[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2026
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
______________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT, AND
RELATED AGENCIES
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee, Chairman
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
KEN CALVERT, California
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas,
Vice Chair
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
CELESTE MALOY, Utah
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio,
Ranking Member
JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
MIKE LEVIN, California
FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana
SUSIE LEE, Nevada
NOTE: Under committee rules, Mr. Cole, as chairman of the full
committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full
committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.
Laura Cylke, Perry Yates, Richie O`Connell, Raynor Buckley, and Sykes
Connell
Subcommittee Staff
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PART 1
Page
Oversight Hearing--State of the Civil
Works Program.............................................. 1
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
62-355 WASHINGTON : 2026
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
----------
TOM COLE, Oklahoma, Chairman
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky,
Chaimain Emeritus
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas
KEN CALVERT, California
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN,
Tennessee
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
DAVID G. VALADAO, California
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan
JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida
BEN CLINE, Virginia
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa
TONY GONZALES, Texas
JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia
STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
Jake Ellzey, Texas
JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona
CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina
MARK ALFORD, Missouri
NICK LaLOTA, New York
CELESTE MALOY, Utah
RILEY M. MOORE, West Virgina
ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut,
Ranking Member
STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina
SANFORD D. BISHOP,Jr., Georgia
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
GRACE MENG, New York
MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
PETE AGUILLAR, California
LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
NORMA J. TORRES, California
ED CASE, Hawaii
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
JOSH HARDER, California
LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
SUSIE LEE, Nevada
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
MIKE LEVIN, California
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana
MARIE GLUESENKAMP PEREZ,
Washington
GLENN IVEY, Maryland
Susan Ross, Chief Clerk and Staff Director
(II)
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2026
----------
Tuesday, February 25, 2025.
OVERSIGHT HEARING--STATE OF THE CIVIL WORKS PROGRAM
WITNESSES
LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM H. ``BUTCH'' GRAHAM JR., CHIEF OF ENGINEERS
AND COMMANDING GENERAL, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
MAJOR GENERAL MARK C. QUANDER, COMMANDING GENERAL, GREAT LAKES AND OHIO
RIVER DIVISION, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
BRIGADIER GENERAL DANIEL HIBNER, COMMANDING GENERAL, SOUTH ATLANTIC
DIVISION, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
COLONEL JAMES J. HANDURA, COMMANDER, SOUTH PACIFIC DIVISION, U.S. ARMY
CORPS OF ENGINEERS
COLONEL GEORGE H. WALTER, COMMANDER, SOUTHWESTERN DIVISION, U.S. ARMY
CORPS OF ENGINEERS
Mr. Fleischmann. Good morning. The hearing will come to
order.
It is my pleasure today to welcome Lieutenant General Butch
Graham, the chief of engineers and commanding general of the
United States Army Corps of Engineers to discuss the state of
the Civil Works program.
Joining General Graham are Major General Mark C. Quander,
commanding general of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division;
Brigadier General Daniel Hibner, commanding general of the
South Atlantic Division; Colonel James J. Handura, commander of
the South Pacific Division; and Colonel George H. Walter,
commander of the Southwestern Division. These division
commanders have made themselves available to address project
execution from a local and regional perspective.
Before I talk about my formal remarks, gentlemen, I want to
thank each and every one of you all for what you do for our
country, not only for the Army Corps of Engineers, our great
United States Army, and service to our great Nation. It is with
profound thanks that we do this hearing today.
And, as chairman of this subcommittee and I would say our
full committee--my dear friend, Marcy Kaptur from Ohio, would
probably agree with me--we are civil. We are cordial. When
there are differences, we understand that. But it is with the
utmost respect that we have you before us here today, and I say
that as chairman of this full subcommittee.
Gentlemen, few Federal programs have such a direct and
immediate impact on the American people's daily lives as the
Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works program. The mission
underpins America's economic competitiveness, promotes public
safety, and protects trillions of dollars in private investment
and economic activity. Congress expects the Corps to address
some of the Nation's most complex and high-profile challenges,
and the Corps does tremendous work to deliver on this critical
mission.
The Corps also faces many challenges inherent to government
contracting. We would all prefer to see Federal construction
projects delivered at the cost and speed of the private sector.
However, patterns have emerged in recent years that go beyond
the regular course of business. I continue to hear from my
colleagues and stakeholders about projects of all sizes, in
different parts of the country, and with little else in common,
all facing similar issues and fact patterns.
The Chickamauga Lock in my district, the great Third
District of Tennessee, has experienced many of these same
challenges, which we will have time to discuss later in the
hearing.
Congress has provided record funding for the Corps in
annual energy and water appropriations acts and tens of
billions more in supplemental appropriations over much of the
last decade. We have funded several major construction projects
to completion, some multiple times, only for the Corps to tell
us they need more.
Projects are derailed due to inadequate engineering,
requiring the Corps to go back to the drawing board in the
middle of construction. The Corps has all but abandoned design
and engineering when studying projects to recommend for
construction, leading chiefs of engineers to certify cost
estimates and project plans based on concepts, not designs. We
are building the plane while we are flying it.
Meanwhile, we have heard from many Corps stakeholders about
the need to modernize the Corps' contracting process. Private
industry would never procure complex infrastructure projects in
the same way. Contracting improvements alone can reduce
uncertainty, improve affordability, and enhance engineering
quality earlier in the life of a project.
Many projects sponsors feel they have no choice but to
plead with our friends on the authorizing committees for the
Federal Government to foot larger shares of these much larger
bills. I don't blame anyone who comes to that conclusion. But
every time that cycle repeats, the choices facing this
subcommittee become more difficult, worsening the outlook for
every project in America.
The Corps executes a no-fail mission, and there is always
more to be done. We need to finish what we start so that we can
deliver for our constituents, and achieving those goals
requires the Corps to define success and measure progress.
General Graham, sir, you are new in this role, and you
certainly have your work cut out for you. I greatly appreciate
the attention that you have already given to these issues and
the vision you laid out in your written testimony. I look
forward to today's discussion and working with you, sir, to
promote a healthy and sustainable Civil Works program for the
American people.
I will now turn to my friend and ranking member, Ms.
Kaptur, for her opening statement.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is such a great
turnout this morning on both sides of the aisle here. This is a
wonderful committee, and I am just thankful everyone is here,
including our honored guests, the Corps of Engineers Civil
Works program.
And I want to thank you and all those who work under your
command for your dedication to the civil works of our country
going back to close to our founding. There aren't too many
organizations that can say that. And the American people thank
you for your service, not just here in our country, but many
times called upon around the world, as was my uncle who served
in the Engineers Corps during World War II at the Battle of the
Bulge.
I want to thank my friend and colleague, Chair Fleischmann,
for holding this hearing. While Congress is about a half a year
late already and has still not finished our jobs for the fiscal
year 2025--it should have been done October, November,
December, January, February, moving into March. Half a year
late. Not our fault. Not our fault. We show up. I hope that if
we were left to our own, we could find bipartisan compromise,
and I hope those ultimately in charge in this institution will
soon find a bipartisan solution to keep the government open
next month and for the remainder of this fiscal year 2025. And
I know how difficult that makes your lives. Thank you for your
endurance.
The Corps of Engineers plays a critical role in developing
the resources of our land and generating enough power for 11
million homes every year. I figured out last night--I guess
that is at least 10 percent of our country. I figured 33
million people--I don't have the exact number, but that is
pretty impressive, and we hope in the future you will be able
to do more.
The Corps builds America for generations to come,
strengthening our economy and sustaining life on our corner of
Mother Earth, ensuring public safety against the now constant
onslaught of both natural and human-caused disasters across our
country.
In 2024, there were 27 confirmed major weather and climate
disaster events with losses for each exceeding a billion
dollars. These included droughts, flooding, severe storms and
wildfires, and the cost totaled over $182 billion just for last
year, the fourth costliest year on record. We can all see our
property insurance bills rising. The people I represent know
it. And the Corps knows why. You need a bigger microphone to
explain to the country what is really happening.
I can attest that, in 2023, in our Great Lakes region,
adjoining the Canadian border, when I arrived home, I
experienced the smoky fall that had never happened before. It
was so eerie, the smoke from wildfires burning way further up
north in Canada. We weren't anywhere near California. And the
air was so hazy that my entire garden--which I pride myself
on--was covered with brownish, black soot by the next morning.
It was just eerie. And my poor rhododendron didn't bear that
year, and I hope this year she will come back. But that had
never happened in our region.
Just thinking about addressing the outcomes of the
Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles overwhelms a casual
observer, and we thank you for your assistance in helping those
who have been so impacted.
It is undeniable that we are witnessing growing weather
events stemming from climate change occurring in real time
before our very eyes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is
needed now more than ever to devise modern approaches to
changing freshwater cycles, whether it is down the Mississippi,
in the Great Lakes, or the arid West.
With an increasingly volatile climate, the Corps must plan
and implement solutions to make our communities more resilient.
