[Senate Hearing 116-217]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]






                                                       S. Hrg. 116-217

                      IMPROVING AMERICAN ECONOMIC
                     COMPETITIVENESS THROUGH WATER
                        RESOURCES INFRASTRUCTURE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                              COMMITTEE ON
                      ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS

                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works






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               COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
                             FIRST SESSION

                    JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming, Chairman
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma            THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware, 
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia      Ranking Member
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota           BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
MIKE BRAUN, Indiana                  BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota            SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska                 JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas               KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi            CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
RICHARD SHELBY, Alabama              EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
JONI ERNST, Iowa                     TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
                                     CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

              Richard M. Russell, Majority Staff Director
              Mary Frances Repko, Minority Staff Director  
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
              
                            C O N T E N T S

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                           SEPTEMBER 18, 2019
                           OPENING STATEMENTS

Barrasso, Hon. John, U.S. Senator from the State of Wyoming......     1
Cardin, Hon. Benjamin., U.S. Senator from the State of Maryland..     3
Carper, Hon. Thomas R., U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware..     4

                               WITNESSES

O'Toole, Patrick, President, Family Farm Alliance................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................     8
Sanders, Jamey, Board Member, Associated General Contractors Of 
  America And Vice President, Choctaw Transportation Company.....    21
    Prepared statement...........................................    24
Brockbank, Derek, Executive Director, American Shore And Beach 
  Preservation Association.......................................    31
    Prepared statement...........................................    33

                          ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Prepared Statement of Hon. James M. Inhofe, U.S. Senator from the 
  State of Oklahoma..............................................    56
Memorandum for the Record, Subject: Damages Prevented by Corps 
  Projects, Hurricane Sandy......................................    58
Scientific Reports, The Value of Coastal Wetlands for Flood 
  Damage Reduction in the Northeastern USA.......................    61
The economic value of America's beaches - a 2018 update..........    73
Increasing Beneficial Use of Dreged Material.....................    84

 
  IMPROVING AMERICAN ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS THROUGH WATER RESOURCES 
                             INFRASTRUCTURE

                              ----------                              


                     WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

                                       U.S. Senate,
                 Committee on Environment and Public Works,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m. in 
room 406, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John Barrasso 
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
    Present: Senators Barrasso, Carper, Capito, Braun, Boozman, 
Ernst, Cardin, Whitehouse, Gillibrand, Van Hollen.

           OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO, 
             U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF WYOMING

    Senator Barrasso. Good morning. I call this hearing to 
order.
    Today we will be holding a hearing on improving American 
economic competitiveness through water resources 
infrastructure. Today's hearing is the start of the important 
process to pass bipartisan water infrastructure legislation 
during this 116th Congress. We begin that process taking 
testimony from the stakeholders who are most impacted.
    The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has 
established a tradition of working in a bipartisan fashion when 
it comes to passing much-needed infrastructure legislation. 
Just before the August recess, this committee unanimously 
passed the most substantive highway legislation in American 
history. America's Transportation Infrastructure Act of 2019 is 
a significant step in improving our Nation's roads and our 
bridges. It will grow the economy, improve road safety, 
expedite important projects, and enhance the quality of life 
for all Americans.
    Roads and bridges are critical to our economy and our way 
of life. Water infrastructure is also critical. That is why we 
are here today. America's water infrastructure helps move goods 
across the Country, and prevent catastrophic floods and 
disasters. It provides clean and abundant water to millions of 
American communities, farms, ranches, and small businesses. 
This is why we must continue the tradition of passing water 
resources legislation every 2 years.
    In 2018, this committee passed America's Water 
Infrastructure Act. This bipartisan legislation passed the 
Senate by a vote of 99 to 1--almost unheard of today--and it 
was signed into law by President Trump. The Water 
Infrastructure Act, when fully implemented by the Army Corps 
and the EPA, will create new jobs, grow the economy, provide 
more water storage, protect lives and property, and cut red 
tape. The bill is also the most significant drinking water 
legislation that we have had in decades.
    However, work still needs to be done. This spring, extreme 
rainfall and rapid snowmelt contributed to widespread flooding 
along the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Arkansas Rivers. 
Pictures of flooded farm fields and destroyed Midwestern 
communities filled the news. American farmers suffered billions 
of dollars in damages. According to the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture's Farm Service Agency, agricultural producers 
reported over 19.4 million acres of crops were not able to be 
planted in 2019, the highest level since the agency began 
releasing reports in 2007.
    In addition, arid Western States still grappled with water 
supply issues. For example, on July 17th of this year, an 
irrigation tunnel collapsed near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, 
affecting over 100,000 acres of farmland between Wyoming and 
Nebraska. This tunnel collapse blocked a vital artery that 
provides water for numerous farming and ranching communities in 
Wyoming and in Nebraska.
    In some cases, these irrigation systems are over 100 years 
old. More needs to be done to assess the health of these 
irrigation systems, so we can avoid such collapses and 
widespread crop failures in the future. While the Army Corps 
does not own these systems, I believe the Army Corps can play a 
vital role in assessing the State of this aging infrastructure.
    In addition, water storage remains a serious concern for 
Western States, whose ranchers rely on water to grow alfalfa 
and to raise cattle. Congress no longer authorizes the 
construction of giant water storage reservoirs, due in large 
part to their high cost and the lengthy permitting process.
    However, working with the States, I believe we can help 
build smaller scale storage reservoirs, which can give relief 
to our ranching and our farming communities. We must ensure our 
ranchers, farmers and communities get the water that they need.
    I look forward to working with the members of this 
committee on a bipartisan basis to enact new water 
infrastructure legislation in 2020. The process toward passing 
that bill begins today.
    I have gotten a call from Senator Carper. He is unavoidably 
detained for a short period of time. But he will be here to 
help with the committee momentarily.
    So we are going to turn to the witnesses, but before we 
hear from our witnesses, I want to just take a moment to 
introduce a very special friend and a long-time friend, Pat 
O'Toole. I have had the pleasure of knowing Pat for many years 
now. He and his family are sheep and cattle ranchers in 
southern Wyoming, along the Little Snake River.
    Pat has served as the president of the Family Farm 
Alliance, an organization dedicated to advocating for farmers, 
ranchers, and irrigation districts in western States since 
2005. He has been a board member since the 1990's.
    Pat is also a fellow former member of the Wyoming State 
legislature, having sat in the Wyoming House of Representatives 
from 1986 to 1992, after which he served as a member of the 
Clinton administration's Western Water Policy Review Advisory 
Committee.
    Now, I know Pat to be a tireless advocate for the 
agriculture community in Wyoming, and a leader when it comes to 
western water storage policy. He knows just how important water 
supply and storage is to our State's communities. It is the 
cornerstone of our economy and everything we do in Wyoming.
    So, Pat, it is a privilege to welcome you as a witness 
again today before the Environment and Public Works Committee, 
and I want to thank you for traveling all the way from Wyoming 
to be with us today in Washington. Thank you.
    Senator Cardin, Senator Carper has been delayed for a few 
moments, and he asked that we proceed. I don't know if you 
would like to make any comments before I turn to the witness.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN CARDIN, 
            U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

    Senator Cardin. Mr. Chairman, let me first thank you for 
holding this hearing. Clearly, the Water Resources Development 
Act is critical legislation. This committee has a proud 
tradition of Democrats and Republicans working together. I have 
a great deal of confidence in Chairman Barrasso and Ranking 
Member Carper, and Chairman Capito and myself as chair and 
ranking on the overall committee and the Infrastructure 
Committee, that we will act, again, in the best interest of our 
Country and pass a bipartisan bill.
    The only point I want to make is that WRDA is important for 
our environment. I could tell you a long story about the 
Chesapeake Bay and how important that is, but the committee has 
already heard this two dozen times.
    Senator Barrasso. No, no, go ahead.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cardin. The WRDA bill has helped us deal with the 
water quality of the Bay, which is critically important to the 
iconic way of life, and to the economy of Maryland. One 
trillion dollars of the economy our of region is based upon the 
Chesapeake Bay.
    So I could talk about the economic issues, the Port of 
Baltimore. The Port of Baltimore ranks ninth as far as foreign 
value of imports, No. 1 role for auto and trucks in the 
Country.
    So when you look at WRDA, we have come up with innovative 
ways, including the environmental restoration of Poplar Island, 
mid-Bay, which is not only the site where we can put dredge 
material, which is always challenging, in order to keep our 
harbors at the depth they need to be, but is also an 
environmental restoration, so it is a win-win situation.
    It is that type of innovation that is coming out of this 
committee, almost always by unanimous votes, that help our 
environment and help our economy.
    So I just really wanted the committee and the witnesses to 
know, we have a proud tradition, we want to continue that 
tradition. We have a great deal of confidence in our leadership 
of this committee.
    And I see that I have talked long enough so that Senator 
Carper could get here.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Barrasso. Senator Carper.


