i'd like to welcome everyone here this afternoon for this hearing which will address the recommendations of the national committee on levey safety and contain its report to congress that like to thank all of those that  george bush with this legislation congress expresses overwhelming that of greed and maintain our nation's crumbling water infrastructure an important piece of the water resources development is title match the national  for a national every safety program today's hearing is only the first step in which we need to know what needs to be a national conversation on how we address  not only in terms of expectations that our current flood control situation but also and how we plan for and communicate risk in the future today's hearing on the recommendations of the committee is a good place to begin the conversation listening to recommendations of flood control experts and examining any challenges to their implementation her return katrina the cost listen most deadly hurricane in our nation's history serve as a wake up call on the state of our nation's levis but not in time to vent over a hundred billion dollars in property damages and a devastating loss of life more recently last summer reaching of levees and flooding throughout the midwest resulted in billions more dollars in property damage is and loss of several dozen lives these events re and for that there a need to address the state of our nation's lives and plays center create a safety program that will protect the public and hopefully reduce the risk of future losses in a more sustainable manner the united states first began several construction other celebrities systems after the great floods in the nineteen twenties and 's along the mississippi and o these devastating floods for congress to pass a flood control acts of nine hundred twenty eight in one thousand thirty six to fund the construction of thousands of miles of robust lettuce and many of the systems protected against extreme flooding hundred year flood protection the reality is that during the life of a typical thirty year mortgage there is a twenty six percent chance that flooding will occur increase development in urbanization have also cause greater risk to flood control systems and many areas levees that were built decades ago to protect form and are now rely on to protect the millions of people who have moved into the area development and flood plains also increases urban runoff and decreases the flood carrying capacity of surrounding waterways first step to creating a successful national level safety play beyond that we must implement and encourage measures that will address the increased risks to our levee systems and better protect that the damage and destruction of hurricane katrina never occurs again alex hard to hear from eyewitnesses about the development in implementation of a national liberty safety plan that will live officials be included as a part of the record in addition i'd also like to enter into the route of a copy of the report to congress on the recommendations for a national literacy program established the national committee on levee safety and charged it with developing recommendations for a national system of the safety program to more adequately address risk in flood prone areas the national committee on safety was challenged with coming up with recommendations within one hundred eighty days of a nachman of a secondary piece of legislation clarifying the provision in the water resources development act while this was a steep hill to climb the committee development the committee delivered on its promise sadly the office of management and budget took longer to review the draft report than it took the national committee on levees actually write the report even with this review a safety report required by law intended for congress is neither wanted nor welcomed this type of medicine behavior bound and its inattention to infrastructure has left the united states vulnerable to catastrophic flooding recent but ignored and catastrophic loss of life could very well happen again and certainly in location lack of oversight lack of technical standards and an inability to fact of really communicate risk has left america  the national amatory dam shows it forty five percent of all federal dams are at least fifty years old and that eighty percent of them are at least thirty years old we know less about the status and capabilities of our levees there's never been a national  different entities at different times in the different standards they have been linked together to provide a protective system but with such a mixture of conditions the true level of project protection may be in doubt over time development is taking place behind some of these levees so that today much more today may be much more of a risk in terms of lives and economic resources than in the past the army corps of engineers has authority over more than two thousand separate levee systems compris more than fourteen thousand miles of levee infrastructure however more than one hundred thousand miles of levees makes its nationwide more people moving the coastal and river rain areas where the risk is is greatest because of hurricane katrina and r a the federal government is augmenting state local recovery efforts with billions of dollars of aid to the gulf coast we don't know where the next hurricane or flood will hit but we do know that many of our major cities including parts of washington d flooding then did new orleans for example the city of sacramento california has almost twice as many people as new orleans yet has less flood protection than any other major city in america cities like houston st louis and miami also risk we cannot treat citizens of these cities differently unless we have a policy reason that we can explain and justify to our constituents there are some much that we do not know about the levees in america that we cannot be sure how safe are cities and towns really are the national committee on leve safety did an excellent job on this report but had only a little time to scratch the surface on the issue of levee safety the report is provided a great deal of education lightman to the congress and i should the report minds of congress and the nation that just because people reside behind a levee or other flood damage reduction projects they're not guarantees safely only that their risk of catastrophic loss has been reduced an important reminder of how we define the one hundred year flood event that a resident has a twenty thousand year flood event in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight the national flood insurance program established the one hundred year flood designation as its risk standard this may have had unintended consequences for encouraging the construction of flood damage reduction projects to this arbitrary and relatively low threshold those living behind one hundred year structures are not required to purchase national flood insurance in fact less than six million people hold flood insurance policies in more than twenty thousand communities nationwide well design and well construction projects continue to be cannot be justified because they reduce risk to life and property however new projects may also attractive element that otherwise would not be that effective flood