[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE GREAT LAKES RESTORATION INITIATIVE: A REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS AND
CHALLENGES IN RESTORING THE GREAT LAKES
=======================================================================
(114-27)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 30, 2015
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee, ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
Vice Chair Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey CORRINE BROWN, Florida
SAM GRAVES, Missouri EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DUNCAN HUNTER, California RICK LARSEN, Washington
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
BOB GIBBS, Ohio STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
RICHARD L. HANNA, New York ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
JEFF DENHAM, California JOHN GARAMENDI, California
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin ANDRE CARSON, Indiana
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky JANICE HAHN, California
TOM RICE, South Carolina RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania DINA TITUS, Nevada
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
ROB WOODALL, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
TODD ROKITA, Indiana CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois
JOHN KATKO, New York JARED HUFFMAN, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas JULIA BROWNLEY, California
CRESENT HARDY, Nevada
RYAN A. COSTELLO, Pennsylvania
GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana
MIMI WALTERS, California
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
CARLOS CURBELO, Florida
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
(ii)
Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment
BOB GIBBS, Ohio, Chairman
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
DUNCAN HUNTER, California DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas JOHN GARAMENDI, California
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
JEFF DENHAM, California JARED HUFFMAN, California
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona
TOM RICE, South Carolina DINA TITUS, Nevada
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
TODD ROKITA, Indiana ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JOHN KATKO, New York Columbia
BRIAN BABIN, Texas RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota
CRESENT HARDY, Nevada PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon (Ex
GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana Officio)
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania (Ex
Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vii
TESTIMONY
Panel 1
Chris Korleski, Director, Great Lakes National Program Office,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency........................... 5
Jose Alfredo Gomez, Director, Natural Resources and Environment,
U.S. Government Accountability Office.......................... 5
Tony Kramer, Acting Regional Conservationist, Northeast Region,
Natural Resources Conservation Service......................... 5
Panel 2
Jon W. Allan, Chair, Great Lakes Commission...................... 27
Hon. John Dickert, Mayor, City of Racine, Wisconsin.............. 27
Ed Wolking, Jr., Executive Director, Great Lakes Metro Chambers
Coalition...................................................... 27
Douglas R. Busdeker, Director, Ohio AgriBusiness Association..... 27
Chad W. Lord, Policy Director, Healing Our Waters--Great Lakes
Coalition...................................................... 27
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Chris Korleski................................................... 50
Jose Alfredo Gomez............................................... 58
Tony Kramer...................................................... 80
Jon W. Allan..................................................... 84
Hon. John Dickert................................................ 90
Ed Wolking, Jr................................................... 99
Douglas R. Busdeker.............................................. 103
Chad W. Lord..................................................... 106
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Hon. Bob Gibbs, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Ohio, request to submit the following:
Letter of August 28, 2015, from David A. Ullrich, Executive
Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative,
to Hon. Thad Cochran, Chairman, Senate Committee on
Appropriations, et al...................................... 117
Letter of September 28, 2015, from Matthew D. Chase,
Executive Director, National Association of Counties, et
al., to Hon. Thad Cochran, Chairman, Senate Committee on
Appropriations, et al...................................... 119
Letter of September 23, 2015, from G. Tracy Mehan III,
Executive Director for Government Affairs, American Water
Works Association, to Hon. Harold Rogers, Chairman, House
Committee on Appropriations, et al......................... 121
Letter of September 15, 2015, from John C. Hall, Executive
Director, and Christopher Rissetto, General Counsel, Center
for Regulatory Reasonableness, to Hon. Harold Rogers,
Chairman, House Committee on Appropriations, et al......... 123
Letter of September 30, 2015, from Adam Krantz, CEO, National
Association of Clean Water Agencies, to Hon. Bob Gibbs,
Chairman, and Hon. Grace F. Napolitano, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment............ 158
Jon W. Allan, Chair, Great Lakes Commission, submission of letter
addressed to him and received September 28, 2015, from Gina
McCarthy, Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.. 44
ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD
Letter of October 14, 2015, from Steve Moyer, Vice President of
Government Affairs, Trout Unlimited, to Hon. Bob Gibbs,
Chairman, and Hon. Grace F. Napolitano, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment................ 160
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
THE GREAT LAKES RESTORATION INITIATIVE: A REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS AND
CHALLENGES IN RESTORING THE GREAT LAKES
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 2156, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bob Gibbs
(Chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Gibbs. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Water
Resources and Environment will come to order.
We welcome our panels. We have two panels today, but we
will first have some opening remarks.
The hearing today is about the Great Lakes Restoration
Initiative. It's a review of progress and challenges in
restoring the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes, of course, are a vital source for both the
United States and Canada to move goods; supply drinking water
for industrial and agricultural purposes, a source of
hydroelectric power, and swimming and other recreational
activities.
But the industrialization and development of the Great
Lakes over the past 200 years has had an impact on water
quality in the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes are a high priority to our Members from
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and New York, particularly in those districts that
border the lakes. However, the Great Lakes are also important
to our entire Nation.
The Great Lakes are the largest surface freshwater system
on the earth, with 6 quadrillion gallons of water. The Great
Lakes account for approximately 20 percent of the world's
freshwater supply and approximately 90 percent of the U.S.
freshwater supply.
Thirty-five million people live in the Great Lakes region,
representing roughly one-tenth of the U.S. population and one-
quarter of the Canadian population. The lakes are the primary
water supply for most of these people.
The Great Lakes constitute the largest inland water
transportation system in the world, and have played an
important role in the economic development of both the United
States and Canada.
According to some estimates, the Great Lakes help support
more than $200 billion a year in economic activity in the
region, and contribute nearly a quarter of the Nation's exports
and 27 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. Over 200
million tons of cargo are shipped annually through the Great
Lakes.
The Great Lakes present a unique environmental challenge.
Legacy issues, including the buildup of toxic substances in
lake sediments in areas of concern, and the introduction of
invasive plant and animal species, are impacting the Great
Lakes. More than 180 invasive aquatic species have become
established in the Great Lakes, including at least 25 major
nonnative species of fish and zebra mussels, which invade and
clog water intake pipes, costing water and electric generating
utilities $100 million to $400 million a year in prevention and
remediation efforts.
Efforts to improve the Great Lakes water quality and
restore the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem are proceeding
through cooperative efforts with Canada as well as through the
efforts of numerous Federal, State, tribal, local, and private
parties.
The EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], Army Corps of
Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the
Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Great Lakes States,
local communities, industry, and other parties all are
involved. With so many parties involved in trying to restore
the Great Lakes, coordination of the effort can be difficult.
To improve coordination, in 2004, the President signed an
Executive order creating the Great Lakes Interagency Task
Force. The Executive order called for the development of
outcome-based goals like cleaner water, sustainable fisheries,
and system biodiversity, and called on the task force to ensure
Federal efforts are coordinated and target measurable results.
The task force, under the lead of EPA, brings together 11
Federal agencies responsible for administering more than 140
different programs in the Great Lakes region, to provide
strategic direction on Federal policy, priorities, and programs
for restoring the Great Lakes.
Congress has enacted more than 30 Federal laws specifically
focused on Great Lakes restoration and there are currently more
than 200 programs that provide funding and resources to Great
Lakes States for restoration activities.
In 2010, the task force released an action plan, as part of
the new Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, to accelerate
efforts to protect and restore the Great Lakes. More than 2,000
projects have been funded to date through the first action
plan.
In September 2014, the Federal agencies released an updated
action plan II, which summarizes the actions that the Federal
agencies plan to implement during fiscal years 2015 through
2019, using Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding.
This action plan aims to strategically target the five
biggest threats to the Great Lakes ecosystem and to accelerate
progress toward long-term goals. The five focus areas in
summary include: toxic substances, invasive species, nonpoint
source pollution, habitat restoration, and accountability and
education.
Since the beginning of the Great Lakes Restoration
Initiative, there has been a concern voiced by some that
restoration activities have slowed or even been halted due to a
lack of coordination among the Federal agencies that encompass
the task force. Other critiques include a lack of communication
between the Federal task force and their partners in State
governments.
In response to my requests, the Government Accountability
Office conducted a review of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
implementation and prepared reports of its findings in 2013 and
July of this year.
Our colleague, Congressman David Joyce, introduced H.R. 223
to amend the Great Lakes program provisions under section 118
of the Clean Water Act to formally authorize the Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative for 5 years, and to carry out projects
and activities for Great Lakes protection and restoration.
Under this legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency
is to collaborate with other Federal partners, including the
Great Lakes Interagency Task Force, to select the best
combination of projects and activities for Great Lakes
protection and restoration.
This hearing today is intended to review the progress of
the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and to hear from
witnesses on the implementation of the GLRI program and the
types of improvements that need to be made to the program.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses, and at this
time I recognize my ranking member from California, Mrs.
Napolitano.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Chairman Gibbs, for today's
hearing on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and thus
providing the subcommittee with a chance to review the progress
made in the restoration of one of our Nation's greatest
resources, the Great Lakes.
Welcome to our witnesses and I look forward to hearing your
testimony and to engaging dialogue on this very successful
program.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, known as GLRI, was
organized in 2010 to coordinate the multitude of efforts
already underway to protect and restore the Great Lakes, the
world's largest system of fresh surface water and the source of
drinking water for over 40 million Americans.
As we can imagine, the economic importance of the Great
Lakes to the country cannot be overstated. The 4.3 million
recreational boats registered in the Great Lakes alone create
nearly $16 billion in economic activities each year. That
supports 107,000 jobs annually.
Specifically, the program was created to clean up toxins
and address areas of concern, combat invasive species, of which
I am very interested in how you combat the quagga mussel issue
because that's California's biggest issue and some of the
Western States; to protect watersheds from pollutant latent
runoff; restore wetlands and track progress; education,
especially on invasive species, I think; and collaboration with
strategic partners, including State and local governments and
other stakeholders.
During the first 5 years of this program, $1.68 billion of
Federal funding was allocated to over 2,100 projects that were
implemented to improve water quality, control or eradicate
harmful, invasive species, and restore valuable ecosystems.
In that time and because of Federal support, the Great
Lakes Restoration Initiative has enjoyed the following
accomplishments:
Five areas of concern have been removed from the list of
contaminated areas.
Forty-two beneficial use impairments in 17 areas of concern
were removed.
Target level control populations have been reached for
multiple invasive species, including the bighead carp, sea
lamprey, and emerald ash borer. Interesting.
Federal and State local partners increased the number of
acres of farmland enrolled in agricultural conservation
programs in priority watersheds by more than 80 percent.
More than 100,000 acres of wetlands and 48,000 acres of
coastal, upland and island habitat are now protected.
While much more work remains to be done, these are
demonstrable successes, and I commend today's witnesses for
their dedication to the success of this program.
In September 2013, GAO [U.S. Government Accountability
Office] released a report recommending EPA develop a more
comprehensive and useful progress assessment tool for
demonstrating the program's accomplishment. Understand that we
look at some of these things, and we want to understand it and
not have to ask questions about what does it mean.
GAO found that the GLRI monitoring system at the time may
have been deficient, but also found as GAO and others have
noted that quantifying overall restoration progress in the
Great Lakes is a very difficult task and that it's often
impossible to link specific environmental changes to specific
programs or projects, which some are long term.
Again, earlier this year the GAO concluded an extensive
study of the use of these funds. It examined the amount of the
funds available for projects and processes used by GLRI to
identify projects and the GLRI's reporting tools.
I am very pleased to say that EPA took action to address--
thank you very much--the recommendations made by the draft GAO
report prior to the release of the report and, in doing so,
established a new system for entering data and created new data
control methods.
Having undertaken these efforts, EPA and its partners will
be better able to track and demonstrate the success of the
program.
So in the 5 short years since this program's inception,
communities throughout the Great Lakes region have enjoyed
measurable results that have made a difference in the lives of
their citizens and their economy.
One might ask what has made the difference, and to answer
this question, I point to the GAO report published in September
2004, which found that the lack of clearly defined
organizational leadership posed a major obstacle and that
coordinating existing restoration efforts across the many
participating organizations was a significant challenge.
So we need to be able to address that so that we can
understand it when we are able to go through and look at what
improvements and what challenges have been addressed.
I would argue that today you have overcome these
challenges. Simply put, this is one of the most influential,
coordinated interagency efforts in the country and stands as an
example of what we can achieve when multiple partners agree,
work together toward a common goal, politics aside.
Again, I welcome our witnesses and thank you for your
testimony.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Gibbs. Thanks.
Before I recognize our witnesses, we have a little bit of
housekeeping. I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record
be kept open for 30 days after this hearing in order to accept
written testimony for the hearing record. Is there objection?
[No response.]
Mr. Gibbs. Without objection, so ordered.
I also ask unanimous consent that written testimony
submitted on behalf of the following parties be included in
this hearing record: David Ullrich, executive director of the
Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative; Clarence
Anthony, the CEO and executive director of the National League
of Cities; Matthew Chase, the executive director of the
National Association of Counties; Tom Cochran, the CEO and
executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors; Joanna
Turner, the executive director of the National Association of
Regional Councils; Tracy Mehan, the executive director for
government affairs for the American Water Works Association;
John Hall, the executive director of the Center for Regulatory
Reasonableness; Christopher Rissetto, general counsel for the
Center for Regulatory Reasonableness; and Adam Krantz, the CEO
of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.
Is there objection?
[No response.]
Mr. Gibbs. Without objection, so ordered.
Today we have two panels. Our first panel is Mr. Chris
Korleski. He is the Director of the Great Lakes National
Program Office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in
Chicago, and also a former director of the Ohio EPA when I was
in the legislature.
We also have Mr. Jose Gomez. He is the Director of Natural
Resources and Environment of the U.S. Government Accountability
Office in Washington, DC.
And Mr. Tony Kramer, who is the Acting Regional
Conservationist for the Northeast region of the National
Resources Conservation Service in Washington, DC.
Welcome, panelists, and Mr. Korleski, the floor is yours.
And pull it up closer. In this room sometimes it is hard to
hear.
TESTIMONY OF CHRIS KORLESKI, DIRECTOR, GREAT LAKES NATIONAL
PROGRAM OFFICE, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; JOSE
ALFREDO GOMEZ, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT,
U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; AND TONY KRAMER, ACTING
REGIONAL CONSERVATIONIST, NORTHEAST REGION, NATURAL RESOURCES
CONSERVATION SERVICE
Mr. Korleski. Is the volume OK? Can everyone hear me?
