House Passes the BEACH Protection Act
Thank you, Ms. Chairwoman. I know the time is short, so I'll be very brief. This is a very important bill to the nation's beaches and I represent a coastal area. Basically a few years ago we passed the original beaches act which allowed for testing of ocean waters so that people would know, as a sort of right to know measure, when to go in the water and when not to. It's been very successful in keeping beaches clean and notifying people when they shouldn't go swimming or when beaches have been cleaned up and they can go back into the water. But we found we needed better protection and that's what we're doing with this bill today. It calls for more rapid testing within 24 hours. Sometimes it would take, within a few hours, I should say, because sometimes it would take 24 to 48 hours in the past before we would know whether beaches should be closed. So there's a much more rapid testing method within a few hours. In addition to that, the grants allow for support for actually preventing beach closings and using the money, the federal money, for tracking so that actually the waters do not become more polluted. So there are a lot of improvements in this bill over the current Beaches Act. I know there's a senate equivalent of this so I think we can get it signed into law.
|
