in parts of california because they know the how to design cars that continually ramp down. the last thing i'll say is that this act to animal missions, a seemingly greenhouse gas emissions. epa has no plans to regulate such as the number of agricultural source is even being required to report their greenhouse gas emissions to zero. so i know that i've been discussed and is a source of worry. i find myself often giving some free assurance to people, to ranchers. >> i really want to hear from you how you think this committee can help you accomplish epa's mission without overly impact team -- without overly impacting

our already very fragile economy. there is little doubt that we can take a small piece of the money that some people are accounting for the high-speed rail at the other infoline uses small piece of money and buy more buses than we would know what to do with to replace the high-speed rail, move a lot of people and help clean air in that fashion, assuming we can get those engines to operate considerably more efficiently. these tell us how we can help. >> i'll be happy to work with you anyway i can, mr. lewis. i think obviously my colleague, secretary wavelet, your former colleague i think very, very highly of and i think what is working epa working closely with d.o.t. as he looks at the

transportation acts of the future, we are happy to share with you the information we are sharing with him. i think that communities are differently situated when it comes to transportation choices and our interest is simply to ensure that we are not going to sacrifice the air quality in my, including mass transit we don't have to do that. >> indeed, those buses at the end hopefully cleaner driven into as it were. you could perhaps put together a major study and help us change the pattern of what people are willing to do in terms of transporting ourselves. we can buy the buses for poster recommended southern california. it's an incredible challenge.

>> mr. koepp. >> thank you, mr. chairman. representing the great lake superior, the gentleman appears before me and i respect seniority and i respect their ability to make my last missed a post first. [laughter] >> representative can she. >> that's a little faster than i thought. thank you, appreciated. first of all, it's a great pleasure, administrator jackson to be with you, to be involved in the situation with you. i want to commend you for their courageous way in which you applied the epa and the kinds of things you've been able to do quickly already in the kinds of circumstances you've inherited and had to deal with.

your mission is to protect human health and the environment and that is exactly what should've been working to do. so i deeply applaud you for it. i think i work on the clean air act particularly a sydney mines, keeping people healthier and massive result providing enormous benefits across the country and in our economy. so as you know, very clearly, we need a strong epa to save her children, safeguard the community and safeguard our future. there is a recent series of article in "the new york times" which were fascinating and are producing a significant amount of new information that is presented in ways that are more understandable than they have been in the past for many people. in fact, stories like little or no testing for radioactive levels and radio to the above those levels can be very

important. so i just want to ask you a few questions along those lines. among the issues raised was that hydraulic fracturing waste border contains radioactivity at levels much higher than previously known. and it is being sent to wastewater treatment plants that cannot safely remove the radioactive materials. these plant but then dumping this contaminated water into rivers, streams and those rivers and streams supply drinking water and as a result thursday for the health of millions of people. such material such as barium, strontium for radioactive elements, little or no testing is going on. so i'm wondering if there's anything that can be done to deal with this. given these reports, with the epa, for example, order the immediate testing of water from these facilities that except tracking waste as well as type

teen water intake systems downstream from these treatment plants? >> thank you, mr. hinchey. bp is very interested in radioactivity of the backwater. i would like to have an opportunity to speak this dates above, specifically pennsylvania , who has done some amount of work. i intend to go to borrow to our office in philadelphia to have those discussions, but i do believe additional information is due to the public as a result of that series. >> i appreciate you saying that they think that's that's absolutely true. a lot of these states are not strong enough in pennsylvania is one of them. there's an awful lot of drilling in pennsylvania and the rapid increase is going on over the course of the next few years that's going to cause a host of problems, particularly if there is no oversight as to what's going on.

if you look close pennsylvania in new york and you find pennsylvania as dumping a lot of these radioactive materials and other toxic tears into rivers that are on the border of your state come you've got to be concerned about it too. just leaving the situations open to individual states is not going to do it. so that's part of it and i'm glad you're interested in this. ..

included none of these topics interestingly enough, so agency officials expressed concern about the public's reaction if it was discovered that the study

scope was being narrowed and staff were discouraged from putting anything in writing about the national study, unless dated by managers, so it could not need and the freedom of information act for example. when regional administrator, apparently instructed his subordinates to not spell out their grandest visions about what the study should examine, bless the public see all these concerns. these are the kinds of things that we know are very very dangerous and we know there is a lot of activities that are going on to keep adverse circumstances to quiet. now epa did have recommendations from congress on but it should study. specifically drinking water but if the agency's scientists felt there were additional areas to examine because of concerns over human health such as with air