Well, good morning, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member
Napolitano, and members of the subcommittee. My name is Chris
Korleski, and I am pleased to serve as the Director of U.S.
EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office, or as we call it,
GLNPO.
I am very pleased to be here this morning to discuss the
remarkable progress that has been made under the Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative, or as we know it, the GLRI.
The GLRI was launched in 2010 to accelerate efforts to
protect and restore the largest system of freshwater in the
world--to provide additional resources to make progress toward
the most critical long-term goals for this important ecosystem.
Since its inception, the GLRI has been a catalyst for
unprecedented Federal agency coordination to the GLRI
Interagency Task Force and the GLRI Regional Working Group,
both of which are led by EPA. This unprecedented coordination
has led to unprecedented results.
During the first 5 years of the initiative, GLRI resources
have supplemented agency-based budgets to fund over 2,600
projects in five focus areas.
Focus Area 1, toxic substances in areas of concern. Federal
agencies and their partners delisted three areas of concern,
what we call AOCs, and completed all of the physical work that
will lead to the delisting of three additional AOCs. That is a
major change from the 25 years before the initiative when only
one AOC was cleaned up and delisted.
It is our hope that we can keep this momentum going and
ultimately achieve the delisting of all the remaining AOCs.
Focus Area 2, invasive species. Federal agencies and their
partners engaged in an unprecedented level of activity to
prevent new introductions of invasive species, including Asian
carp, into the Great Lakes ecosystem. Asian carp are a
significant threat to the ecological health of the Great Lakes
and its multibillion-dollar sports fishery, and the GLRI
provides support to the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating
Committee to prevent bighead and silver carp from becoming
established in the Great Lakes ecosystem.
To date monitoring has not found any established, self-
sustaining populations of silver or bighead carp in the Great
Lakes. Nevertheless, the threat of Asian carp entering the
Great Lakes continues, and the Federal partners are eager to
continue the work necessary to keep them out of the Great
Lakes.
Focus Area 3, nearshore health and nonpoint source
pollution. Federal agencies and their partners targeted
activities to reduce phosphorus runoff from farmland which
contributes to harmful algal blooms in western Lake Erie,
Saginaw Bay, and Green Bay.
Federal agencies used GLRI support to increase the number
of acres of farmland enrolled in agricultural conservation
programs in GLRI priority watersheds by more than 70 percent.
Focus Area 4, habitat and wildlife protection and
restoration. Federal agencies and their partners protected,
restored and enhanced more than 100,000 acres of wetlands and
48,000 acres of coastal, upland and island habitat. Over 500
barriers were removed or bypassed in Great Lakes tributaries
enabling access by fish and other aquatic organisms to over
3,400 additional miles of river.
These activities have accelerated the restoration of native
fish and wildlife populations to self-sustaining levels.
Focus Area 5, accountability, education, monitoring,
evaluation, communication and partnerships. Maybe you can see
why we changed the name in the next action plan.
Federal agencies and their partners implemented ``teach the
teacher'' activities and helped science teachers throughout the
basin incorporate Great Lakes-specific material into their
class curricula. But what's next?
Well, the first 5 years of the GLRI have achieved
remarkable progress. The Federal agencies are already well
underway implementing the GLRI Action Plan II, which summarizes
the actions that Federal agencies will implement during fiscal
years 2015 through 2019. These actions will build on
restoration and protection work carried out under the first
action plan with a continuing focus on cleaning up AOCs,
preventing and controlling invasive species, reducing nutrient
runoff, and restoring habitat.
We have modified Focus Area 5, and while we will continue
to educate educators about the Great Lakes, Focus Area 5 now
more directly incorporates an adaptive management approach into
the GLRI's implementation.
It also requires that GLRI projects take into account the
need for resiliency in the face of climate change.
Action plan II is tighter and more focused than action plan
I in large part because it incorporates suggestions for
strengthening the GLRI that were contributed by the Great Lakes
Advisory Board, U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, GAO, the
Congressional Research Service, States, tribes, municipalities,
and the general public.
We are committed, devoted to improving the implementation
of the initiative and have recently adopted new budgeting and
planning processes that will provide for a closer working
relationship between Federal agencies and their State and
tribal partners to ensure that appropriate projects are being
prioritized and implemented.
Thank you, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member Napolitano, and
members of the committee. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Gomez, the floor is yours.
Mr. Gomez. Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member Napolitano, and
members of the subcommittee, good morning. I am pleased to be
here today to discuss our work on the Great Lakes Restoration
Initiative.
The Great Lakes, as can be seen in the screens, is the
largest system of freshwater in the world, and it provides
economic and recreational benefits to millions of people.
Decades of industrial and agricultural activities in the region
have left a legacy of contamination.
In addition, more than 180 nonnative species have become
established in the Great Lakes, some of which have caused
extensive ecological and economic damage.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, as has been noted,
was created to accelerate restoration by addressing issues such
as water quality contamination and invasive species that
continue to threaten the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem.
The restoration is overseen by the Great Lakes Interagency Task
Force and is chaired by the Environmental Protection Agency.
So my statement today summarizes the results of our two
reports on the topic. I would like to make three key points
about the GLRI, the initiative: first, the funding and
monitoring and reporting; two, the process used to identify
restoration work; and, three, information available about Great
Lakes restoration project activities and results.
The first point is that nearly all of the $1.68 billion in
Federal funds in fiscal years 2010 to 2014 have been allocated,
and as it can be seen in the next slide, EPA and the task force
agencies have made funding available to a range of recipients.
We found that the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force agencies
conduct restoration work themselves or by awarding funds to
recipients through financial agreements, such as grants,
cooperative agreements or contracts.
EPA and the other 10 agencies have since expended $1.15
billion for over 2,100 projects.
With regard to monitoring and reporting, we found that some
information on restoration projects in EPA's database is
inaccurate and may not be complete, which may prevent EPA from
producing comprehensive or useful assessments of progress.
We recommended that EPA capture more complete information
on progress, which the agency did. In May of 2015, EPA replaced
its old database with a new information system.
Second, with regards to the process for selecting each
agency's Great Lakes restoration work, this process has evolved
since fiscal year 2010 to emphasize interagency discussion.
Originally, each agency made its own project and funding
decisions in agreement with the task force.
Now, multiple agency subgroups discuss and decide what work
should be done. In fiscal year 2012, the task force created
subgroups to discuss and identify work on three priority
issues. The first issue was cleaning up severely degraded
locations, called areas of concern, which we have heard about
already.
Number two is preventing and controlling invasive species.
And three is reducing nutrient runoff from agricultural
areas.
According to EPA, the focus on priority issues allowed for
two areas of concern, the White Lake and Deer Lake areas in
Michigan, to be targeted for accelerated cleanup. Both were
delisted in 2014.
Third, the task force has made some project information
available to Congress and the public in three accomplishment
reports and on its Web site.
In addition, individual agencies collect information on
activities and results, although this information is not
collected and reported by EPA.
Of the 19 projects that we reviewed, 8 reported results
directly linked to restoration, such as improved methods for
capturing sea lamprey, an invasive species that can kill up to
40 pounds of fish in its lifetime. The remaining 11 reported
results that can be indirectly linked to restoration. That is,
the results may contribute to restoration over time.
In summary, the U.S. has committed enormous resources to
restore the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem with some
progress. Currently the restoration effort is in a period of
transition, as EPA and the task force agencies are using a new
action plan, new subgroups to identify work in funding, and a
new system to collect information on projects.
Great Lakes restoration is an ongoing, long-term effort. As
such, it can benefit from continued congressional oversight.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Napolitano, and members of the
subcommittee, this completes my statement. I would be pleased
to answer questions.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Kramer, the floor is yours. Welcome.
Mr. Kramer. Thank you and good morning. Mr. Chairman,
Ranking Member, and distinguished members of the subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to
discuss the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the role of
the Natural Resources Conservation Service within the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
At NRCS, we know that voluntary private lands conservation
is making a difference so that producers can sustain highly
productive agriculture while making progress protecting and
improving a Nation's natural resources. As Acting Regional
Conservationist for the Northeast region, I have the privilege
of serving multiple States, including Ohio and even Michigan.
I was raised on a farm in northwest Ohio and graduated from
the Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in
agriculture. I have worked with NRCS in many capacities over 30
years, and I understand personally the conservation work my
agency performs on private lands.
This is a great time for conservation, and I welcome the
opportunity to share this with you today.
At NRCS, our conservationists work with State and local
partners, as well as private organizations to deliver
conservation, technical, and financial assistance to private
landowners on a purely voluntary basis. In fiscal year 2014,
NRCS provided technical assistance to over 135,000 customers
nationwide to address natural resource objectives on almost 60
million acres of farm, ranch and forest land.
NRCS technical and financial assistance is delivered to
private landowners primarily through programs authorized by the
Farm bill, which include the Environmental Quality Incentives
Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program, and the
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program.
This assistance helps producers plan and implement a
variety of conservation practices, such as cover crops, no-
till, removing invasive species and restoring wetlands.
GLRI complements the significant investment made by NRCS
within the Great Lakes region. Since 2010 and through 2014,
GLRI has provided an additional $106 million in financial and
technical assistance for conservation through the interagency
agreement between NRCS and EPA. This was used to fund over
1,500 contracts with producers committing to implement
conservation practices in over 300,000 acres within the Great
Lakes Basin and to provide direct technical assistance to
producers and landowners.
NRCS works very closely with partners across the country
and in the Great Lakes to maximize the Federal investment and
leverage that with non-Federal contributions. Within the
context of GLRI, between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, NRCS has
leveraged about $7 million of the GLRI funds in agreements with
partners to increase the impact of the Federal investment in
conservation.
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
this opportunity to appear before you today. Conservation
continues to be a solid investment in our Nation's future. GLRI
and other NRCS conservation programs and activities supported
by Congress and the administration have demonstrated success to
helping farmers, ranchers and private forest owners achieve
their production and operational goals in balance with nature,
with the natural resource objectives which provide benefits for
the rural communities and the Nation as a whole.
I will be very happy to respond to any of your questions at
this time.
Thank you.
Mr. Gibbs. I thank you.
And I will start out with questions.
First of all, I want to thank Mr. Gomez for the report that
we requested from your office. It was very helpful.
I recognize that the EPA is implementing some of what you
mentioned and you also mentioned in your report that they
implemented a big initiative before the final report came out
because of the draft report, and I want to talk about that just
for a minute and then I will get to another issue.
In your report you talk about sharing future success and
the challenges, and needing the EPA to address the issue. It is
about communication between the different agencies and States.
Mr. Korleski created subgroups from my understanding, the way I
read this, and so hopefully the intent is that the subgroups
are working together, communicating, because what we have
heard, and I think what Mr. Gomez and the study determined, is
that one hand did not know what the other hand was doing.
So do you want to elaborate a little bit about the
functioning and the mechanism going forward with the subgroups?
Mr. Korleski. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Yes, I think what my colleague was referring to is that in
the early years of GLRI there was more of what we would call an
allocation approach where each agency would have its own
projects that it would like to do, and then we would get
together and talk about how much money should go to each agency
to let them do their projects.
I am simplifying, but that is the way it worked.
I think come 2011, there was a consensus that, wait a
minute; this is not the best way to do this. This idea of
having agencies sort of saying, ``We want to do these
projects,'' was not we think as good as saying, ``Let us all
work together and figure out, looking at that ecosystem as a
whole, what is the work that should be prioritized without
regard to what this agency would like to accomplish or what
that agency would like to accomplish. What should we as the
GLRI accomplish?'' and prioritizing that.
So that is what resulted in, I think, much more of a
collaborative approach. The subgroups were created to focus on
what we agreed were priority areas like AOCs.
Mr. Gibbs. Excuse me. The subgroups would consist of
different agencies, the EPA, NOAA [National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration] and all?
Mr. Korleski. So if I understand your question, when I
think of a subgroup, I think of a subgroup within the Regional
Working Group. So the Regional Working Group made up of EPA,
NOAA, the Corps of Engineers. There are representatives from
those agencies on those subgroups for, again, AOCs, invasive
species, whatever it might be.
So that way all of the agencies were focused.
Mr. Gibbs. I think that is a good way to go forward.
Mr. Korleski. Yes.
Mr. Gibbs. That was one of the criticisms of the report.
But to take that further, I think the Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative Action Plan for 2015 to 2019 does not
include targets to measure any progress. If the EPA and the
task force do not have targets, how are they going to measure?
You do not have in this new action plan specific targets,
goals. Am I understanding that right?
Mr. Korleski. Mr. Chairman, no, there are targets in the
action plan. If I can briefly, in the new action plan,
specifically, there are five focus areas. There are 12
objectives. There are 22 commitments. There are 34 measures of
progress, and 10 of those measures of progress have annual
targets where we are actually trying to hit numbers, for
example, the number of AOCs where all of the work has been
completed or the number of BUIs [beneficial use impairments]
removed.
So there are most definitely targets and objectives within
action plan II.
Mr. Gibbs. OK. I wanted to ask a question on the algae
issue in western Lake Erie. Can you describe to the
subcommittee how the EPA shows deference to the expertise of
other Federal agencies for funding these activities?
For instance, the EPA recognizes NOAA as the agency with
the expertise related to harmful algal blooms. Why is it
important that that one agency not be given sole discretion
over the GLRI activities?
Mr. Korleski. Mr. Chairman, I think a number of the
agencies have expertise in areas pertinent to harmful algal
blooms. NOAA, for example, I think has great expertise in
areas, such as satellite monitoring and monitoring the bloom.
In fact, after the Toledo drinking water crisis in 2014, we
very quickly freed up about $12 million in GLRI funds to
devote. For example, some of that money went to NOAA so they
could improve their ability to monitor algae and microsystem
levels in the Toledo area. We provided money to USGS [U.S.
Geological Survey] to do more stream monitoring, to measure the
amount of phosphorus getting into Lake Erie, which USGS is
extremely good at.
NRCS was provided with additional funds because our
colleagues at NRCS are very good at getting----
Mr. Gibbs. My last question I wanted to just go to Mr.
Kramer.
What would it take to reduce the amount of nutrients
entering the Great Lakes to prevent the algae blooms that have
occurred in the last few years?
Mr. Kramer. That is a good question. Eliminating it, I do
not know if that is going to be possible. I think we have an
opportunity here to reduce the impact, maybe the duration.