risk management involves multiple cannot reduce risk over a few years this crisis is build building for generations and it will take a combination of long term and short term measures to address the levee safety crisis the american society of it civil engineers issue full you know the scope of the problem we do not know what is going what it's going to cost to fix it however rushed estimate by a c e o is that it may cost more than one hundred billion dollars to repair and rehabilitate the nation recently been forced to face the fact that some banks and some businesses are just too big to fail well i would submit to you that the potential risk posed by unsafe levees is a risk too big to ignore we must begin to get an understanding of the scope of the problem program well we may not agree on all of the finer points of the recommendations i want to congratulate the members of the national committee on that he said he for meeting the challenge of reducing it and lighting report thank you chairwoman johnson for holding this hearing i look forward t and members of the subcommittee see how thin special system for them and levy safety with the u s army corps of engineers and a registered professional engineer i'm pleased to be here today have the opportunity to talk to you about my role as a vice chair of the national committee on levee safety and our report to congress on a national id safety program although i'm here today to discuss the committee's report it must be clear that the committee's recommendations do not represent an administration position and a letter dated may seventh two thousand and nine the army noted that in social policy review by the administration would use the findings of the committee's report to inform its final review army also not that the administration expects to complete its review this fall our nation is experiencing an increase in risk to people in infrastructure as a result of aging infrastructure history united states is full ess successes and failures levee systems and their maintenance devastating floods in the one nine hundred twenty s and one nine hundred thirty s for a long period of unregulated and poorly constructed levees into focus resulting in the construction of more robust levee systems for the decades of the one nine hundred thirty s through the one nine hundred sixty s so the report from the national committee on let me say think those recommendations in a strategic plan on national t v safety program the committee is a diverse group of professionals mainly from state local regional governments private sector including some from the federal government that have worked diligently representing national interest in levee safety i'd like to preface the committee's recommendations by recognizing a few  comments upfront a the need for a broader flood risk management approach in the country be an opportunity to take the national and safety program and emerging national every safety program and integrate them and paternity for leveraging levee safety is a critical first step in a national infrastructure investment dialogue the committee also recognizes that the levee systems commonly shared the same spaces water conveyance and critical ecosystem and habitats and that working with these interest is vital in effectively managing flood risk report for national every safety program and embraces three main concepts a need for a new national leadership via levee safety commission the building a strong levee safety programs in and within each of the states with the foundational well aligned federal agency programs and all these twenty specific recommendations in the report in the interest of time i'd like to highlight just a few the sabbaths the national average safety commission that would oversee and inventory an inspection of all levees develop mattia levees safety standards and a comprehensive national public involvement and education awareness campaign to better communicate risk for collaborative studies for the environmental and safety issues and establish a levy safety grant program to assist states at the law and local and regional governments second major point is to build and sustain strong levee safety programs and within all states strong levee safety programs would initially be highly incentivized to qualifying states  providing technical assistance and training critical data on levee inspections and inventory federal grants for start up and sustainment of state levee safety programs and a levee rehabilitation improvement and flood mitigation fun targeted at communities with high risk levees the last major point is to align federal programs that are associated with levied areas by providing incentives to communities to exceed the minimum program requirements benefit from lower risk flood safety and economic prosperity with a growing development and consequences i'm in almost all areas behind levees the benefits of a strong levee safety program are only going to increase over time so not only does the concept of a safety fit within a national infrastructure needs by protecting bridges and roads but levees safety is also very much at the state local issue as levees protect so much local infrastructure such as homes local businesses schools water and  plants from frequent flooding so we will review the report as a beginning not an end to addressing the issue levee safety and we look forward to working with you and the other stakeholders while the administration conducts its policy review in the spirit of a good beginning the committee will seek additional stakeholder and agency input through a series of national and regional listening sessions that were beyond the original accelerated pace of the report but an important part of moving forward with a national id safety program issues that contribute to our national problems i'll just briefly mention some of those we've already seen in the testimony first of all we think communities and states they honestly think the flooding is a federal problem it's not we don't really know how many miles of levees there are the conditions the current team and corps policies did not work together and in fact they've increased our levee resco over the years we've lost to jamal's of the nation's natural functions and resources because levees typically are on the edge of the river are estuaries respond levees are increasing as we've talked about and we said the rest is not clearly understood i put up on the power point chart that i would like to show you talk about just briefly what this show is actually this is general riley from the corps of engineers developed to help develop this chart s concept what we're seeing is that on the left side of the chart if you start out with with all respect for address that you're facing there are number of measures that you can take to buy down that risk as you can see it talks about doing  building codes actuation planning flood insurance levees you know flood insurance in fact does reduce that individual risk because reduces consequences i want to talk about risk i'm not just talking about the probability of flooding risk as the probability times consequences so the more you have of consequences the bigger your risk some of the best are long term solutions we like to advocate for reducing flood risk include avoiding flood