[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 26 (Tuesday, February 14, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H1134]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 OUR CRUMBLING NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, candidate Trump talked a lot about the need 
to invest $1 trillion in our crumbling infrastructure, and President 
Trump, on Inauguration Day, referenced again the need to invest in our 
infrastructure. There has been little progress since that point and no 
major proposals.
  Last week, I talked about surface transportation. I am running a 
clock on the costs to the American economy and the American people of 
not investing in roads, bridges, highways, and transit. That clock 
started at noon on the 20th of Inauguration Day, and it is now up to 
$11 billion. That is the cost to the American people, to the economy, 
of not investing.
  This week we have seen a dramatic new example in a different area of 
infrastructure of the costs of not investing: the evacuation of 130,000 
people below the Oroville Dam in California. This shouldn't be 
happening. Federal and State officials warned that the dam didn't meet 
current safety standards in 2005, yet no investments and no 
improvements were made.
  I wish this were an isolated example. Unfortunately, 96 percent of 
the dams in America are owned by State, local, and private entities, 
and many are in need of upgrades or a complete overhaul. Fifty years is 
the estimated lifetime of a dam. There are 50,000 dams that are past 
that lifetime, and some of them are safety critical, that is, if they 
fail, people will die.

                              {time}  1045

  The American Society of Civil Engineers gives us a D. They say by 
2020, 70 percent of our dams will be over 50 years old. There are 2,000 
that are classified as a high hazard today--those whose failure, by 
definition, or misoperation will probably cause loss of human life.
  We need about $53 billion to repair these dams. That is a lot of 
money, but think of what a life is worth. Think of the cost of the 
damage that is caused when these dams fail. Most everybody downstream 
has Federal flood insurance.
  Instead of the Federal Government partnering and working with 
communities and States to improve these dams and prevent a disaster, 
until last year, the only program we had was one to mitigate after the 
disaster. But luckily, we moved forward last year in the Water 
Resources Development Act with an amendment offered by our colleague 
Mr. Maloney that would authorize repair and rehabilitation of non-
Federal dams and provide proactive maintenance and repair.
  Obviously, it is much more cost-effective than waiting until failure 
and then mitigate the property loss downstream and declare an emergency 
to rebuild the dam. We will have the sad loss of life when we don't 
make those investments.
  There are many examples that I could cite. A dam failure in Hawaii 
killed seven people. It had never been inspected. It was a 100-year-old 
dam. In 2 weeks, we will mark the 35th anniversary of the Buffalo Creek 
Dam failure in West Virginia. It killed 125 people, 1,100 were severely 
injured, and 4,000 people were homeless. The dam had received safety 
violations, but there was no follow-up.
  So, this is another aspect of infrastructure in America that needs 
investment. President Trump was pretty much spot on with his estimate 
of a trillion dollars. If you look at surface transportation--roads, 
bridges, highways, and transit--if you look at infrastructure for water 
treatment--think Detroit--or if you look at the thousands of 
communities that need to upgrade or rebuild their sewer facilities and 
other aspects of infrastructure, a trillion dollars would just about do 
it.
  If we made those investments, we would put hundreds of thousands of 
people to work in this country, make America more efficient and more 
competitive in the world economy. But many of my Republican colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle think that we shouldn't be making these 
investments publicly. They classify any kind of spending as a deficit, 
even if it is a capital investment that will last for a hundred years 
or a capital investment that will save lives and mitigate losses for 
the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Flood 
Insurance Program.
  It is penny wise and pound foolish not to make these investments. We 
can and should. We need to move forward and rebuild our country.

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