|
|
|
|
The Water Resources Coalition was established in 2007 to promote the development, implementation and funding of a comprehensive national water resources policy. With member organizations representing state and local governments, conservation, engineering and construction, ports, waterways and transportation services, the Coalition works to ensure that a comprehensive, national water resources policy is developed, implemented and funded to provide a sustainable, productive economy; a healthy aquatic ecology; and public health and safety. For more information, visit the Water Resources Coalition Web site. |
|
|
|
|
WRC Ongoing Activities
The American Shore and Beach Preservation Association's (ASBPA's) annual Fall Conference, held last week in New Orleans, gave attendees a chance to discuss some of the urgent issues facing the water resources community. ASBPA is an active member of the Water Resources Coalition. Many at the Conference were interested in the status of FY 2012 Corps funding, the future of federal participation in Water Resources, and what can be done to improve the status quo.
In July, the House of Representatives approved an Energy and Water appropriations bill that will fund the Army Corps of Engineers at a level that is $76 million below FY2011 levels and $677 million below the FY 2010 funding level. In the Senate, however, the Environment and Public Works Committee has approved a bill that will fund the Corps at a level that is $22 million higher than the FY 2011 level, though it would still be $579 million below FY 2010 levels. The Senate bill is awaiting a vote of the full Chamber, although no vote is expected any time soon. It is reasonable to expect that the final FY 2012 bill will fund the Corps at a level somewhere between the House and Senate bills.
What does this mean for the water resources community? Luckily, because the majority of Corps projects are not their own line-item in appropriations bills, it is very unlikely that funding for the coast, or any other specific water resource, will be zeroed out anytime soon. In fact, now that Congress has abdicated its Constitutional right to direct money to specific projects via earmarks, the Corps is making many more of its own project prioritization decisions. This means that, now more than ever, a coordinated effort by the Water Resources Coalition has an unprecedented opportunity to shape the future by making sure that America's most important resources are adequately funded.
Already this year, the Coalition has spoken out on wide-ranging issues that will affect most - if not all - water resources. One such issue was calling for additional Emergency Disaster Relief Funding to help repair the damage done by the Midwest Flooding this spring and Hurricane Irene this summer. Another example is an in-progress draft analysis of CEQ's new Principles and Requirements for Federal Investments in Water Resources (formerly Principles and Guidelines). By standing together to advocate for all water resources we can make sure that America's coasts, levees, inland waterways, ports and more have the right policies and funding to allow America to compete in the 21st Century. |
|
Corps of Engineers' Dredging Needs $2 Billion
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs more than $2 billion to complete the dredging of the nation's ports to their required depths, a senior Corps official told Congress this week.
Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, said the Corps would need an additional $1.3 billion in Fiscal Year 2012 above the $793 million budget request to finish the backlog of harbor projects.
Darcy was testifying before the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on the condition of U.S. ports and harbors. The subcommittee has been examining the condition of seaports and the growing balance in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF), which is expected to total nearly $7 billion by the end of FY 2012. The HMTF receives an estimated $1.6 billion in revenues annually from a federal excise tax on imported cargo, but Congress has not appropriated the full amount in the trust fund in recent years.
H.R. 104, the RAMP Act, was referred to the T&I Committee in January. The bill, which has more than 100 Republican and Democratic co-sponsors, would require all new revenues in the HMTF to be appropriated annually for port dredging and maintenance, but the subcommittee has not acted on it yet.
"While the ports themselves have done an admirable job of investing in landslide improvements and enhanced intermodal connections, the federal government has all but ignored the nation's navigation channels, the gateways to world markets," said Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-OH), chairman of the subcommittee.
The Water Resources Coalition is in strong support of the enactment of H.R. 104, the Realize America's Maritime Promise Act.
The hearing record can be viewed here.
|
|
Senators, Congressman Question Corps On Flood Efforts In Midwest
Eight senators and a House member appeared before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week to urge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do more to prevent major floods like those that occurred in the Upper Midwest and Plains states this year.
In April-May 2011 the Mississippi River experienced some of the greatest flooding since the 1920s and 1930s. In 2011, the Corps estimates that the flooding runoff in the Missouri River basin exceeded normal annual flood levels by 117 percent to 491 percent.
President Obama issued 154 disaster declarations between January and October 2011, almost all of them related to flood events of one kind or another. Several states suffered from repeated flooding this year and were the subject of more than one disaster declaration, sometimes within days or weeks of each other.
Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) and Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Thune (R-SD), and John Hoeven (R-ND) all spoke at the start of the hearing to state that the Corps had been too slow to release extreme snow melt from the six reservoirs on the Missouri River early in the spring to allow them to store record-high rainfall in the spring.
Brig. Gen. John McMahon, commander of the Corps' Northwest Division, said winter weather blocked efforts to release snow melt, thus setting the stage for flooding from the spring rains. "Ice on the river limits the amount of water that can be released," he said. "What we didn't anticipate was the rain. Three months of rain was the wild card."
Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, said diminished Corps budgets played a role, too. "What we did was operate the Missouri River as designed," Darcy said. "We are challenged by (a lack of) funding."
But Thune expressed the general frustration of the lawmakers at the hearing. "Everybody saw it was coming and urged action to address the coming deluge except the Army Corps of Engineers, which is charged with managing the river," he said. "I fear that the Corps is planning to move forward under the assumption that this was a one-off event."
Darcy said the Corps is now rebuilding high-priority levees and infrastructure responsible for protecting human lives along the Missouri. She said she has used emergency authority to transfer $212 million from non-flood-related Corps accounts.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) said demands by officials from downstream Missouri River states to drain the reservoirs early in the year in the name of flood-control was "strange."
"Downstream states (previously) pushed, pushed, pushed to keep more water in upstream reservoirs for the barge traffic downstream," Baucus said. "Now they come with exactly the opposite message. Earlier they want water, water, water. This year, no water, no water, no water."
ASCE, a WRC co-chair, submitted a statement to the committee urging Congress to enact a national levee safety program to help prevent future floods.
The hearing testimony is at http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=f46a889c-802a-23ad-4bc9-e93cf1b231c7. |
|
Corps Announces Public National Levee Database
The Corps of Engineers has announced public access to the National Levee Database that will provide map-based visualization and search capabilities for the location and condition of USACE levee systems nationwide. There will be at least two levels of access - one for the general public, and the other with more sensitive information for government and public safety officials.
Users of the NLD will be able to learn about attributes of the more than 14,700 miles of USACE levee systems, including information about specific levees and floodwalls that are relevant to flood prevention, design, construction, operation, maintenance, repair and inspection. Also in the database is information describing the general condition of levees. Risk assessments are not currently included but will be added in the future. The full portfolio of USACE levees is expected to be incorporated into in the NLD early next year.
"The National Levee Database is intended to be an authoritative source for information on levees nationally; very similar to the national registry of dams," says Eric C. Halpin, the USACE special assistant for dam and levee safety.
USACE will host three webinars: Thursday, Oct. 27 at 2 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Nov. 2 at 2 p.m. EDT and Thursday, Nov. 3 at 11 a.m. EDT. Attendance is free and open to the public, but registration is required at: http://nld.usace.army.mil/publicrollout.
The database can be found at http://nld.usace.army.mil.
|
EPA Needs to Establish a Vision for the Restoration of the Gulf Coast
In comments to the Gulf Coast Task Force Ecosystem Restoration Strategy of the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a WRC co-chair, urged the agency to establish an overall vision for the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.
"We recommend that a vision statement be established by the Task Force and discussed in the strategy to illustrate what the Gulf of Mexico would be like if the expressed goals were fully achieved. How would a fully restored Gulf look and operate in a potential future world?" ASCE said.
In October 2010, President Obama created the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force and ordered it to develop a Gulf of Mexico Regional Ecosystem Restoration Strategy. On October 5, the Task Force released a preliminary report on its findings and proposed recommendations.
"(Mississippi) River management priorities historically have centered on navigation and flood risk reduction," the task force said. "While clearly successful in meeting those two goals, those priorities created unintended consequences to the surrounding environment by accelerating wetland and barrier island erosion and restricting the flow of vital sediments that had sustained the Gulf ecosystem over time. The Task Force's goals for the Gulf Coast restoration effort are (1) restore and conserve habitat; (2) restore water quality; (3) replenish and protect living coastal and marine resources; and (4) enhance community resilience."
ASCE said the Task force should adopt a comprehensive view of the needs of the Gulf Coast. "While the Mississippi River system represents a dominating concern in the northern Gulf of Mexico, there are other concerns and issues relating to other regions that could be better highlighted. It is recommended that revisions be considered to recognize problems and processes that are occurring in other areas of the Gulf."
The Task Force report is at http://www.epa.gov/gulfcoasttaskforce/ .
ASCE's comments can be viewed here.
|
WRC Member Urges Risk-Management Approach for Bureau of Reclamation Studies
The Bureau of Reclamation should use risk management when establishing decision-making processes that affect the public's safety, health, or welfare, ASCE told the Bureau this week.
"The Bureau should clearly incorporate all risk assessments and comparative risk analyses within each feasibility study for water and related resources," ASCE said in comments on the Bureau's draft "Manual Directive and Standard for Water and Related Resources Feasibility Studies."
ASCE said the assessments "must be communicated public, and, in a collaborative process, all stakeholders need to decide how much risk is acceptable to our communities in planning for land use; establishing water quality and other environmental standards; and particularly for developing infrastructure for flood and storm protection, and for resistance to other natural hazards."
ASCE also made a number of technical comments on the draft manual that can be viewed here.
|
Sincerely,
Brian Pallasch and Marco Giamberardino
Co-Chairs
Water Resources Coalition
|
|
|
|
|
|
