different states in order to meet inconsistent standards or forcefully adhere to the most strict, often unreasonable and frequently non-protective standard of the largest state.

We addressed the state preemption issue by instead giving all states a voice in the regulatory process while also providing industry with a consistent, reliable standard for regulating chemicals and protecting our citizens.

We sought to balance states' rights and recognize efforts states have already taken in the absence of a functioning federal program while continuing to support and protect interstate commerce.

Congress can responsibly update environmental laws and do it in a way that is consistent with conservative principles. With the Lautenberg Act, the law can once again work to protect public health while also supporting our economy, which includes the $800 billion chemical industry that impacts more than 7 million related American jobs and is the catalyst for almost all U.S. manufacturing.

The Lautenberg Act is proof that the Republican majority is working for Americans and is accomplishing things that have been impossible to achieve for decades.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), lead-GOP sponsor of the Lautenberg Act; U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.); U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho); and U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, chairman of EPW Subcommittee on Superfund, Waste Management and Regulatory Oversight.

Editorial Board

Congress is finally getting serious about hazardous chemicals in household products and industrial goods. The House is expected to vote on Tuesday on a bill overhauling a 1976 chemical safety law that has made it hard for federal regulators to ban toxic substances, even known carcinogens like asbestos. The Senate is expected to follow later in the week.

The bipartisan legislation would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to review chemicals to determine whether they threaten human health or the environment. Regulators would be required to give priority to the riskiest chemicals, evaluate at least 20 substances at a time and finish each evaluation in no more than seven years.

The reviews would have to pay special attention to the harm the chemicals could cause to vulnerable groups like children, industrial workers, pregnant women and poor people. Substances commonly stored near drinking water sources would move to or near the top of the list.

These changes represent a big improvement over the 1976 law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, under which the E.P.A. has been able to ban or restrict the production or use of only five chemicalsout of the roughly 85,000 in use today. The 1976 law is written in such a way that it can be almost impossible for the E.P.A. to do a satisfactory job, in part because it does not require manufacturers to provide safety data before a product hits the market.

And courts have often interpreted the 1976 law in the industry’s favor. In 1989, the environmental agency banned most asbestos-containing products, but two years later the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the ban for many products containing asbestos, some of which are still on the market. Asbestos-related diseases cause about120,000 deaths a year globally.

The latest bill is the product of painful compromises on both sides and, as with any compromise, is not perfect. The biggest potential problem is that it would pre-empt states from imposing restrictions on chemicals that the E.P.A. has reviewed or is in the process of evaluating. State laws and regulations enacted before April 22 would be allowed to stand and states could ask for waivers from pre-emption for laws or regulations enacted after that date.

Industry pushed for pre-emption because it is easier to deal with one federal regulator than a patchwork of state laws. States like California have often been more willing to ban and regulate dangerous substances and have had stronger legal authority to do so than the E.P.A., which is why some public interest groups and some state regulators are unhappy with the pre-emption provision. That said, pre-emption is unlikely to be a major problem as long as the legislation empowers the E.P.A. to do its job and the agency acts with urgency.

Under the measure, the chemical industry would contribute $25 million a year to help pay for the agency’s work. That’s a good start, but it will cover only a portion of the money the agency needs to review thousands of chemicals; the rest will come from the federal budget. A lot will depend on whether Congress continues to provide sufficient resources to the E.P.A., long a favorite target of anti-regulatory legislators.