have also cosponsored H.R. 4289, which is Congresswoman Furse's 

 Waterways Restoration Act, which has some features in common 

 with my own bill. 



If I may, Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit my statement for 

 the record and simply summarize my statement. 



Mr. Studds. We would appreciate that, absolutely. 



Ms. Norton. I ask you to forgive me; I have had some laryngitis 

 and may not sound like myself. 



The Urban Watershed Restoration Act is really the culmination 

 of more than a year's work and a lot of consultation. I chose the 

 Anacostia River as my environmental project when I came to Con- 

 gress. I quickly found out that the Anacostia was replicated in 

 urban and suburban areas across the United States, and I thus be- 

 lieved that what you, Mr. Chairman, have called a more holistic 

 approach — certainly a more systematic and comprehensive ap- 

 proach to the urban rivers — was necessary. It was at this point 

 that I began to work with environmental groups, with community 

 groups, and with my staff to try to design a bill that would reach 

 to these extraordinarily neglected rivers. 



I am pleased that 42 Members of Congress have cosponsored this 

 bill, and I am particularly pleased at the sponsorship of American 

 Rivers, the National Resources Defense Council, the National Wild- 

 life Federation, the Anacostia Watershed Society, as well as the 

 NAACP, and the National Association of Service and Conservation 

 Corps. 



My bill would essentially take money from existing funds. What 

 it seeks is to get a fairer share of Section 319 Clean Water Act 

 funds for urban watershed work. It seeks to get 25 percent of the 

 funds rather than the 13 percent that these most polluted of Amer- 

 ican waterways have gotten. Thirteen percent. Although these 

 urban areas are only 2.5 percent of our land surface, they are 18 

 percent of the polluted river miles, 34 percent of the impaired lake 

 areas, and 62 percent of the impaired estuary square miles. Yet, 

 they have gotten only 13 percent of the money. These rivers need 

 a voice or else they are going to sink to the point where nobody 

 would even begin to want to restore them. 



What would my bill do? Essentially, it tries to give a more cohe- 

 sive framework, a more systematic approach to restoring these wa- 

 ters. 



The EPA or the State would administer the funds. There would 

 be technical assistance from EPA or from another Federal agency. 

 In the District, and in Maryland, for example, the Corps of Engi- 

 neers has been very helpful to us. What is unique, however, about 

 the bill is the requirement for local citizens' sponsorship, along 

 with governmental sponsorship. 



Priority would also be given to projects that include jobs in ca- 

 reer development for youth, such as the Youth Corps. 



The citizen-centered element of the bill is central, to be redun- 

 dant. Rivers run through cities and the waterways that we are dis- 

 cussing — the ones that I am calling urban waterways — run through 

 the most populated areas of our country; cities, yes, and suburban 

 areas. And so they get not only the ordinary nonpoint source run- 

 off, they get all that human beings can do to the waterways- 

 dumping, littering, and all that goes along with it. 