Just since 2010 to 2013, the GLRI funding that was provided
to NRCS has reduced, we estimate, the nitrogen entering into
the Great Lakes by over 3.5 million pounds and over 600 pounds
of phosphorus.
Now, the algal blooms still develop. There are many other
sources. It is not just agriculture.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes.
Mr. Kramer. There's residential. There's commercial.
There's what we call legacy phosphorus, which there is
phosphorus sitting in Lake Erie, you know, in the sediment, on
the ground or under the surface, and turbidity, water, air
temperature, water depth, sunlight, all have an impact on
whether that comes up.
Mr. Gibbs. Are we noticing more dissolved phosphorus
compared to maybe phosphorus attached to the sediment? Is
dissolved phosphorus more of an issue than it was in previous
years?
Mr. Kramer. I can't answer that. I do not know that we have
made that distinction, Congressman.
Mr. Gibbs. OK.
Mr. Kramer. But we have reduced and we are looking at other
methods and processes. We do know that a lot of the dissolved
phosphorus gets out in the tile.
Mr. Gibbs. Pardon?
Mr. Kramer. Gets out in the tile, through the farms, and as
of right now Ohio has just with assistance from GLRI funding
entered into agreement with the Ohio Farm Bureau to do
demonstration farms, you know. So there are a lot of different
things going on.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes, I know. The Ohio Farm Bureau put up $1
million towards that.
Mr. Kramer. Yes.
Mr. Gibbs. This is my last question before I yield to my
ranking member.
On these programs, can you kind of elaborate, voluntary
versus regulatory, mandatory? You know, what is the best fit?
What is the best way to address this issue?
Mr. Kramer. Well, for me it is voluntary, at least when it
comes to private landowners, private agricultural farms. I
think the voluntary approach works.
One good example of why it works, and this is not just in
the Western Lake Erie Basin or the Great Lakes but across the
country, every single one of the programs that NRCS offers is
well oversubscribed. We have backlogs forever.
People want to participate. They want to put conservation
on their ground, and they want some assistance to do that, and
we have shown that it does work.
Mr. Gibbs. And I will concur with that, being a farmer, and
I would also just in closing say that, you know, farmers drink
the water first.
Mr. Kramer. That is right.
Mr. Gibbs. I mean, it is on the land because all of their
wells are where they are getting it, and it is just critical.
And they want to do the best for the environment. We have seen
that with best management practices, no-till, and a bunch of
things that are happening.
And my concern has been, especially with the WOTUS rule,
when you come down with a heavy hammer at some point you just
overburden them with redtape and bureaucracy. They will throw
their hands up in the air and they are not going to do what
they would have done voluntarily. I am really concerned with
the WOTUS rule that we can actually go backwards in water
quality with the strides we have made.
So I yield to my ranking member.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And on that note, Mr. Kramer, one of the things that a
pilot project in California is looking at is on-site new
technology that might clean the runoff, recycle the runoff
right from the farms.
Is there anything being looked at or touted or at least
considered as part of the assistance to the farmers?
Mr. Kramer. The one thing that we are doing that is not
actually cleaning, but what we called edge of field monitoring,
which we now do within NRCS. That allows, on the farms, they
can monitor the nutrient loads that are coming off that farm.
We have looked at things such as bioreactors and things of
that nature in the ground, subsurface, to clean it, but what
you are referring to I am not aware of, but it is a
possibility. We could look at those different methods and
processes, and within NRCS what we typically do is take a look
at something like that. If it provides merit, we can try it on
a pilot basis.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, I will check, but it was supposed to
be a pilot in Bakersfield by the Costner, the group that did
the Bridge petroleum spill.
Mr. Kramer. OK.
Mrs. Napolitano. So that might bring some change.
In the algae bloom, is not probably the temperature also
responsible for the creation of a lot more of the algae?
Mr. Kramer. Yes, yes. The water temperature, air
temperature. I think we avoided it a lot this year because we
did not have as much duration of hot, humid days, and we had
some winds that kind of, you know, stirred the lake a little
bit. At least that is from the reports from NOAA that we
receive on a pretty regular basis.
Mrs. Napolitano. And I notice, and I am sorry but my time
is running, and I want to be sure that I take in all the
questions that I have in mind, but in the runoff, going back to
the runoff, the fact that there are more effective ways of
partners working together to combat the runoff, what else is
being done to be able to help farmers and the ability to
restrict the amount of runoff into the streams and rivers?
Mr. Kramer. Well, I think, you know, one of the big things
that we do is not just controlling the runoff. It is what is
being applied.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK.
Mr. Kramer. You know, only apply what you absolutely need
through our nutrient management standard specification, which
is a widely used practice throughout the basin and throughout
the Great Lakes.
So what is being delivered on the field should be
controlled first, and a lot of producers are doing that.
Mrs. Napolitano. Of course, there are great results, but
some are saying that GLRI is going after the low-hanging fruit,
and what remains is going to be a bigger challenge. Can you
explain?
Mr. Kramer. I believe maybe it is kind of what I referred
to before. We have developed a Conservation Effects Assessment
Project that we have done, and our scientists have estimated
that for Western Lake Erie Basin alone, if we treated every
single agricultural farm, we would still only reduce the
nutrients by 40 percent.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that maybe what that
statement is referring to is even in doing everything that we
could do, there are still so many other factors involved that
we are not going to be able to get there.
Mrs. Napolitano. Do you have an idea of how many farms are
voluntary for partners? Is it a percentage?
You mentioned it was voluntary.
Mr. Kramer. Yes, yes. I do not have that with me, but we
could provide that.
Mrs. Napolitano. It would be nice to know.
Mr. Kramer. The number of producers in the Great Lakes that
are actually working with us, yes. We could provide that
information.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
Mr. Kramer. Yes.
Mrs. Napolitano. Mr. Korleski, your testimony notes that
action plan II incorporates fresh approaches. Can you describe
the science-based adaptive framework you plan to use and when
do you feel that it is going to be implemented?
Mr. Korleski. Yes, Ranking Member. I think adaptive
management is a fancy way of saying learn as we go, learn from
your mistakes, learn from what works, learn from what does not
work.
Mrs. Napolitano. But who looks at those?
Mr. Korleski. What is that?
Mrs. Napolitano. Who looks? Who determines what works and
what is not working?
Mr. Korleski. The agencies implementing the projects.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK.
Mr. Korleski. So under the action plan, the way this should
work is when projects are implemented, the agencies
implementing them should look at project results and look at
project impacts and look at, again, what worked.
If you did a project, if we tried something as a pilot
project and it did not work, we have to remember that, and we
have to say, ``Yeah, that did not work. Do not do that again.''
Mrs. Napolitano. But what is turnaround time? Do not forget
Government works very slowly.
Mr. Korleski. Well, we do adaptive management really over
the course of two different cycles. So we do an action plan
every 5 years. So one of the things that we do is when we're
drafting a new action plan, as we did in the second action
plan, we looked about what worked, what did not work, what kind
of targets did we have in the first action plan that were not
realistic, and we did not have the technology or we did not
have good measurements, and come up with a better action plan.
But I think more importantly, adaptive management is also
looked at on an annual level when we are actually doing project
selection because the agencies essentially get together and
look at the potential universe of projects that could be done
and say, ``OK. Given what we know, where should we
prioritize?''
Mrs. Napolitano. Do you share that information with other
areas that might have similar problems?
Mr. Korleski. For example, other geographic areas?
Mrs. Napolitano. Yes.
Mr. Korleski. Like the Chesapeake, yes.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK.
Mr. Korleski. Yes.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK. Because that would save some time in
some people having to reinvent the wheel.
The other question I have, recently, actually yesterday,
there was a news release in regard to Line 5, the pipeline, and
the question, of course, comes up about, according to the
University of Michigan, it is the worst possible location for
an oil spill.
This crude coming out or transfer being out of Canada? You
are aware of that, I am sure.
Mr. Korleski. Yes.
Mrs. Napolitano. And some of the challenges that they may
face in winter if there is a spill, and apparently there was a
winter spill test that was very challenging.
Is there a way to be able to understand? Because I
understand Senator Stabenow and Congressman Peters have a bill
to ban crude oil shipments through that region.
Mr. Korleski. Well, Ranking Member, if I can tell you about
EPA's rule, maybe that will help clarify.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK.
Mr. Korleski. So in region 5 where we are, our response
office, our Superfund program, is deeply involved in planning
contingency work, trying to anticipate what can go work, and
working with PHMSA [Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration], States, tribal nations, to again make sure----
Mrs. Napolitano. I know, but that was in summer. The
program was looking at transportation in summer, but what about
winter? Because there is a challenge there.
Mr. Korleski. Ranking Member, I confess I am not that
familiar with the challenge that occurred in the winter
exercise. So that is something we can follow up on. But I do
know that EPA and the Coast Guard would be the first line of
response in the event of any----
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, apparently there is another test
being held early next year. I would like to be able to know the
results of that because of the protection for that area.
Mr. Korleski. Yes, Ranking Member. We will be sure to note
that.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
And then of course, in the past 5 years the program has
improved the quality in the region and addressed a lot of the
environmental problems. How is GLRI prepared to produce the
same result in the next 5 years?
Mr. Korleski. I am sorry. Could you repeat the question?
Mrs. Napolitano. How is the GLRI prepared to produce the
same results in the next 5 years as it has in the past 5 years,
considering the scope of the problems?
Mr. Korleski. Ranking Member, I think we actually hope to
do better in the next 5 years.
Mrs. Napolitano. Based on your experience?
Mr. Korleski. Based on the adaptive management approach and
learning from what we learned the first 5 years. Also the fact
is, as I mentioned earlier, the agencies I think are
coordinating much better on identifying priorities. So it is
not just an agency-by-agency ``let us do what we want.'' I
think that is going to achieve better and greater results.
So I think we have learned a lot, and we are working
together more closely.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
And now I will refer back to my chairman. I have one more
question for Mr. Gomez. I will hold.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Ribble.
Mr. Ribble. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here.
I appreciate the work that you are all working on and doing
this.
I happen to live in the Lower Fox River Watershed in
northeast Wisconsin. I live on the shoreline, and so I have
been able to see in real-time some of the improvements that are
actually happening. And, Mr. Korleski, can GLRI funds be
awarded to support partnerships between water systems and the
agriculture industry?
And by that I mean you have got both point source and
nonpoint source issues, and so can there be some combination of
partnership there and the funds be used in an equal partnership
with them together?
Mr. Korleski. So, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Representative, I think
the short answer is yes. It would depend on how the project was
organized and who was doing what, but one of the great things
about the GLRI is that there is flexibility in terms of how we
award and provide money.
So I would think that, yes, depending on what was being
proposed and who was involved, that is something that we could
do and we could certainly look at it.
Mr. Ribble. So it is a bit of kind of an exploration of
ideas, and you are looking at the best ideas, and if someone
comes up with some type of program that makes sense to you all,
that would be something you would take a look at?
Mr. Korleski. Mr. Chairman, Representative, absolutely. The
one thing that we do not pretend to have is all the answers,
and we do not pretend that we have got everything down to a
science. We do not, and we are open to new ideas.
Mr. Ribble. Are the hypoxic zones in Green Bay similar to
the ones in Lake Erie?
Mr. Korleski. So my understanding, I am more familiar with
the Lake Erie area partly because, frankly, I am from Ohio.
Mr. Ribble. Yes.
Mr. Korleski. But I think the problem is the same. I think
the magnitude of the blooms in the Western Basin of Lake Erie
have been greater. That is not to minimize what is happening up
in either the Saginaw Bay or the Fox River area, but the
problem we believe is caused by the same issue, which is too
much phosphorus getting into the water, and we think the
solutions are essentially the same: try to figure out how to
reduce phosphorus, both dissolved and in other forms, from
getting into the water.
Mr. Ribble. Yes. Basically keeping the nutrient on the soil
and not in the water.
Mr. Korleski. Where they are needed.
Mr. Ribble. Ultimately where they are needed to go.
Mr. Korleski. Where they are needed, yes.
Mr. Ribble. And, Mr. Kramer, first of all, I want to
commend the work that your agency has been doing in Wisconsin
and Lower Fox.
Mr. Kramer. Thank you.
Mr. Ribble. One of the things I hear repeatedly from county
executives in the entire Lake Winnebago, Lower Fox Watershed
which drains into Green Bay is that they actually could use
more conservation agents, whether they are agents that are on
the ground at the county level or with your agency.
Can GLRI funds be used by county executives to increase
agency partnership with working with agriculture?
Mr. Kramer. Yes, they can, and as a matter of fact, NRCS
has utilized some of the GLRI funding in just such that way.
In my oral and, I believe, written testimony, it alluded to
the agreements to extend the Federal contributions. We can
enter into agreements with soil and water districts, State
departments of agriculture, and others to put more boots on the
ground, more folks out there in the field, and we have done
that in various areas throughout the Great Lakes.
Mr. Ribble. Because in this watershed, the one I am
speaking of here in northeast Wisconsin, the 71 CAFOs
[concentrated animal feeding operations], large farming
operations, one of the highest density in the country, and
around 1,500 to 1,600 smaller dairies, and there are a lot of
animals in this area.
Mr. Kramer. Yes.
Mr. Ribble. And reaching out to that many individual dairy
farmers is a tough task with the number of bodies there, but
what I have experienced both with your agency and working with
Wisconsin's dairy industry is that they are anxious to start
solving this problem. They want to be part of the solution.
But for some of the smaller dairies, it does become an
issue of resources. Are funds available for some type of joint
sharing of equipment, for example, direct injection of manure
into the soil as opposed to just mass spreading it using water
as a carrying agent?
But that equipment is $80,000, $90,000, $100,000. Could it
be shared by a county over a large area of land so that
multiple farmers would have access to that type of equipment
through the grant system?
Mr. Kramer. Yes, typically the NRCS program, specifically
EQIP [Environmental Quality Incentives Program], would not
actually purchase a piece of equipment, but what it would do is
provide an incentive to those farmers where if they want to go
out and purchase that together to share it, they could use
those funds to do that.
What we are looking for is the activity. What are they
actually doing on the farm? We are paying an incentive for that
activity. Now, if that means they have to get a piece of
equipment or modify it, that is fine, but we definitely stray
from using the tax dollars to actually purchase a piece of
equipment which may not be there in 2 to 3 years or it might
be.
Mr. Ribble. Sure.
Mr. Kramer. But there are ways to get to where you are
going.
