Rep. Stansbury Opposes GOP Attempt to Gut the Clean Water Act on the House Floor

VIDEO: Watch Rep. Stansbury’s speech on the House Floor here.

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury (N.M.-01), Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, spoke on the House floor to urge her colleagues to oppose H.J. Res. 27, which would undermine the Clean Water Act and strip protections for over 90% of New Mexico’s waters.  

During her remarks, Rep. Stansbury highlighted the importance of the Clean Water Act in the protection of waters across New Mexico, addressing the ways that rolling back these critical protections will impact the well-being of communities across the state. 

“The American people want clean water,” said Rep. Stansbury. “They want us to protect our streams and rivers. They want us to protect our farmers and ranchers. They want us to protect their families and their children. We cannot go back decades, as this measure would take us back, and we cannot gut this fundamental underlying environmental law that protects the health and safety of our communities.”  

A lifelong water resources professional, Rep. Stansbury has championed bipartisan water security bills throughout her time in Congress, including a bill to standardize and unlock the power of water data to address drought and water security issues, to provide the tools for addressing water needs in the Rio Grande, and increasing funding and reducing barriers for Tribes to access key water infrastructure funding. 

Rep. Stansbury’s remarks as delivered can be found below:  

Thank you Mr. Speaker.  

I rise today as a proud daughter of New Mexico, as a water resources professional, and as a defender of the most basic element that we need to survive, which is water.  

In New Mexico, water is life. Water is sacred. Water is culture. Water is fundamental to everything that we do and everything that we are.  

For years, our state, and our country, and our communities have ridden the rollercoaster of regulatory rollbacks on the Clean Water Act. But I never could have imagined that in the year 2023, we’d be voting on a bill to gut the rule that protects our streams and rivers and our right to have clean water. 

2023 - just weeks ago, a train derailment in East Palestine sent toxic smoke into the atmosphere and people were afraid to turn on their taps and drink the water.  

The American people want clean water. And yet, here we are, weeks later, being forced to take a vote on a bill that would gut a fundamental rule in how the Clean Water Act actually saves our lives.  

Water - the most basic element for how we survive as a species. The Clean Water Act was passed because rivers were on fire. In fact, in some of the districts that our members who were actually sponsoring this bill, where toxic waste was filled and sewage was filled in the waterways of these very districts, where children were being poisoned by toxins that were being put in the rivers.  

But yet here we are, voting for a measure that would leave massive swaths of our waterways exposed, and particularly in New Mexico. We are talking about raw sewage, farm waste, chemicals being dumped in our arroyos and our wetlands.  

Let me ask the American people. Is this what you want this body to be working on? Gutting the most basic foundation of the protection of our public health and our environment? No. The American people want clean water. They want us to protect our streams and rivers. They want us to protect our farmers and ranchers. They want us to protect their families and their children. We cannot go back decades, as this measure would take us back, and we cannot gut this fundamental underlying environmental law that protects the health and safety of our communities.  

So wherever you live, whoever you represent, whatever you fight for, know what this bill is actually about, and I urge my colleagues to vote with clean water and vote against this measure, and I yield back.