Laura: Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez,  thank you for joining me to talk for a few   minutes about PFAS today.

Teresa: Well, thank you for   having me.

This is such an important subject for   New Mexico and for my district.

Laura: Excellent.

So, the U.S.   House recently passed an amendment of yours  to the PFAS Action Act that would apply   to Highlands Dairy down in Clovis, New Mexico.

Can  you talk a little bit about the amendment and also   the bill that passed the House?

Teresa: So, what we passed at the   House was the PFAS Action Act, because we knew  that we needed to address this forever chemicals.

They last forever and the bill would require  that it be studied and that PFAS be cleaned up   and that we study and set limits for how much  can we have, PFAS, how much of the chemical can   we have in our drinking water?

I recognize that  that was not enough, that we needed to make sure   that we studied and eliminate, limited and then  eliminated PFAS in our food supply as well.

This is an example of how an issue at home,  in our wonderfully diverse and beautiful   third congressional district is going to  help out everybody across the country.

So,   that was my amendment to make sure it was included  in this food supply to protect the food supply,   but it came out of the fact that Highlands Dairy,  by Clovis, New Mexico has been ruined because of   PFAS in the groundwater there.

The cows drank the  water that was contaminated and they ate the grass   that was contaminated, so the milk from the  dairy could no longer be sold in the market   and the cows themselves could also not be sold.

Laura: So, if I understand correctly,   you've also been talking with Mr. Scott about  what USDA might be able to do about his cows,   which like you said, can't be sold.

He can't even  sell them for, like, dog food.

How might USDA be   able to help him and maybe other farmers out?

Teresa: The USDA has a program where they are   allowed to purchase milk, for example, if the EPA  has determined and the USDA has determined that   that milk is contaminated.

So, the USDA actually  purchased milk from him to account for the fact   that the milk had been contaminated, through no  fault of his own, but they didn't have a way of   purchasing the cows themselves, because that's,  what you need to do… those cows cannot be used.

We do not want them in the market.

They did not  have a way of doing that.

Now the legislature,   thanks to the great work of Senator Udall,  Heinrich and Senator, now Senator Ben Ray Lujan   had made sure that you could actually purchase  the cows themselves.

The problem the USDA never   enacted regulations to allow for that, so we have  been pushing the USDA to enact those regulations,   to enact those regulations on a fast-track  basis, so that they can purchase the cows from   Highlands Dairy and help Highland's Dairy  kind of get back on their feet, because   they've been suffering through this.

It's been an  economic ruin for them and we need to fix it.

So,   the DOD, the department of defense, can cause the  problem.

The EPA is going to be looking at the   environmental aspects but USDA itself is going  to help with solving the immediate problem.

I   spoke about this directly with the USDA secretary  because he spent two days with me here last month.

Laura: Okay.

So if this bill that passed the  House, if it passes the Senate, is signed into   law, do we have a sense of how quickly the EPA  will actually act on enacting a drinking water   standard, classifying PFAS as a hazardous waste?

How many years are we looking at, do you think?

Teresa: We're hoping it won't be years and  years, because everybody recognizes that this   is a serious issue that has been ignored.

It was ignored by the past administration   because they didn't want to deal with  it, but now we know that it has these   just drastic consequences for our health, for  drinking water, for our food supply.

So, we'll   have, we're hopeful that it will happen quickly.

I will say the bill passed with bipartisan support   on the floor of the House, so we are looking for  bipartisan support in the Senate and hopefully   we'll move quickly.

Everybody recognizes the  urgency of addressing this forever chemical so   that we don't, you know, destroy our groundwater.

Laura: So we've been talking about the EPA,   specifically with this bill, just to switch  gears a little bit to the defense department.

Congress has repeatedly put funding and mandates  into the annual appropriations bill to set   timelines for the military for clean up to set all  sorts of ways for them to move forward and frankly   they have not, in many aspects, and I'm curious  at this point, does congress have control over   the U.S. Military, in terms of getting  them to clean up this forever problem?

Teresa: So congress can appropriate but it's up  to the administration to take the action that we   appropriate the money for and that, we said  you must do this.

So, what we saw in the last   administration, that there wasn't an urgency  about addressing these environmental concerns   and we have now raised it.

I raised it with Cannon  Air Force Base directly, the minute I got in as a   congresswoman, and met with them.

It's one of the  first things we talked about.

They recognize that   we are looking at them now, that we are going to  be doing that kind of oversight to make sure they   take action on what congress has directed them  to do.

And we have, with this administration,   the Biden administration recognizes the importance  of addressing contamination and especially in   disadvantaged communities.

And that's exactly what  we are seeing in Clovis.

So, we have right now,   the means, the funding, but we also have the  motivation in President Biden's administration   to get this done.

So, we are very hopeful.

Laura: So we know how important the military   is economically to New Mexico, but we also know,  we look across that military and DOD or DOE   installations across the state and they are big  polluters in our state and when we look at even,   if we do get to the cleanup phase for some of  these problems, it's millions in some cases,   billions of dollars with PFAS.

We're not even sure  what kind of a cleanup can occur.

Looking out to   the long term, how do we know that we're making  the right choices for future generations and kind   of continuing this relationship where we rely  so heavily on the military and yet it's causing   such great long-term damage in our state?

Teresa: What we need to do with the military,   which we do rely on, is constantly look at what  can we put in place to prevent, to prevent any   future environmental harms and then fully fund the  cleanup that's required.

This was another issue   you know LANL’s in my district we all know that,  you referred to the DOE, we need to make sure that   we fully fund the cleanup at LANL, because there's  that legacy and then when we talk about what else   are we going to be doing on these bases or doing  at LANL that we do the full environmental review   that EPA calls for.

Our national environmental  policy act calls for full environmental reviews   of what we do when we take federal action.

We have not always done that in the past but   we are going to start insisting on it now and  moving forward in the future because we cannot   move forward in a way that sacrifices, you know,  our grandchildren our children for a few jobs.

We need to recognize that we can do both.

We can  both have a thriving economy and have a focus   and a priority on our environmental needs and  our environmental cleanup and making sure that   we protect this beautiful place we call home.

I  always call it this beautiful place we call home,   whether it's New Mexico or the planet and that  we must always take all our actions with that in   mind, of how do we protect this beautiful,  beautiful place that we get to call home.

Laura: Congresswoman, thank you so  much for joining me.

I appreciate it.

Teresa: Well, I loved being here.

Thank you so much for inviting me.