Mr. Ribble. Yes, because when you look at the technologies
available with low-till equipment, with direct injection of
manure, the things that will actually keep the nutrient in the
field, those bear a fair amount of costs.
Mr. Kramer. Yes, they do.
Mr. Ribble. And then my final question, and then, Mr.
Chairman, I will yield back. Mr. Gomez, in your report did you
guys look at the efficiency of the funding?
In other words, how much money is going to just the
administration of the fund itself versus how much is actually
getting to specific projects?
Mr. Gomez. Sure. So I mentioned earlier we did look at 19
projects in detail, and in those projects we did look at the
amount of money that was going to indirect cost, and we found
that that varied from zero to 37 percent.
In the cases where it was zero, it was because the entities
had not established an indirect cost rate. Those that were
higher, those tend to be universities that charge a higher
indirect rate. So that is the way we looked at it in terms of
the projects, and we looked at, as I said, 19 projects.
Mr. Ribble. Was there obviously anything that we can do to
reduce the indirect cost so that more of it actually gets to
the ground is going to be a better use of this taxpayer
funding.
Thank you, and, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Gibbs. Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have been listening to this very impressive collaboration
which apparently has bipartisan support even here. I note that
this Great Lakes restoration effort is not authorized, but it
has been funded. It appears that the Federal Government is the
major actor pressing forward, using its full expertise with
working groups and Federal agencies, and one is left to wonder
if other areas, and somebody mentioned the Chesapeake, for
example, if this kind of collaboration and effort driven by the
Federal Government, the EPA and other agencies is occurring in
other watersheds or are we hearing a unique effort that has not
been exported.
Perhaps Mr. Korleski or Mr. Kramer would be able to speak
to that.
Mr. Korleski. Mr. Chairman, Representative, I do know that
we, for example, have had conversations with the Chesapeake Bay
program, which has similar problems. They are different, but
they have nutrient problems that show up in different ways.
And not that long ago we spent a couple hours on the phone
with them sharing our practices about what we were trying to do
to reduce nutrient loadings into water bodies, and that was
very helpful.
There is a Chesapeake Bay program within EPA as a separate
line item in the budget, I believe. So we have worked with
them. We are aware of other geographic programs which are
receiving funding from EPA.
Ms. Norton. Are the results that you obtained repeated
anywhere else or are we talking about a unique effort?
I understand there's huge importance, massive importance of
this major water supply, the Great Lakes. I'm trying to find
out whether it's unique or not, particularly since it is driven
by the Federal Government.
Mr. Korleski. I know that Federal dollars are being
directed to other programs.
Ms. Norton. That I know. I am looking at the impressive
results that have been attained here.
Mr. Gomez, do you have any notion of whether we are talking
about a unique effort, completely federally driven, it seems to
me, by one of the great watersheds. We couldn't do without it.
Mr. Gomez. Sure, sure.
Ms. Norton. Would it go anywhere else?
Mr. Gomez. What I can mention is GAO has actually looked at
ecosystem restoration efforts around the country. One was
mentioned earlier, Chesapeake Bay. We have looked there, and
they have a slightly different organizational structure. The
Chesapeake Bay States are partners with the Federal agencies
and other entities are also key partners.
The Great Lakes are organized slightly differently. We
looked also at the Florida Everglades restoration efforts in
years past where, again, it is managed by the State, the Feds,
and tribes.
Ms. Norton. Is that not different here? The Federal
Government is the driver here, is it not?
Mr. Gomez. Yes, correct.
Ms. Norton. And one of the problems in the Chesapeake Bay
is the same huge number of States, but where they are the
leadership with water the crosses State lines, it does not
appear to me that we get results anywhere in the ballpark of
what we are seeing here with this federally driven project.
Mr. Korleski. Representative, if I may, one of the things
that I would emphasize is that while the GLRI funding is
Federal funding and the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force and
the Regional Working Group are made up of the Federal
departments, a large reason for the success in the Great Lakes
Basin is because we do partner very closely with States.
Ms. Norton. How did you get the States who obviously have
different interests, just as they do on the Chesapeake Bay, to
collaborate except for the force of the Federal Government, its
money and its expertise behind this project?
Mr. Korleski. Representative, I think it is because they
recognized the GLRI brought an opportunity for significant
changes to make an improvement.
Ms. Norton. The what?
Mr. Korleski. An opportunity for significant----
Ms. Norton. And what brought it? What do you say brought
this opportunity?
Mr. Korleski. The GLRI and the States recognizing that
through our grants in providing them with funds and working
with them, that jointly we could get a tremendous amount of
work done.
Ms. Norton. I think it was Federal leadership, Mr.
Korleski. I think it is very difficult when you say to the
Chesapeake Bay, the nine States. I mean, there is something
like that. You get together. This is one of the great wonders
of the world, and together figure out what to do about it.
You have your own budgets, your own priorities, and
everyone speaks about how extraordinary this is, but what you
do not have is the kind of leadership that the Federal agencies
have given to this extraordinary project with extraordinary
results, and you have not been able to name a single other
project which has had similar results.
And I would with knowing nothing hazard a guess that it is
because it has not had the same Federal leadership that this
project has had.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Nolan.
Mr. Nolan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank Chairman Gibbs and Ranking Member
Napolitano for holding this hearing and thank the witnesses for
being here.
I first of all want to commend you all for the work that
you are doing and the importance of it. With no pun intended, I
do have a couple of areas of concern myself that are unrelated
to pollution at the Great Lakes. One of them is what appears to
be a rather abrupt shift in programming and in funding, and I
will start with you, Mr. Korleski.
You talked about the significance of the unprecedented
coordination, and I applaud you for that; the unprecedented
results, and I applaud you for that; and you used that word
``unprecedented coordination'' a number of times, and I applaud
you for that.
My two concerns with regard to the shift in programming and
funding relate--forgive me for being parochial--but to the
Duluth area. We are proud to have eliminated our first area of
concern on the St. Louis River there, but based on the first 5
years of funding where we had received $4.5 million, there has
been a dramatic reduction of almost three-fourths, down to $1.2
million, and based on the first 5 years of work, it had been
expected that we would have eliminated all of our areas of
concern by 2019, which of course will not happen at this point
in time, and that is an area of concern for me, and I would
like you to address that.
And then secondly, we have heard from Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency and from the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources, and they, like you, were celebrating the
unprecedented coordination and collaboration in what I believe
they referred to as ``flexible dollars.''
And now I see that funding for staffing will be restricted
to project specific, and there is a concern that I have and
others have that that will reduce the ability for that kind of
collaboration and cooperation between State and county and
local on a broader basis.
So if you could address both of those concerns, it would be
much appreciated.
Mr. Korleski. Mr. Chairman, Representative, yes, there is
no question that in this latest funding cycle the money that we
were able to provide to States for what I would describe as
capacity funding was less, and the main reason for that is
because the first determination of how much States, including
Minnesota, would get as capacity funds was put together back in
2010 when GLRI was funded at a level of $475 million.
That was a 5-year allocation, if you will, and it was based
on the belief that there would be $475 million. During that 5-
year period we did not reduce that annual allocation even
though the amount dropped from $475 million to roughly $300
million a year over the last 4 years. We did not change the
allocation during that 5 years.
When that grant expired after 5 years and it was time to
renegotiate a new grant with the States, we were looking at
what was essentially a 37-percent reduction in the GLRI if we
were looking at a $300 million level. If we were looking at a
$250 million level that was proposed, that was a 48-percent
reduction compared to what we had back in 2010.
That was the main reason why we had to reduce the amount of
capacity funding for the States.
Your second comment, which I am very glad you raised the
issue of this project-specific funding, one of the things that
we are trying to emphasize----
Mr. Nolan. Staffing for project specific, yes.
Mr. Korleski. Exactly. One of the things that we are trying
to do is make a clear distinction between funding for capacity
and funding for projects. I will give you an example.
Capacity funding for us would be money given to a State,
for example, to allow staff to attend meetings, to allow them
to travel, to allow them to do overall budgeting over their
plan as a whole.
Project specific work would be, for example, staff working
on a specific AOC-related project. And one of the things that
we tried to convey to the States is we want them to start
putting their staffing needs in their project applications
rather than just relying on capacity grants to take all of that
into account.
So in other words, we think there should be an appropriate
amount of capacity funding to do overall planning, but if staff
is going to be working on a specific AOC project, our advice to
the States is build that number into your project application;
build that cost into the project application; and then that
will be treated as part of the project.
We would intend to fund it, assuming we had the money, but
it gets us away from this ``is there enough capacity money to
do both capacity- and project-specific work?'' The reason we
want to do that is because we think if we can more clearly
identify when money has gone to specific projects, it just
gives us a better ability to account for that money.
Mr. Nolan. Well, and I appreciate that, but you know,
having staffing for a greater coordination and collaboration,
you know, as you were celebrating and I celebrate, it gives the
regional groups a greater capacity to adjust as well, depending
on, you know, what the county/State priorities are and what
they might want to fund, and so I appreciate your trying to
take a look at a bigger picture.
But if the city or the State or the county wants to do
something differently, but significant, you know, with that
coordination, that collaboration, that is how you know about
that, and that is how you can adjust to it and make the things
happen.
Well, I am about out of time here, but thank you very much
for all the great work that you do. This is really important,
and I lament the fact, Mr. Chairman, that we celebrate and, you
know, we might be able to come up with $300 million, you know,
when it is darn near $200 million short of what we are used to.
So, you know, I think we should look at trying to find some
ways to authorize a greater expenditure here for this important
project.
Lastly, Mr. Kramer, and just a quick answer, you talked
about if we did away with all of the agricultural pollution we
would reduce it like 40 percent, and you alerted to the other
sources.
Do you have any statistics on exactly how much comes from
municipal and industry and other?
And if you do, could you share those with us?
Mr. Kramer. No, Congressman, I do not. We can check with
some of our scientists and see if they have pulled some of that
information, but I am not aware of that. We were just looking
at the agricultural and what reductions in phosphorus and
nutrients and nitrogen we would see from all of the treatment
of all of the agricultural land.
Mr. Nolan. Well, if you come across any of that, take a
look, would you please, and let us know?
Mr. Kramer. Yes.
Mr. Nolan. And maybe we could have our staff look at that,
too, and that would be helpful to us in understanding the scope
of this problem.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gibbs. Before we excuse the panel, I know I have one
question. I think my ranking member has a question.
But I guess, Mr. Korleski, we are going to go to you with
your background as a former Ohio EPA director and your role
now. There has been a lot of discussion about the impact of
open-lake disposal for dredging and the legacy issues.
Can you just give us your thoughts of what the impact might
be on, you know, the legacy issues of phosphorus for the open-
lake disposal?
Mic, mic, mic, mic.
Mr. Korleski. The green button was on. You fooled me.
Mr. Chairman, that is a great question. So we know that
open-lake disposal is a huge issue, for example, in the
Cuyahoga area. There the issue is not so much phosphorus or
nutrients----
Mr. Gibbs. It is PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls].
Mr. Korleski. PCBs, exactly. So that is one kind of issue
you have.
Out in Toledo where there is a much larger amount of
sediment that needs to be dredged there, there is some
speculation that by open-lake disposal that material could
exacerbate the phosphorus problem. I have never heard anyone
point to any scientific certainty or as close as you can get on
science.
What we are thinking about, one of the big issues that we
are thinking about with regard to open-lake disposal is in
general I think most people would prefer if it did not go into
the lake.
The problem is, and the problem that we want to work on
with our partners is, finding beneficial uses for that
material, whether it is filling in old basements, whether it is
for stockpiling for soil for gardens, whatever that is. We
think that beneficial use is critical.
Mr. Gibbs. Just to comment a little bit on the Cuyahoga-
Cleveland issue, I think they have made significant progress on
finding beneficial uses, the filling in the basements of the
Land Bank Program there. The bedload interceptor, I do not know
if you are familiar with that, started this spring going up the
Cuyahoga River upstream and collecting a lot of sediment before
it gets more in the contaminated legacy areas. So I am hopeful
that could come in.
The good thing about that issue there, the amount of cubic
yards is a lot less than what we have in the Toledo-Maumee
area.
Mr. Korleski. Yes.
Mr. Gibbs. And that is highly laden with phenyl phosphorus,
and I know that you said there is no scientific evidence. I did
not know if there was any thought of trying to do more studies.
I know there have been comments made by certain elected
officials in Ohio that, you know, they put it out in the lake
and Lake Erie is so shallow out there, that is one of the major
problems, issues, challenges. It kind of gets washed back into
it.
And we think that could be a hypothesis as a fact that
maybe it is adding to the legacy issues. Go ahead.
Mr. Korleski. Mr. Chairman, going back to my days at Ohio
EPA, I wrote a very heartfelt letter to the Corps of Engineers
expressing concerns with in-lake disposal in the Toledo area
because of the volume of the amount.
During that time I talked to a lot of technical people,
scientists, about is there any--I will not even call it
conclusive--hard evidence that this is going to exacerbate
either the phosphorus problem, the nutrient problem through any
mechanism.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes.
Mr. Korleski. And I could not get a clear answer. So I
think I am relying on what many other people are relying on,
which is it is such a large amount of sediment there must be a
better use for it.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes.
Mr. Korleski. But finding that use----
Mr. Gibbs. It should be an asset instead of a liability.
Mr. Korleski. That is the way we would look at it.
Mr. Gibbs. This is the last quick question. The Western
Lake Erie Basin, you know, is so shallow, 30 feet or whatever
it is, compared to maybe up in Mr. Ribble's area of Lake
Superior I have heard 700 feet. I do not know. It is very deep.
So open-lake disposal in depths like that, common sense
would tell you that maybe it is not an issue because of the
depth. Would you concur with that?
Mr. Korleski. I think that, Mr. Chairman, if you are
talking about the Western Basin where I think somewhere around
20, 25 feet is the average depth----
Mr. Gibbs. OK.
Mr. Korleski [continuing]. If you are dumping in roughly 1
million cubic yards--I do not recall what the exact volume is--
I can see the argument that, well, OK, you are certainly just
keeping this shallow.
But, again, I would be reluctant to assert with any
certainty that I know that that is either exacerbating the
nutrient problem or any other problem.
The one thing I would say and what I pointed out several
years ago though is the question I would have is: how much are
you redredging that you have already dredged?
And I raised that issue back in 2010 when I believe this
came up and was not able to get a clear answer then either.