          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS R. CARPER, 
            U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE

    Senator Carper. I thank my colleagues for saving my seat, 
and to both of you for the good work, the Chairman of the full 
committee and the chairman of the relevant subcommittee, we are 
delighted to work with you and the members of your staff.
    Welcome to our guests today. We look forward to hearing 
from each of you. I want to thank our Chairman for holding an 
important oversight hearing to kick off our discussions on the 
next Water Resources Development Act.
    I am proud of the bipartisan work that Senator Cardin 
referred to that we are able to use and employ in accomplishing 
last Congress on water infrastructure, including significant 
reforms through the Army Corps of Engineers and the first 
reauthorization of the Drinking Water Safe Revolving Loan Fund 
in 22 years. I hope that this hearing will provide us with some 
important insights as we work to develop the bill in this 
Congress, and I look forward to hearing testimony from all of 
our stakeholders here today and others that are not here today.
    In the drafting process, the last Water Resources 
Development Act, also known as AWIA, along with our staffs, 
Chairman Barrasso and I heard repeatedly that the Office of 
Management and Budget micromanages the Corps of Engineers, and 
that there had been a troubling lack of transparency with 
respect to OMB's Corps budgeting and project selection process. 
OMB relies upon a method for prioritizing projects that fails 
to capture all of a project's benefits. This method, called the 
benefit-to-cost ratio, considers only a project's national 
economic benefits. When a Corps project provides important 
regional and local economic benefits, like flood reduction or 
ecosystem restoration, these benefits are often not considered 
by OMB when it determines which projects should receive 
funding. This means the budget and work plans regularly fail to 
include the construction of projects that would address 
critical needs in small, rural, and tribal communities.
    OMB is also a little bit of a black box, and the agency 
rarely, if ever, discloses how projects are evaluated, raising 
serious questions about which projects will make it into the 
final Army Corps work plan each year. This is also the case for 
projects that receive supplemental appropriations for damages 
sustained during a flood or storm event.
    Last Congress, we made strides in improving transparency 
with the Corps budgeting process. It is my hope that we can 
continue to build on that important progress.
    Millions of Americans across our Country really do rely on 
Army Corps projects, in my State, and I think in the States of 
everybody who is a member of this committee. These projects 
help us safely navigate our waters, stay safe from flooding and 
storm damage, and lead to benefits of healthy aquatic 
ecosystems and marsh land. We need more investments in Corps 
projects, not less.
    In the mid-1980's, though, Federal funding for new project 
construction and major rehabilitation began to steadily decline 
and it has never recovered. As a result, we now face a backlog 
of projects and maintenance needs, and most of the Corps' 
infrastructure has now exceeded its useful life span.
    The most recent American Society of Civil Engineering 
Infrastructure report card tells an unsettling story. Our 
Country's dams, our levees, our inland waterways, receives a 
grade of D, as in dismal, representing a cumulative 
construction and deferred maintenance backlog of more than $100 
billion.
    Clearly, our committee has important work to do in this 
regard, and frankly, so does this Congress, and so does the 
Administration. I think we are up to it though, and I look 
forward to working with all of our colleagues and the members 
of their staffs, to deploy the green as well as the gray 
infrastructure projects that our economy needs.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this 
important hearing. Again, welcome to our witnesses. Thank you.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Senator Carper.
    We have three witnesses today: Pat O'Toole, the president 
of the Family Farm Alliance; we have Mr. Jamey Sanders, who is 
vice president of the Choctaw Transportation Company; and we 
have Mr. Derek Brockbank, who is the executive director of the 
American Shore and Beach Preservation Association.
    So I want to welcome all of you and remind all of you that 
your full written testimony will be included as part of our 
hearing record. So I ask that you please try to keep your 
statements to 5 minutes, so that will give us some time for 
questions. We are going to have votes starting at 11, and we 
hope to be able to work through all the questions before we 
have to leave for the vote.
    With that, I look forward to hearing each of your 
testimonies, beginning with Mr. O'Toole. Please proceed.

                 STATEMENT OF PATRICK O'TOOLE, 
                PRESIDENT, FAMILY FARM ALLIANCE

    Mr. O'Toole. Thank you very much, Senator Barrasso, Senator 
Carper, members of the committee. I can't tell you how honored 
I am to be here. I have spent my life trying to figure out how 
these systems work, particularly in water. I have written 
testimony that is quite extensive, but I would like to just 
tell you some personal stories.
    Our family started ranching in 1881, when my wife's great-
grandfather trailed horses from the Mexican border to the 
Colorado-Wyoming border. Our ranch is in a valley that the 
State line crosses 31 times, which makes us a Colorado-Wyoming 
valley, so we have learned water policy issues in both States, 
which sometimes they are the same and sometimes they are very 
different.
    But we have a lot of experience in that, and luckily for 
us, we have leadership at our conservation district level that 
is world-class visionary, about how we get that resilience that 
is going to take us to get to the future. Today on our ranch, 
there is a project that will be the final piece of a trout 
passage for the entire watershed, we will be trout-passage 
friendly. We work with Trout Unlimited on it. It starts in the 
Forest Service and ends up on private land. We have done that 
for 20 years. This is the last project to do that.
    What it did was what I call integrated our irrigation and 
fishery, so not only are we having a great success story for 
the fish part, but it has made the irrigation systems 
throughout the valley much more efficient and much more 
critically helpful for us as ranchers and farmers.
    A year ago, we were finishing the driest year in the 
history of the Yampa River. The Yampa River is the headwaters 
of the Colorado River. And it was brutal. We got no second 
cutting of alfalfa in our family. It was followed by the second 
worst winter I have ever experienced. So the $61 hay that I 
would have put up if I would have had the water was $270 to 
feed my livestock because of the brutal winter, followed by one 
of the top five wettest years that we have ever had in the 
springtime.
    All of those things have an economic reality to them. Our 
community built storage years ago that I was involved in with 
the Wyoming legislature. Those people at the lower end of the 
valley with storage got that second cutting. Their fisheries 
survived; their process was still intact.
    We are working now on another project in the State of 
Wyoming, the upper part of the valley, in coordination with the 
State of Colorado. We have unanimous support from their upper 
district. And it is about working together.
    I think one of the things that is so important, this 
committee is called the Environment and Public Works Committee. 
This is the appropriate committee to deal with what I consider 
to be the crisis of the future. I have this saying that I 
believe: Mother Nature always gets the last at bat. We saw that 
in the last 12 months of the incredible volatility. When you 
talk to farmers and ranchers, it is volatility that is the 
issue that they talk about.
    I visited with a lot of people about this testimony, 
because I think this issue is so important. A friend of mine, 
Jim Faulstich, from South Dakota, said that his Governor said 
the 1st of September was the biggest disaster in the State of 
South Dakota. They then had a 12-inch rain after that. And I 
said, what are you going to do, Jim? He said, probably going to 
have to sell our cows. I saw a picture last night of relatives 
in Nebraska who went through flooding all last year, and the 
picture was them putting up what hay they were able to put up. 
The bales were half sunk in another flood yesterday.
    Understanding this volatility issue is critical. Next week, 
I will be on a horse taking cattle off the national forest. The 
national forest is not functioning correctly. There is a study 
that is mentioned in my testimony of 160,000-acre feet of water 
isn't going into the Platte River system because the forest 
isn't functioning. It is so critical that we address these 
issues on scale.
    In my world, I talk about, you can't solve a million-acre 
problem with a hundred-acre solution. We have to start thinking 
at a scale, and whether it be on the Missouri River system or 
the Platte River system, the Colorado River system, we have run 
out of easy answers. The event that Senator Barrasso talked 
about in Wyoming was on the Platte River system that was built 
during the Roosevelt Administration, not Franklin. We are 
talking about century-old infrastructure that has serviced us 
well. The 104,000 acres that weren't able to be produced in 
Wyoming is an incredible, devastating event. And yet its 
infrastructure was over 100 years old.
    So I think our challenge us rejuvenating through this 
committee, the appropriate committee, the ability to use our 
infrastructure correctly. A thing that jumped out at me really 
quickly was the fact that half of our fruit now comes from 
overseas. We have lost a million acres of production in the 
last 5 years in California, another million expected in the 
next 5 years. We have to realize how important our 
infrastructure is, so that America produces for itself, and so 
that ranchers and farmers and rural America have a future that 
they can look forward to.
    My grandkids are the sixth generation on our ranch. They 
all ride and rope and do all those things. If we don't 
understand how critical it is that our water infrastructure be 
taken care of, they are not going to have the opportunity that 
I hope that they have.
    Thank you very much for this opportunity.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. O'Toole follows:]  
    
    
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you for your testimony, Pat.
    Mr. Sanders.


