Going in a helicopter over this with the epa administrator right after it happened. Stunning. Now. The company has come in and, you know cleaned up most of what was there. We still cant fish. People along the river cant use their property their back yards. This is going to take tens of years to clean up. You can go to the other side of the state where we have in detroit mounds of whats called Petroleum Coke from tar sands that was sitting on the detroit river, now not only blowing into the river, blowing into the school neighborhoods, churches of the southwest side of detroit. Now, thanks to my colleague senator peters whos now with us and i was proud to join with him, that pet cokes not sitting there anymore, but it was pet coke from tar sands that blew into huge airreas of detroit. And now we have madam chair, a real concern in the straits of mackinaw going across our beautiful state from the upper to lower peninsula where we have a very old pipeline. And, again concerns about the fa
Called baker, montana. Its not just about canadian oil coming to the u. S. Its about north dakota and montana oil. Second, as i was traveling one day to a rural coop in glasgow, montana, there in my pickup, i show up in my jeans and my jacket, they told me that the Keystone Pipelines approved electric rates for their coop payers folk who is dont have a lot of money, thousands of montana families in eastern part of our state their rates will remain flat for the next ten years because of the Keystone Pipeline . Why is that . Because they will supply electricity to the pump stations in the pipeline. Accused on pipeline is is the Keystone Pipeline not approved the electric rates for those hardworking montana families will go up 40 in the next ten years. Its 80 million a year in tax revenues for the state of montana and for these Rural Counties that desperately need infrastructure to pay for roads, for bridges, for teachers, for schools. So this is not just about the good arguments already
And i look forward to looking to working with senator cantwell. Our geographic neighbors so to speak with so much shared interests between the states of washington and alaska. We have a lot that we can be working on collaboratively. To i have a very strong collaborative relationship with my colleague from oregon senator wyden, from the committee. I think we set a good tone for this committee, in terms of how we build things and how we work to advance initiatives throughout the process. Having said that, as we embark on their First Business meeting, our markup, i think it is a little unfortunate that we move to markup first, that we did not have the opportunity for the hearing was scheduled yesterday. We had already laid that groundwork, we had invited our agreedupon witnesses, we circulated a background memo that i hope each of you had an opportunity to read and review. It was written by joint staff in preparation for the hearing. We had already gotten testimony from our witnesses, the
Montana groups working to expand recreational opportunities along the Lower Yellowstone River say the initiative could bring millions of dollars more to the region.