Daily Comet: Congress to debate corps reforms
Jeremy Alford
BATON ROUGE - As the groundwork continues to be laid for a new water resources bill, it is becoming clear that Louisiana's senators will be seeking substantive operational reforms for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be central in this debate in the coming months as it crafts the latest Water Resources Development Act.
The bill will include projects for everything from transportation and drainage to coastal restoration and hurricane protection.
The last time a water resources bill was passed by Congress was in 2007, and Louisiana benefitted from more more than $3.6 billion in direct funding.
The public works committee conducted a hearing last week entitled "Oversight Hearing on Implementation of Corps of Engineers Water Resources Policies," and Sen. Mary Landrieu submitted a statement for the record urging necessary policy changes and increased funding for the corps.
Landrieu, a Democrat from New Orleans, said the corps fulfills a critical role in the nation's water infrastructure, but its efforts are hamstrung by a backlog of more than $40 billion in projects and consistent underfunding.
"Wise and timely investment in construction and proper maintenance can save lives and resources, and we are simply not currently making the necessary investments," she said.
The corps has a construction budget of about $1.7 billion, "which could easily be spent in Louisiana alone," she said, adding it is not nearly enough to meet the need around the country.
She said current policies regarding required project studies result in endless delays and wasted money.
"The current corps processes are broken," Landrieu said. "The corps spends millions of dollars on project studies that either do not result in construction due to lack of funds or are outdated almost immediately upon completion due to an inefficient and slow process."
Sen. David Vitter, the ranking member on the public works committee, started his own push for reforms for the water resources bill last fall, remarking that the corps "needs to be held accountable for the construction and operation of our waterways, dams, locks, and levees that protect people from disasters like hurricanes Isaac and Sandy."
Vitter, a Republican from Metairie, was also responsible for requesting last week's hearing on water resources and the corps.
He said to ensure the next water resources bill encompasses the "full scope of the challenges facing our nation's water resources infrastructure," the following should be addressed:
- Reforms that expedite and improve the corps' project delivery process.
- Solutions that address the policy and funding challenges facing the Inland Waterway Trust Fund and the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund.
- Oversight of the corps' implementation guidance and internal policies.
- Prioritization of water resource projects.
Vitter, who presided over a large portion of last week's hearing, said the reforms are "long-awaited and much needed," but they must be accomplished in a bipartisan fashion.
"In a time of constrained federal funding and a moratorium on congressionally-directed spending, we must establish a process and criteria to ensure that the corps does not act unilaterally when determining the water resource priorities in our states," Vitter and others wrote in a letter to Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat.
Landrieu said the corps' New Orleans district office has imposed wetlands mitigation requirements that have caused flood protection project costs to skyrocket.
Congress must find a better way to have the corps combine mitigation with restoration and provide more reasonable solutions for flood protection projects, she said.
It is a difficult challenge, she said, considering the corps' construction budget has been drastically reduced over the past five years.
"The most frustrating part about this is that the government is still paying. But instead of investing on the front end, we are chasing storms and spending billions on disaster recovery," Landrieu said. "I can only wonder how many disasters it is going to take for enough of our colleagues to realize that this practice must change