 STATEMENT OF JAMEY SANDERS, BOARD MEMBER, ASSOCIATED GENERAL 
      CONTRACTORS OF AMERICA AND VICE PRESIDENT, CHOCTAW 
                     TRANSPORTATION COMPANY

    Mr. Sanders. Chairman Barrasso, Ranking Member Carper and 
Senators of the Environment and Public Works Committee, thank 
you for inviting me to testify on this vitally important topic.
    My name is Jamey Sanders. I am Vice President of Choctaw 
Transportation Company, located in Dyersburg, Tennessee. We are 
a fourth-generation construction company, specializing in heavy 
marine construction and port operations. I have spent all my 
life in this industry, and I care deeply about the vitality of 
our water resources infrastructure, and understand the 
challenges ahead.
    I currently serve as Chair of the Federal and Heavy 
Construction Division for AGC of America. AGC appreciates and 
thanks the committee for its continued efforts to help develop 
and improve our Nation's water resources infrastructure.
    As many are aware, there is a backlog of more than a 
thousand authorized water resources construction projects that 
will cost more than $98 billion to complete. I am here to tell 
you that contractors are able and willing to tackle this 
backlog, but we need Congress' help in untying the regulatory 
and layered bureaucratic knots from the contractors' hands.
    As the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, 
R.D. James, often says, his focus is to ``move dirt.'' AGC 
could not agree more, and we urge that this motto be at the 
forefront as Congress drafts WRDA 2020.
    The benefits of our Nation's waterway systems are the envy 
of the world, and well-known to all who sit on this committee. 
Harbors maintained by the Corps handle 95 percent of America's 
import and export trade, while the inland waterways system 
moves freight at half the cost of rail and one-tenth of the 
cost of trucks. Spending just $5 billion a year on this program 
generates an estimated net benefit of $87.1 billion in economic 
development, a 16 to 1 return.
    To that point, revenues in the Inland Waterways trust Fund 
and the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund should be used for their 
intended purposes. They should be categorized as mandatory 
spending and taken off the discretionary budget.
    The delays in commencing and completing critical water 
infrastructure projects have broad and far-ranging ripple 
effects. For example, just last week at Victoria Bend, mile 595 
on the Mississippi River, shoaling caused by the historic 2019 
flooding in the Midwest caused major delays in towboats 
transporting hundreds of barges, loaded with all types of vital 
commodities that help drive our Nation's economy. As many as 85 
towboats were sitting still for days waiting for emergency 
dredging operations by the Corps to reopen the river to 
traffic, costing many companies and consumers untold dollars 
which we will never get back.
    Many times, budgetary and environmental bureaucratic 
processes can stand in the way. While we must be good stewards 
of the taxpayer dollars and protect our environment, we must 
find ways to move dirt more quickly to deliver the benefits to 
communities that depend on these projects.
    As you draft the 2020 WRDA bill, AGC recommends that you 
consider including the following recommendations, among others 
listed in my written testimony. Congress should require Federal 
agencies to follow a One Federal Decision process for all 
environmental reviews and authorizations for major 
infrastructure projects. This will allow for a single NEPA 
review for a project that ends with a single record of decision 
issued by the lead agency.
    Reform the benefit-cost analyses. The Chief Reports 
submitted to Congress show that the project benefits are at 
least as great as the cost. However, OMB subjects these 
projects to a second, more rigorous benefit-cost ration. OMB 
often requires benefits at two and a half times greater than 
cost.
    Congress should establish formalizing partnering on civil 
works projects to help create an environment that is more 
conducive to solving project level problems and making timely 
decisions. Congress should enact specific deadlines for 
completing the permitting and review processes.
    Encouragingly, this committee has recently passed similar 
reforms in the Highway Reauthorization Bill. This bill details 
provisions to streamline the environmental approval processes, 
reduce duplication, and increase accountability and 
transparency, all of which would be great benefit if included 
in the WRDA 2020.
    Thank you again for inviting AGC to testify before the 
committee today. I look forward to answering your questions. 
Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Sanders follows:]

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    Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much for your testimony, 
Mr. Sanders. It is really very helpful. Thank you.
    Mr. Brockbank.

  STATEMENT OF DEREK BROCKBANK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICAN 
            SHORE AND BEACH PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION

    Mr. Brockbank. Thank you.
    American shoreline is infrastructure that upholds the U.S. 
economy. Forty percent of the U.S. population lives in a 
coastal shoreline county, with a combined GDP of $7.9 trillion 
dollars. If counties, not States, just counties, along the 
coast were considered as an individual country, they would rank 
No. 3 in global GDP, behind only the U.S. and China.
    So if we want to improve American economic competitiveness, 
we had better make sure that the coastal infrastructure that is 
protecting America's most populous and prosperous regions from 
rising seas and increasingly powerful storms are ready for the 
challenges ahead.
    If Hurricane Dorian had stalled over the Atlantic coast of 
Florida rather than the Bahamas, the tenor of this hearing 
would be vastly different.
    American Shore and Beach Preservation is an organization of 
beach and coastal practitioners, the communities, industry and 
local elected officials and academics who build, maintain, 
manage and research our Nation's beaches and shorelines. We 
have been advocating for healthy coastlines since 1926. Thank 
you for including us here today.
    When we talk about coastal infrastructure, we are talking 
about natural infrastructure, beaches, dunes and wetlands, and 
occasionally hard infrastructure, seawalls and riprap that 
project homes, communities and other coastal infrastructure 
along a coast. We have seen time and again communities with 
wide beaches and high, healthy dunes come away from coastal 
storms with far less damage than communities who haven't 
maintained their ``first line of defense.''
    Nearly every beach on the east and Gulf Coast and many on 
the Pacific and Great Lakes coasts, from Rehoboth to Gulf 
Shores, has been restored, renourished and re-engineered to 
mimic natural systems. Most estuarine coastlines are also 
engineered, either armored or restored as wetlands and living 
shorelines.
    What connects all these shorelines is the need for sand and 
sediment. Sand and sediment are the building materials of a 
healthy coastline. Beaches and wetlands are dynamic systems 
that should naturally be eroding and rebuilding, but too often 
they cannot rebuild because we have prevented sediment from 
ever reaching the coast. Levees prevent flooding, and sediment 
deposition, hardened cliffs, riverbanks and dams keep sediment 
out of waterways. Jetties and dredging send sediment far 
offshore.
    In short, we are facing a coastal sediment crisis, in 
addition to the challenges of rising seas and localized 
subsidence. As the Environment and Public Works Committee 
develops water resources legislation and provides the 
Administration oversight, we encourage you to do three things. 
One, direct the Army Corps of Engineers to better manage 
sediment; two, change the Army Corps decision-making 
frameworks, so that multi-benefit projects that can use the 
natural infrastructure can out-compete single benefit projects; 
and finally, encourage the Office of Management and Budget to 
better fund and support coastal flood risk management.
    We believe the most influential thing and fundamental thing 
the Army Corps can do to better manage coastlines is operate 
under principles of regional sediment management, RSM. This is 
the concept that sediment is a resource, not a waste product, 
and managing sediment within a watershed or littoral system, 
not a project-by-project basis, is more ecologically sound and 
saves money. In short, we need to move sediment within the 
system, not remove it.
    RSM goes well beyond just re-using dredged material, but an 
important part of RSM is beneficial use. The Corps dredges 
about 214 million cubic yards of sediment per year from 
navigation channels. Of that, 38 percent is beneficially used. 
That is not good enough. The Corps should beneficially use 100 
percent of uncontaminated dredged material.
    One way to help do this is change the understanding of the 
Federal standard. As part of the Army Corps' determination of 
the least cost alternative for disposal of dredged material, 
the Corps should include the economic valuation of sediment, 
including potential ecosystem restoration benefits, flood risk 
reduction benefits, and other economic values and long-term 
costs.
    The next fundamental way to improve coastal project 
development and prioritization is modifying the benefit-cost 
ratio, the BCR, as we have heard before, to better support 
multi-benefit projects. In designing a project authorized as 
flood risk reduction or coastal storm risk reduction, the Corps 
calculates the benefits derived from reducing flood risk 
without fully considering other benefits. So projects are not 
designed to maximize habitat creation or economic development.
    In the case of beaches, the economic value can be 
remarkably high. Economist Dr. James Houston has calculated 
that beach travel and tourism generates $285 billion to the 
national economy, and generates $23 billion in Federal tax 
revenue annually. These types of economic figures ought to be 
considered when deciding which flood risk management projects 
to prioritize.
    The result of advancing RSM and beneficial use and reform 
of the Corps BCR will be improved decision-making frameworks 
that appropriately value natural infrastructure, the beaches, 
dunes and wetlands, that provide flood risk management but so 
much more. Army Corps mandates are too broad and the challenges 
of the coast too great for the Corps to continue to focus on 
projects that only solve one problem at a time.
    Finally, the EPW Committee should look at the role OMB has 
in underfunding and delaying coastal projects. The 
Administration's annual budget drastically underfunds coastal 
flood risk management ,and even when Congress funds coastal 
projects via appropriation adds and shore protection or via 
supplemental appropriations, OMB can withhold funding with very 
little transparency.
    ASBPA looks forward to working with the EPW Committee to 
address these challenges in WRDA and in future infrastructure 
legislation. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Brockbank follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you all for your testimony. We will 
start with 5-minute rounds of questions, and I will start.
    Mr. O'Toole, would having the Federal Government partner 
with the States to build additional water storage in the west, 
would that have a significant impact economically for rural 
communities in States like Wyoming?
    Mr. O'Toole. Thank you for the question, Senator. As you 
know, I served on the Select Water Committee in Wyoming. There 
was a genius in Wyoming of putting aside dollars for 
infrastructure, long-term renewables, non-renewables and 
renewables were of the philosophy of where we came from.
    But I will tell you that because of budgetary things in 
Wyoming alone, I know a lot about Colorado also, the ability to 
assist with funding is critical.
    I sit on the Yampa Roundtable, which is all the rivers in 
northwest Colorado and southwest Wyoming. Every single 
watershed realizes because of the early runoffs, we have to 
have storage. That is every single watershed, sub-watershed, 
including mine, in that part of the Country.
    And that is true everywhere. I have seen the map of 
California that the 50-year plan, 50 years old, none of it was 
done except for the incredible expansion of population. I think 
the infrastructure part, storage particularly, because of the 
early runoffs, is critical. So it would be very important.
    Senator Barrasso. Could I also ask you about the idea of 
invasive species and the amount of water that invasive species 
take up? We hear that certainly in Wyoming quite a bit. What 
can you tell the committee about the impact of invasive species 
on the water supplies, upon which your organization's members 
depend? What actions do you believe that the Federal Government 
could take that would be most effective in fighting these 
invasive species, which drain so much of the water?
    Mr. O'Toole. In my written testimony, I talked about the 
160,000-acre feet of water that the Forest Service themselves 
has said is not going into the Platte River system. That is 
every one of the systems, because the forest, because of the 
invasive species, the pine beetle. In my world, I used to ride 
horses through the trees. You don't do that anymore. It is now 
pickup sticks. So gathering livestock, hunting, all the 
activities that we have spent our whole lives doing in the 
national forest are not doable. We are seeing a lack of 
thinning, a lack of controlled burns, a lack of aspen 
regeneration, all things that I think are doable in the context 
of the dollars that you have in the bills, Senator.
    It was interesting, I had a call with the Imperial Valley 
Irrigation District, which is the southernmost part of 
California. When they understood that number, the 160,000-acre 
feet, if that were replicable on the Colorado River, they said, 
boy, we would be willing to invest in that, thousands of miles 
away. Because it is so important to understand when a forest is 
functioning, and the invasives haven't taken over, you have a 
whole different watershed reality of water in the system. As we 
go into the systems now that are more challenged, nothing could 
be more important.
    Senator Barrasso. Mr. Sanders, stakeholders are concerned 
with the Corps' long history of projects being over budget and 
taking too long to build. Congress authorized the Olmsted 
Locking Dam project in 1988, $775 million. After 30 years of 
delays, $3 billion, the Corps of Engineers finally opened the 
project last year. You are smiling, you are familiar with it.
    Any thoughts on how to improve the process so that water 
projects actually can be developed and put online more 
efficiently?
    Mr. Sanders. I attended the ribbon cutting last year for 
Olmsted. Nobody could have been happier to see it open than us. 
The people that have been sitting with barges behind Lock 52 
and 53 for the last 30 years experiencing extreme delays in 
that.
    Olmsted is a great example. I think it is awful easy to 
point fingers at the Corps of Engineers, looking at the 
execution of Olmsted. I think if you really dig down into it, 
we can all point fingers at all of us that were involved in 
that project over that time, and not working to get it done. 
And look what happened.
    So the previous Administration, they finally got upset and 
decided to move dirt. Got it fully funded and the industry 
answered. They got it built ahead of time, ahead of schedule, 
open to the public, all the delays, just untold millions of 
dollars in delays that we have been experiencing at Lock 52 and 
53 disappeared. They are now demolishing those, now that we 
have Olmsted open.
    So fully funding a project is something that, it is 
wonderful. We need WRDA 2020, it is our mechanism for getting 
these projects on the street. But the Administration and the 
Congress has to look at fully funding these projects, and 
industry can deliver.
    Senator Barrasso. Let me ask a final question, Mr. O'Toole. 
The Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations, FIRO, is the idea 
that modern weather and water forecasting technology can be 
used to better inform decisions on when to retain and release 
water from reservoirs and to maximize available water storage. 
A pilot to test this information is currently ongoing at Lake 
Mendocino in California. I think there are some positive 
initial results.
    Section 1211 of America's Water Infrastructure Act requires 
the Corps to submit a report to Congress identifying other 
candidates for use of this technique. Could maximizing the use 
of existing water storage, this information, forecasting 
information, would that benefit farmers and ranchers in Wyoming 
and other rural States?
    Mr. O'Toole. Yes, Senator, it is really interesting, 
because living on a two-State river, watching the way that 
information comes to farmers and ranchers, is depending, 
really, on the system that you are watching. But I think that 
what we see is being able to plan ahead for letting water out, 
so that more water in these storms, because of the intensity 
that I talked about earlier, I just can't overstate the 
intensity piece of this, how important it is that we have both 
the ability to plan ahead.
    I think the second part is storage, and in California, they 
have several projects, storage projects, online that would be 
designed to take that high water that comes from intense storms 
and save it, rather than have it go out to the ocean. So that 
planning capability I think is critically important.
    Senator Barrasso. Senator Carper. Thank you.
    Senator Carper. Again, thank you all for wonderful 
testimony. We are delighted that you are here.
    Mr. O'Toole, sometimes you have said, and I will paraphrase 
you, you said something about understanding the volatility 
issue is critical, understanding the intensity issue is 
critical. There is an old song by Stephen Stills, Buffalo 
Springfield, it says, something's happening here, just what it 
is isn't exactly clear. What do you think is happening here?
    Mr. O'Toole. Let me say first that the Family Farm Alliance 