emissions, then the public and congress should have been made aware of those. contrary to assertions from the industry they report language was a congressional recommendation, not in order and epa have the authority to ignore or expand on it. instead, what we see here are deliberate attempts to shield from the public additional concerns expressed by epa scientists. there is a lot of positive things going on by the site is particularly in epa under your leadership and in under your direction. so there are clearly other risks worth examining that have come to light census report language was first drafted in june of 2009. shouldn't the public and congress be made aware of all of the concerns epa scientists had about the risks fracking poses,

the risk that fracking poses to public health? why would epa managers believe this information should be withheld? why is that? why would epa not allow these additional topics to be submitted to the advisory board? furthermore in a january meeting in washington, regional directors were informed that the national study with the only forum for research on hydrofracking. while i understand the agency might want to ensure there is no redundancy, there is absolutely no justification to stop research outside the scope of this study. so one other issue. should the national study be the only forum for research on fracking even if regional offices and other scientist and and -- in researching risks outside the scope of the study and response to public health concerns keep rising and getting more serious?

>> why do we give the administrator a chance to answer that. >> there are several questions. thank you mr. chairman. thank you mr. enzi. on the issue of the republican congress having access to what we know, absolutely i have committed the agency to transparency in information and i would like to point out that the issues seem to stem from some concerns that are poorly located in philadelphia. we have 10 regions, 10 different offices accounts -- across the country. the one that handles new york is inert city. think they submitted strong and principled comments to the state on its draft eyes and we await the state action on the eyes. many of the states are very involved in this issue. is affecting them now while we do this big study which is going to take about two years. texas we have actually taken enforcement actions there and learn something of the dispute with the state because our belief is that we needed to take

those actions to ensure protectiveness. i want to start by saying we believe natural gas is important. it is a homegrown source of energy but it must be sustainably and responsibly produced it and future generations shouldn't somehow bear the burden of the rush to produce it. we think it can happen. both can happen. you asked about withholding information. i just want to clarify one thing. the article series is very important that we are looking at radio nuclei as part of the study, so somehow the reporter reports today but that was left out of the study. that is not sure, but i'm sure it is just an inaccuracy in something he read. but the studies with their science advisory board. we have used a transparent consensus-based process to scope this study. we expect the science advisory board to have a meeting on this study parameters on monday. all of that has been opened. we have vetted the people who

sit on the board to make sure they don't have undue conflicts of interest so that we don't have folks later worried that the study was somehow skewed. with all those safeguards that we have put in place i'm certainly not going to be close minded to say we don't need to look to make sure that we are doing everything right. so that is why i am going to go tomorrow to pennsylvania, to philadelphia to our office to try to understand what the state of play is there. the last question was about the national study. the budget this year calls for $6 million for that national study and i think congress last year or the year before, can't remember, were authorizing for your leadership in ensuring we have the study money. the only thing i will say is we have to spend money wisely. so i will not say that the national study should need only study sir, but after a process that opened, then transparent that progress to try to outline the study i would want wine

science adviser, my head of research and development to understand what additional work is happening so that we are not somehow being redundant. we don't want to stifle science but we want to make sure we are doing work that we are not in the same work over here. i think that is only fair. is a wise use of money but otherwise i think we should certainly not be tying the hands of our scientists and trying to understand this. while at the same time recognizing maybe the article didn't do the greatest job of portraying that many states who are used to drilling have done significant work in regulating the fracking and drilling for natural gas recovery process. states like you are on who have taken timeouts to make sure they can get it right. >> i deeply appreciate that and if i could respond to that. i deeply appreciate that i know you are doing a lot of things that are very important and need to be done but also there is a lot of damage that is taking place right now that damage is going to increase dramatically, rapidly over the course of the

next couple of years and if nothing is being done to try to just control and oversee what is happening then there's going to be a lot of damage to a lot of people. so all of that is critically important. one of the things, there are a number of things that could be done by this congress and one of the things that could be done and should be done by this congress is to go back and correct a piece of legislation that took out an important federal act which was put into place back in 1974 to regulate this frack drilling and to ensure that whatever frack drilling is being done it is being done on scalia not in done in ways that are corrupted and corrupted quietly so that nobody knows about the corruption. nobody knows about the danger, nobody knows about what is going on including what is being injected into the context of this drilling. this is something that this congress --. >> i thank adjustment for his comments. >> i thank the gentleman. i want to follow up on mr. lewis' comments regarding nonstationary sources and i

think jerry certainly is credibility on the issue. he wrote the clean air act in the state of california was probably the most stringent clean air regulations in the united states. because we understand that nonstationary sources are the problems. automobiles, trucks, trains it caused a significant part of pollution especially particulate pollution and one of the programs that has been very successful i think, in the epa has been the tour program, the diesel emissions reduction act and senator feinstein and senator boxer and myself and others have been very supportive of that program because it is moving -- removing old engines, old diesel engines from the inventory and replacing them with clean diesel which has a significant effect on particulate pollution. and we know that his approach and that works and there are a