Investments in the critical water infrastructure of our Nation
allow the Corps to focus on your significant missions across
our country, keeping commerce safely flowing on our waterways--
and what is happening along the Mississippi, we hope you can
tell us a little more about that today--managing flood risks
through dams, levies, and shoreline protection, restoring
ecosystems, and building local, clean water, and drinking water
infrastructure. I hope you can get more into that today and in
the future.
There is no doubt that every Member of Congress is impacted
by your work, and there is bipartisan support in this Congress
for your work because you have been so successful. However, the
Corps has faced numerous challenges in engineering and design,
schedule delays, cost overruns, and contractor performance--
most of which isn't your fault--that correlate with these
massive weather events, workforce shortages, and supply
backups.
In the Great Lakes region--which I know best--projects like
the Soo Locks are a prime example of investments that will
turbocharge our economy. They will assure the modernization and
efficiency of our maritime transportation system, but the
project has experienced time delays and very significant cost
escalations. Enlightening our subcommittee on why this is
occurring will be appreciated.
Similarly, the Brandon Road project is aimed at arresting
the economic and environmental damage unleashed by this
creature called the invasive Asian carp that, if not checked,
will exterminate the $7-billion native fishery that is Lake
Erie. More fish in Lake Erie than all the other Great Lakes
combined, and, of course, Lake Erie and all the related Great
Lakes have the longest coastline in the Nation. It is over
2,600 miles.
However, this particular Brandon Road project is another
example of one burdened with cost increases and delays. The
Great Lakes and Mississippi ecosystems are drastically
different, and I remain very concerned that the Great Lakes
Fishery faces daunting challenges with the Brandon Road
investments, what the governor of Illinois has just done, and
that we may be heading into a period where--there were
proposals to shut off the confluence of the Mississippi and the
Great Lakes waterways. I am very troubled with the solution
that was finally arrived on and whether it will be successful
in meeting this really terrible challenge.
The Corps is fully aware that it must address project
execution challenges. Our constituents depend on the successful
completion of these projects, and the additional costs are
ultimately paid by the taxpayers.
Again, I want to thank the witnesses for being here along
with all of our dear members to discuss how the Corps is
learning lessons from these challenges and trying to implement
new solutions across the country. With that, I will close my
remarks, and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you all.
Mr. Fleischmann. I thank the distinguished ranking chair
for her remarks.
And I thank you, our witnesses, for being here today.
Please ensure that the hearing record, questions for the
record, and any supporting information requested by the
subcommittee are delivered, please, in final form to us no
later than 4 weeks from the time that you receive them. Members
who have additional questions for the record will have until
the close of business Friday to provide them to the
subcommittee office.
Without objection, your full written testimony will be
entered into the record. With that in mind, we would ask that
you please summarize your opening statement in 5 minutes.
General Graham, you are now recognized, sir, for your
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM H. ``BUTCH'' GRAHAM
JR., CHIEF OF ENGINEERS AND COMMANDING GENERAL, U.S. ARMY CORPS
OF ENGINEERS
General Graham. Chairman Fleischmann, Ranking Member
Kaptur, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to discuss the Civil Works program.
Major General Kelly, our deputy for civil and emergency
operations, was supposed to testify here today, but he is in
Los Angeles leading our wildfire debris removal mission that we
are executing under FEMA.
The President's intent was clear: Move fast to help people.
Currently, we are about a month ahead of what our original
schedule was. We have 115 crews actively removing fire debris
from private residences and are adding more crews as homeowners
provide rights of entry. We will continue to add resources as
required until all the fire debris is safely and swiftly
removed. Thank you, again, for letting me be here instead of
General Kelly.
Through the Civil Works program, the Corps works with
State, Tribal, and local agencies to study, build, and operate
water resource projects.
Breaking the program down into its components, the
navigation program, as we heard this morning, underpins the
entire national economy, ensuring that commodities can move
reliably and efficiently along 12,000 miles of inland waterway,
13,000 miles of inner coastal waterway, and into 1,000 coastal,
Great Lakes, and inland harbors. Ninety eight percent of
overseas trade and 48 percent of consumer goods moves through
these ports.
The Corps' flood risk management program maintains 746 dams
and 13,000 miles of Federal levies that prevent an astounding
$200 billion of damages every year.
The Corps' recreation program--not to be forgotten--
includes more than 400 lakes and river projects which provide
recreational opportunities to millions.
These are important programs that the Nation has entrusted
to the Army Corps. Our objective every day is to safely deliver
quality projects on schedule within budget. We have been
working hard over the last 5 years to leverage these new
business intelligence tools to measure how we are meeting this
objective. Our current on-schedule rate across our entire
portfolio is 73 percent. That is a C, and that is unacceptable.
When we look into our costs and schedule shortfalls, we put
the drivers into two categories: Uncontrollable and
controllable factors.
Uncontrollable factors include inflation and labor
shortages. According to the Associated General Contractors,
construction inflation over the last 5 years is around 34
percent. Labor, particularly for skilled trades, is tight,
leading to wage growth of 25 percent. Construction materials
and diesel fuel have increased 38 percent and 58 percent
respectively.
As you would expect, we put most of our effort into those
things that we can control. We have grouped these into three
main areas: Get the engineering right, get the project
management right, and get the business right.
Getting the engineering right. Our cost estimates must be
based on sufficiently mature engineering designs, at least 35
percent. As you will hear today, we have allowed projects to be
authorized with the engineering well, well below that 35
percent threshold. In these instances, it wasn't so much that
the costs have increased; rather, it was that our initial
estimates were way, way too optimistic. My pledge to this
committee is that I will only sign chief's reports when I am
convinced that we have got the engineering right with
sufficient majority.
Our second controllable focus area is get the project
management right. We must improve our ability to stay in
control of our projects by setting realistic schedules. There
is a very insightful GAO report that captures the prevalence of
optimism bias across most Federal contracting. To combat this
bias, we have instituted monthly reviews at the division
headquarters level to monitor the quality of our schedules.
Our third controllable focus area is get the business
right. Here, our intent is to improve scheduled performance by
properly resourcing the work with the right manning levels or
by contracting the work out with the right acquisition
strategies. Get the engineering right, get the project
management right, get the business right.
Thank you, again, for inviting us here today. I believe
that if we stay focused on those three fundamentals, we will
deliver the outputs we all seek. Thank you.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Fleischmann. I want to thank you, General Graham. We
will now begin with questions, sir, starting with my own.
General, I have always maintained a positive working
relationship with the chief of engineers and the district and
division commanders. My goal has remained the same, and we must
finish Chickamauga Lock. For fiscal year 2023, sir, we thought
we were $39 million away from completing the project. In fiscal
year 2025 and $237 million later, we cannot award the
completion contract and are expecting another significant cost
increase.
General Graham, I appreciate your focus on getting the
fundamental building blocks right to avoid these kinds of
issues in the future. This work is not glamorous, but these
details make all the difference. However, if we do not define
the goals clearly and measure progress toward them, we cannot
expect different results.
My first question, sir, is what will be different in 3
years if you have been successful in putting the Civil Works
program on a path to stability and cost and schedule
efficiency, sir?
General Graham. Chairman Fleischmann, what we will see is
we are delivering on our commitments. The first step is to--
let's make good commitments at the very beginning. As I
mentioned in my opening statement, all of that is predicated on
getting the engineering right.
There is a great book that is out by a Dutch economist. He
is a professor at Oxford. It is called ``How Big Things Get
Done,'' and most of us are reading it. And in there, one of its
main premises are go slow to go fast. And by that, it is take
the time necessary during the feasibility stage to make sure
that you have thought through the engineering and that you have
got all the stakeholders on board.
We failed that at Chickamauga. Worse, we had a poor
contractor. We are doing our best to work with that contractor
to pull that contract across the finish line. But 3 years from
now, I expect that our on-time percentage--as I mentioned, it
is 73 percent right now--to be well above 80 percent.
The last point, sir, is that that look is--when I take a
look at our on-time percentage rate, that is a leading look as
much as it is a look in the rearview mirror. So we are looking
at the commitments we are making today and seeing are we on
track for those commitments we have made in the future.
Mr. Fleischmann. Yes, sir. I have two follow-up questions,
sir, and you may have already answered that in this. So, if you
would like to expand on that or supplement it in the two
follow-up questions, sir.
What quantitative metrics have you put in place to measure
success and apply lessons learned to future studies and
projects? And then when the next change of command arrives and
you are assessing your tenure as chief of engineers, sir, what
metrics will you judge your own effectiveness?
General Graham. It is as simple as are we safely delivering
quality projects on schedule within budget, and it can be a $3-
billion lock and dam up at Soo. It can be a small wastewater
infrastructure project somewhere in Tennessee. All of those are
important to someone.
So I often get asked, Chairman, are you going to prioritize
the work you are doing? Absolutely not. We are project-funded,
which means we can expand and contract as we are authorized and
appropriated to do the work. And so when we sign up to deliver,
that is our commitment to you.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir. I realize I have a little
bit of time left, but we have such a very robust dais, which I
am very fortunate for, sir.