Mr. Gibbs. It would be nice if somebody put markers on
there so that you actually tracked that.
Mr. Korleski. Yes. Yes, it would.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gomez, the GAO's report of July 2015 indicated EPA
should improve its monitoring reporting data. So before your
report came out they changed it to the EAGL system. How is that
improving and will that satisfy?
Mr. Gomez. So that is a good question, and, right, as we
were doing our work we had recommendations for EPA to either
decide to do away with the old system or improve the old
system.
The new system that they have, which is referred to as
EAGL, when we were doing our work, EPA was still finalizing it.
So we have not looked at it to see how it is working. We do
think that it is----
Mrs. Napolitano. When will you know though?
Mr. Gomez. Well, so we are going to be tracking the
development of it. So I believe that EPA is supposed to allow
data entry at the beginning of fiscal year 2016.
Mrs. Napolitano. So not until next year?
Mr. Gomez. So once that happens, we were also interested to
make sure. I know one thing that EPA has done already is
restricted who inputs information into that system so that now
you get more consistent information. In the old system,
everybody I believe who was a grantee or was an entity
receiving funds could input information.
EPA has also improved the guidance that they have provided
to----
Mrs. Napolitano. Is it project specific?
Mr. Gomez. Yes. It would be project specific, and they are
restricting who can do it. It is just Federal agencies, and
they have better guidance.
So we would like to see how that goes and can report back
on it.
Mrs. Napolitano. How long will it take you after you review
that data next year?
Mr. Gomez. Well, we would have to wait until at least there
is some data entry. So once the Federal agencies enter the
information I would give it a year for us to see how well it is
working.
Mrs. Napolitano. How often will you track that data?
Mr. Gomez. Well, at this point because we did not make a
recommendation, because EPA was taking action, we would
probably have to look at the effort again. So we would get a
request from you that says go back in and see how this system
is working. We would be more than happy to do that.
Mrs. Napolitano. Or if it is working.
Mr. Gomez. The one thing that I just wanted to add which
has not been brought up, and I think it is important to
mention, the issue of nutrient runoff, and that is in the work
that we did as we talked to stakeholders, they told us about an
issue that really is not addressed by the GLRI, and that is the
issue of inadequate stormwater and wastewater infrastructure
that leads to runoff.
Mrs. Napolitano. Water treatment plants.
Mr. Gomez. So that is a big area. We refer to it sometimes
as urban runoff. I think it has maybe been referred to, but
that is an area that stakeholders said is key. It contributes
to nutrient runoff, and it's not addressed really by the GLRI.
Obviously, you know, EPA has the State Revolving Funds and
each State then provides money.
Mrs. Napolitano. What would provide the ability to be able
to not control but actually modify how it is being treated and
who is treating it?
Mr. Gomez. So in a lot of cases what happens with this
infrastructure, it is just one pipeline. So in heavy rains, the
overflow just goes into streams, lakes, rivers instead of the
treatment plant. So it is an issue in a lot of places, and you
will probably hear from the second panel, it is an issue that a
lot of cities and towns across the country face.
Mrs. Napolitano. So are you looking at the improvement or
upgrading of the water treatment plants to be able to
accommodate that?
Mr. Gomez. That is one option, yes. So others are----
Mrs. Napolitano. But is that being considered?
Mr. Korleski. So under the GLRI one of the things that we
are focusing on is controlling stormwater runoff through
something called green infrastructure. We do not spend and we
are prohibited from spending GLRI money on hard infrastructure
like wastewater treatment plants.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK.
Mr. Korleski. We cannot do that, but we are very well aware
that stormwater runoff can cause health hazards. You cannot
swim in a beach because of E. coli, whatever the problem may
be. So we have devoted a considerable amount of funds and we
are continuing to focus on this concept of green
infrastructure, which can be as simple as where you have got
runoff running down into a beach area you construct a little--
we would call it a swale, a little ditch. You put plants in it
that absorb the runoff. They filter the runoff so that before
it actually gets into the lake, it has essentially been
filtered and you have captured a lot of the E. coli.
That kind of project we can do, and we have had two rounds
now of what we have called green infrastructure funding, and we
plan to continue.
Mrs. Napolitano. But wouldn't it make sense to be able to
assist the treatment plants to be able to upgrade or expand, to
be able to handle in times when you have exceeding amounts of
rain?
Mr. Korleski. And again, part of the green infrastructure
intent is to capture some of the water before it gets into the
concrete stormwater system. By reducing that amount of
stormwater getting into the system, it can reduce the
likelihood of overflows.
But again, the way GLRI is structured, we can't offer money
to fix or update treatment plants themselves.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK. Well, it might be something you might
want to consider in the future.
Now, you mentioned an issue--I think it was Mr. Kramer--on
quagga mussel infestation. Somebody did. Was it you, Mr.
Korleski?
Quagga mussel, that is very costly to reduce or clean the
intake valves in all the systems that are affected. What have
you found is, how would I say, working to be able to reduce the
impact it has on those intakes?
Mr. Korleski. So, Ranking Member, probably the latest news
is within the past year there has been--I am not recalling the
term--I will call it a ``quaggacide'' or a ``zebracide.'' There
has been essentially a pesticide that has been found to be
effective against Dreissena mussels, which are the quagga and
zebra mussels.
Mrs. Napolitano. The zebra, yes.
Mr. Korleski. And the information thus far shows that it
can have an impact on them without impacting other, for
example, native mussels.
Mrs. Napolitano. Would you send to this subcommittee
information on that? Because I am sure some of our entities
would be glad to know what it is that is successful in that
area.
Mr. Korleski. We would be happy to do so. The one thing I
would point out is that thus far it has only been tried on a
pilot level.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK.
Mr. Korleski. It has only been tried on a pilot level.
Mrs. Napolitano. Now, California has many problems with
water, as you well know, we are facing drought. But are there
any recommendations you have for California?
Mr. Korleski. Ranking Member Napolitano, the only thing I
can say is I think with each passing month and year, whether we
live in California or we live in the Great Lakes Basin, we all
realize that water is precious.
Mrs. Napolitano. Correct.
Mr. Korleski. And it is being recognized as being more
precious, and we have to protect it. Whether it is on one
extreme a drought where we have to do a better job of
conserving water or on the other extreme, you are seeing more
intensive storms dumping a large amount of water in a short
period of time; we have to plan for that.
Mrs. Napolitano. But what I find more interesting is the
partnerships that were forged to be able to make this happen.
So thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Gibbs. I want to thank the panel for coming in today
and sharing your thoughts and expertise, and I think it is in
the report and in our hearing today that collaboration, working
with all of the different agencies, and the private entities,
and, Mr. Gomez, you raised a good point about the hard
infrastructure, the mine sewer overflows and all of that issue,
and we did put in the WRRDA [Water Resources Reform and
Development Act] bill the last time a WIFIA pilot program to
try to help supplement the State Revolving Funds to address the
hard issues.
But also on the green side of things, as a farmer I can
tell you I have seen amazing things happen with buffer strips
and grass waterways. The filtration process in nature is really
amazing, and so there are some things that can be incorporated
that I think make a lot of sense.
I think we know the work that NRCS and all the people who
do that on a voluntary basis, working with all of the farmers
in the agricultural sector out there, is very important, and
moving forward I think we can make some good progress.
So again, thank you for coming in today, and you are
excused, and we will bring up the second panel.
Welcome to the House Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.
Today on our panel 2 we have Mr. Jon Allan. He is the acting
chair of the Great Lakes Commission; the Honorable John
Dickert, the mayor of the city of Racine, Wisconsin; Mr. Ed
Wolking, Jr., the executive director of Great Lakes Metro
Chambers Coalition; Mr. Doug Busdeker, director of the Ohio
AgriBusiness Association; and Mr. Chad Lord, who is the policy
director of Healing Our Waters--Great Lakes Coalition.
Welcome, and, Mr. Allan, the floor is yours.
TESTIMONY OF JON W. ALLAN, CHAIR, GREAT LAKES COMMISSION; HON.
JOHN DICKERT, MAYOR, CITY OF RACINE, WISCONSIN; ED WOLKING,
JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREAT LAKES METRO CHAMBERS COALITION;
DOUGLAS R. BUSDEKER, DIRECTOR, OHIO AGRIBUSINESS ASSOCIATION;
AND CHAD W. LORD, POLICY DIRECTOR, HEALING OUR WATERS--GREAT
LAKES COALITION
Mr. Allan. Thank you, Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member
Napolitano, for holding this hearing today.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative remains a top
priority for the Great Lakes Commission and its member States,
and we appreciate your oversight and your interest in it.
I serve as director of Michigan's Office of the Great
Lakes, but I am here today as chairman of the Great Lakes
Commission. I moved from acting to chair just the other day.
The commission was formed by eight States in 1955 to
provide a common voice on behalf of the eight States on
important Great Lakes issues.
The Great Lakes are a great national treasure and a vital
economic interest. They provide us with multiple benefits, but
most profoundly they constitute the social and cultural
background for nearly 40 million U.S. and Canadian citizens who
live within that basin. The lakes are a significant and growing
component of our regional and national economies.
Restoring and properly caring for the Great Lakes is a
longstanding and a bipartisan priority for our region's
leaders, including my boss, Governor Rick Snyder. The focus has
continued through Democratic and Republican administrations and
enjoys broad-based support among States, tribes, cities,
businesses, industries, and with conservation groups.
The commission and its member States have been deeply
engaged with the GLRI since its inception. The States actually
helped formulate some of the original GLRI focus areas and
State staff are supporting many of the projects and actions
underway either directly on projects or assisting local
partners across each of our States. The States' contributions
are vital to the program's success.
The GLRI is a strong and well-managed program that is
targeting resources at our most serious problems and areas. It
is supported by sound science, and is guided by an action plan
with important performance metrics.
The GLRI has stimulated impressive progress over the past 5
years. Noteworthy highlights include actions to thwart bighead
and silver carp from invading the Great Lakes, targeted
nutrient reductions in watersheds contributing to dangerous
algae blooms, and of course, the cleanups of the AOCs we have
been talking about.
Really one of the most striking impacts, I think, has been
in this area of AOCs, where the GLRI together with State
resources and local resources and capacities is enabling
communities to clear their legacy contamination and to
revitalize degraded waterfronts, transforming them into once
again valuable assets.
Last year we were very proud in Michigan that we were able
to delist two of those AOCs, and it is really not the Federal
Government that I want to think about and the States, but it is
30 years of people in communities that worked hard towards that
end. So I want to recognize how important the communities have
been. It is important, and they feel the benefit of that
progress.
I will say though that it would not have been possible
under any circumstance without GLRI to promote that activity.
Communities have been waiting for decades for this kind of
progress.
While the GLRI predominantly focuses on ecosystem
improvements, it is also generating important cultural, social,
and economic benefits for the region and the Nation and for our
communities and should be recognized and celebrated.
Businesses, jobs, wildlife, and people--people--are returning
to waterfronts across the region that were once written off,
ignored, forgotten about.
Performance metrics really cannot fully capture this
evolution as much as we work towards that end, but it is
profoundly important for local economies and for our quality of
life and really, human well-being.
There is room for improvement, however. You have seen some
of that in our written testimony. The commission's specific
recommendations have been provided there. However, I will just
highlight a few of the following things that we have already
touched on, I believe.
First, we really urge improved coordination, consultation,
engagement with the States. We really see ourselves as more
than just stakeholders. We have sovereign authorities. We have
regulatory responsibilities. We have direct connections to
communities, and really work hand in hand with them and our
Federal partners as well. We see this as collateral
partnerships.
Second, we need to sustain State capacity to support an
effective Federal-State partnership. We need to ensure that
Federal programs are integrated with State priorities and
workplans, and we must maintain State capacity towards that
end.
Third, we must maintain long-term monitoring to assess
progress, success, and as we have heard, to adapt over time.
Finally, we need to better target our nutrient reduction
actions to prioritized watersheds that contribute to the
formation of harmful algae.
While some of that coordination is directly beyond GLRI, it
is in other programs and other Federal programs that can be
aligned with both the Federal and the State interests, and the
States can play a very unique role in helping that coordination
amongst multiple programs.
In conclusion, the commission reiterates two priorities for
Congress: sustained funding for Great Lakes restoration. We
really need to continue the progress that we have seen,
continue the efforts that really have been happening for
decades with great success recently; and ultimately to pass
formal legislation authorizing the GLRI.
The GLRI has generated real progress, progress that would
not have occurred without it and refinements such as the ones
in our testimony can build upon that success. The commission
and its member States urge Congress to support the program, and
we pledge, as States and through the Great Lakes Commission,
our continued partnership towards the restoration of the Great
Lakes.
Thank you.
Mr. Gibbs. Mayor, welcome. The floor is yours.
Mr. Dickert. Mr. Chairman, good morning, and committee
members, good morning. Ranking Member Napolitano, good morning,
and all of you watching in TV land, good morning.
I am Mayor John Dickert, mayor of Racine, Wisconsin. We are
a city between Milwaukee and Chicago on Lake Michigan, about
80,000 folks.
I sit as the vice chair of the Metro Economies Committee
with the U.S. Conference of Mayors and also serve on their
Mayors Water Council. I was the past chair of the binational
Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, and I serve on
Governor Walker's Coastal Management Commission, and was
president of the Urban Alliance in Wisconsin.
What does this all mean? It means I am a little familiar
with water. I am here to testify for the U.S. Conference of
Mayors and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative,
and I ask that the testimony be inserted in the record.
We did have the best tasting water in 2011. Our Blue Wave
Beach has been consistent for 12 years, and USA Today and NRDC
[Natural Resources Defense Council] rated us as one of the top
beaches in the world. So to say the least, we are committed to
water.
We have put our focus on it, and the importance of the
Great Lakes obviously cannot be overstated. As we saw with
Toledo, 20 years ago they were actually rated as the best
tasting water in America.
We just recently had a meeting with them and Mayor Rahm
Emanuel, which we held in Chicago because of the problems that
they had in shutting down water to 500,000 people. When you
don't pay attention to the problems, obviously we can have
dramatic effects.
We are obviously seeing that 20 percent of the freshwater
in the world is from the Great Lakes, and the Conference of
Mayors did a study where only 35 percent of the mayors that
responded knew where their water was coming from in 2020. That
is a sad fact, but the mayors, we spend a lot of money on our
infrastructure and our water. In 2012, we spent $111 billion on
our infrastructure to provide those two. Congress, thankfully,
spent $2 billion. So we thank you for that.
