Full Committee Hearing: Nomination of Robert L. Van Antwerp, Jr. to be Chief of Engineers and Commanding General, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers

 

 

April 17^th, 2007

 

 

Thank you Madam Chairman.  Welcome General Van Antwerp to the Committee.  I thank you for taking the time to meet with me yesterday in my office and thank you for your service to our nation.  For those of you on the Committee who don’t know, 3 of General Van Antwerp’s sons have served or are serving in Iraq, and I personally would like to take this opportunity to thank you and you family for your service and sacrifice on behalf of our nation. 

 

This hearing is a good opportunity for us to learn about General Van Antwerp’s vision for the Army Corps, and about what we can do as partners with the Corps to ensure it meets its goals.  I have a number of issues I am eager to hear from General van Antwerp on.  I am interested in hearing in what course of action he plans to reduce the Corps’ backlog of projects, as well as to improve its business practices.   On the local level, and General Van Antwerp and I spoke about this issue yesterday, I am very interested in what the Corps is doing to meet its promise of beginning the update of the water control manuals for the ACT and ACF river basins in my state.  In face to face meetings with the Corps, I was promised that the updates would begin on January 2^nd of this year, however to date no action has been taken.  However, as General Van Antwerp shared with me yesterday, there are steps that the Corps can take to begin the process and I look forward to exploring that in more depth.

 

In an effort to move to the witness I will cut short my statement here, and I thank the Chair for calling this hearing.  

 

I yield back my time.