So, at this time, I am going to recognize our distinguished
ranking member for 5 minutes for questions, Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, through funding that Congress provided last year,
the Corps allocated $10 million to the city of Toledo to
initiate and complete construction to rehabilitate raw water
means and water supply. Our water was cut off for 3 days back
in 2014, and there are issues when our water draw in Toledo is
only 20 feet below the surface, and when the wind blows east to
Buffalo, we face the risk of not having water.
General Quander, thank you for working with us to try to
fund the critical work for Toledo. Do you commit to execute
this project and these funds expeditiously?
General Quander. Ranking Member Kaptur, thank you for that
question.
And for that Section 594 program for the city of Toledo, we
are absolutely committed to partnering with them. They have
been a great partner, and just talking to the district, we
expect them to sign a letter of intent here pretty soon.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
General Graham, the Corps has often struggled to execute
environmental infrastructure projects in a timely manner. What
is the Corps doing to improve its efficiency in implementing
environmental infrastructure across the country?
General Graham. Ranking Member Kaptur, as was mentioned
earlier, all projects are important, whether they are a small
environmental infrastructure project or a huge lock and dam
project. And so the districts must, must make sure that the
project delivery teams on all those projects are capable of
doing the work assigned.
Ms. Kaptur. We know in other programs not under your
jurisdiction--like nuclear submarines--we are going to be
spending an additional 2 billion-plus in order to meet the
delivery, but the problem there is people who can actually do
the work properly and shortages in the industrial base itself.
As you look at your organization, do you face the same
shortages? And could you be more specific about which
competencies you lack and--human competencies--and then on the
capability side, what in the industrial base is not serving you
well?
General Graham. Ma'am, let me start with the industrial
base.
We know that our pool of large contractors that can do a
$3-billion project like up at the Soo--that that has shrunk
over the years. And similar, too, when I look at the military
side of the Army, the industrial base over there has shrunk as
well.
So we are working to ensure that we are maximizing the
competition and our ability to leverage our small business
program to continue to assist small businesses growing into
large businesses. That is one of the goals that we have to
increase capacity of our contracting base.
On the Corps internal side, you get good at something by
having reps and sets. So, if a district is only going to do a
certain project once every 5 years, we are going to consolidate
that work so that the team that is doing it does it more often.
A good example for this, ma'am, is our locks and dams right
now. We have got one design center that we have gone to, and
they are doing all of the design across the Nation. And we are
going down to two production centers, one in Rock Island and
one in Pittsburgh, and they will do all the production.
Ms. Kaptur. Okay. I am going to just move to Brandon Road
really quickly in my time.
We fought intensively to prevent the spread of the Asian
carp into the Great Lakes, and we are not through this problem
yet. You know what its aim is.
I was going to ask General Graham. This project has
struggled with delays due to negotiating the necessary
agreements among the Corps and multiple nonfederal sponsors.
How are you providing transparency and certainty to the
nonfederal sponsors that the Corps will meet its obligations?
And then, General Graham, I am going to ask you. This
project was estimated to cost $830 million in 2021. After
additional engineering work was done, the cost estimate now is
1.1 billion. How is the Corps improving its initial cost
estimating, and will it be able to--what are you now projecting
for this project?
General Graham, yes. Okay. Yes.
General Graham. Ma'am, I will take that.
Ms. Kaptur. Okay.
General Graham. Ensuring that the engineering is a
sufficient majority, that is the Rosetta Stone for all of this.
For Brandon Road in particular, with the various States and
nonfederal sponsors engaged, it is making sure that we have got
alignment, that this project meets their needs. I know there
are some challenges right now, but we are absolutely committed
to continuing to work with our nonfederal sponsors to meet
those challenges.
On the engineering, we talked about the uncontrollable
factors, particularly the inflation and the struggle with
contractor capacity. So we will continue to work with industry
to maximize their capability.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. My time has expired.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you.
At this time, I would like to recognize my friend from
California, the distinguished chairman of the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee, on which I am privileged to serve
under him, Chairman Calvert.
Mr. Calvert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, first, I want to thank the former assistant secretary
of the Army, a long friend of mine, Mike Connor, and Colonel
Handura for their work on the Majestic Chino project in the
Prado Basin. The team helped navigate this 409 permit problem.
We helped move that project forward. But I think it created a
new precedent within the Corps for future projects, and I thank
you for that and appreciate that.
I also want to thank you for the work you are doing in L.A.
It is obviously a tremendous disaster for the people in Los
Angeles. With 7,000 structures, the debris removal is a
tremendous job, but I know we waived the California
Environmental Quality Act, NEPA, and also the California
Coastal Commission to accelerate that project as quickly as
possible, and I appreciate your work in getting that debris
removal out as quickly as possible.
The Prado Dam project is in my congressional district. I
secured full funding for the Santa Ana River Mainstem funding
in the 2018 Budget Act. The final component of the mainstem
project involves raising the Prado Spillway to accommodate a
higher level of flood protection, which was fully funded.
The Prado Dam in Corona also requires a dam safety project.
The Prado Dam shields almost 1.5 million people and $61 billion
in property from potential flooding in 29 cities in Riverside
and Orange County. In an effort to complete both objectives in
a more cost-effective way, the Corps pursued a unified project
that will accommodate both the dam safety objectives and goals
of the mainstem project.
However, your fiscal year 2023 budget justification for
construction estimated the cost for this project was 650
million. The following fiscal year in 2024, the estimated
Federal cost of the project increased significantly to 1.3
billion. And, frankly, I am concerned about what will be
included in the fiscal year 2026 construction budget. The
project is a prime example of why we have this hearing today,
which is to evaluate project execution, project formation, and
contracting.
With regard to this project, what is being done to resolve
these issues, and do you anticipate additional costs that are
not already included in the requested amount? Do you anticipate
additional design charges?
Colonel Handura. Sir, I am going to turn that Prado piece
over to my colleague, Colonel Walter, who is my teammate, and
then I will follow up afterwards.
Colonel Walter. Thank you, sir, very much. I appreciate the
question.
So, as we look at Prado in particular, I would like to
hearken back to the chairman's opening comments about trying to
find a path to do our business better, particularly to our
acquisition strategies. What we have done at Prado is we are
pursuing an integrated design and construction project, which
is a contracting mechanism that industry uses, which shares
risk across both the contractor and the Federal Government. The
intent of this is to drive down the price during construction.
So, after pre-construction services, there is a follow-on
contract that is an option that is incentivized to the
contractor to come below the target price where they are
basically doing savings sharing. So that is one of the tools we
are looking at to try to get the cost back into an actionable
area.
We do anticipate there are some--there continue to be some
cost increase. That is mainly due to what we have already
discussed, the market forces, and then also the addition of
contingency in this contract mechanism.
Mr. Calvert. Well, the sooner you can get that information
to us, the better, where we can plan on that.
One other project is the Murrieta Creek flood protection,
restoration, and recreation project. That has been moving
forward. We got the $39 million requested for completion of the
phase 2b of the project. I am also concerned about this being
delayed and additional design issues and additional costs that
seem to continue to change as time goes on.
So, hopefully, there is a--we can get the successful bid
out and get this project complete. I have been working on this
thing for 30 years. I would like to get it done in my lifetime.
What do you think, Colonel? Can we get it done?
Colonel Walter. Sir, I am not trying to----
Mr. Calvert. I can move on to somebody else here.
Colonel Handura. I have got this one. Sir, let me talk
Murrieta.
So, sir, we are on track scheduled for the ward of the last
reach--that is the phase 2 bravo--in June of this year, 2025,
and then we are looking at construction fall of 2025, sir.
Mr. Calvert. You are going to stick to that?
Colonel Handura. Yes, sir.
Mr. Calvert. Okay. Great. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Chairman Calvert.
At this time, I would like to recognize my friend and a new
member to the full committee and to the subcommittee, the
distinguished gentleman from California, Mr. Levin, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Levin. Well, I thank my dear friend, the chairman, and
it is truly an honor to be with you all. And I want to
associate myself with my colleagues' comments thanking you for
the hard work in L.A. I had the opportunity to go on tour with
a number of the committee members recently, and it is just an
incredible amount of work, and I am very grateful for it.
I have the great honor to represent about 50 miles of
beautiful Southern California coastline about an hour south of
there in Orange County and San Diego County. Come visit
anytime. We really have had a tremendous relationship with the
Army Corps of Engineers. I particularly want to thank Colonel
Handura and everyone for all the great work these last 6 years.
We know firsthand the threats presented by coastal erosion,
storm damage, and flooding, and the Army Corps continues to
support numerous critical projects that maintain the integrity
of infrastructure throughout our congressional district.
This past year, after many ups and downs, I am pleased that
we completed the first renourishment of the San Clemente
Shoreline Project as well as the Encinitas Solana Beach Project
to deliver sand for my constituents and to protect our vital
coastal infrastructure.
