mr. chairman , i am opposed to my friend 's amendment , and he is a friend , he is a good friend . 
i have not had a chance to speak on the floor , but i thought this fit right in line with environmental justice . 
when many of us came in 1990 , the clean air act came up . 
and i remember mr. daschle , who is no longer with the other body , standing up and talking about how good mtbes were . 
none of us knew . 
i saw a special that showed how bad mtbes are , and that they are poisoning our waters in many communities . 
they should be removed . 
but when the government asks any industry to do its bidding , and it does that , then i think that the government should protect that individual , whatever the company is , because it did what the government told it to do . 
now , i think what we should do with this is push forward , help with the cleanup , and fight and do everything we can to get mtbes out of our system and out of our groundwater . 
the gentleman from california ( mr. pombo ) xz4003220 did that in 1996 , and my colleagues on the other side fought that tooth , hook and nail . 
i was the cosponsor of the bill . 
when you talk about justice , let us look at why we ended up with it , where we are , and let us work together to get rid of this stuff . 