lot of things we do in government that don't work. so a lot of us were concerned when you've zeroed out the tour program so i just want to bring that certainly to your attention. my home state of california as you mentioned we have our own environmental laws and i would say in almost every case, every case, we meet or exceed federal standards. we have a process in california called sql is the environmental quality act which exceeds the needs or requirements almost in every requirement in the state of california. one agency after you have there because obviously we have a significant job problem in california, our unemployment rate is at 12.5%. in my own district 1 out of every four people are either out of work or underemployed. and the need for requirements are causing significant delays in permitting processes in order to get projects underway. have you ever given any thought

to states such as mine where permit applications and documents that are submitted by the states such as california which you can see that it can be waived by some states such as california and other states but i can't think of the state that has more stringent environmental laws in the state of california. but don't you think that is a way that we can work toward getting these projects underway quicker? >> sir, haven't focused on the need for process. that is run out of the council on environmental quality from the white house so it is not entirely within our jurisdiction. we comment on part of the process but it is not mine to manage. >> but wouldn't epa certainly have some input into this and supporting a new process in which they can potentially be

waived? >> i am happy to take a look at it or discuss it along with the chair of the council. i will say this obviously firm berman to permits like our clean air act permits in the state of california, almost across the board is delegated to permit authority for those issues so there is no -- we don't issue the permit and then california they issue one permit. >> any comments on the dura program? >> yes sir. i do not disagree with you in terms of both the popularity and the effectiveness of the program. i think it is around 13 or 14 to one health benefits and dollars spent. is a tough tough budget full of tough choices and the only consideration i would offer for you cert is that there was dura money included in the recovery act in that money is about 60% spent i believe so the thought was in a year of tough budget choices, that we could that

money hit the street if you will and retrofit more engines so that was the basis for the very difficult decision to not add money to the program this year. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you mr. chair. thank you administrator jackson for coming to testify here today, and i want you to know on behalf of my constituents and the citizens of minnesota your hard work and ensuring they epa is much appreciated and in fact i got valentines to pass on to you. we support your mission to enforce our nation's laws to make the air we breathe cleaner and the water we drink safer. we know that we do face tough fiscal times and difficult choices must be made but the one thing that can never be sacrificed as the health of our children, our seniors and their

most vulnerable populations which you addressed in your testimony. there has been a lot of talk about jobs and you know what can happen and what can't happen and this morning i was looking at politico and there was a story in there about some previous hearings that took place in other committees and there was a story in here and i referred to it at -- it talks about what happened when we as a nation were working on controlling and removing ozone depleting cfc's and some of the quotes in here where that the air-conditioning and refrigeration institute warned that we will see shutdowns of refrigerated equipment in supermarkets and went on to say we will see shutdowns of chiller machines which cool our office buildings, roads in our hospitals. according to the epa and this will be the." mack idea from the article, the

phaseout happened five years faster than predicted and cost 30% less than expected. and i was working for a company that was called sears roebuck in major appliances, and it was doom and gloom about what was going to happen. people got it for me came in to buy their refrigerators to replace them. people understood it. what they were doing was making the air better for their children and i never heard a consumer complaint about what was moving forward and in fact it caused a lot of great increased technology and that, so thank you for the work that you do and i think lots of times we focus on what our problems when people are trying to understand regulations when they are moving forward and we don't celebrate our successes. i do want to talk about something that i am concerned when you talk about balancing your budget and i think the chairman has been very

thoughtful on how we work to coordinate climate change and other things to make sure and you were mentioning that too about using the best science and not duplicating it but yesterday we heard from the gao and inspector general about the increasing demands on the epa. it was in the reports. it didn't even deal -- you didn't even have to deal with it a few years ago, nanotechnology, cybersecurity, contaminants of emerging concern in our water. one of my questions is the epa's budget significant to address these issues as well as working on past issues and you know you mandate -- the mandate we have in front of us. i think we can roll this together so i will do my second one. we also heard from the gao and inspector general the difficulties that epa has in regulating toxic chemicals and that is due to the fact that the

for-profit chemical companies are not required to fully disclose health and safety data information. and this puts the burden on the epa, the taxpayers, to prove the safety of the chemicals that are being sold for-profit. this is in contrast to the european union's approach and i'm heartened to see that you have made chemical, toxic chemical safety one of your priorities but i'm concerned about how you are going to do that with a decreasing budget and fulfilling all the other things that we have heard about today in backlogs involving water counts and they concern the gentleman from kentucky had with ongoing litigation. so my question, i think they go together. how are you going to build to carry out your enhancing chemical safety initiative that has been given to the epa, not the chemical companies to determine the safety of these chemicals?