Colonel Handura, again, I want to personally thank you, as
well as Colonel Baker at the L.A. District and General
Spellmon, former commanding general for the Corps, for helping
to make sure these projects were completed.
And while completing these projects was a win, it also
demonstrated the limitation that our Corps faces in the Pacific
region. There is very limited dredge capacity in the Pacific,
which increases costs and threatens both maintenance and
emergency dredging needs and the ability to complete projects
in the necessary dredging windows.
Months- and even years-long dredging delays negatively
impact communities, beaches, and the movement of goods through
our ports and harbors. We must ensure adequate annual funding
for the Corps Plant Replacement Improvement Program to support
the Corps' infrastructure needs and make sure the Corps has the
capacity it needs to best serve communities like mine
throughout the entire Pacific region.
Colonel Handura, the city of Oceanside has experienced
significant coastal erosion challenges since the construction
of Camp Pendleton Harbor in 1942, and the Federal Government
has acknowledged that construction of the harbor jetties was a
direct contributing cause of this erosion.
I appreciate that the Corps is finally nearing completion
of the Oceanside mitigation study to study this right--or to
right this wrong, I should say--after nearly 25 years of work.
That is pretty stunning.
It is of the utmost importance to my constituents that the
Corps fully analyze a beach-fill-only alternative--that is the
key, a beach-fill-only alternative--to get more sand on the
badly eroded coastline, especially since there are strong local
concerns about the construction of groins.
So can you commit, sir, that the Corps will work
collaboratively with the city of Oceanside and other local
governments in the area as you analyze alternatives to mitigate
for the coastal erosion caused by Camp Pendleton Harbor?
Colonel Handura. Sir, thank you for that question. And we
are moving forward on that mitigation study with plans to
undertake sampling--sediment sampling in fiscal year 2025, the
window of May to September.
USACE has a legal and policy--may have a legal--USACE has a
legal and policy barrier to implementing sponsor-requested
alternative evaluation on the beach fill because this is a
mitigation study and we are restricted to the least-cost plan.
Any deviation to this would require a policy determination by
the administration.
We understand the stakeholders have broad concerns with the
potential environmental damages associated by the groin
alternative, and we are committed to using our stakeholder
engagement process required under NEPA to ensure we have the
locally accepted plan.
Mr. Levin. Thank you. Local acceptance is key, and I will
be watching this very closely and really want you to work
collaboratively with our city and our community.
Let me turn to another project, the San Luis Rey River
Flood Control Project, which the Corps has been working on
since before I was born. I am 46 years old. I remain deeply
concerned about the low level of flood protection that the
project presently provides despite over five decades of work
and tens of millions of local dollars that have already been
contributed to the project.
Colonel, what assurances can you give me that the Corps
will move diligently towards the implementation of a
construction plan that ensures, first, that the highest-
priority necessary work for flood control is accomplished as
soon as possible and, second, that the entire project is
finished efficiently?
Colonel Handura. Sir, thank you for that question. And we
are committed to finishing what we have started on that project
contingent upon funding and engineering analysis for the levy
and the sand plug. We have been trying to wrap this project up
since reauthorization in WRDA 2020.
We appreciate the 7 million in funding received to do the
geotechnical evaluation, and that report will inform if further
levy repairs are needed. The geotech analysis is on schedule to
be complete by this March of 2025. The sand plug analysis is
needed to determine if it can be removed safely or if it
naturally requires intervention. This and the sand plug removal
is needed to complete the project to provide the channel
capacity to pass the 100-year event.
Mr. Levin. I am out of time, but I would like to ask for a
follow-up meeting with the Los Angeles District and South
Pacific Division so that we can get the project moving.
Colonel Handura. Absolutely, sir.
Mr. Levin. Thank you. And I will ask other questions for
the record.
And I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Levin.
At this time, I would like to recognize the distinguished
vice chairman of this subcommittee, new to the subcommittee and
proud to be my partner here, Mr.--goodness gracious--Mr.
Chairman Cloud of Texas from the Corpus Christi area. It is an
honor to have you with us, sir.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Chairman. It is an honor to be here,
and I look forward to continuing to serve you in this committee
and in our Nation.
I want to thank you all for being here. Thank you for the
work that you do. Anytime I am sitting in front of people who
have distinguished military service like you all, I am humbled.
And thank you for your service. I appreciate it.
I also want to say thank you for the great work that is
being done along the Texas coast where I represent the Port of
Corpus Christi. Our number-one energy export port is coming to
completion. That is because a lot of the great work that you
all are doing, and we are excited to see that happen and all
that it is going to mean--not only for our national economy but
what it is going to mean for our allies as we are able to
support them with energy around the world.
I do want to touch on the Matagorda Ship Channel. This has
been kind of a sticking point as we move through. We had a
project that had a record of decision. In an unprecedented
move, the Biden administration rescinded the record of
decision--that had never been done before--and sent the project
back to basically zero starting point.
And so we have been working to move this forward as quickly
as possible. You know, we have had a number of meetings to do
what we can to squeeze that timeline as much as possible.
I have been concerned about the Corps' willingness in the
previous administration to--I am trying to think of a polite
way to say this, but--to acquiesce to certain environmentalist
groups who looked to put roadblocks who--their stated position
is to kill the project.
I understand we want to build and we want to do it reliably
and responsibly and those kind of things, but when their stated
objective is to put every sort of hindrance into the project in
an effort to kill it, I get very concerned about that. And so
we have seen this timeline continue to slip.
And, in light of President Trump's new executive order--
which, you know, it is a dozen pages or so, and so I won't read
it all--but he talks about the importance of speed. Burdensome,
ideological-motivated regulations have impeded the development
of our natural resources. He talks about the national interest
to unleash America's affordability and reliable energy in
natural resources. And he goes on and he basically says, we
need to find a way to expedite this going forward.
And you, being in the Army, know that we are in a massive
competition globally and especially with China, and they seem
to be able to build things quicker than we can. And so I would
like to know what we can do to move this project forward very
quickly and efficiently going forward.
I was concerned, again, you know, as we are looking at
delays in this project, that there was a Justice 40 seminar
that the Corps took time to spend time on that day. Meanwhile,
we have projects not moving forward. And so I would like to
have some sort of confidence on what we can do to streamline
this timeline in light of President Trump's new executive
order.
Colonel Walter. Sir, if you don't mind, I will take that
one.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you, sir.
Colonel Walter. It is good to see you again.
So, Matagorda is one where we did get the engineering
wrong. You and I discussed that when we met the last time.
So, as we look forward, we are actually just wrapping up
the supplemental EIS, the environmental impact statement, for
that area. When we had to place the dredge material, we need to
look through--we look very good on that. I just actually signed
a validation review of the path forward. I believe that in
November of 2025 we will be able to release--so this November--
release for public comment the report with a post-authorization
change request the following year, November of 2026, which
would allow to understand the full cost of that project.
For going forward, we absolutely remained committed to
monitoring and holding ourselves accountable. The chief had
mentioned the monthly reviews of our programs. So keeping an
eye on our metrics for how we are doing and looking forward to
make sure that, as milestones are approaching, we are prepared
for them so that we can ensure that we are not eating into
contingency and going long on things.
Mr. Cloud. One other question I had on this particular
project, too, is the BCR has been an issue--benefit-cost
ratio--which, normally, I am for. I am a fiscal hawk, and so I
always want us to have a taxpayer--a good ROI on this. This is
one where we have a nonfederal sponsor willing to pay for
almost the whole project, and yet there has been no sort of
allowance made for that or consideration for that in our
conversations despite my many efforts to bring kind of common
sense to this equation. And so my hope is that that would not
be a hindrance moving forward.
And anything you can to speak to that, especially in light
of--we have groups that are specifically trying to move the
cost up to make that formula not work and so that the American
people wouldn't be able to have access to the completion of
this congressionally authorized project.
Colonel Walter. Sir, I think it is fair to say we are
mindful of that. Rhett, who is down in Galveston--he and I
traded notes on this yesterday as far as the value to the
American people. So we remain focused on that.
Any discussion outside the policy side of it, I would
really have to defer back to the administration and then the
Army--or the assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works to
go through the implementation for policy.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for all your
work.
Thank you, Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Fleischmann. I thank the vice chairman for his
questions.
At this time, I would like to recognize my friend from the
great State of Indiana, Mr. Mrvan, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Mrvan. Thank you, Chairman.
And thank you to all the witnesses for your testimony
today.
Before I get to my first question, I want to first take a
minute to recognize the important work of the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, which is critical strengthening the economy--a
critical role in strengthening the economy of northwest Indiana
and the entire Midwest and our Nation.
I am privileged to represent Indiana's First Congressional
District, which is home to 40 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline,
three major river corridors, the Grand Calumet River, the
Little Calumet--the Grand Calumet River, the Little Calumet
River, and the Kankakee River, as well as the Trail Creek,
Burns Harbor, and Indiana Harbor waterways. It is the center of
vital road, rail, air, and port networks in the Great Lakes
Region and is home to major manufacturing industries. This
infrastructure, in conjunction with our labor workforce and
proximity to Chicago, enables our region to attract new
commercial and residential interests and talent.
