Raúl Grijalva

Mr. GRIJALVA

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I concur with much of what Chairman Westerman said. I support the amendment. I don't think it goes far enough. I think that as we confront the question that he brought up of Chinese communism and their influence and their participation in activities on our public lands and waters, that we need to make sure that that doesn't occur. But I would extend that further. I would extend it to cronyism. I would extend it to insider trading. I would extend it to large corporate interests, many times foreign-owned companies, dictating our energy policy and production for this country. The point that we have here, as Representatives of our constituents and the Federal Government, is to protect the American people. To protect the American people is to make sure that their public health and their right to know and their right to seek redress is protected. H.R. 1 does not do this. This amendment is a step in that direction, but the underlying bill does not. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, this amendment requires the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service to do very basic reporting on funding that the agency would start receiving under the bill from outside groups for processing permits. The agencies would only have to report at the end of each year how much money they got from which outside groups, not which permits that money funded. This won't do much, if anything, to prevent conflicts of interest and corruption in permitting. The section that this amendment amends is very, very bad. To me, this amendment demonstrates that some Republicans are noticing the absurdity. Instead of requiring after-the-fact reporting on outside money influencing our permitting process, why not prevent conflicts of interest in the first place? Again, the Federal Government should have sole responsibility to conduct unbiased environmental reviews, because the Federal Government is responsible for protecting its citizens. Mr. Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, there is a way to speed up and deal with the backlog. We, Democrats, in the Inflation Reduction Act fought for and included $1 billion to deal specifically with NEPA and the review process to bring it up to capacity and staff it. The same can be done for the other agencies that do species reviews, marine reviews, et cetera. It can be done and it needs to be done by the government. I think the Federal Government should have the sole responsibility to conduct unbiased environmental reviews. That would deal with the backlog. With the $1 billion under NEPA, we will reach that 2-year threshold that the Trump administration wanted, that the Republican majority wanted, and Senators, including Manchin, wanted. We can do the same with the other agencies as well. It is about backlog. It is not about continuing a self-fulfilling prophesy. The prophesy has been to starve these departments so that you can claim that things are not being done in a timely fashion. This is an opportunity. The President has recommended it in his budget to fully allow the transfer of money from the IRA to this review process with other agencies, not just NEPA. I think this amendment is redundant in the sense that we establish a dependency on outside funding from potential claimants to leases and permits within our Federal lands and waters and depend on them to be able to deal with that backlog. If we are going to speed this up, let's do it correctly. Let's do it with the taxpayer and the American public's rights and public health in mind and fund them fully. We should allow the President and the departments to transfer money to the areas in which they are needed. That is what speeds it up. What we are doing today in terms of requiring a report will have no real effect on the backlog and opens the doors to conflicts of interest and corruption in our permitting process. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, this amendment says that if the Secretary of Defense takes any action under the Defense Production Act related to solar panels or electric vehicles, it can't be treated as a covered project under FAST-41. I have my own concerns about FAST-41, specifically around ensuring that communities have proper input in project permitting. This amendment is a blatant attack on clean energy infrastructure, and I cannot support it. Mr. Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I would be remiss, after the chairman's acknowledgement of his staff, not to do the same. I thank the Democrats on our committee for their hard work and their effort to keep the worst from happening with H.R. 1. Their work has been phenomenal and all of us on the committee, as members, are very appreciative. Let me just go back to polluters over people act, H.R. 1. H.R. 1 is supposed to be the pinnacle, the apex of legislative action on the part of the Republican majority. While we are having this discussion, looming over the Nation is the default--the debt ceiling--and the negotiations being promoted by the Republican majority and the cuts that are being promoted to the basic services and programs that the American people not only depend on, but rely on for their lives. We are not talking about that. All we are hearing is that if permitting doesn't happen the way that the industry wants it in terms of changing the basic laws that protect the American people, their health, and our environment, then we will make that part of the hostage-taking in any discussion and any negotiations that we have around the debt ceiling. We will continue to work hard, the Republican majority are saying, to gut NEPA, to gut basic environmental and public health laws in this country because that is the zenith of the effort. H.R. 1 is not a legislative effort; it is a giveaway. It is empowering Big Oil and Big Gas to once again control the energy policy of this Nation, ignore climate change, and cost the American people more and more through the cuts that are being anticipated and through the fact that we are not concentrating on their needs and concentrating on the needs of Big Oil and Big Gas--an industry that doesn't need our attention, doesn't need our help, and certainly does not need the handouts in H.R. 1. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, this amendment requires the Government Accountability Office to study the sufficiency of the current environmental review process for offshore wind projects. I think we can all agree that offshore energy projects, including offshore wind projects, need to be studied thoroughly before being built, and the National Environmental Policy Act helps us do that review. However, H.R. 1, the polluters over people act, guts the National Environmental Policy Act. If I lived in a coastal community, I would be pretty nervous about how H.R. 1 makes it harder for stakeholders to weigh in on projects that might affect my community. This amendment scrutinizes the environmental review process for renewable energy development, but the underlying bill guts the review process for all offshore development. As we have seen in the Gulf, the infrastructure needed for oil and gas drilling has decimated wetlands, and oil spills like the BP disaster close beaches and kill wildlife. Scientists have found that seismic surveys for offshore oil exploration are far more damaging to marine mammals than surveys for offshore wind. A couple-page GAO study on whether environmental reviews of offshore wind are strong enough doesn't make up for the cuts to those reviews in H.R. 1. A better path forward is to reject the polluters over people act and, instead, make sure Federal agencies have the tools, capacity, and resources they need to complete reviews in a timely fashion. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, as we finish the amendment process under the jurisdiction of the Natural Resources Committee, let me just close by saying that the polluters over people act, H.R. 1, has one distinct and sole purpose, and that is to dismantle, weaken, and eliminate basic laws and legal protections that have been in place for over 50 years around important issues of public health and environment. What we have heard today is rationale regarding permitting reform, rationale regarding energy independence and dominance, but the sole purpose of these concepts is dog whistles. They are dog whistles for climate denial and no action. They are dog whistles for having corporate dominance, not public interest, in charge of the most vital natural resource, and that is our people. H.R. 1, the polluters over people act, is a basic assault on public health, public interest, and it prevents us from dealing with the reality of climate change and the need to take action now. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I oppose this amendment. While I recognize the amendment's underlying goal is to make it easier to obtain a Clean Water Act permit, not all permits have the same potential impacts on water quality. We need to take care to distinguish between those permits that can be expedited because of their minimal impact on the environment and those that need additional attention and scrutiny. The Clean Water Act already authorizes the use of general permits to allow a more expedited process for activities in the wetlands that will cause only minimal adverse environmental effects when performed separately and will have only minimal cumulative adverse effects on the environment. Current EPA regulations also allow the issuance of general permits for point source discharges that involve the same or substantially similar types of operations, such as construction-related activities, urban stormwater, and the western and central Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas activities. The amendment attempts to codify existing EPA regulations on general use permits for point source discharges without the safeguard that the activities have only a minimal impact on the environment. The amendment does not prescribe how these new requirements will interact with existing general permit authority. Conflicting standards may have the opposite effect that the Representative intends. It may restrict EPA's authority to determine which activities are eligible to use the more streamlined process of obtaining general permit coverage and those activities more appropriately reviewed under a more rigorous individual permit authority. Bogging down the EPA with layers of rules will not make obtaining a permit easier. The amendment also expands who can apply an expired general use permit onto new projects. Under current law, current permittees who file a notice of intent to be covered under a general use permit scheduled for reissuance remain covered by the previous permit, even if there should be a lapse between expiration and reissuance. The amendment requires the new applicant also be allowed to use an expired permit regardless of whether or not the permit is likely to be renewed. Allowing automatic expansion of permits that have not been renewed for legitimate concerns will not improve water quality. I stand ready to work with Representative Graves or any other colleague who seeks to achieve sensible permitting reform while continuing to uphold our Nation's water quality. However, this amendment does not uphold our Nation's water quality, and that is why I will oppose it. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRIJALVA

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, House Democrats filed several amendments to H.R. 1 that would help mitigate some of the outright damage to our climate, our communities, and our economic future that this bill would cause. Unfortunately, only 7 out of 95 were made in order to get an open debate and an up-or-down vote. Some Republicans have also filed amendments that I support. But I am afraid that at the end of the day, there is ultimately no path forward for making H.R. 1 any semblance of a legislative proposal that the American people, not polluters, deserve. The polluters over people act will actively and aggressively take us backward regarding emissions and in our transition to clean energy. It guts our bedrock environmental laws and takes communities out of the permitting process entirely, the public's right to know. Some of the Republican amendments add to that mess. To start, I rise today in opposition to this amendment, which would make a harmful bill even worse by arbitrarily eroding community protections under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. This amendment greatly expands the limited environmental review standards of the 2015 FAST Act to a series of coal waste extraction activities that can cause significant environmental damage and warrant strong environmental review standards. There is already a deliberate process in place under the FAST Act to expand its limited environmental review standards to new types of projects under certain conditions. This amendment is a legislative end run around that deliberative process that inappropriately curtails public input, environmental review, and judicial review under NEPA. At its most basic level, NEPA simply requires government agencies to assess significant environmental and public health impacts before a decision is made and potentially harmful activities like coal waste extraction begin. NEPA doesn't stop these activities. It simply assures that their impacts are considered and that the public knows. This amendment undermines the basic purposes of NEPA. I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would further restrict access to the courts to hold polluters accountable when they violate the law and unlawfully harm public health and the environment. The underlying bill already bars additional review of a permit, license, or approval under all Federal laws unless filed within 120 days. This amendment reduces judicial review times even further to 90 days for major infrastructure projects that can greatly harm communities. By contrast, judicial review under most of our Federal environmental and public health laws is generally 5 to 6 years. Congress included a judicial review period of this length in most of these laws because often serious public health and environmental effects aren't known within the first 120 days and certainly not within 90 days. Judicial review is a key enforcement mechanism for most of our major environmental and public health laws. This amendment doubles down on the underlying bill's effort to gut the enforcement of our Nation's laws and to give polluters a virtual blank check. I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, it is simply a public right that the public has an opportunity to seek redress in the courts. To limit that should not be part of this legislation. I urge opposition to the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chairman, this amendment attempts to accelerate pipeline construction, and it does so by undermining informed decisionmaking and meaningful review which falls under the National Environmental Policy Act and other established bedrock laws. We have an extensive record showing that NEPA is not a meaningful cause of energy project delays, period. When a delay does occur, it is usually because of the permit applicant who is causing the delay or because of the lack of funding for agency staff and resources at permitting offices. While we cannot do anything about applicant delays, we have already addressed the other core issue, and we should be celebrating that. Democrats fought to get more than $1 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to staff up Federal agencies' permitting offices so they would be able to efficiently and effectively process permits. The Council on Environmental Quality has also now told us that because of what Democrats delivered, even the most extensive form of environmental review will, in most cases, take 2 years or less. By the way, that was the target timeline of industry, Trump, and Senator Manchin. Democrats are making quick, but high-quality reviews a reality. Republicans simply want to mandate low-quality reviews or none at all. Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition, although I am not necessarily opposed.

Mr. GRIJALVA. Madam Chair, the amendment offered by my colleague from Florida, Mr. Donalds, requires the Secretary to submit a report to Congress that includes the status of uranium deposits in the U.S., information on the quality of these deposits compared to the rest of the world, and policy considerations regarding the use of these deposits. Although this amendment concerns only the making of a report, I want to take a moment to highlight the history of uranium mining in this country as it relates to our indigenous communities. One example I will use is the Navajo Nation. From the 1940s to the 1980s, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from the Nation's lands, exposing generations of Tribal members to the contamination that permeated these sites. After the mining companies were done, they simply left their operations and failed to engage in any cleanup measures. Today, there are over 500 abandoned uranium mines on the Tribal Nation's lands, and this continues to be a serious concern for the Nation's Tribal leadership as we speak. As you can imagine, these mines have contributed to chronic health outcomes among Tribal members and have left countless homes and water sources with elevated levels of radiation. When we consider the status of uranium mining in this country, we must also consider the inequitable history that this industry has imposed specifically upon Tribal communities. I hope that in addition to the information my colleague would like to be included in the amendment's report, we can also work to include a survey of the industry's historical practices and expected challenges and outcomes to local and surrounding communities. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.