We recognize the importance of infrastructure when 94
percent of the withdrawals that we are taking are for food,
food production, drinking water and energy. That is why GLRI is
so incredibly important. You know when you look at nearly 2,700
projects have been done since this started, this is incredible,
and I have got to tell you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member,
thank you for doing this. Thank you for holding this meeting
and talking about this. It is important to us.
The Conference obviously supports this. We ask and pray
that you break down the silos within the agencies so we can all
work together. We have been doing that. We have been officially
and effectively using your taxpayer dollars because we know how
vital every one of those dollars is.
Closer to home in Racine, we have used GLRI money in a
blending of three projects, one to take a beachfront that was
so polluted you could not even walk on it it smelled so bad,
and turning that beach around making it available to
handicapped and seniors. We then blended it with a road project
where we took the road and took the runoff into an
environmentally friendly, sensitive cleaning, and then cleaned
out our harbor and worked with pervious pavement to provide an
opening for the largest inland fishing tournament in the world.
We do this blending because we know the dollars are
important. We do it because we get peak efficiencies and cost
savings by blending all of this together, and I will tell you
GLRI has been consistently used to leverage multiple partners
in funding because we have redeveloped areas that would have
never been redeveloped without these funds.
We rebuild our cities, and we do them efficiently and
effectively. We are the ground game that you are talking about.
When you are asking who is doing all of the work, well, we are
the ones, and we are here because we know the dollars are
precious.
Mayors have been responsible to protect the public health
and safety of our citizens. That is our job. That is what we
do. So we are prepared to break down the silos, work with you,
create that efficiency and effectiveness, but also that
flexibility.
There is a Native American saying that I wanted to end with
and maybe touch on two other points if we have a second, which
is that we do not inherit the land from our ancestors. We
borrow it from our children. So we ask you to work with us so
that we can create a future for our children that is an amazing
one.
With your permission, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, I
would just like to say I know you have talked about brownfields
in the past, and you have had testimony on it, and I will tell
you that in cities like ours that are industrial, we would not
be able to rebuild our cities and create new growth and a new
economy without it.
So I have leveraged the brownfields funding in my city for
a potential of up to $200 million in growth over the last 5
years.
The last thing is that I know that you are looking at
authorization of this, as mentioned earlier. I hope you do do
that.
The last piece is that I know that the appropriations
language and the EPA section 428 of Senate bill 1645 is
regarding discharges, and I will simply leave it at this
because my time is over. We can control discharges about as
well as we can control weather, and because of that we simply
cannot prepare for all of it.
So we are doing our best, and we look forward to that
conversation, but I hope you will consider that language
carefully.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Wolking, the floor is yours. Welcome.
Mr. Wolking. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Napolitano, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to be here today.
I represent the Great Lakes Metro Chambers Coalition, which
is a group of Midwestern chambers dedicated to the
competitiveness of the Great Lakes trading region, emphasizing
Federal actions that will accelerate our region's economic
comeback. We have an appreciation of the fundamental role of
manufacturing in our region and a tight focus on targeted key
issues especially important to this region.
Together with the Great Lakes Manufacturing Council, we
have pioneered the notion that the binational Great Lakes
region is the third largest economy in the world when you take
the combined State and provincial GDPs [gross domestic
products] together.
More about our agenda and our issues is in this brochure. I
am happy to make that available to the subcommittee with your
leave.
At the center of our region is the Great Lakes. It is a
fundamental transportation artery, as Chairman Gibbs has noted,
but it is also from a different perspective, a defining and
precious geographic asset. It is the most important body of
freshwater in the world. It is critical to the economic well-
being of our region, the social fabric of our region, and the
employment of many thousands of people, and it is key to the
region's and Nation's future.
A critical consideration is whether you can have growth and
economic development and quality environment at the same time,
and it used to be that people thought it was a false choice
between growth and the environment and you had to choose one or
another.
But with technology and processes we have today, we can
have both clean, desirable waterways and economic growth, and
that is often cited by political, business and community
leaders.
Our coalition's Great Lakes-related priorities include what
has been mentioned here before a time or two: the Clean Water
State Revolving Fund, which is very important to the lakes;
prevention of Asian carp; and eradication from the Mississippi
and Ohio watersheds which sit on the doorstep of our region,
and obviously the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative where we
spend much of our time.
The effects of this program, the GLRI, are enormous. More
than 2,500 projects that GLRI has been involved in overall;
over 5,300 miles of U.S. coastland; and 99 percent of the funds
have been obligated.
We have gone over the numbers and the five pillars from
other speakers. I will not belabor those, but those pillars are
very, very important to the region's future.
Some have tried to pin a specific ROI [return on
investment] on this wide-ranging initiative. Our view is that
that takes major time. There is a lot of interrelated,
intricate, hard to quantify moving parts. It is complicated
work, but we are learning. About 10 years ago a Brookings group
calculated an ROI that was about 3\1/2\ to 1. More recently a
Grand Valley State University Muskegon Lake project calculated
an ROI of about 6 to 1.
These are systems approaches, however, and they are hard to
model, but we would say the real key to all of this is that
everybody in our region knows that this is the right thing to
do and that if we stay the course, good things, many good
things, are going to come of this initiative.
It is bringing activity back, and it is vital to
placemaking, which plays such a fundamental role in economic
growth and decisions today.
We support the minimum $300 million annual investment,
which we think is a sensible level in these challenging times.
We heartily support the notion of H.R. 223, the Great Lakes
Restoration Improvement Act, for continuity purposes and to
really solidify this program for the next 5 or so years.
We are very supportive of the EPA's action plan II and
obviously that adds up to being supportive of the fundamental
work that this initiative is accomplishing.
Many things are working in this approach. You can see the
results. That is an important part of it. The multiagency
interdisciplinary approach is key. We can build on this
project, this initiative and gain momentum from our results,
from learning how to work on this together, and also from
engaging more stakeholders.
A question came up, how to do better. Really there are a
few things I would recommend on high-level terms and leave the
details to the experts.
Number one, a formal authorization of H.R. 223 is very
important.
Also, improved consultation, collaboration and coordination
both vertically, up and down between Federal and State
agencies, and local communities as well as across the range of
Federal agencies.
Obviously the measuring and the monitoring systems are key,
and the improvements that are coming in action plan II. The
data, the stories, making everything accessible to all, and
also the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan II,
also very, very important to the future.
And one final comment, thinking about Canada, it is very,
very important to think of our relationship to our neighbor to
the north. They are also the other key stakeholder.
Thank you.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Busdeker, welcome. The floor is yours.
Mr. Busdeker. Chairman Gibbs, Ranking Member Napolitano and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to
be here today.
I am Doug Busdeker of Pemberville, Ohio, in northwest Ohio.
I am employed by the Andersons in Maumee, Ohio. I serve as a
board member of the Ohio AgriBusiness Association, which
represents the Ohio crop nutrient industry, along with grain,
feed, seed and crop protection.
The Andersons, Incorporated, my employer, was founded in
1947 by Harold Anderson and built the first grain elevator in
Maumee, Ohio. Currently I serve as a senior manager for
Northern Farm Centers consisting of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.
I am pleased to be here today to relate the many positive
agricultural activities occurring in the Western Lake Erie
Basin. During my career I have engaged with farmers, engaged as
an agricultural retailer in the region.
Following the large algal bloom that occurred in 2011 in
the Western Lake Erie Basin, many in the agricultural community
recognized that agricultural retailers and farmers would need
to play a bigger role finding solutions to address water
quality challenges. Healthy water, clean, fishable and
drinkable water is important to everyone, including all in
agriculture. We recognize that agriculture must be part of the
solution.
Following the algal bloom of 2011, the Nature Conservancy
partnered with several key agricultural retailers in the
Western Lake Erie Basin to develop the 4R Nutrient Stewardship
Certification Program. This voluntary program was focused on
agricultural retailers since agronomists, certified crop
advisers, sales personnel, and applicators were recognized as
having a strong influence on nutrient use.
Currently 17 agricultural retailers have been certified
representing 1.2 million acres of cropland and 3,200 farmers in
Ohio and Michigan. Another 10 are awaiting confirmation. Since
our program launch on March 18, 2014, a total of 71
agricultural retailers are in the process or have indicated
interest in becoming certified.
The 4R Nutrient Certification Program was founded on the
Fertilizer Institute's 4R Nutrient Stewardship Principles of
the right source, right rate, right time, and right place, and
includes social, economic and environmental BMPs [best
management practices].
SCS Global, a respected independent audit development firm,
was hired to create the 4R Nutrient Stewardship Certification
standard. This standard involves 41 different specific criteria
that are audited to become certified. Many newer BMPs are
already occurring in the Western Lake Erie Basin. Cover crops
of all types are growing in popularity. Equipment manufacturers
are offering several new tillage options to inject crop
nutrients below the surface. Application of gypsum is quickly
being adopted, the sequestered phosphorus reducing dissolved
reactive phosphorus runoff.
Use of nutrient management plans to precisely determine the
required nutritional balance for each crop is common.
Commercial fertilizer nutrients are one of the single largest
expense for traditional growers, and overuse leads to
undesirable financial implications.
Improving soil health resonates with all farmers. There is
still much work to be accomplished, but conservation activities
advance each year. On April 2, 2015, Ohio Governor John Kasich
signed Senate bill 1 into law. Senate bill 1 prohibits manure
and fertilizer application when fields are frozen, snow-covered
or saturated.
In addition, Ohio Senate bill 150, which requires anyone
applying fertilizer on 50 acres or more to become certified,
was signed by the Governor in May 2014.
The Ohio AgriBusiness Association fully supported passage
of both Senate bill 1 and Senate bill 150.
Research has shown that algal blooms in the Western Basin
of Lake Erie are predominantly the result of excess dissolved
reactive phosphorus in our rivers and streams. While the exact
source and why the increasing amounts of DRP [dissolved
reactive phosphorus] is not clearly understood, research has
shown that transport from agricultural land plays a significant
role.
In the 1970s and 1980s, when Lake Erie was in serious
trouble, through research farmers widely adapted new tillage
techniques, such as no-till conservation tillage. These
practices remain in place today and contribute greatly to a
reduction in particulate phosphorus runoff and erosion.
Additional research is needed to identify new BMPs that
support a reduction of dissolved reactive phosphorus during
periods of extreme rainfall. To that end the fertilizer
industry has committed $7 million to establish a 4R research
fund. The goal of the fund is to establish sustainability
indicators and environmental impacts for implementation of 4R
Nutrient Stewardship across America. The fund provides a much
needed resource for the focus on measuring and documenting the
economic, social and environmental impacts of 4R Nutrient
Stewardship.
For the sake of time, I thank you again for this
opportunity to provide you with an update on the many positive
activities and projects occurring in the Western Basin of Lake
Erie as we seek solutions to improve water quality.
We all share the goal of having clean water for many
generations to come.
I would be happy to answer any questions.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
Mr. Lord, welcome. The floor is yours.
Mr. Lord. Members of the subcommittee, thank you for this
opportunity to share our coalition's views with you today.
As you have heard, the Great Lakes are a global resource
with millions depending on their clean water. Yet the lakes
still suffer from a legacy of toxic pollution, invasive
species, harmful algal blooms, and the loss of habitat.
Ten years ago President Bush asked our region to prepare a
comprehensive restoration plan to address these and other
problems. The Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy was
created. Four years later, President Obama proposed the Great
Lakes Restoration Initiative that launched our region on a
restoration path barely imaginable a decade ago.
Because of the GLRI, we have been able to undertake one of
the world's largest freshwater ecosystem restoration projects.
Groups across the region are focusing on public-private
partnerships to clean up toxic hot spots, restore fish and
wildlife habitat, and combat invasive species, partnerships
that may never have come together had it not been for the GLRI.
The GLRI's size and scope means it plays a central, albeit
not the only, role in successfully restoring and protecting the
Great Lakes. The GLRI has accelerated progress and catalyzed
critical restoration action that likely would never have
happened otherwise.
For example, in Duluth, toxic mud from the bottom of
Stryker Bay was removed, making the bay safe to swim in once
more.
The city of Marysville, Michigan, replaced a failing
seawall with a natural sloping shore and wetland providing
valuable fish and wildlife habitat.
The Brickstead Dairy near Green Bay planted cover crops
reducing runoff to improve water quality.
How we are accomplishing this is equally as impressive. The
GLRI is a model for large, landscape-scale restoration. It
ensures the focus remains on the region's highest priorities.
It sought to fix the problem GAO identified all the way back in
2003 that there was inadequate coordination among Federal
agencies.
Now, the EPA quickly converts the funding it receives for
restoration activities by passing it through to other Federal
agencies so they can direct it through their existing
authorized programs at the region's highest needs. The GAO
seemed to recognize these benefits in its most recent report.
It found that Federal agencies had allocated almost all the
GLRI funds that they had received and that it promotes
efficiency and effectiveness by bringing agencies together to
agree on common goals to prioritize restoration work.
In short, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is
working. However, no program is perfect. The GLRI should be
continuously reviewed and updated to reflect the changes to the
lakes, program deficiencies that have arisen or yet to be
addressed, or new threats that have emerged.
So what changes should be made? First, Congress should
remove all doubt that the region is on the right path and
restoration efforts are on track. Pass H.R. 223, the Great
Lakes Restoration Initiative Act. Passing this bill creates
greater certainty for the program and allows everyone to focus
on getting the job done.
Second, we support even greater targeting of GLRI funds in
priority watersheds. However, we expect the GLRI to invest in
all five focus areas and to fund activities in these areas as a
prescription for recovery.
We also want to see more consistency on when requests for
proposals are released each year.
Third, we remain worried that we are not as effective on
larger lakewide scales at monitoring, scientific assessment and
program project evaluation. Generally speaking, our coalition's
members support the integration of monitoring requirements for
projects they are undertaking.
Successful monitoring has assisted HOW [Healing Our Waters]
groups in documenting short- and long-term project successes.
However, it is not clear how comprehensive and systematic
monitoring is and how these local efforts add up to a well-
monitored, scientifically assessed system.
Since the beginning we have been saying that monitoring
requires more GLRI resources than it receives now, and that
those funds be available beyond just a couple of years so we
can track long-term progress. It would also help if this
monitoring stems from a Great Lakes research plan which has yet
to be assembled.