There is no doubt projects under the jurisdiction of the
U.S. Corps of Engineers serve as an economic driver of
Indiana's First Congressional District, and I am grateful for
their missions in our region. I cannot tell you how many times
I have stood with mayors and other State and local officials
who have shared that your work has facilitated economic
development and enhanced the quality of life for residents in
our region.
I also appreciate our partnership with other economic
drivers in our region, including the dredging initiatives at
the international port of the Burns Harbor, permitting the
Gary/Chicago Airport, and efforts to protect our shoreline and
clean our waterways, particularly through the Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative.
My father was one of the longest-serving members of the
Indiana General Assembly, and as a young child, I remember
attending public forums with him and other stakeholders,
including the representatives from the Corps, to address the
toxic pollution found in the Grand Calumet River. I am proud
that the Federal Government, including the EPA in partnerships
with the Corps, has made such great progress, and I am hopeful
that, as we move forward, we can finish this work to remove
over a century of industrial discharge and benefit the
countless residents, businesses, and environment of northwest
Indiana for the next century. And I look forward to working
with all of you.
My first question is for Major General Quander. In my
district and across the Great Lakes, some projects have been
slowed because of the difficulty of finding somewhere to put
contaminated dredge materials. How does the dredging and the
management of the dredge materials impact the Corps' ability to
carry out its mission with respect to dredging and the
operations and maintenance?
General Quander. Representative Mrvan, sir, thank you for
that question.
In terms of dredging, each State has some different--we
have engagements with different States with dredging and we
just--we have different engagements with different States in
terms of dredging with Illinois, with the State of Ohio, and
then--those States.
Representative, we need some additional capacity for
dredging, clearly, in the Great Lakes, and then we need some
opportunities to how we dispose the dredging. And, like I said,
we have some different challenges in different States.
Mr. Mrvan. What are the opportunities for the disposal?
What does the future look like?
General Quander. Representative Mrvan, in terms of
opportunities for disposal, we have our confined disposal
facilities, which we know we have in the State of Indiana.
Mr. Mrvan. Correct.
General Quander. I know you have that in your district. Up
in the Great Lakes, though, we have some challenges in terms of
Illinois with the Calumet confined disposal facility. And so,
as we are trying to dispose, we are kind of at an impasse at
that location.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. One other quick question, General. With
respect to the Great Lakes Coastal Resilience Study, can you
explain the benefits of studying the variability--the viability
of lake levels and the shorelines as well as the potential
economic impacts that these fluctuations may have at the Great
Lakes coastal communities?
General Quander. Yes, sir. So, in terms of the Great Lakes
Resilience Study, we have previously experienced negative
impacts from both the high and low lake levels in the past 30
years. Flooding and coastal erosion have occurred more
frequently.
That partnership with the eight Great Lakes States has been
hugely important, and it is allowing us to look at lake levels
and also studying potential vulnerabilities in those lake
levels and make recommendations. We have just completed the
first milestone of the shared vision, and we look to
incorporate projects after we continue to progress on that
Great Lakes study.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. I look forward to working with you in the
future. Thank you.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Mrvan.
At this time, I would like to acknowledge and recognize my
friend, Mr. Franklin, from the great State of Florida.
Gentlemen, this man has had a distinguished career in the
great United States Navy as an aviator and is just a great new
member of this subcommittee. I am glad to have you, sir.
Mr. Franklin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.
I have the privilege of representing Florida's 18th
Congressional District, which is the heartland of the State of
Florida. I tell everybody it is the south half of Florida with
no saltwater. So if that gets your bearings.
But, as you all probably know, there is a tremendous amount
of work you all do in my district. The Western Everglades
Restoration Plan, that is in our district. All the watershed
that feeds that has a tremendous amount of projects that you
all are involved in. So you are top of mind for many of my
constituents, and I appreciate all the work you do.
We can always do things better, and I know I am sensing
that from you all. There is a spirit there to try to improve
our processes. We always want to do government, you know,
better, faster, cheaper, and fix people's problems.
So I want to dive in a little bit--General Hibner, this
would probably be most appropriate to you--to talk about the
Section 404 Clean Water Act permitting--and this is really just
an example that can scale across anywhere else within the
Corps--but just talk about the efficiencies in this program.
In 2016, the Army Corps Jacksonville District approved 735
projects. In 2017, it was 874 projects. 2018, 850. So around,
you know, 825 give or so--give or take a few each year--was
what was getting done. In 2020, the State of Florida assumed
the ability to issue those permits. So it kind of took some of
that workload off the Corps. By 2022, the State had done 1,615
projects. In 2023, 1,450 projects. So roughly double. Not quite
double, but quite a bit more. It reduced the backlog that had
been a big part of the frustration for constituents.
But, in February of 2024, the Federal Government--or the
Federal courts issued an order that took away that State
authority and put it back on the Corps. I know that wasn't
anything that excited the Jacksonville office at the time, but
it was what it was. Since that time and, really, within a
matter of weeks after that decision, our phones started blowing
up with the backlog starting to mount again. Now, we have got
big backlogs and we are trying to figure out how to plow
through that.
I have an amendment in the--well, before I get to that, I
would just love to hear your thoughts. Why is it that the State
seems to be able to do this so much more efficiently than the
Corps has been able to? Is it a question of money? Is it
people? Is it the processes?
Assuming the State is doing it right and the standards are
met at the same that the Corps would do--and that is an
important assumption, and if that is not valid, then I would
need to understand that. But why the difference and the
disparity? Why can the state do it much more efficiently?
General Hibner. Yes, sir. I appreciate the question. And I
won't pass judgment on whether the State was doing it properly
or not. They were told to stop in 2024. We were doing our part
in helping the State assume that responsibility for 404
permitting.
And what we have done since then is we have actually
established a regional permitting agency within the division--
not only my division, but other divisions in the Corps of
Engineers--to help us expedite our permitting process, to put
more resources against our permitting process to--in order to
let that development--all this really important development to
occur for the people of Florida and for the Nation, and we will
continue to do that.
Whatever the future holds for 404 permitting, if it does
end up going back to Florida and Jacksonville won't be doing
that, we will, once again, in good faith be good partners in
transferring that responsibility back to the State of Florida.
But I will mention that that does cause turbulence and that
does slow us down as we are doing those multiple transitions,
but we will do it as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Mr. Franklin. And I understand there is turbulence in that
transition, and that probably contributed to some of the
backlog increase initially when it was moved back over.
If the State were to take this--assume this fully, what
kind of savings would that provide for you? And then,
conversely, if the decision were not made and it stayed on the
Corps' plate, do you need additional--what additional funds are
we talking about?
General Hibner. Sir, it doesn't necessarily provide savings
to us. We have our regulatory program and our regulatory
personnel that are providing that service of doing those--of
processing those permits.
So, whether it is the Corps of Engineers doing it or it is
the State of Florida, the funding that comes from the Federal
Government will be directed just to a different entity. Instead
of my regulatory program, it would be the State's regulatory
program, and we would have to figure out how we best employ our
regulators or let them go since the work is no longer there for
the Federal Government.
Mr. Franklin. Okay. And, along with the ranking member, I
too hope that we can get our appropriations bills done for
fiscal year 2025. I have got an amendment that is in the
Interior appropriations bill for 2025 that would restore that
authority back to Florida, and I appreciate your comments that
it would be a smooth transition. If we do that, we definitely
want to be working with you all hand in hand to ensure a smooth
turnover. But thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here.
Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Franklin. I also echo your
sentiments. I sure hope we can get fiscal year 2025 done. So
thank you.
At this time, I would like to recognize my friend from the
great State of Mississippi, the distinguished chairman of the
House Ethics Committee, who is with us on this subcommittee
today, Mr. Guest. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Guest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. I think you
can see from the questioning here that every district across
our great Nation has critical infrastructure needs, and each of
us--as Members of Congress, we do our best to try to vet those
infrastructure needs, and then we advocate for our district as
we seek funding for those critical infrastructure projects.
And, many times, you are going to be included as individuals
who are going to be working on those projects.
And we know and we have seen here today by some of the
examples that have been given that, often, we find that those
projects experience extensive delays, that those delays then
cause the cost of the projects to go up extensively, and that
we experience--as Members of Congress, we experience
frustration with that. Our constituents back home, our local
leaders, local government entities who are vested and bought
into these projects--they experience frustration.
And so what we want to try to do--and I think that the goal
of this hearing is to figure out where those choke points are
and what we can do to alleviate those choke points and try to
get these projects flowing much quicker.
There have been examples here. Chairman Calvert talked
about the fact that he has a problem--has a project within his
district that has been going on for 36 years. I think I heard
someone over here mention a project maybe going on for 40
years. You know, and I think back that, you know, we were able
to construct the Hoover Dam in 5 years, actually 2 years early
and under budget. We were able to send a man to the moon 8
years after John F. Kennedy challenged America to fulfill that
mission.