wrote a paper on climate in 2007. It is the same philosophy 
that we have today. We realize, whether it be intensity and 
volatility, or whether it be growth, or whether any of the 
aspects that are challenging our water supply, what I think is 
happening here is we have run out of the easy answers. Without 
a new initiative and philosophy on storage, on recharge of 
aquifers, on understanding how the systems work, we are just 
not prepared either on the food side or on the population side 
for what is inevitably happening.
    Senator Carper. Same question for Mr. Brockbank.
    Mr. Brockbank. We are a science-based organization, and all 
the science points to climate change as being the driving force 
in most sea level rise, increasing storm intensity. So our 
coasts, it is absolutely critical to do adaptation to prepare 
for these storms. But there is no adaptation that can be done 
that will withstand unabated sea level rise from climate 
change.
    Senator Carper. All right, thank you. Another question, if 
I could, for you, Mr. Brockbank. It relates to one we just had. 
Extreme weather events, precipitated by climate change, 
continue to drive up costs of emergency response in this 
Country. I assume the ASBPA hears about this issue regularly 
from coastal communities, especially those that are impacted by 
storms and long term by sea level rise as a result of climate 
change.
    You touched on this, but I am going to ask you to dig down 
a little bit more. How can coastal communities and beach 
communities in particular adapt to rising seas?
    Mr. Brockbank. Thank you. I would say two points to this. 
One is to make sure they are maintaining and building out their 
coastal defenses. When I talk about coastal defenses, you have 
to look at those natural systems that are intended to withstand 
and protect the community. So you build out a wide beach berm 
that reduces the wave intensity. You buildup a high dune 
system. That dune system can actually prevent storm surge from 
building in. Your back line, your communities, once they are in 
sort of the estuarine system, wetlands can absorb storm surge 
like a sponge and reduce that.
    So you need to be able to maintain those beaches, the 
dunes, and the wetlands. The advantage to each of those, 
particularly a dune system and wetlands, is they are able to 
actually accrete, they are able to grow with sea level rise. 
Vegetative dunes can elevate and grow, wetlands can, if 
maintained, can actually grow with sea level rise.
    The second point is, and this speaks to some of the work of 
the committee, is after a storm, it is important that these 
systems are not simply restored to the way they were before, 
but they need to be allowed to be built even better, built 
stronger, built to the challenges that we are facing in the 
coming years, not the challenges we were facing in the past 
years. This committee has taken some steps to make changes to 
P.L. 84-99 that reflect this. But continuing to push the Corps 
to make modifications to projects post-storm that will allow 
for greater protection in the future is absolutely essential.
    Senator Carper. All right, thank you.
    A different question, if I could, for Mr. O'Toole, and if 
we have time, for Mr. Brockbank as well. Stakeholders and 
sponsor collaboration within the Army Corps of Engineers is 
essential to solving today's water resources challenges. This 
helps to limit the costs of missed opportunities, promotes 
better planning, provides transparency and results in more 
fiscally and environmentally sound projects.
    How can the Corps work better with stakeholders in planning 
and managing its projects?
    Mr. O'Toole. If I might respond with a personal story----
    Senator Carper. You are like me; I love to respond in 
telling stories.
    Mr. O'Toole. There you go. So, we met with the head of the 
Corps of Engineers, his name was Rock Salt. Sat with Secretary 
Salazar and a person working on low-head hydro storage, which 
became a bill that passed the entire system, signed by the 
President in the last Administration .
    What it was, groups came together, American Rivers came 
together with Family Farm Alliance. And it is putting together, 
in my mind, the futures coalitions, where we put coalitions of 
people with vested interests, whether it be on the conservation 
side or on the production side, with plans that are long-term, 
plans with the resilience I talked about.
    So in my view, the Corps needs to understand that there are 
multiple benefits and multiple needs, and how do we try to 
address them in a time when we have as many challenges as we 
have today. I hope that answers the question.
    Senator Carper. Mr. Brockbank, could you just take a few 
seconds, and essentially what I'm trying to get at is, how can 
the Corps work better with stakeholders in planning and 
managing its projects? Just very briefly.
    Mr. Brockbank. So I will touch on regional sediment 
management, it is the concept that we need to manage sediment 
within a region, and that includes both the Army Corps as well 
as communities. Sometimes the Army Corps is dredging a project, 
and a local community wants that sediment. Those two 
communities need to be talking. One of our proposals in our 
written testimony was that each Corps district should have a 5-
year regional sediment management plan that talks about where 
they are going to be dredging, where there are going to be 
sediment needs, and also specifically identifies all the 
stakeholder groups that are engaged in the sediment within that 
watershed or within that littoral system, so that officializes 
the collaboration between stakeholders and the Corps on 
sediment management.
    Senator Carper. All right, thanks. Mr. O'Toole, was that 
fellow's name Rock Salt or Rock Solid?
    Mr. O'Toole. Rock Salt.
    Senator Carper. All right, thank you, for the record.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Barrasso. Senator Braun.
    Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The topic of infrastructure across the board, roads and 
bridges, rail, air, shoreways, inland waterways, it is such a 
capital-intensive discussion. I am going to circle back to that 
classic thing we always grapple with here, how you pay for it. 
We haven't raised the user fee, gas and diesel tax, I think, 
since 1993. We did it back in Indiana in 2017. We can at least 
practically talk about how we might do things there, because we 
are in the context of being in the black. We have a balance 
sheet that, it is not hypothetical, how we would do our share 
of it.
    User fees and general fund are kind of the ways that you 
generally pay for things. Both seem to lack that ingredient 
here, which is political will. Because everything we have 
discussed is going to be very expensive.
    I know when the President and Schumer and Pelosi talked 
about infrastructure, and I started hearing trillion and two 
trillion, that is so disingenuous in a sense that with a 
balance sheet like we have here at the Federal Government, how 
do you pay for this stuff?
    I personally think, you cited, Mr. Sanders, that bargain we 
get with moving things on waterways. Mr. Brockbank, you talked 
about all the GDP that is on our shorelines. However climate is 
going to paly into it, it looks like it is going to be 
aggravating rather than ameliorating. So I want to get some 
opinions on where you think States should enter into this and 
the private sector. Almost all States have solid balance 
sheets. They live with guardrails and guidelines and balanced 
budgets, statutes or amendments. Things work, you pay for it.
    I know the private sector does, because you have the hard 
accountability of competition, and if you don't do things with 
the bottom line to where you are saving for the future and 
thinking about things like rainy day funds, investing in either 
a sinking fund or some way, we are basically here talking about 
it in hearings without having anything that is actually going 
to be feasible to put some of this to where you start moving 
dirt, as you mentioned.
    So I would like to start with Mr. Sanders. This place is 
generally not known for the subject matter I just mentioned. If 
in fact we do keep running trillion dollar deficits, is it 
realistic to expect the Federal Government, where I think 
infrastructure ought to be the No. 2 priority, behind maybe 
defending the Country, and we have a portion of our budget, the 
mandatory spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, 
that just on autopilot is creating all these deficits, what is 
plan B in terms of actually paying for this stuff? I would like 
to know what your opinion is, because maybe it is something 
other than looking here to lead and pay for the preponderance 
of it.
    Mr. Sanders. Right off the top, the risk and the lack of 
reward in being able to be globally competitive, it is just, I 
think the risk is too great not to try every means possible to 
be able to fix our critical infrastructure. It is no secret; 
there are locks and dams that in a lot of cases are being held 
together by duct tape. Tennessee, I am from Tennessee, we are 
very blessed, we run a surplus in Tennessee.
    Senator Braun. Do you see Tennessee being willing to chip 
in?
    Mr. Sanders. I do.
    Senator Braun. And then do you think that the users of 
waterways are willing to pay more?
    Mr. Sanders. Absolutely. We use the waterways, we have 
grown, we have had four generations of our company and 
employees use the waterways. We realize how precious it is. And 
it is the way we make a living. We were 100 percent for the 
user fee increase previously. So, absolutely, I think we as 
users would be willing to do our part to make it happen. I 
think the States, just Chickamauga Lock, for instance, AECOM is 
there finishing that project, working on that project. It is 
critical to east Tennessee and middle Tennessee, the economy 
there.
    So I think that the States should look hard and that, and 
it should be open. It shouldn't be anything locked in place to 
say, you can or cannot do something. All the stakeholders have 
to come together and be able and willing to do their part to 
get something done.
    Senator Braun. I hope this committee does realize that we 
are disingenuous with the public when we do run our operation 
here in such a way. Because I am hoping that creative solutions 
involving States and the users of infrastructure start coming 
into play. Because to me, as a CEO and owner of a distribution 
and logistics company, I have more faith in that having 
relative emphasis, rather than grabbing out of our general fund 
here, that we borrow a trillion dollars a year to make it work 
currently. Thank you.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Senator Braun. 
Senator Cardin.
    Senator Cardin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Brockbank, I want to get you engaged in a discussion as 
to how we can have a win-win situation under WRDA, that is, 
projects that not only provide the economic incentives such as 
the maintaining the depths of our channels, but also have a 
positive environmental impact on cleaner water.
    I give you this as way of background. Before I was elected 
to Congress, that is going back over 30 years ago, the sites of 
dredged material was the principal issue in a congressional 
campaign. It elected a Member of Congress, that single issue, 
because of the controversy over where dredged material would be 
located. He was opposed, the incumbent Congressman was opposed 
to a site. The challenger ran on that issue of the Port of 
Baltimore needing deeper channels.
    We have come a long way since that debate. My predecessor 
in the U.S. Senate, Senator Paul Sarbanes, had an innovative 
proposal about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, which was to take a 
vanishing island in the Chesapeake Bay known as Poplar Island, 
which was at one time populated, which had been reduced to 
about two acres, to restore it through dredged material in a 
way that would become an environmental plus for wildlife and 
the Bay itself. Poplar Island is almost totally built out now, 
over 1,000 acres. It is an incredibly pristine facility, and 
has the total support of all the stakeholders. It is without 
controversy today, so much so that we now are on our second 
island, Mid-Bay, which has been fully funded and approved by 
this committee.
    I say that because that is an innovative approach. There is 
another innovative approach that is being talked about today in 
regard to Blackwater Wildlife Refuge, which, as Senator Carper 
pointed out in his opening statement, is the restoration of 
wetlands is critically important to our environment. We have 
lost a lot of wetlands in the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. We 
have found that if we used dredged material where we have lost 
wetlands, we can actually restore wetlands. In a pretty fast 
way, within one season, we have been able to do it.
    It costs more money, and the challenge is, as we did with 
Poplar Island, we used an environmental restoration economic 
model rather than strictly a pure economic model. And it paid 
major dividends.
    So my question to you, as we look at the next WRDA 