Fourth, buy-in from the Great Lakes community is also
critical to the overall success of the GLRI. Agencies at every
level of Government must talk to the public to help understand
what progress has been made, where efforts should focus next,
and whether the restoration priorities of the Great Lakes
restoration community and, therefore, the GLRI, should change
based on those assessments.
Annual engagement of the non-Federal stakeholder community
leads to better coordination and better alignment of resources
and work at all levels.
To sum up, the Great Lakes restoration investments are
paying off for the environment and economy. The Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative is Government at its best; agencies
working with business, civic and community groups
collaboratively on a common goal. The results are impressive
and underscore why this national effort needs to be authorized
so that we can see the job through to the end. Cutting funding
will only make the job harder and more expensive.
Thank you for inviting me to share our views with you. I am
happy to answer any questions.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you.
I will start off with a question here.
Mr. Allan, in your testimony you describe the need for
increased coordination, consultation and engagement between the
Federal GLRI agencies and the Great Lakes States. Can you give
us examples of how the current efforts by the Federal agencies
in the area are just not enough?
And then are States treated as coequal partners? Can you
just elaborate?
Mr. Allan. Yes, thank you.
It has been subject to our written testimony as well. I
think the States are feeling the necessity to be sort of
engaged in some of the decisionmaking process, not just as the
recipients of the funds, but really a little more upstream in
that process to make sure that we can coordinate as much as we
can with other existing State programs, State resources, and
really at the community level, too, to help be part of that
facilitation.
So I think that is an important aspect. As I said, I think
the program has worked well. A lot of money gets targeted to
the right things, but I think the States would like to see some
further integration sort of upstream in that decisionmaking.
We did receive a letter to our letter to Administrator
McCarthy.
Mr. Gibbs. Are the States involved in the subgroups that we
talked about in the first panel?
Mr. Allan. They have not up to this point, but we have some
commitments from EPA that the States will be included further
in that deliberative process.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes, I think that would be a critical component.
I mean, it is a partnership.
Mr. Allan. Yes.
Mr. Gibbs. States ought to be involved in getting down in
the weeds.
Mayor Dickert, can you explain kind of on that same
question, as a mayor, the relationship of the municipalities
with the Federal Government on this question about the
consultation and involvement?
Mr. Dickert. Well, first of all, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, we have had a great coordination with EPA
region 5. We do not as mayors, at least I do not and most of
the mayors that I know, we do not go out and just ask for money
willy-nilly and just say we want to take all the money without
project coordination and dramatic results.
So the first thing is we work with the EPA and on the
problem areas that we see for the end game, and that end game
is usually not only cleaning up the environment, but providing
that economic benefit as it moves forward, whether it's helping
as business development or overall quality of life issues for
your cities.
The coordination that can go on top of that is the
additional coordination with the State, and when you have got
all three of those players playing in the same sandbox, you
have got some really good things going on. So they can
coordinate their money for efficiency and effectiveness with
the cities and the counties and the Federal Government. It is
the perfect answer.
The issue that we deal with, candidly, is the silos within
the Federal Government that there is no flexibility and that
limits sometimes even the money that you can go after because
it does not fit perfectly into a box.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes, you would think with a grant process that
would help break down some of that, but that is what we need to
work on, I think, in the authorization.
Mr. Dickert. Grants and prioritization, correct.
Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Mr. Busdeker, on the 4R Program you talk
about, nutrients, stewardship, dealing with the right source,
right rate, right time and right place, obviously that is just
plain common sense to me as a farmer. Your statement about
excess nutrient supply costs money, and you cannot hardly do it
especially with today's commodity prices. It is not a smart
thing to do.
Has the GLRI provided any funds to help with your efforts
for the 4R Program?
Mr. Busdeker. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that question.
Not directly for the 4R Certification Program. That has
been funded by industry as well as the folks who become
certified that go through the audit. They have to pay for the
auditing process and so forth.
Mr. Gibbs. Are you seeing with GPS, global positioning
system, and I know my larger green farmer friends, it is in all
their equipment out there, especially in northwestern Ohio,
seeing more farmers moving to more specific placement of
nutrients using GPS? Is that starting to happen or not?
Mr. Busdeker. Well, that is becoming very common. We call
it variable rate technology in terms of application of
nutrients, and I would say that is becoming commonplace. It is
not 100 percent, but it is rapidly progressing forward as the
way to apply nutrients.
Mr. Gibbs. And I think for anybody listening to this or
viewing this, you know, the reason I raise that question is I
think it is important because people do not realize that in any
given field you can have tremendous yield differentials and
fertility levels because the soil does change, you know, across
a 5,800-acre field or whatever.
It helps the farmer's bottom line by getting that nutrient
placed where it is needed and not putting excess on where it is
not needed, and that is where GPS would come in. I think you
would concur with that, right?
Mr. Busdeker. Yes, that is correct. And we have actually
for years, many, many years previously, used one rate across a
field, but today we are breaking this up into individual
management zones based on yields, and that has been occurring
not on all fields, but we are progressing that way. That is
kind of becoming the way of the industry.
Mr. Gibbs. Has the Natural Resources Conservation Service,
are they doing enough? Is there more they can do or what are
your thoughts on that?
Mr. Busdeker. Well, they are doing a lot in the area,
especially with the cover crops and the various things that are
going on. They are a great help, yes.
Mr. Gibbs. OK. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano, I yield to you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Gibbs.
And to that question, Mr. Busdeker, this is all voluntary
if I remember correctly, the farmers utilizing fertilizer that
was being now informed in the way it is being utilized by you.
Do you have data on that?
Do you have any data that shows the trend, the lines of the
application of these nutrients to the land, both commercial and
manure?
Mr. Busdeker. Well, the voluntary part that you have made
mention was the certification program for the agricultural
retailer.
Mrs. Napolitano. It is only about 70 percent certification,
right?
Mr. Busdeker. Well, not 70 percent. We have got I think it
was 17, I believe I said, that were certified agricultural
retailers. Now, that is not farmers. That represents about 1.2
million acres in the Western Basin of Lake Erie and about 3,200
farmers.
But as far as the participation and all in this nutrient
management and so forth, that is a pretty high percentage of
farmers because really our sales and certified crop advisors
provide that information to the grower.
Mrs. Napolitano. Do you have any of that data?
Mr. Busdeker. Specifically I am not sure I understand the
question.
Mrs. Napolitano. The data that shows the trend of the
reliance on the application of the nutrients, commercial and
manure. Are you showing how much it is being utilized?
Mr. Busdeker. Well, we know based on crop production. That
is how we determine how much to apply. It starts with a soil
test. Then we go through the crop production. We determine
yield goals, and then we determine how much nutrient needs to
be applied, which includes livestock waste, if there is
livestock waste, as well as commercial nutrients.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK. Well, could you provide any of that
information to this subcommittee so we know what is happening
and maybe be able to understand a little more?
Mr. Busdeker. Certainly.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, sir.
And several of you have talked about the importance of the
authorization of the GLRI that is in H.R. 223. Mr. Lord does
raise the importance of the reauthorization of the EPA's Great
Lakes National Program Office and also of the Great Lakes
Legacy Act. Both are laws.
Do you agree that these programs also are important for
Congress to reauthorize?
Mr. Dickert. If I may, yes, and the reason why is simply
when we are working at the local level, it is all about
consistency, and if you know, for instance, if you have a
developer coming into a city like ours where you have just done
a brownfield redevelopment and that person, that investor knows
that they are coming in, but they are going to need some
additional EPA work to make that happen, to create that better
riverfront or lakefront, then if there is a consistency in the
program, you know that if you do not get it in the first year,
you can still apply the next year and still try to work through
those to make those blend together.
If there is no consistency, then you do not know if that
money is there. Then you are always battling back and forth to
see if the project is actually going to happen.
So for us at the local level, it is purely the consistency
knowing that the opportunity is there. It allows us to do
longer planning, create more efficiency and make our projects
more effective.
Mrs. Napolitano. Anybody else?
Mr. Allan. I would agree. Having a suite of tools
available, GLRI, Great Lakes Legacy Act, and then having a
Federal agency in this case, EPA, through the Great Lakes
National Program Office, through GLNPO, being able to really
sort of be that voice and really have that set of relationships
develop----
Mrs. Napolitano. So it does have importance.
Mr. Allan. We think it has great importance moving forward.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK.
Mr. Allan. It adds to that clarity and adds to the
collaboration.
Mrs. Napolitano. Anybody else? No?
Well, thank you for that, and, Mayor Dickert, I hate to
bring up the issue of the MS4 [municipal separate storm sewer
system], but that is going to have to be another issue that is
going to affect all communities, and I am sure you know Mary
Ann Lutz.
Mr. Dickert. Oh, all too well.
Mrs. Napolitano. Who is now on my staff doing the MS4 work
with EPA.
Mr. Dickert. Yes, yes.
Mrs. Napolitano. So I would want to be sure that we
communicate that we need to get more of that information so
that EPA does work with the community to ensure that that is
done and that it is not heavyhanded as an unfunded mandate to
our communities.
Mr. Dickert. Right. And candidly, the unfunded mandates
that come down and sometimes the consent decrees that come
down, we are already at the local level working on. We may not
have met necessarily the goal, but I rarely know a mayor who
simply sits back and says, ``Ah, whatever happens happens.''
We are trying to work ahead of everything so that we do not
have to worry about it. So any time that we can get the effort
working together, it is great. It is dealing with the consent
decrees and the mandates. I always tell everybody it is always
better to work together.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, yes, but keep Members of Congress
informed because they do not know anything about the stormwater
issue or many of them are not aware that it is going to be an
unfunded mandate on their communities.
Mr. Dickert. Absolutely.
Mrs. Napolitano. And they are going to be raising holy you-
know-what when it comes down as a mandate.
Mr. Dickert. Yes, absolutely.
Mrs. Napolitano. To Mr. Lord, some have criticized the GLRI
for the pace which expends the funds. Is it not true that these
programs take years to complete and that a more appropriate
measure would be the total number of funds obligated to the
long-term projects?
Mr. Lord. I would agree with that. We see that this is a
region that has winter. The lakes freeze. There is snow cover.
The ability for projects to actually be implemented can take
years just by the vagaries of the weather patterns. I mean we
just do not know.
So using obligations I think is a much better benchmark
than trying to use expenditures or funds.
Mrs. Napolitano. Make more sense?
Mr. Lord. I think it does and I think the GAO report that
came out in 2015 also highlights three or four reasons why
expenditures may take longer and why you may not be seeing
expenditures as quickly as you do the obligation of those
funds.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
A question, Mr. Allan, real quickly. The issue that the
EPA's old reporting system is now replaced by EAGL, have you
seen that system? Have you looked at it?
Mr. Allan. I have not yet. I think it was still in final
testing, and I have not had a chance to take a look at it.
Mrs. Napolitano. Are you being included in being able to
understand how it will be applicable?
Mr. Allan. We will definitely.
Mrs. Napolitano. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Ribble.
Mr. Ribble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mayor Dickert, it is good to have you here. I live up near
Green Bay and had a chance to visit your city on many occasions
in my 35 years that I have been traveling around the country
and stayed as a commercial contractor.
My question for you, and I have got a couple questions for
you if you do not mind, I have heard from the Green Bay Clean
Water Agency as well as read in your testimony your concerns
about the Interior appropriations bill in the Senate.
It sounds a little inconsistent. I wonder if you could help
me navigate the inconsistency when you talk about opposing the
language when they are asking for no discharge. Can you expand
your comments on that a little bit? Because it seems like it is
not consistent with the rest of your testimony.
Mr. Dickert. Sure, and thank you, Mr. Ribble. It is great
to see you again, Congressman Ribble.
When you come down with Senator Kirk's proposal I believe
you are talking about, when you come down with a proposal that
says that you have to eliminate all overflows, there is no
system, and you can ask the city of Houston because I was
talking with our mayor the week that they had their storm
flooding; there is no system in America that is designed for
the complexities of the weather that we are having right now.
If we get 7 inches of rain in Milwaukee, 28 hours later it
will be in Racine, and we will be flooding, and there is
nothing that we can do about it because it is a 500-year event.
So what we are talking about is we are all working, and we
talked about this earlier. I think Congresswoman Norton brought
it up. We are all working at creating methods and systems that
capture stormwater, hold it, clean it, allow it to filter
through the ground, all working to try to prevent those big
500-year events, but it is impossible to do that.
There is no way Houston could have prepared for what
happened with their storm that they had. They were 3 feet under
water. So to simply say that we all have to get to that level,
by the time we get to that level and that 500-year flood
happens, we are probably going to have to have an overflow at
that time.
So what we ask is that we are already working as a city. We
do not have combined sewers. So we are already working as a
city to prevent all of that. We are putting in 2-million-gallon
storage tanks. We are doing all of the work environmentally. To
simply say that we have to do that, that will cost the city of
Racine $700 million for 80,000 people. Sixty-five billion
dollars, I think, is the pricetag for the country for the Great
Lakes region.
It simply is unaffordable. So what I would ask is that we
work together in advance with these communities to find those
best practices and work through those.
Milwaukee is a perfect example. MMSD [Milwaukee
Metropolitan Sewerage District] is working to do different
stormwater systems with their combined sewer to make sure that
that stormwater never even makes it into the system. So we are
trying to do that.
When you look at Green Bay, 1.4 percent of the Lake
Michigan water, 30 percent of the nutrient load into that
areas. You know, there are problems that we are all trying to
work through. We ask that you focus on the big problems and
work with those folks, like Mayor Jim Schmitt in Green Bay, and
try to help them out.
We are trying to do our own at the local level to prevent
this from coming in the first place, but I will tell you when a
500-year flood hits, you pray. You pray hard because there is
not a heck of a lot else you can do besides that.
Mr. Ribble. I thank you for expanding your comments that
you had in writing here.
I want to also go a little bit further in your testimony.
You mentioned the use of porous pavements and things like that
in one of the projects. Has your city gone to the point of
modifying your building codes to a 21st-century standard
requiring porous pavements, parking lots, sidewalks, vegetative
roofing?
Mr. Dickert. Right.
Mr. Ribble. Things like that that would actually bring our
construction practices into the 21st century as far as managing
the water runoffs during high rain events.
Mr. Dickert. Absolutely. We do, and we work through a
series of best practices within the U.S. Conference of Mayors
and the Great Lakes groups to do that. We have actually gone
above and beyond that.
That project that I talked about earlier where we have the
boat ramp, the harbor and the road, all of those were done with
environmental sensibility to not only do porous pavement, but
to then take stormwater management and manage it through the
process of plants and things like that to preprocess the water.