And so I know that we have the ability, that we have the
workforce, but I feel like that we have been constrained. And
some of the constraints you have mentioned--particularly on the
larger projects, General, you mentioned the fact that there are
only 25 firms nationally that can do projects of over 500
million, but there are a lot of smaller projects where we would
have additional contractors and additional firms who are able
to participate.
And so the first question is, do you--being the Army Corps,
do you have the workforce that you need to get these projects
approved and to get these projects moving forward? And then the
second part--and we can talk about these at the same time--is
the environmental compliance. And you talk about the
environmental compliance in your testimony. You talk about the
National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA, the Endangered
Species Act or ESA, the Clean Water Act. And so what can be
done to expedite these critical infrastructure projects to move
through the environmental compliance?
And Michael Cloud made a good point that there are
environmental groups that are continuing--continue to sue to
United States Government with the sole goal in mind to shut the
project down completely. They don't want the project to be
built better or to have less harm to the environment. They just
want to kill the whole damn thing. And the longer they can keep
it in court, and the longer that it drags out, and the more
costs that are associated, then they hope that we will move on
and do something else.
And so the two questions that I have--and I will stop
talking and give you the next minute and a half to answer
those--is, one, workforce within the Army Corps. Do you have
the workforce that you need, particularly to the smaller
projects? And then what can be done on the environmental
compliance side?
General Graham. Representative Guest, thank you for that
question.
Regarding cost delays, we share your frustration. We
absolutely do. Everyone at this table shares that frustration.
We take this personally when we can't deliver on our
commitments to you and to your constituents.
On the internal workforce, we are susceptible to the same
market trends that everybody else is. We are at 3 percent
unemployment, and it is a hot market out there right now for
structural engineers, and we have to compete. We have the tools
available that allow us to do that.
And so that is our responsibility to successfully compete
in the labor market, or we have to tell you that I can't get to
this project right now. We are not going to say no. We just
have to say not now because I don't have the workforce on
board, but we will work hard to get it. What we also can do is
to leverage the talents of the private sector.
In the 18 seconds I have left, sir, in terms of the
environmental compliance, this is one where it is almost
counterintuitive, but it is go slow to go fast. Every time we
have tried to not dot our Ts--dot our Ts--cross our Ts and dot
our Is carefully on the environmental side, we usually end up
getting sued, and then that sets the project back further.
Mr. Guest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for those
questions.
At this time, I would like to recognize Ms. Lee of Nevada.
Gentleman, Ms. Lee, like my good friend from California,
Mr. Levin, is one of my co-chairs. I chair eight caucuses, and
caucuses--and I say this because there are other people
watching this all across America--are a way that Republicans
and Democrats can work together in a bipartisan fashion on a
common issue.
With Ms. Lee, it is cleaning up legacy waste sites. With
Mr. Levin, it is on spent nuclear fuel. So it is a bit niche,
but we all work together.
So at this time, I would like to recognize Ms. Lee of
Nevada for 5 minutes and thank her.
Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your
leadership.
I also want to thank all the witnesses for being here today
and for all the critical work you do with respect to our water
resources, and that is really what I want to focus on right
now, being from Nevada, and my colleagues from other States
where water resources are plentiful.
I was very disturbed to hear about the Army Corps' highly
unusual release of over 2 billion gallons of water from Central
California's Terminus and Schafer Dams last month in what
appears to have been, quite honestly, just a simple, risky,
rushed, wasteful political stunt by the Trump administration to
create this impression that somehow this water would assist the
wildfire response in Southern California.
After that happened, there was reporting that the water
didn't help the farms or L.A. at all.
And actually, what is more concerning, being from the west,
is the understanding of how important our reservoirs are to
water management, especially as we look to a potential drought
year again and what farmers are going to do come August when
they rely on that water that was released prematurely from
those dams.
So my question, General Graham, is not about this now well-
covered incident in Southern California, but more about what
are we doing going forward, and how are we going to handle when
politics sometimes comes and trumps the science and the good
sense in water management?
I want to know is the Army Corps positioned and prepared to
ensure that its stewardship of so much of America's water
remains free from this type of harmful political interference?
General Graham. Representative Lee, thank you for that
question.
And we absolutely remain committed to making sure that all
of our actions are lawful. We have got great working
relationships with the irrigators down in the Tulare Lake
region of the southern Central Valley, and our commitment is to
continue to work with the State and local irrigators to get the
maximum benefit out of the water and those basins.
And so, the water that was released those days were flood
storage water. It wasn't irrigation water, and so that was
completely within Corps authorities.
Now, what we have done, and certainly the sense of Congress
has been to work as collaboratively as we possibly can with the
local irrigators on the flood waters.
And so, we have an R&D initiative called forecasting
foreign reservoir operations where we will take a little bit
more increased risk with holding onto flood storage waters
because we can see the atmospheric rivers as they are coming
across the Pacific. And that allows us to then more slowly
discharge those rivers to make sure that we are maximizing what
the irrigators and the citizens can use.
So, ma'am, that is our commitment to you.
Ms. Lee. So are you saying that this was flood control?
That this release, it wasn't prompted by any call by the Trump
administration?
General Graham. Ma'am, the water released was flood storage
water.
Ms. Lee. No, but was it a flood management release, or was
it at the direction of the Trump administration, was my
question?
General Graham. Ma'am, the answer to the question is it was
in compliance with the executive order that we were given.
Ms. Lee. Okay.
So that allows me to drill a little bit deeper on another
issue of political interference.
So now, if Congress specifically directs funding to an Army
Corps project in fiscal year 2025 or 2026 under our
appropriations legislation, but the President or, perhaps, his
OMB director, then illegally orders the Corps to withhold such
funding, how will the Corps respond?
General Graham. Ma'am, when our policy officials come on
board--right now that question would be best directed towards
them. We don't have any of our policy officials on board right
now. And that would normally be the Assistant Secretary of the
Army for Civil Works is an appointed official, and we don't
have any of those folks on board now.
Ms. Lee. So you can't answer whether or not the Army Corps
of Engineers will legally adhere with our Constitution and our
appropriations process? You are unable to answer that? We need
someone else to do that?
General Graham. Ma'am, we will always ensure that our
actions are legal and in accord with the Constitution. The more
nuanced policy questions, I would ask that once we get a policy
official on board, they would be best set to address those
adequately.
Ms. Lee. Okay. Thank you.
I yield.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you.
At this time, I would like to recognize my friend Ms. Maloy
of Utah. She is new to the subcommittee, is a water attorney by
profession----
Ms. Maloy. I used to be.
Mr. Fleischmann [continuing]. And I thank her.
So it is a privilege to have you on the subcommittee.
And I recognize you for 5 minutes.
Ms. Maloy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am going to follow up on some of the things that my
colleagues over here talked about with the choke points and
efficiencies with getting permits issued, but I want to talk
about it at a little bit higher level.
I introduced the Free Act last Congress and this Congress,
and it is an attempt to get agencies to look into using permit
by rule so that we can issue permits more efficiently.
In the meantime, Executive Order 14154, issued on the day
of inauguration, orders the Secretary of Defense, as well as
the heads of other relevant agencies to undertake all available
efforts to eliminate all delays within their respective
permitting processes, including through but not limited to the
use of general permitting and permit by rule.
So while I am working on it on the legislative side, you
are also being told by the administration to work on it.
And a couple of my colleagues, during their time, talked
about preventing projects by making them more expensive, how
there are groups that like to sue and delay projects and make
them just more and more expensive until they may become
prohibitively expensive and never happen.
But even if we get projects built and permitted, they cost
the taxpayers a lot more than they needed to, to begin with.
So my question is: Are you familiar with the executive
order? And if so, what are you doing to implement permit by
rule and eliminate some of these efficiencies that we have been
talking about today?
General Graham. Representative Maloy, thank you for that
question.
We are, indeed, familiar with executive order--all of the
executive orders that have come down regarding our regulatory
program, and we are working to unpack those right now.
I don't have any direct answers for you right now, but we
certainly acknowledge the challenge.
Ms. Maloy. Okay. Well, I would encourage you to work with
us to find ways to implement permit by rule.
One of the things that you all talked about is that the
private sector could be utilized better in meeting some of
these needs, but there is some inefficiency in doing that.
In a permit-by-rule scenario, the private sector could be
utilized in giving the Corps some of the information that you
can then review to decide whether it is adequate for issuing a
permit.
I think that would be a lot better for the taxpayers, we
would have good environmental decisions, good engineering
decisions, made in a lot less time.
So please work with us; let us help you figure out how to
implement that because I think it is a good direction for us to
go in the future permits shouldn't take as long as they take.
We can make good environmental decisions a lot faster and a lot
cheaper than we are making them.
General Graham. We are in 100 percent agreement with you.
Ms. Maloy. Thank you for your time thank you for being
here. And Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Fleischmann. And thank you, Ms. Maloy, for those
questions.
It has been brought to my attention, gentlemen--and by the
way, I thank you for a very furtive first round of questions.