authorization, can you help us in how we can have those types 
of innovations built into our law, so that we cannot only 
maintain the economic importance of deeper channels and 
maintaining our channels, but we can also restore our wetlands 
and our environment?
    Mr. Brockbank. Yes, thank you. Great question, great 
points. Poplar Island was one of my examples I was going to 
use, but you spoke eloquently to it. The ability to use dredged 
material to restore systems, to maintain systems, is essential. 
The thin layer placement that happens both on wetlands as well 
as occasionally placing it in near shore, in my written 
testimony I mentioned a location outside of Oregon where they 
are spreading dredged material from the Columbia River, five 
centimeters. That is not easy to do, to make sure that you are 
keeping dredged material placed at just five centimeters in the 
near shore, so that it can then naturally drift back up onto 
the beach to restore the beaches.
    So that kind of innovative technique is more expensive, and 
I believe what needs to happen is to make sure that when the 
Corps is pricing out what their least cost disposal method is 
for dredged material, the valuation of that sand or that 
sediment is taken into account. So if Blackwater Refuge could 
use that sediment, that value that the sediment would provide 
to Blackwater Refuge needs to be included in the disposal cost. 
So that is going to create economic incentives for the Corps to 
actually beneficially use their dredged material, rather than 
just dispose of it. So it is really getting to that framework 
of, how do you switch from dredged material being seen as a 
spoil to dredged material being seen as a resource.
    Senator Cardin. The point that you are raising is 
critically important. We were able to that on Poplar Island by 
doing it first, by getting the Army Corps to put in the 
environmental restoration as the value, rather than the pure 
economic cost factors of disposal of dredged material.
    I am suggesting, particularly as it relates to restoration 
of wetlands, we need to get that type of model developed. We 
may need language in authorization, in a WRDA bill, in order to 
be able to advance those types of projects. I would just ask if 
you could help us in trying to identify how we could make that 
a reality.
    Mr. Brockbank. I 100-percent agree, and I look forward to 
working with you and your staff to make that happen.
    Senator Cardin. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Senator Cardin. 
Senator Capito.
    Senator Capito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank all of you 
for being here today. While we know that the Army Corps' 
critical mission is flood control and navigation, I do think 
that one of the sources of concern that I have in this Nation 
is the access to clean drinking water. Numerous reports and 
studies detail that our Nation's drinking water and wastewater 
needs, particularly those, are stemming from aging 
infrastructure.
    In West Virginia, we had one report from a local newspaper 
that said that our State's water systems lose about 75 percent 
of their water in their water systems. This is an untenable 
situation. I think the Army Corps can play an important role 
here through their environmental infrastructure authorities, 
which can provide assistance for these water and wastewater 
projects.
    So this is a little off of the waterways, but I think it is 
critically important, obviously, to all of us.
    Mr. O'Toole, I would like to ask you, in your testimony you 
say that water is the lifeblood of our Nation. I have heard 
some of your testimony saying that storage, rather than just 
running it off, keeping it, is a valuable resource. Of course, 
over in my State of West Virginia, we have abundant water. We 
would like to pipe it out to California and make a lot of money 
off it, but we haven't quite gotten there yet.
    Anyway, you are a former State legislator, you have 
probably experienced this area of local communities trying to 
contend and keep their wastewater and water projects current. 
How do you see this developing over time and where do you think 
WRDA and the Corps might be able to be helpful with their 
expertise in this?
    Mr. O'Toole. Yes, ma'am, thank you for that question. I can 
speak more clearly about personal things we have seen in our 
community. We have a watershed that over 30 years has had a 
vision. For example, we turned a desert tributary into wetland 
that went from 29 species to 140 species of birds.
    The thing that is interesting about that, and the river 
restoration, the integration of irrigation and fishery that we 
are working on, the people that are on the land doing those 
projects are the people in our community who are oil and gas 
people, with the equipment. What we have been able to do is 
integrate, through using both USDA and Interior, and I think it 
is really important to understand how those two agencies can 
benefit each other, both in terms of leveraging dollars and in 
sort of the philosophy of maintaining agriculture and clean 
water at the same time. What we have seen is by bringing in the 
community people with the equipment, we have created an 
economic development boom for them.
    So in the oil field in Wyoming, there are periods of time 
when you cannot drill because of endangered species or other 
stipulations. This becomes another piece of the economic 
development puzzle for those people to stay in business with 
their equipment.
    The thing that we have done that I think is important, our 
conservation district measures every tributary in our entire 
system. There are a lot of people that feel maybe knowledge 
isn't the best thing to have. We feel like knowledge is power. 
Our family has had consistently the cleanest system in a 
watershed. We are so proud of that. But it is because we 
understood that there are things you can do.
    We have done some amazing stuff in our riparian areas, 
without any negative to our agricultural production at all, 
because we have enough knowledge to realize that timing of 
grazing and how we utilize our lands has an immediate effect on 
water quality.
    Senator Capito. Right. So weaving the balance of the 
economy and environment are what you are seeing the results of 
in your State.
    I am going to switch to another topic. We have a lot of 
locks and dams going on the Ohio River. I just went with 
Colonel Evers to see the de-watering of the Robert C. Byrd 
Locks, very exciting. But you don't get an idea of how massive 
these projects are until you go all the way down in a de-
watered lock and look up and see the massive opening and 
closing sand how expensive these are, and how important it is 
to maintain the infrastructure that we have and then to 
modernize what we don't have.
    I was very pleased that the Lower Mon project has been 
fully funded in the budget. These are, some of them, 100-year 
projects and very important to us.
    Mr. Sanders, in your testimony you highlight both the 
issues with pre-construction and construction phases. How do 
you weave that in with balancing that with the maintenance 
issue that I saw when I was at the Robert C. Byrd locks on the 
Ohio, in terms of being able to maintain our water system and 
keep it viable for the economics? Particularly in the Ohio 
River for my State it is absolutely critical for things like 
coal, chemicals, grains and other things.
    Mr. Sanders. Sure. As you very well stated, the locks and 
dams, the communities cannot survive without the commerce being 
able to easily go through those dams.
    Senator Capito. Right.
    Mr. Sanders. That is critically important, to have that 
consistent, we have to have a consistent funding stream that is 
not related to, this Victoria Bend thing that I brought up a 
second ago, we just got through 9 months of flooding where 
barges were restricted, commerce coming from your area down the 
Ohio to New Orleans was restricted. The water finally goes down 
and we have the ability to move that efficiently on the 
Mississippi River, and here we are sitting behind the dredging 
areas that need to be dredged and traffic is stopped again.
    It is devastating. It really is devastating to the economy. 
So when the water is right, when the projects can go, we have 
got to be able, and I will say it again, move dirt. The money 
has got to be there. It is too critical; the cost is too great 
from a global competitive standpoint. From the environmental 
side, the clean water side, there is nothing better for the 
environment that moving commerce in barges. It is the cleanest 
way of moving commerce that we have. So we have got to keep the 
funding consistent.
    Senator Capito. All right, thank you very much. Thank you.
    Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Senator Capito. Senator 
Whitehouse.
    Senator Whitehouse. Thanks, Chairman. Welcome, everybody. 
We are getting a little tight on time, so I am going to be 
quite brief and simply ask you to respond to this as a question 
for the record, if you have suggestions with respect to the 
problem that I am going to describe.
    Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, I think this is a matter 
that involves the whole committee. I just want to describe a 
few episodes.
    You have heard me over and over again ask for information 
about the Flood and Coastal Storm Damage Reduction Account. We 
have asked for an explanation from the Army Corps why, over the 
past 10 years, the Corps has requested between 13 and 120 times 
more money for inland versus coastal projects. One hundred and 
20 times as much for inland versus coastal is a big, big, big 
discrepancy. It is less than 1 percent for coastal.
    I have asked for an explanation over and over again. We 
have never yet received an explanation. Year after year, I have 
asked. Year after year, they have simply ignored us.
    Debris removal, we have asked to have the Corps support us 
in removing debris in harbor areas. They said they wouldn't do 
it, so we got authority in the 2016 WRDA so that they did have 
authority to do it. They still refused to do it.
    So in the 2018 WRDA, we directed a report from the Corps on 
why they weren't using the 2016 WRDA authority. They had not 
even done the report. I sent a comment letter as recently as 
February. No report, no implementation guidance, no response.
    On innovative materials, the 2016 WRDA included a study on 
the potential use in water resource projects of innovative 
materials, composites and things like that, that are less 
likely to rust. Wouldn't start the report because they said 
they didn't have an appropriation for it. So we, in the 2018 
WRDA, said no, do the report. They haven't done the report.
    On harbors of refuge, the 2018 WRDA included a request for 
the Corps to complete a study of the hurricane barriers and 
harbors of refuge in our region, so that we can get an update 
on whether they are safe for the traffic in and out of those 
ports and marine areas. They haven't even started that report 
from the 2018 WRDA.
    So what I see here is an agency that comes to our committee 
that wants funding for all this great stuff and that doesn't 
pay a damned bit of attention to what we want to do. They think 
we are a bunch of chumps who throw them billions of dollars 
with which they get to do whatever the hell they want, whenever 
the hell they want to do it, without feeling any obligation to 
actually obey the law that we set out that requires them to do 
these things.
    If it was one or if it was two, I would be upset. But at 
this point, it is essentially every damned time. What I think 
we need to do is set up some kind of a procedure where, when 
they are messing around like this and not following the law, we 
have a standard procedure in the committee where we call them 
back in here and get a darned explanation for what the heck is 
going on.
    In court, I was a courtroom lawyer in the old days, you 
would do like a show cause hearing, in which you would ask the 
court to invite in the other party, and say, why are you not 
complying with this order. If you have a good reason for your 
non-compliance, we would like to hear it. If you are just being 
truculent and refusing to obey a lawful order of the court, 
well, then, you face some consequences.
    I think we need to do something. I don't know what it is. A 
show cause hearing of some kind comes to mind, where members of 
this committee can say, here are the projects that concern me, 
here are the projects that the Corps is ignoring, despite 
repeated, in some cases, WRDA authorizations and requirements. 
And we have got to get some discipline into this organization. 
Otherwise, we are a useless committee. All we are doing is 
shoveling money down a spout, and people whose names we don't 
even know and who we have never heard of who are buried down in 
the bureaucracy are making the actual decisions about what gets 
spent where and when, and we are just ciphers.
    That is not the Senator I got elected to be, not when 
things like harbors of refuge are at issue in Rhode Island. So 
if you all have thoughts about that subject, and about how we 
