Doris O. Matsui

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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 9616, the Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Technology Assessment Initiative Authorization Act. This bill would help us reach the dual goals of cleaning up toxic sites while also ensuring critical minerals found at those sites don't go to waste. This bill authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a grant program to identify and recover critical minerals from contaminated sites. There are countless Superfund and other contaminated industrial sites across the country, including in my home district. Many of these sites have been abandoned for decades, with local communities suffering the consequences. While we clean up through public funds, we could also help replenish our domestic supply of critical minerals needed for clean energy projects to save American families money on soaring energy bills, and those bills are soaring now thanks to Trump's reckless war of choice in Iran. This program is a shot in the arm for emerging technologies to extract critical minerals from contaminated sites and waste that would otherwise sit in landfills. It also has an added benefit of incentivizing cleanups of some of the world's worst toxic sites in the Nation. This program is a clear win-win for the environment and our domestic supply chain. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 9616, and I reserve the balance of my time.