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Brownfields Legislation
Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials
The Honorable J. Christian Bollwage
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am J. Christian Bollwage, Mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey. I am pleased to testify today on behalf of The United States Conference of Mayors, the national mayors' organization representing more than 1,000 cities with a population of 30,000 or more. Today I will speak to the position of the Conference of Mayors regarding the pending brownfield proposals - Chairman's Discussion Draft, Democratic Discussion Draft and S. 350, the Senate-passed bill - now before this Subcommittee. Within the Conference, I am a Member of the Advisory Board and I also serve as a Co-chair of the organization's Brownfields Task Force, a position I have held since that panel was first established in 1996. Given these positions, I have been extensively involved in these issues for some time. Mr. Chairman and Ranking Minority Member Pallone, I would like to begin my comments by commending you and Members of this Subcommittee for moving forward with brownfields legislation. The enactment of bipartisan brownfields legislation has been among the Conference's top priorities for several years. In fact, this is now our third Congress where we have been urging bipartisan Congressional action on this legislation. Mr. Chairman, I want to deliver one message on behalf of the nation's mayors and this is: we need prompt bipartisan action on brownfields legislation. While we can engage in discussion about how to craft specific provisions of the legislation, and debate both substantive and technical changes, the overriding issue is how we come to a broad bipartisan agreement on this legislation. Need for Bipartisan Action on Brownfields Mr. Chairman, the nation's mayors urge you to craft a bipartisan agreement on brownfields. This has been and continues to be the central tenet of the Conference's policy on brownfield legislation. At no time, Mr. Chairman, has the Conference of Mayors endorsed or supported a partisan legislative proposal on these matters. Earlier this week, the Membership of the Conference of Mayors renewed its call for a broad bipartisan agreement on brownfields legislation. Mr. Chairman and Members of this Subcommittee, I call you attention to the policy statement, Bipartisan Action on Brownfields Legislation, which was adopted Monday, June 25 by our Membership during our 69th Annual Meeting in Detroit. I was pleased to sponsor this policy statement with Charlotte Mayor Patrick McCrory, the Chair of the Conference's Energy and Environment Committee, and Green Bay Mayor Paul Jadin. It is a bipartisan group of mayors, calling for bipartisan Congressional action. The message of this policy statement is bipartisanship. In this statement, the mayors call upon the House Leadership of both parties to come together to " craft a bipartisan agreement and to do so promptly." The mayors also call upon President Bush "to request House Leaders to seek prompt bipartisan action." Finally, the mayors urge the House of Representatives to "adopt the Senate-passed legislation (S. 350), if ongoing House efforts fail to develop a timely and broad bipartisan agreement on brownfields legislation. " Our position provides you with the opportunity to work cooperatively in crafting a bipartisan agreement. Failing to generate such an agreement in a timely manner, the mayors would urge you to simply move forward with the Senate-passed legislation, S. 350. Elements of an Agreement Mr. Chairman, the proposals before you today share some common elements that the mayors have consistently supported. We have called for resources at the local level to support city and county programs to assess and cleanup these sites. The pending bills before you have funding elements in them that are generally consistent. In our survey work at the Conference, where we conduct annual surveys of our membership, federal funding for these local efforts was the top need that was identified in each of three surveys of cities. This information simply underscores the importance of a strong funding element in this legislation. Close behind funding is the need for liability relief for innocent parties. Again, each of the pending bills before you have provisions that protect innocent parties, focusing on developers and other parties who are seeking to cleanup and redevelop these sites. In addition, there are other parties like contiguous landowners that are given protection under the legislation before you. We must ensure that people who get protection under these provisions are "innocent parties." We have also called for more clarity on the relationship between the federal government and the states on brownfield cleanups and other matters. As you know, this element is generally defined by the debate over what is called "finality." These issues - funding, liability relief and the federal/state relationship - constitute the core elements of a brownfield package. These three elements need to be supported by a clear and appropriate definition of what constitutes a brownfield. This is an area that needs particular attention in t he final House version of the legislation to ensure that the sites that are the focus of the legislation, be it liability protection, funding or priority under state cleanup programs, are truly brownfield sites. In this Congress, the decision has been made, and rightly so, to move a brownfields only bill, a position strongly advanced by President Bush and Governor Christine Todd Whitman in their support of S. 350. It appears now there are some efforts to use brownfield legislation as an umbrella to extend brownfield-related provisions to sites, which are not truly brownfields. Here I am talking about more seriously contaminated sites, usually characterized as NPL or NPL-caliber sites. We would urge you to abandon provisions that characterize sites as brownfields, particularly where there are current owners/operators who are responsible for contamination at these sites, so they can realize relief or other protections/considerations for contamination that they caused. This is a direction we would oppose. Mr. Chairman, on each of the issues that I have outlined - funding, liability, finality and definitional issues - it is clear that the Senate found ways to reach broad agreements on these issues. In fact, on the issue of "finality", as one example, they rightly concluded that their agreement, while short of what some might advocate, will positively affect an overwhelming percentage of the many brownfield sites throughout the nation. As such, the finality provisions in the Senate were broadly supported. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, a former Governor, agrees with the Senate approach. We also agree with the Senate's stance on these issue. We urge this panel to work in the same spirit as the Senate and work to reach similar broad bipartisan agreements to allow this legislation to move forward. The technical nuances of one provision over another will matter little, at the end of the day, if you can't reach a bipartisan agreement. Concluding Remarks Mr. Chairman, I want to underscore the call of the nation's mayors for bipartisan action on brownfields legislation. Bipartisan action is a formula that works. Earlier this week, our Conference leaders met with President Bush to talk about our priority issues before he spoke to the full Conference Membership on faith-based initiatives. We underscored the need for a bipartisan agreement in the House, praising him for his support of the Senate bill. He indicated that enactment of brownfields legislation is among his priorities and noted his support of the Senate's bipartisan legislation. Let me recap. President Bush has made enactment of brownfields legislation a priority. The United States Senate has voted 99-0 on its proposal, S. 350. We need this body to move forward on a bipartisan basis so that we can accelerate our efforts to address this critical national problem. To this end, Mr. Chairman and Members of this Subcommittee, you can count on the strong support of the nation's mayors.
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