Some of my colleagues would like to engage in a second
round and glad to acquiesce in that regard.
Myself, I am satisfied, but I am going to defer now to the
ranking member--oh, well we are back in the first round kind of
like, well, that is good, which is great, hold those comments.
My friend from Florida, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, welcome
back, and you are welcome to ask questions for 5 minutes.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you for the indulgence.
And my questions will be directed at General Hibner.
General, this subcommittee, on a bipartisan basis, has
strongly supported projects across the country to accommodate
larger container ships that are coming to dominate the
waterborne shipping industry.
And Port Everglades, in my district, is not only a
cornerstone of south Florida's economy, but also one of the
Nation's most critical seaports facilitating billions in trade
and supporting thousands of jobs in our region.
As one of the top container ports in Florida and a key
gateway for energy products, cruise operations, and
international commerce, ensuring its infrastructure keeps pace
with industry demands is really essential. But the Army Corps'
navigation improvement project has still not been implemented
after three decades.
The port is struggling to accommodate increasingly larger
cargo vessels. The Port Everglades Pilot's Association has done
an exceptional job navigating these challenges, but their
ability to safely transit larger ships is now further hindered
by high spots from shoaling identified in the Corps' latest
hydrographic survey.
While the Corps originally planned the next full channel
maintenance event for fiscal year 2027 the Jacksonville
district has indicated that they have the capability to at
least start preparatory work if funding is available.
So given Port Everglades' vital role in our district's
economy and national trade, would you support including funding
in the Corps' fiscal year 2025 work plan to expedite this
maintenance event?
General Hibner. Ma'am we acknowledge the importance of the
port and the importance of regionally having all of our harbors
at maximum capacity so that all the ships that are calling on,
say, the eastern seaboard in my region are available at the
maximum depth and those ships can come in at any time that they
need to, that we are not relying on title action to bring in
the largest vessels in all of those considerations.
And to Port Everglades, ma'am, I am tracking that there is
some typical shoaling that does happen in our harbors, but that
the cycle of 5 to 6 years for doing the O&M, dredging the
operations and management dredging for Port Everglades is on
schedule and should happen in 2027 and 2028.
And that is all I have.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. But what I am asking you is there is
room to expedite some of this, and is that something that you
could look at and be supportive of so that we can move faster.
General Hibner. Ma'am, if there is, and I apologize for not
knowing the exact details of the condition of the port, exactly
how much shoaling is happening.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Yes, that is okay.
General Hibner. But if there is some maintenance that needs
to be done, we will of course do what we can to address those
concerns.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Okay.
But what I am asking you to do is please go back and take a
closer look at it and see if it is possible to expedite any
portion of it.
General Hibner. Understood, ma'am, we will.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Because it is really critical for
us.
General Hibner. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I also, General Hibner, note that
this hearing has been focused on project delays and rising
costs at the Army Corps. I was here for the beginning of the
meeting and heard the testimony.
But no project has experienced more of these delays than
the deepening and widening project at Port Everglades. Can you
provide us with an update and timeline for when we can expect
to reach key milestones to move this project forward, and what
steps can Congress take to ensure that projects like this one
don't face unnecessary bureaucratic delays.
General Hibner. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It has been more than 20 years.
General Hibner. Ma'am, we submitted the biological
assessment for the expansion of the harbor back in May of 2024.
We appreciate you and your office's support in trying to come
to an agreement with the National Marine Fisheries Service to
be able to reconcile some of our differences in what they see
in our biological assessment and what we think is sufficient
and what they believe is sufficient.
As to your question for the timeline, this has gone long
enough in our assessment.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Oh, yes.
General Hibner. And we want to move this forward. We are
going to do a final push next month with a meeting with the
regional leadership of both the Corps of Engineers and NMFS,
with the goal of reconciling as much as we can.
If we are able to and we are successful, then we will be
able to have a biological opinion process started with NMFS in
July of 2025 this year with the goal of having a record of
decision in October of 2026.
If not, ma'am, we are done doing this at the regional level
and we are going to bring this up to the higher level the
headquarters and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil
Works.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. I appreciate that.
And I am going to continue to offer my assistance to be
able to try to make sure we can bring this in for a landing to
address the environmental concerns and the economic needs to
move this project forward.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I yield back.
Mr. Fleischmann. I want to thank Ms. Wasserman Schultz for
her questions.
And I will associate myself with my earlier remarks. We are
now going to move to round two.
And I recognize Ms. Kaptur for 5 minutes.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, I wanted to ask you, in order to help the Corps
meet your staffing challenges and some of the contracting
challenges you have discussed, how few companies there are in
our country that can actually handle a contract with bonding
over $500 million, would you be open or have you ever done
Zooms with Members of Congress and having them invite their
business communities to hear this for the first time, both in
terms of staffing as well as the private contracting issue?
Would you be open to that? Do you have staff to do that?
Could someone answer that, please?
General Graham. Sure.
Ma'am, absolutely, we would be open to that. Each of the
regions, they do regional industry days. Maybe I will ask
General Quander to speak about what his regional industry day
does. And those are broad gatherings of industry and government
officials to lay out what work might be coming up and what
capacity they might have. It is a good meeting of the minds.
Mark.
General Quander. Thank you, ranking member, for that
question.
In terms of industry days, so for us, we do it both at the
regional level and the district level. And as General Graham
described, we bring in members of industry. Some are folks that
are new to the Corps. So we explain how--we explain our
workload first and our portfolio, what we have coming up for
the next year. And then we explain how we do business with the
Corps. And so we push that information out there.
Then we do breakout sessions, and those breakout sessions,
it is both us talking about Corps projects and feedback from
industry on how we can work better together. And the feedback
from industry has been hugely valuable as we look at how we do
acquisition in the future, ma'am.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you for that.
Well, I can tell you what, we will be interested in our
area. So if you are open to that, just let me know who we call.
I want to move on to another question. I handed out a map
this morning before the official meeting began, and it is
actually a map of the--a small map of the largest watershed in
the entire Great Lakes, which our region shares with Canada.
And the reason I am showing this to you is because I think
I have served longer than anybody in the room. And 40 years
ago, we had sent a sample of the dredge material from the
southern shores of Lake Erie, the largest dredging budget in
the Great Lakes, the southern shore of Lake Erie.
And we asked them for help because there is so much
material, it would fill the Cleveland Browns stadium every year
400 feet high. That is how much dredge material there is.
And we have been seeking for years, working with the Corps
and others, to try to find a way to reapply this material in a
scientifically reasonable manner.
I will invite you to lunch, if that is legal, I don't know,
and we will go over to Cleveland, and we are going to meet with
the sewage treatment division of the greater Cleveland area.
They have managed to process raw sewage and turn it into an
EPA-applied land application that can be used in parks. It can
be used in gardens and so forth.
And I keep asking myself if the city of Cleveland, which
has one of the finest--I don't represent it anymore. Our State
likes to gerrymander us around, but actually, it has benefited
me as a human being, because now I understand the whole
watershed.
The Cleveland area has found the magic key, and so I would
like--we never really got a good answer from Vicksburg. The
soil went down there. It came back and went back again. I don't
know. It is like--I want to bring the Vicksburg people in to
meet the folks in the Cleveland Water and Wastewater Authority
and see what it is that is so unique about the +dredge
material, which I think would be so much cleaner than what they
are dealing with, and why we can't get a scientific answer out
of the Corps.
So I don't know if you would be open to that, General, but
I think we need to cross skills here and try to find a way so
that we can land apply dredge material.
Would anyone wish to respond to that request?
General Graham. Yes, ma'am. And I will start, and I will
turn it over to General Quander.
First off, the benefit to reuse the dredge material, to
view this clean material as an asset, we are 100 percent on
board. Our goal is to achieve 70 percent beneficial reuse of
all of our dredge material. We will certainly bring our
engineering research and developers up to meet with the
Cleveland folks and General Quander's team to see if we are
missing something that Cleveland has figured out.
Ms. Kaptur. You know, and what has happened over the
years--I hate to--it is 40 years of effort. So I have got 10
seconds left.
But can you imagine how difficult we have made this? Got
into a big fight, Cleveland, and then had to stop the Corps, go
to Federal court to stop the Corps from open-lake dumping.
And we built all of these containment facilities on the
Great Lakes, across the Great Lakes, certainly our region of
the Great Lakes, but we haven't gotten--we have done
experiments with corn growing right on the banks of the Maumee
River. We have worked with the agriculture department on that.
This seems to be a solvable--this isn't nuclear waste. We
have got enough trouble with that.
And if you tell me it has got to go in a hole, the region
that I represent has giant, giant stone quarries, and they have
dug down hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of feet. There is
room to store material there, more than the Cleveland Browns
stadium.
My point is I think we have a way of dealing with this, but
we can't seem to get the scientists together to find an answer.
And I really don't understand what is holding it up because
there is so much material. It is just so much.
And it is all washing from the land into the lake, and then
we are pulling it out and we have got to--and maybe it is not
really sick.