can be more effective, and how we can prevent the Corps from 
becoming a black hole in which all decisions are made by junior 
bureaucracy and none are made in Congress, then I would love to 
have your response to that as a QFR.
    But I really want to flag it to the Chairman and Ranking 
Member. Because I think there is room for agreement amongst all 
of us on this committee that this nonsense has to end, and that 
when we have said something is to be come in a WRDA that has 
gotten all the way through Congress and passed into law, then 
by gum, they need to pay attention to that and do what they 
have been instructed to do.
    Senator Barrasso. And they have been instructed to appear 
here, and are scheduled to appear on October 23d. So we will 
have an opportunity.
    Senator Whitehouse. Well, this is my warm-up round.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Barrasso. Senator Van Hollen.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. Thank all of 
you for your testimony. Senator Cardin has covered a lot of 
territory important to the State of Maryland. I second all his 
comments about the Chesapeake Bay, the importance of Army Corps 
dredging for the success of Baltimore Harbor and the important 
connection between disposing of dredged materials, but also 
dealing with the habitat issues and prevention erosion, which 
is a win-win. So I am all in with what Senator Cardin said.
    Mr. Brockbank, I would like to focus on some of your 
testimony here. It goes to the issue of how the Corps grades a 
particular proposed project, and whether that project is 
successful. You point out in your testimony with respect to 
flooding, for example, that the Army Corps will calculate the 
benefits derived from reduced flooding risk, but not the full 
recreational benefits nor any of the ecological or social 
benefits. So the project will not be designated to support the 
economy or habitat.
    We have a similar issue in Maryland, I know others face 
this in other places around the Country, where one dimension 
may be measured in terms of economic benefit, but not others. 
So for example, commercial benefits are measured, as they 
should, right? So the Port of Baltimore has that.
    But there are also really important economic benefits from 
the recreational boating industry, for example. In Maryland, it 
is $3.5 billion. We have an example in Anne Arundel County, 
Maryland, called the Rockhold Creek Channel, which is important 
for some commercial activity but also mainly for recreational 
boating, which supports that community and the livelihood of 
the community.
    Can you talk a little bit about how we should reexamine, 
how we establish the cost-benefit ratio, especially on the 
benefit side?
    Mr. Brockbank. Thank you. Yes, the title of this hearing is 
Improving Economic Competitiveness, and I think the core of 
what you are getting at, and what my testimony addresses, is 
the fact that we need to be getting more bang for the buck out 
of every dollar spent with the Corps. So if you are investing a 
dollar in flood risk management, you should be getting some 
flood risk management benefit, but you should also be getting 
economic development benefit, you should also be getting 
recreation benefit.
    The social cohesion, the ability for a community to stay in 
place and health benefits provided by the recreational 
opportunities, all those are tangible values. Some of them are 
hard to quantify in economic terms, but they are actual values 
that are critical to a coast.
    So changing that benefit cost ratio, which is a sort of 
blunt tool that the Corps uses to determine how projects get 
selected on the flood risk side, I think there need to be 
changes to that to either fully calculate all the economic 
values, and that is going to be challenging, because you are 
talking about putting an economic value on habitat, or putting 
an economic value on social cohesion, or putting an economic 
value on community health. Or you need to supplement that BCR 
with ways to incorporate value provided by the environment or 
habitat.
    So yes, your point is well taken, and I think that BCR is 
too blunt a tool for a 21st century agency to be developing 
projects by.
    Senator Van Hollen. Mr. Chairman, we put some language in 
the last WRDA authorization to try to provide a little more 
transparency in this process to allow the proponents of a 
project to make their case. But I think we need to go farther, 
both in transparency, but also reexamine this cost-benefit 
ratio.
    Now, I agree that some of those dimensions you mentioned 
are hard to measure. But I can tell you what is not. It is not 
so hard to mention the economic benefit of the boating 
industry. There are clear figures on that. That is different 
than trying to measure the overall social impact and community 
well-being, which I think should be taken into account.
    But there are some projects that are being denied, even 
though, if you look at their commercial benefit plus their 
recreational benefit, it is larger than a narrow view of a 
commercial benefit in another project. So it seems to me that 
when we are talking about taxpayer dollars and prioritizing 
those dollars, we should be investing them in a way that has 
the greatest economic benefit to the communities we are talking 
about. That is an important responsibility we have as stewards 
of taxpayer dollars.
    So I would appreciate any specific suggestions going 
forward with respect to supplemental testimony or ideas any of 
you may have for the committee.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Van Hollen. Senator 
Gillibrand.
    Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I just want to continue where my colleague left off. I went 
to the field hearing in Iowa to talk about the horrible 
flooding in Glenwood, Iowa, and other communities. It was a 
perfect example of how the ratio is not working. Because it is 
a small populated rural area. But the farms were devastated. So 
we are not actually fully accounting for the value to the 
community and to the cost and how important agriculture is in 
this Country.
    Similarly, in upstate New York, we have lots of small 
harbors, like in Oswego, that desperately need dredging for 
commercial benefit, but also for recreational benefit. We have 
Lake Ontario flooding, where these communities are being 
devastated because it is rural. The formula is not working.
    So, Mr. Chairman, I would really love this committee to 
formally ask for a deep dive review of that formula and 
examples of projects that are being left behind because they 
are not being adequately valued. It is really 
disproportionately impacting lower population rural 
communities, like upstate New York, and like these farms in 
Iowa.
    Mr. Sanders, how should the OMB benefit-to-cost ratio be 
changed to facilitate funding for more authorized projects, 
particularly low-income and rural communities?
    Mr. Sanders. Well, certainly we all need to be singing from 
the same sheet of music, to your point.
    Senator Gillibrand. Yes.
    Mr. Sanders. I mean, it is kind of ridiculous for 
desperately needed projects to be gotten out there to build and 
you have the Chief's report looking at it from a one-to-one 
basis, then you have OMB looking at it too, and it is not 
taking into account, some of the things we have talked about 
today, which I agree with. I know that is difficult sometimes.
    But to your point, I think that is a wise move to look at 
that. But I think at the end of the day, everybody needs to be 
singing from the same sheet of music and stopping the delays.
    Senator Gillibrand. Thank you. Mr. Brockbank, could you 
elaborate more on the benefits that are currently not being 
adequately considered by the Corps and OMB when they are 
conducting their benefit-to-cost analysis?
    Mr. Brockbank. Sure. For flood risk management projects, 
beach projects, whether it is the Hamptons or Rehoboth or Santa 
Monica, are assessed based on their flood risk value, and then 
at maximum 50 percent and no more than the equivalent of what 
the flood risk value is from the national economics.
    So if a beach provides $100 million of flood protection and 
it provides $200 million of recreation, they are only going to 
count $100 million of that recreation, which has multiple 
impacts. One, it means those projects are not going to get 
competitively funded over other projects that are really single 
use, that only have flood risk value.
    It also means there is no incentive to try to maximize the 
economic value. So if you could try to advance, you do a 
project that has even more economic value, there is no effort 
to design that. So you don't have those national economic 
benefits. Regional economic benefits aren't included at all. So 
if it is sort of helping----
    Senator Gillibrand. That was an Iowa example. It was 
really, it is crippling these communities. Because to rebuild 
those farms is so expensive. If they can't produce, whether 
they are producing corn or ethanol or wheat or soybeans, it 
gets devastating to our overall economy.
    Mr. Brockbank. And then of course, the ecological benefits 
have no value. Rockaway Beach, sea turtles nesting for the 
first time ever this year, no value added.
    Senator Gillibrand. No value. So I would like a formal 
writing how we should fix this, and we will work on our next 
legislation to do that on a bipartisan basis.
    My second issue, for Mr. Brockbank, I want to talk about 
our shorelines, because ensuring that we have healthy 
shorelines is really important to States like New York for 
tourism, recreation, economic development. And as we see 
increased risks because of sea level rise, and extreme weather 
events, we are seeing high and more damaging storm surges. It 
is a matter of life and death. It is a question whether our 
coastal communities will continue to exist as we know them.
    So I would like to highlight the report that you submitted 
with your written testimony describing the damage prevented by 
the Army Corps projects that were in place when Superstorm 
Sandy hit the northeast. In the Army Corps New York District, 
coastal protections prevented an estimate of $1.3 billion in 
damage.
    Can you speak a little more about the effect that having 
adequate shoreline protection can have on mitigating impacts of 
storm surge and flooding during major events like Superstorm 
Sandy?
    Mr. Brockbank. Yes. Every time you see a dune that gets 
eroded by a coastal storm, that is a house that is still 
standing. Dunes erode and houses stand. Beaches get washed away 
and roads survived. It is much easier and much less devastating 
for communities to restore and rebuild their beaches and their 
dunes than restore and rebuild people's lives.
    Senator Gillibrand. And what are out biggest barriers to 
implement the most effective strategies to achieve maximum 
shoreline protection?
    Mr. Brockbank. Largely, it is funding. We wait until after 
a storm to fund flood risk management on the coast than we have 
been doing it ahead of time. Invest up front, you save money 
than investing afterwards.
    Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking 
Member.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Gillibrand.
    Senator Carper.
    Senator Carper. I want to say thank you. We really 
appreciate your taking the time to come here. For me, your 
comments were very helpful and very cogent. There is actually a 
lot of agreement among the three of you which was really 
helpful, very helpful.
    Fortunately, my wife is from Boone, North Carolina, so I 
understood most of the words you were saying, Mr. Sanders.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Carper. When she goes back down there, she talks 
just like you.
    Let me ask another question about what you just mentioned. 
I think it is important, and you raised the point that there 
seems to be a big problem with OMB to get projects moving. Mr. 
Chairman, you may want to ask OMB to join the Army Corps of 
Engineers in testifying. I would ask that you think about that.
    Again, thank you all very, very much.
    Mr. O'Toole. Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Barrasso. Yes.
    Mr. O'Toole. If I may make one last comment, we have been 
talking about the Corps, and having spent 14 years getting 
permits for a small water project in Wyoming, the part of the 
Corps in the permitting part is really critical to understand. 
They can hold up a project for, we are at a time when we are 
looking at follow-through and getting projects done 
immediately, when needed. Even in State-funded projects, the 
Corps' ability to hold up the process is really important to 
understand. Thank you.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you. I thank all of you for being 
here. Members may actually submit some written questions, some 
members had to head in and out. So the hearing record is going 
to stay open for 2 weeks. I want to thank all of you for being 
here. Thank you for your time, thank you for your testimony.
    The hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:28 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]
    [Additional material submitted for the record follows:]