We have the system that you talked about earlier where the
stormwater comes off and it goes through five tiers of
environmental purifying before it even gets to the lake. We do
all of that.
The thing that we are doing on top of that because as
mayors we have to stay efficient and then we have to continue
to be efficient. We actually go to a road system where once we
do stormwater and water and you put the cement on top of the
road, utilities have the right to cut that road up the next
day. We actually work now with our roads where we bring
everybody in ahead of time, all the utilities, including water
and stormwater, so that when we do a road, all those five
layers are done so that when that cement cap goes on top, that
road is not going to be touched for 20 years.
Those types of processes in long-term planning, to the
issues, Mr. Chairman, that you brought up earlier about whether
those funds and Congresswoman Napolitano talked about whether
that consistency of those funds are there; that allows us to
plan all of that out so that we can create all of that
efficiency so we can hold back all of those items.
So we do that every day. The best practices we get from our
colleagues. Mayor Daley said that, you know, the one thing you
do as a mayor is steal, and I said as a Catholic that is tough
for me, but we do. We steal each other's ideas and we blend
them into what we are doing.
Mr. Ribble. And I think it is really important because I
often read language like is in your testimony where you say,
``I cannot emphasize enough that we all must be fully engaged
and fully committed to water issues if we are going to succeed.
You cannot do this halfway.''
I hear that a lot, but then when you do the deep dive on
building codes, you see that they are not really fully
committed. I would also suggest that to Mr. Wolking for the
chambers to also be taking a look at how corporate America can
be a partner in this issue as well.
It has to be all of us participating as agriculture, in
dealing with the nonpoint source, endpoint source. If we all
would actually move into the 21st century, we could preserve
this very important chain of water.
So thank you very much for being here, and with that I
yield back.
Mr. Dickert. Thank you.
And if I may, Mr. Chairman, not just in the ordinances, but
in the bidding. Your bidding has to include that as well.
Thank you.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Davis, do you have any questions? Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I apologize for the side conversation there.
And thank you, Mr. Rokita.
First off, witnesses, we really appreciate you being here.
My first question is for Mr. Allan.
You wrote in your testimony that Federal agencies are not
coordinating, consulting and engaging with the States as well
as they could or should. What are some ways that the Federal
agencies need to treat the States more as coequal partners in
implementing the GLRI program?
Mr. Allan. Good question.
Mr. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Allan. So we did pose that to the EPA in our letter to
Gina McCarthy, and she has written us back just as of a day or
so ago, and we can enter that letter into the record as a
response.
And we do agree with it. She is going to invite us or open
up additional quarterly discussions with the States, with the
Regional Working Group. We think this will help really start to
facilitate more sort of that front-end planning than just, you
know, here are the priorities, here are the projects, here is
where we have to go.
So as I mentioned before, we are really looking to move
that upstream a little bit more in the decision process.
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Mr. Davis. Great. Thank you.
And, Mayor--Racine, Wisconsin, right?
Mr. Dickert. Yes.
Mr. Davis. Who is your Member of Congress in Racine?
Mr. Dickert. Congressman Ryan.
Mr. Davis. Who?
Mr. Dickert. Congressman Paul Ryan. You might know him.
Mr. Davis. Not ringing a bell. No, no.
Mr. Dickert. He is a good looking, tall guy. You should get
to know him.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Davis. No, Paul is great, and please do tell him that
we were giving him some flak here in the T&I Committee.
Mr. Dickert. I hope to see him in a little bit. I will
remind him.
Mr. Davis. Yes. Let him know we do have other committees
here besides his vaunted Ways and Means. OK?
Mayor, I have been a supporter of public-private
partnerships. Mr. Lord mentioned more public-private
partnerships in his testimony. I think they are a good means of
leveraging and coordinating resources.
As a matter of fact, my colleague, Cheri Bustos, and I,
along with our Senators from Illinois, ensured that there was a
provision in the WRRDA package to encourage more public-private
partnerships.
Do you see a role for P3s [public-private partnerships] in
the Great Lakes restoration projects?
And if so, how can that role lead to further success? And
what idea may you have to get the Federal agencies past their
hesitance of doing them?
Mr. Dickert. Well, first of all, I think P3s are
imperative. We use them on a regular basis because the fact is
many of these companies, large and small, have the expertise
that you need.
If there is one thing you learn early as a mayor, there is
no book on how to do the job. So you have to go out and find
the organizations, the companies that actually can provide the
work, especially when you are in emergency modes to finish and
help you with these.
I think P3s are not only imperative, but I think it is part
of everything that we do. How can we encourage that and move it
forward? I still think that the blending of the local
governments, the State priorities and the Federal priorities
should be matched up a little bit more. I think that we can get
better leverage.
The other thing I would suggest is that--and I think the
EPA has allowed for this already. Regionalization of project
planning, so in other words, if you have two or three
municipalities in the same area and especially in the Maumee
Valley in Ohio, looking at solving that bigger, very complex
situation, allowing projects to be worked together by one
company, if there is one company that is very good at what they
are doing, allow them to work on three projects at the same
time to help blend the efficiencies and savings of that effort.
So those are a couple of things that I would suggest.
Mr. Davis. So you are saying the Federal agencies should
let local municipalities walk and chew gum at the same time.
Mr. Dickert. We would love that.
Mr. Davis. Yes, thank you. We would, too.
Mr. Busdeker, hey, thank you for being here, too. I have a
question for you. Is the NRCS doing enough to support the
agricultural community to implement conservation and best
management practices to reduce nonpoint source pollution?
Yes or no?
Mr. Busdeker. Yes and no. They could do more. We could
always do more. There is a lot of work to be done. We are not--
--
Mr. Davis. That was my next question. What more should they
be doing?
Mr. Busdeker. Well, certainly cover crops are a big piece
of what we are doing out here today; control structures on
tile, and even maybe a little bit off to the side here,
research is another big piece. We need to do more research on
this edge of field work so we know where this dissolved
reactive phosphorus is really coming and what BMPs can help
mitigate it.
Mr. Davis. Excellent. We actually just had a research
hearing in my other committee. I had another hearing which is
why I was late for this one in the House Committee on
Agriculture, and in our hearing yesterday and the subcommittee
I chair focused on agricultural research and working with our
land-grant universities.
If you see a way to partner with our land-grants and with
other institutions within the agricultural community to get
more research dollars towards conservation, please do let me
know.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the second I have
left.
Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Rokita.
Mr. Rokita. I thank the chairman, and I appreciate the
witness testimony today and also from the first panel as well.
I give my apologies. Today in three committees and starting
yesterday actually where we are getting ready to employ a
concept called reconciliation, and the Workforce Committee just
did its part of the reconciliation process for this year that
originated in the Budget Committee that I am also a part of. So
it was a busy day for a lot of us. No excuse, but just want you
to know where I was before this.
And even though I was distracted by the gentleman from my
left and though I associate with him regularly, I was able to
hear a little bit of your testimony, and so I would like to
focus my questions I think mostly, and no offense to anyone
else, but I want to focus my questions directly to Mr. Lord if
that is OK.
Reading your statement last night, you talk about the
number of jobs that can be created on the Great Lakes due to
these restoration projects. I am from Munster, Indiana, Lake
County. So we are right up there, grew up there, and I would
like to think I appreciate the cultural value, the economic
value, the environmental value of those lakes.
But this committee and this subcommittee is new to me. I
want to understand more when you say this will create jobs. Do
you mean to imply that these restoration efforts are going to
go on in perpetuity or is there some day when this ends,
therefore technically making the jobs temporary?
Yes, that is a trick question.
Mr. Lord. I would suggest that that day is a while away. So
the jobs would be fairly permanent. We have a lot of work that
needs to be done in the Great Lakes region to address the
decades of problems that have been building.
While we have been able to make progress in cleaning up our
areas of concern, for example, we still have 27 that remain
unattended and need to have more focus. While we have been able
to make some progress in creating new habitat and wetlands, we
have had a significant amount of----
Mr. Rokita. So in your mind, when is enough enough? When
would you be satisfied definitionally that the restoration has,
in fact, occurred? When these 20 projects are done?
Mr. Lord. Well, I do not know if it is as simple as that.
That is a very good question, but it is a very difficult
question at least for me to answer.
Mr. Rokita. You have got 2 minutes.
Mr. Lord. Well, I will do my best. I think I don't know
when we will be done. I think some of the indicators that we
would like to see that would help suggest when we may be close
to being finished with our restoration activities would be for
a system of lakes and connecting channels that are resilient,
that can accommodate the stresses that we have put on them
through the legacy of toxic pollution or habitat loss or the
introduction of new invasive species or the impacts that we are
seeing from climate change.
So we would have a better sense as to knowing that we will
be closer to being finished with this project when the reaction
of the system is such that it is able to adapt more effectively
to the changes that we are asking the system to make.
Mr. Rokita. Thank you.
Would anyone else like to jump in my line of questioning in
terms of response? Mr. Allan?
Mr. Allan. I would, and I will direct it in one hand
specifically to the Area of Concern Program. That is one of the
big pieces of GLRI.
Communities have set out very real markers for what they
see on all the different beneficial use impairments. When they
meet the next threshold to be able to remove that and if you
remove all of the beneficial uses, then you can delist the area
of concern. So that one has very real and definitive markers of
success: habitat replacement, loss of habitat, fish,
consumption of fish, all of those pieces.
And we see ``done'' in the case of GLRI and under Area of
Concern Programs specifically when each of those markers are
met and the community essentially agrees with the progress
made.
So as principals and actions and projects take place in
those communities, as we continue to delist the use
impairments, whatever that is, once those are agreed to and
acknowledged by the community, we can then move on to other
things.
Mr. Rokita. Anyone else?
Mr. Allan. If we collect enough of those, then the
community can celebrate its success.
Mr. Rokita. Anyone else for 10 seconds?
Mr. Wolking. If I may, yes. I think you need to understand,
too, that getting there gets us to a point where we can say we
have accomplished these objectives, but we also have to be able
to sustain, and these are changing ecological and environmental
systems. So can we also sustain and can we also then find there
are other needs as well?
We do not know.
Mr. Rokita. Thank you. My time has expired. Appreciate it.
Mr. Gibbs. I have one question. I want to kind of finish up
with Mr. Wolking.
In your written testimony, I do not think you highlighted
this in your verbal testimony, but you talk about the 5,300
miles of shoreline and the complex work and we learn as we go.
Then you talk about the second major phase of the plan, 2015 to
2019, and the introduction of science-based adaptive
management, improvements in prioritization, and better
reporting on measures of progress and their impact.
I see you have Brookings Institution and Grand Valley State
trying to get cost-benefit analysis and trying to quantify
where we are headed.
It is hard to do, but do you want to elaborate a little bit
on trying to monitor the impacts, the economic impacts for the
benefit?
Mr. Wolking. I think that is the most difficult part of
this whole process when we are talking about measuring in
metrics. I think it is easier to measure the environmental
impact and results, but then when you start talking about,
well, what economic activity proceeds from that, it is a lot
more complicated than saying we are putting a machine on the
floor that can put out a certain number of parts at a certain
estimated cost, and we are borrowing X funds at X percent.
You know, this is different, and it would seem to me that
there is a great opportunity here if we stay the course to
observe as we have finished projects and we have attained
results to watch what happens in those communities, which
partly will be as a result of what has been accomplished with
the initiative.
Again, you are talking about people and systems and
environment, and they all come together. There are many things
that go into the soup, but clearly I think as we get more time
under our belts observing what we have been able to accomplish
and observe what happens in the communities as we go forward I
think we will be able to see measurable results. That can at
least partly be attributed and tied back to the initiative.
It is the level of activity, I think. That is a great word
to keep in mind. As these things happen and are completed, you
are going to see activity as a result in those areas, whereas
before you were seeing no activity.
Mr. Gibbs. That is a good point to end this hearing, I
think.
I want to thank you all for coming in.
Do you have one more point? Go ahead.
Mrs. Napolitano. Just one very quickly, and that is to Mr.
Lord.
Mr. Rokita touched on the job creation issue, and while it
has been 5 years and you have already created the jobs, it will
hopefully be another 5 years. How long do you think this can
continue to create the jobs and will those jobs change as new
technology and as improvements are done?
What do you see will happen, the challenges that may be
ahead?
Mr. Lord. Well, it depends on the type of jobs that we are
talking about, but some of the things that we have seen, some
of the results that we have seen as a result of the Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative through some of the habitat
improvements, for example, very much sustain the kinds of
outdoor jobs that we would like to see in the region, jobs for
folks that sell the guns and the ammo and the fishing hooks and
the rest of it to the people who are going into Michigan or
Ohio or any of the other Great Lake States in order to enjoy
the outdoors.
As I also noted, the restoration project that we have
undertaken while we are 5 years in, we have got a long way to
go.
Mrs. Napolitano. How long do you think that might have to
go?
Mr. Lord. I cannot answer that question, ma'am. It is a
very----
Mrs. Napolitano. Three decades, four decades?
Mr. Lord. These are large lakes with a lot of problems, and
we have, I think, made a very significant and valiant effort
and a lot of progress to date in cleaning them up, but as
noted, we have got 27 AOCs, areas of concern, that remain, and
they are very complicated projects in terms of getting those
finished.
So I think the bottom line is there is a lot more work, but
the benefits, as Mr. Wolking was highlighting, are that when we
clean up these areas of concern, for example, these communities
that have had this anchor around their necks in terms of this--
it's gone, and so you can see the development coming, the
highrises or whatever they may want to do in these newly
cleaned up places.
We have begun to see some of that happen, and so that is
the kind of excitement that the GLRI can bring and I think will
continue to bring as we make more progress in the future.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Gibbs. Well, again, I want to thank you for coming in.
I think this was quite an interesting discussion, and
hopefully we can move forward with the formal authorization and
reliable, sustainable funding.
We had a hearing just recently on brownfields, Mayor. That
is a key issue. We have made a lot of progress, sir, I think,
in integrated permitting and planning, I think you highlighted
that. We have had hearings on that, and are trying to work with
the U.S. EPA to allow municipalities like yourselves to do
integrated permitting so that you can address what your needs
are, which might be different than the needs in Cleveland, for
example.
And so thank you all for coming in to highlight the
importance of the Great Lakes to economic stability and job
creation in the region.
Thank you very much, and this concludes our hearing.
[Whereupon, at 12:27 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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