So if we can figure out what to do with sewage and make a
profit, which they are by selling it, the treated product, then
we should do it.
General Graham. Ma'am, you have our commitment on that.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.
Let's see. Do I have another question here?
I asked you about your staffing issues and about the Zoom.
So I think that will be it.
Thank you very, very much for participating today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you to all of our members who have done such a
great job.
Mr. Fleischmann. I thank the ranking member for her
questions.
At this time, I would like to recognize Mr. Levin for 5
minutes.
Mr. Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Graham, I want to thank the Corps again for all the
hard work being done on the L.A. fire response.
Along those lines, I want to also ask about the release of
water from the Terminus and Schafer Dam. I just have four yes
or no questions, and then I have a couple of open-ended
questions to let you opine a bit on what you think happened.
So first, the yes-or-no question. Is it true that the 2
billion gallons of water never reached L.A.?
General Graham. I don't know what happens to the water once
we release it from the dams.
Mr. Levin. They evaporated in the dry lake bed in Lake
Tulare, from all public accounts. Is that not consistent with
what you understand?
General Graham. Sir, I don't know what happened to the
water once it released to dams.
Mr. Levin. Okay. I will ask you to follow up and find out.
It is also true that even if it had reached L.A., the fires
were already 100 percent contained. Is it correct, General,
that the water was released and lost--well, I guess you said
you didn't know.
You will have to take my word for it. It was released and
lost in a dry lake bed, even though that water was supposed to
be saved for some irrigation. That has been widely commented on
by scientists, farmers, and the rest.
Is it correct, in your view, that the release of this water
potentially worsened future water shortages in our State,
particularly if we have a dry next few months?
General Graham. Representative Levin, it was excess flood
storage water which we----
Mr. Levin. You said that a few times. I just want a yes-or-
no answer.
Do you think it could potentially have contributed to the
water shortage in our State?
General Graham. I don't know.
Mr. Levin. Can you find out for us and take that back?
General Graham. We will do our best.
Mr. Levin. You guys have a lot of experts that we fund. I
would like to know.
How do you respond to scientists and farmers who say that
these releases contradicted established flood safety rules,
established coordination that has been in place with local
authorities for decades, and just sound science?
General Graham. I don't believe I have an answer to that.
Mr. Levin. You don't have anything to say to the farmers
who are worried about water shortages this summer or the local
communities that felt they were out of the loop?
General Graham. I don't have anything else to respond.
Mr. Levin. Nothing to say to them.
What assurance can you give us that the Corps will follow
flood safety rules, follow local coordination precedent, follow
sound science if you have a future executive order that demands
that you do the opposite of what is best practices by the
Corps?
General Graham. Representative Levin, our commitment is to
always follow our statutory processes, as defined by the water
control manual.
Mr. Levin. And do you think that happened here?
General Graham. We were absolutely within the statutory
authority of the Corps, as laid out in the water control
manuals.
Mr. Levin. Statutory authority is one thing. Common sense
is another.
And the overwhelming public evidence suggests that despite
all of the local coordination that had gone on for decades,
despite the fact that scientists were saying, Don't do this,
you know, basically what happened is you had to slam on the
brakes.
You wanted to release several thousand in both the Terminus
and Schafer Dam. You wanted to release several times more than
you actually did. And common sense prevailed to an extent, but
you still released a huge order of magnitude more than common
sense would have dictated.
Is that not accurate?
General Graham. Representative, we released water in
accordance with our authorities.
Mr. Levin. You are saying all of the public reporting is
wrong?
General Graham. I am saying we released water in accordance
with our authorities.
Mr. Levin. And in the future, if Congress gives you the
money to conduct sound science, and if it is the sense of
Congress and really more than the sense of Congress, the
direction of this committee and of Members of Congress that you
have good local coordination and you do it in the best interest
of stakeholders, like our farmers, what assurance can you give
us that is actually going to happen if, in fact, you get
another executive order that says to do all the opposite?
General Graham. We will always work to ensure that we are
in compliance with all laws and with the executive orders we
have been given.
Mr. Levin. What steps are you taking right now to ensure
better communication and coordination with local farmers and
local stakeholders?
General Graham. That coordination is built on relationships
that are nurtured with daily coordination.
Mr. Levin. Probably have been hampered a bit, don't you
think?
General Graham. I wouldn't speculate.
Mr. Levin. Well, I am speculating that you have a lot of
work to do to regain the trust and confidence in local farmers,
local stakeholders, scientists, and all of us that you are
going to follow common sense and facts rather than an executive
order that contradicts those things.
And with that, I will yield back.
Mr. Fleischmann. At this point in time, I would like to
recognize Ms. Wasserman Schultz of Florida for 5 minutes.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Hibner, back to you.
As you know, Everglades restoration is one of the most
significant environmental restoration efforts in the world, and
thanks to our strong State and Federal and local partnerships,
we have made historic progress in recent years.
And the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided a record
$1.1 billion for restoration efforts.
I was proud to join you and many of your colleagues in
Florida to celebrate the groundbreaking of the embankment of
the EAA reservoir, and that is a game-changing project for
water storage ecosystem recovery.
But the momentum, though, while it is critical, we have to
keep our foot on the gas and ensure that we have steady,
reliable funding to complete these projects on time.
So from your perspective, how important is it that we
continue Federal investment in Everglades restoration? And what
would sustained funding mean for the long-term success of those
efforts?
General Hibner. Yes, ma'am. This is the largest ecosystem
restoration program in the world, and it is crucially important
to the Nation. It is a natural resource that is important to
everyone, not just in Florida, and it is vital that we continue
to have the funding that we need to do the important work that
is happening.
And we have had a lot of successes in recent years. There
is a lot of momentum behind the goals that we have been trying
to reach for a couple decades now. So the funding results in
that continued success in the future.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. We are certainly hopeful that the
President's budget reflects the real need to be able to
continue that momentum, and that Congress will follow up, as we
have in the past.
I also want to note a University of Florida study found
that for every dollar spent on restoration of the Everglades
generates at least $4 in economic benefits, and that supports
industries like tourism, real estate, agriculture, while
protecting our water supply in Florida and reducing costly
storm damage.
And as you noted, Everglades restoration, this is America's
Everglades even though it is situated in Florida. It is a very
significant ecosystem that has incredible biodiversity.
Mr. Chairman, I will reiterate our invitation again for you
to join us in south Florida and bring the committee down, with
Ms. Kaptur, to tour the Everglades and the project. It is
really a sight to see.
And so, with that in mind, can you speak, General, to the
long-term cost savings and economic benefits of continued
Federal investment in Everglades' restoration? And how do
projects like the EAA reservoir and stormwater treatment areas
reduce long-term Federal spending on things like disaster
recovery, water treatment, and flood mitigation?
And then I will turn to the chairman for a response to our
invitation.
General Hibner. Yes, ma'am. It is vital to the Nation. It
is not only one of the most vast water resources in the United
States. It provides the ability for us to sustain life in
southern Florida. And a lot of the structures that we rely on
to support the communities in southern Florida are relying on
the proper movement of water through the Everglades.
So the continued maintenance, especially of some of these
very aged structures that were built in the 1940s, 1950s,
1960s, it is all becoming more and more vital as the population
growth in Florida continues to increase and our ability to
control the water becomes more challenging.
So the continued investments can't be overstated, in my
opinion.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you.
And Mr. Chairman, you know, it is not a tongue-in-cheek
suggestion. We have had really nearly every chairman, along
with the ranking member, come down to take a look at the
Everglades restoration project, and we would really love to
have you come down so you can take a look at it.
Mr. Fleischmann. Well, I can unequivocally state that the
Everglades has no stronger champion than Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
I thank you for the invite.
And I will say this. The Everglades are a national
treasure, and I appreciate your advocacy there. I know you were
joined, actually, by members on my side of the aisle who have
the same affinity for that. So we will certainly look at that.
We have not really taken a water trip, to my knowledge, per
se. And as Ms. Wasserman Schultz knows, I spend a lot of my
time on the energy side. But I will look forward to that and
try to work that into our very busy schedule and, of course,
would welcome the ranking member to go. She is a great hero for
our Great Lakes, and I think all of them, not just Lake Erie.
So thank you for the invite.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. As we say, come on down.
Mr. Fleischmann. Come on down. Thank you.
And at this time, in concluding this hearing, gentlemen,
thank you. Again, I began with a very strong and fervent thank
you for your service to our country and that continues.
Thank you for the way that each and every one of you have
conducted yourself in this hearing. It is not easy doing the
job and the task that you have got.
So, again, from the chairman, I sincerely thank each and
every one of you for what you are doing, what you are trying to
do, and wish you sincere success not only for yourselves but
for our great Nation.
And with that, I thank you.
And we will close this hearing.
[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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W I T N E S S E S
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Graham, Lieutenant General William H. ``Butch'' Jr............... 5
Handura, Colonel James J......................................... 15
Hibner, Brigadier General Daniel................................. 22
Quander, Major General Mark C.................................... 12
Walter, Colonel George H......................................... 14
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