Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

This amendment, which mirrors bipartisan bill H.R. 380 is straightforward. It requires the Federal decision makers at the Department of the Interior to consider the threat of invasive species when installing fishways.

We all know that over time, the number of dams in this country have decreased. As the number of dams has decreased, a benefit is a lot of times fish are able to swim upstream, spawn more, and improve the overall health of our rivers.

However, there are times where there are some fish that are not so good, and that is when we have invasive species. I have a big problem with that on the most significant river in the State of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin River. There is a dam there, and they were talking about putting up a fishway, which, on the face of it, sounds nice.

The problem is, below the dam we have Asian carp; they are large fish, not native to Wisconsin. It would be devastating to the local fish. If they were ever able to work their way over the dam, they would not only pollute the Wisconsin River, but the lakes which feed into the Wisconsin River all over northern Wisconsin could also be polluted. And it is even possible that because there are areas that are kind of dicey, they could even work their way into the Great Lakes and all the way up the Saint Lawrence River.

I appreciate the fact that we have considered this amendment. I hope it is adopted as part of the en bloc.

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