Remarks announcing the American Heritage Rivers initiative

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 15, 1997

Thank you, Jose. I think we should send him around the country to organize other young people, don't you? [Laughter] Thank you, Mr. Carlino; to the members of the administration who are here, and the Senators and Members of the House and all the rest of you.

We did not intend to regale you today with the natural splendor and riverfront aura of Room 450 - [laughter] - of the Old Executive Office Building. I can't really take responsibility for the weather. I wanted to welcome you to Mount Vernon. The Vice President suggested I blame it on climate change. [Laughter] But we haven't had time to have the requisite number of studies done. [Laughter] So we're here to make the best of it.

Before I start and make remarks about this subject, I do want to say that something has occurred in the United States Senate this morning about which I am personally very pleased and for which I am grateful. I have been working, as everyone knows, since the day I became President to allow all our people to participate in the opportunities that this country offers and will offer in the new century. I think clearly the most important way to do that is to guarantee a world-class education to every young person. Just this morning, an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate, 88 Senators, voted to move forward with the plan that I have advocated to establish national standards of learning in reading and mathematics, and to test our children in the fourth and eighth grades by 1999.

They have voted to make sure that these examinations would be written by a truly independent, nonpartisan board, and the measure that they have embraced will help parents to ensure that their children will master the basics of reading and math and to help measure the performance of the schools and teachers involved. This is another example of what can happen when people of good will of both parties get together and look to the future and not the past. And thank you, Senators, and I think this is very, very good news.

And what we're here today to talk about is also very good news and profoundly important. If you think about the stories of Pittsburgh and Chicago - I don't know how many of you have been to Pittsburgh to see the rivers there and see the changes in the community that are truly astonishing, and all the other little communities outlying Pittsburgh and southwest Pennsylvania. As you know I think all of you know, Hillary is from Chicago, so I spent a lot of time in Chicago, and I've spent a lot of nights and days looking at the Chicago River.

And I think it's very important to remember that many of our greatest cities became what they are because they were built on rivers. And now if we want them to be even greater as we move into a totally new era and where their economies are changing, we have to make sure that the rivers that run through them are good, clean rivers that offer the potential for young people like Jose to do something they can be proud of, to have a place that they can be proud to be a part of, and to preserve a heritage for their own children and grandchildren.

Rivers have always been the lifeblood of our Nation. They nourish our cities. They feed our soils. They allow us to expand our territory in commerce. They permit us - millions upon millions of us - to fish. You heard the Vice President putting in his little gig about the Tennessee rivers. You know, those of us who come from the States with a lot of rural land - all of us grew up living with the rivers and all of us have these vivid memories of the rivers. When I graduated from law school, I went home to the hills in north Arkansas to live before Hillary and I married, and I bought a home - I rented two different places out in the country on two different rivers. I spent a lot of the happiest days of my life along the Buffalo River in the Ozark Mountains in north Arkansas, which was the very first river set aside by Congress in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. You can't get there from here. [Laughter] But if you do, it's worth the effort. [Laughter]

Nineteen years ago, when I first ran for Governor of my home State, I called my great uncle at who just passed away at the age of 91 - and who had only an elementary school education, but a very high IQ and a great wit. And we were having a heated election for the United States Senate that year, and I asked my uncle, I said, "Who do you want to win this Senate race?" He said, "I don't care, and I wouldn't care who was going to be Governor if you weren't my kinfolks." [Laughter] And I said, "Well, if I get elected, what do you want me to do?" Then he got dead serious. He said, "I want you to make sure that the rivers are clean and pure so the fish will be in them, and I can run my feet in them in the springtime." That was his platform for my campaign. [Laughter]

And there were many people of his generation of modest means who knew that if all else failed they could still go to the river in the springtime. And so this is a big part of what we are.