As Prepared for Delivery:

Upon returning as Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee at the beginning of this Congress, my goal was to return to regular order and get things done.

We achieved that by enacting the first five-year highway bill in 17 years– the FAST Act.

We achieved that again by enacting the first update of a major environmental law in 20 years – the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act.

Working together, Senator Boxer and I will achieve it once more by passing a Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) -- returning to the regular schedule of passing a WRDA every two years.

In the Corps of Engineers part of the bill, we authorize 29 projects recommended by the Chief of Engineers that will provide benefits that significantly exceed the cost of the projects. 

These include important harbor deepening projects for Charleston, South Carolina, Jacksonville, Florida, and Brownsville, Texas, as well as significant flood protection projects in Kansas, Missouri, California, North Carolina, Louisiana, and elsewhere.

We also authorize the next phase of the Everglades restoration project that Senator Rubio has championed.

In addition to new projects, the bill modifies some existing projects that need additional Congressional authority before they can continue.  These include critical flood control projects in Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, and Arizona, as well as a critical navigation safety project in Texas.

This bill also makes policy changes based on the recommendations of Senators, project sponsors, and the users of our water transportation infrastructure.

They had a clear message - we need to empower local sponsors to help keep that infrastructure strong and functioning. 

To address this issue, we remove barriers to allow project sponsors get things done, using their own money.

This includes letting ports like the Port of Catoosa in Oklahoma help maintain navigation infrastructure so locks don’t shut down due to a lack of maintenance, costing shippers millions in delay time.

We also are streamlining the process to allow local sponsors to make changes to federal projects so that levee districts are not caught in a bureaucratic nightmare when they attempt to repair their levees, and drought stricken communities can increase reservoir storage capacity.

When the Corps rebuilds a levee after a disaster, we now allow local levee districts to increase the level of flood protection at their own expense–so we don’t waste federal dollars rebuilding the same inadequate levee over and over.

WRDA 2016 also expands the current authority of the Corps to accept funds from non-Federal interests to expedite permits for rail transportation projects. 

Overall,  we estimate that the Corps of Engineers section of the bill will cost about $6 billion over 10 years. 

A second part of S. 2848 addresses dam safety.

According to the Corps’ National Inventory of Dams, there are 14,726 high hazard potential dams in the U.S. This means if the dam fails, people will die. 

Under our legislation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is authorized to help rehabilitate dams that the state dam safety officials have determined have a high hazard potential, fail to meet minimum dam safety standards, and pose an unacceptable risk to the public.

CBO estimates that implementing these dam and levee safety programs program will cost $401 million over 10 years.

In our substitute we have added a Bureau of Indian Affairs dam safety program for dams in Indian Country, at a cost of $129 million.  This is based on S. 2717 that Senator Barrasso moved through the Indian Affairs Committee with unanimous support.

A third part of S. 2848 addresses EPA mandates under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act.

We heard from communities all over the country about this issue.

They too had a clear message – the smallest and poorest communities need financial and technical assistance and other communities need new tools to allow them to meet mandates in an affordable way. 

We have targeted the assistance in the bill to those who have the greatest need. These programs include: Assistance for small and disadvantaged communities with a priority for underserved communities, assistance for lead service line replacement with a priority for disadvantaged communities, assistance to address sewer overflows, technical assistance for small and rural communities.

We also include affordability measures to empower all communities. These include: allowing communities to meet EPA mandates on a schedule that will be affordable and address the greatest health threats first.

S. 2848 includes $170 million to address lead emergencies and the public health consequences of those emergencies.

For example, we provide $70 million to capitalize the new Water Infrastructure Financing Innovation Act program which can provide secured loans for water and wastewater infrastructure anywhere in the country.  WIFIA is modeled after the highly successful TIFIA program that supports highways.

The $70 million provided in the bill for WIFIA can support as much as $4.2 billion in secured loans – a very fiscally responsible way to provide federal assistance.

WRDA also includes 4 regional restoration programs that we reported out of the EPW Committee as separate bills. These include Senator Kirk’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the reauthorization of the Lake Tahoe Restoration program that Senator Heller and Senator Reid put forward, along with Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein.

Finally, WRDA includes consensus legislation to allow EPA to review and approve state permitting programs for coal ash disposal units.  EPA’s coal ash rule went into effect last October, but EPA does not currently have the authority to approve state permitting programs. This bill fills that gap, benefiting utilities, states, and the environment by authorizing state oversight of coal ash disposal. There is no other environmental regulation solely enforced simply through private lawsuits.  This bill fixes that by giving states the authority.

Without this bill:

• 29 Navigation, Flood Control, and Environmental Restoration projects will not happen.
• 7 Flood Control, Navigation Safety, and Environmental Restoration projects will have to be halted.
• There will be no new Corps reforms to let local sponsors improve infrastructure at their own expense.
• There will be no FEMA assistance to states or Bureau of Indian Affairs assistance to tribes to rehabilitate unsafe dams.
• There will be no reforms to help communities address Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water infrastructure mandates.
• There will be no new assistance for innovative approaches to Clean Water and Drinking Water needs, to address drought and water supply issues.
• There will be no authority for important restoration programs in the Great Lakes, Lake Tahoe, Long Island Sound or the Delaware River Basin.
• Utilities will have to guess how to comply with EPA’s new coal ash rule – leaving them vulnerable to citizen suits - instead of operating under federally recognized state permit programs. 

Although this bill does authorize new funding, all the funding in the bill must fall within the annual spending caps in appropriations bills or is fully offset by reducing the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Program.