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Senate Environment and Public Works Committee meets to review status of the country’s ailing water infrastructure system
[/title][fusion_text]Wednesday, February 10th 2016
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee met Wednesday to review the status of the country’s ailing water infrastructure system and to plan its response – another Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) – that panel members predict will receive congressional approval this year. Everyone on the committee, including Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Ranking Member Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. – who disagree vehemently more often than not – said a new WRDA bill was critical to expanding exports of U.S. grain and other commodities, creating jobs and boosting the economy. The last WRDA bill passed in 2014 after seven years without a major water infrastructure mandate. The law authorized a number of infrastructure projects and streamlined the way projects are proposed and implemented. Inhofe says he intends to get a WRDA bill enacted every two years. Currently the law has automatic reauthorization under budget authority. Currently, the U.S. has 300 commercial ports, 12,000 miles of inland waterways, nearly 84,000 dams, 100,000 miles of levees and about 240 lock chambers. Together, they facility the movement of more than 70 percent of U.S. imports by tonnage and just over half of U.S. imports by value. A 2013 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), led by Norma Jean Mattei, gave the country’s water infrastructure an overall grade of “D+”. The nation’s dams, on average, are 52 years old. About 16 percent, or 14,000 of those structures, are considered “high-hazard” because they are located above population centers; 2,000 need significant repair, which the Association of State Dam Safety Officials says will cost $21 billion. ASCE’s 2013 report card found that 91 percent of the nation’s levees, which protect 43 percent of the American population, are in unacceptable condition and would cost about $100 billion to repair or rehabilitate. The U.S. needs to invest $15.8 billion in water infrastructure – in addition to the $14.4 billion in planned expenditures – over the next four years if it wants to protect the nation’s exports remove any drag on the GDP caused by failing infrastructure, or waterways that are too narrow or shallow to accommodate larger modern ships, ASCE says. With the extra funding, ASCE projects each American household would save about $770 every year with lower shipping costs.
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