       Prepared Statement of Hon. James M. Inhofe, U.S. 
               Senator from the State of Oklahoma

    Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing to hear 
from the stakeholders who build and use our Nation's water 
infrastructure.
    I want to take a moment to speak about the MKARNS the 
McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System--which goes 
from Tulsa, Oklahoma, through Arkansas, reaching the 
Mississippi River. A Marine Highway route for waterborne 
commerce, the U.S. Department of Transportation upgraded the 
MKARNS in 2015 from a Connector to a Corridor route due to 
sustained, increased traffic volume. The MKARNS supports 
economic activity across a 12-State region, moving 10.9 million 
tons of commerce worth $3.5 billion annually.
    MKARNS, the most western warm water port in the United 
States, is a vital corridor for agriculture commerce. Farmers 
and ranchers rely on the port's availability year-round to move 
crops to market in all seasons and transport fertilizer 
domestically in preparation of the growing season each year. 
Intermodal facilities at ports along the MKARNS streamline the 
transfer of agricultural and other commodities through landside 
infrastructure onto barges for their efficient movement down to 
the Gulf of Mexico and beyond.
    With our Nation's surface land transportation networks 
experiencing increased congestion, we must expand the capacity 
of our inland waterways to move additional freight in a cost-
competitive manner. However, we face some significant hurdles 
in doing so.
    Today, the MKARNS is facing $225 million backlog in 
``critical'' maintenance project needs. A maintenance project 
deemed critical means that if the needed maintenance is not 
completed, there is a 50 percent chance of failure. Specific 
project in need of critical maintenance include: replacing 
Tainter gates at multiple locks throughout the system and 
repairing decade's old concrete structures with exposed rebar 
integral to dam operability. Should any one of these critical 
maintenance projects fail before it can be addressed, use of 
the whole system would be impossible.
    Unfortunately, we already know the impact to Oklahoma if 
use of the MKARNS is not an option. Due to the terrible floods 
in Eastern Oklahoma this past May and June, tons of silt was 
deposited in the navigation channel of the MKARNS, 
necessitating the re-dredging of the navigation channel, an 
effort that likely will not be complete until this November.
    As such, not a single barge has moved from the Port of 
Catoosa in Tulsa, Oklahoma since May 13. For 4 months and 
counting, the economic engine for 12 States has been silently 
impacting every stakeholder dependent on the MKARNS. Hundreds 
of people have been temporarily laid off as small businesses 
and manufacturing facilities have been forced to idle 
production or shift resources to pay for more expenses means of 
transportation.
    That is 4 months on one part of the system. Imagine the 
economic impact if Congress fails to address the critical 
maintenance backlog on the MKARNS, or any other part of the 
inland waterways system, and this happens again.
    So what can we do? We can make it easier to address the 
aging infrastructure and critical maintenance of our Nation's 
inland waterways system by reducing needless environmental 
reviews and costly repetitive permitting requirements imposed 
by numerous Federal agencies.
    I was proud to support President Trump's Executive Order to 
create a ``One Federal Decision'' process for environmental 
reviews and authorizations for major infrastructure projects. 
Earlier this year, the Environment and Public Works Committee 
codified the president's ``One Federal Decision'' process for 
major surface transportation infrastructure projects in the 
America's Transportation and Infrastructure Act of 2019. We 
should extend those permitting reforms to inland waterway 
infrastructure projects. Today, multiple Federal agencies 
create and review endless reams of paperwork, delaying the 
start of any project to address the critical maintenance needs 
of our inland waterways. With ``One Federal Decision'' we would 
accelerate project delivery, allowing for the review, 
permitting, and approval processes to be conducted more 
efficiently, saving time and money when starting new 
infrastructure projects.
    I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure we 
address the critical maintenance backlog facing the inland 
waterway system in the next Water Resources and Development Act 
legislation.

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