dress carry as a specially deep flood plains and coastal storm surge areas secondly the use nonstructural approaches because they have smaller long term costs third if we use levees at all set back those levees so that we protect some of those functions and we decrease the pressure on the levees and if we're going to put federal dollars in we ought to be talking five hundred year levees why isn't this happened in the nation let's talk about the two agencies i mentioned fema has a policy and mr bozeman talked about this it says one hundred year levee now behind it you do nothing no flood insurance no regulations no nothing so even if the corps had a positive benefit cost ratio and typically the community opts for the low one because that buys them what they want ironically we'd fare better if the whole nation had ninety nine year levies because then we'd have essentially the same level of protection but we also have the other some of the other measures of insurance regulations and some of the other things would help give us a backstop in the chorus standpoint this is where we get in the what's currently a disincentive for good behavior we use federal taxpayer money to build sixty five percent to build a levee on the levee fails or or tops we use the taxpayers money to either build it with rebuild it with eighty percent or hundred percent federal money so i'm the mayor of a local town you're going to let me bill help me build this levee and i'm going to have this development behind the levee i get all the tax benefits from that increased development but when the levee overtops and fails and when we have a disaster you the federal taxpayer going to come in to bail me out gee i wonder why i take those steps with those kind of policies in place we're not going to solve this problem so before we can fix a levee problem we need to change some other things too like some of these programs i just talked about mandatory talked about would make more sense if we don't deal with if we only deal with levees and not with a broader issue of flood risk we fear that we're going to be fiddling while rome burns here the direct talks about the incentives the strong state programs those are all good things these aren't new ideas you're hearing from us these have been in every report you can see about levees since one thousand nine hundred two so standing up the next steps congress may want to consider is standing up a broad flood risk committee having a levee subgroup the proceeds on some of these items we talked about of state capability incentives engineering standards in the rest so that if we can move on those areas and at the same time try to decrease those and senators that create bad behavior i think we're going to make some progress i thank the committee again for the opportunity to testify thank you very much  lisa thank you madam chairwoman nafta represents one hundred members mostly large urban agencies and about seventy six million citizens are members on the front line every day reducing loss of life and property damage from fl members also deal directly with increased populations and helping to guide design of low flood risk neighborhoods many of which will be built behind existing or future levees i'm going to start with four general observations on the recommendations first mr hope and i applaud you and the entire committee who represent the breadth and depth of levee experience in the united states from all levels of government and the private sector is especially important bob turner from st bernard parish is on the committee he experienced firsthand the consequences of major flooding behind a levee system their parish was devastated by hurricane katrina with only five buildings not flooded so i can call this report focuses on levees many of its ideas approaches and recommendations  applicable to the broader issue of flood risk management as stated in the report improving levee safety will be most effective if it is conducted within the context of a national flood risk management program and third levee safety is a shared responsibility responsibilities lie at all levels of government and with persons whose live lives and property are located behind levees and fourth while everyone may not agree with all the recommendations it is paramount that implementation of the ones that we can agree on begin as soon as possible not like to talk about the recommendations we divide them into three three groups those that need to be implemented as soon as possible those that will take longer should be implemented next and the ones that need further study thirteen the recommendations should be implemented as soon as possible they address expanding the living inventory adopting a hazard classification system and national levy safety standards providing technical guidance removing liability barriers delegating responsibilities to the states augmenting existing fema programs and funding one of this group is particularly important to the nasa members who are currently trying to maintain the integrity of their exist levees conflicting regulatory environment agencies views are resulting in long delays or inability to perform the needed infrastructure maintenance such as removing trees now spoken kurz of the levee safety can't committee recommendation that acceptable operation and maintenance practices need to be developed in coordination with environmental agencies so lives and property can be protected and significant environmental resources are not impacted there are five in the implement next group they include developing tolerable risk guidelines public education and awareness levy safety training research and development and exploring incentives and disincentives and finally there are only two that we had in a fide as needing further study the first is establishment of a national level safety commission it would focus exclusively on levees unlike the current situation where a levee issues are spread between the corps and fema it is probably the smart thing to do to develop a strong national program however some national members are skeptical of another layer of government the other one is a mandatory purchase of flood insurance and levied areas although nasa agrees that participation in the national flood insurance program helps reduce the impact of financial damages on individuals and businesses and raise awareness in the participating communities it is not change or flood risk we also understand that actuarial rates would be applied when we are interested in seeing how the formulas would be developed were levees can fail for various reasons and consequences can vary greatly nasa believes that a thorough evaluation of the long term impact that the mandatory purchase purchase requirement would have on local communities is needed nasa agrees with the house approach in the bill approved last congressional session calling for a study of these impacts to be carried out before congress mandates such a change in closing nasa recommends continuing to utilize the experts in practitioners on the levee safety committee to ensure fact of and timely implementation of the national levees safety program to reduce flood risk loss of life property damage and recovery costs thank you for giving thank you madam chairwoman ranking member but bozeman and members of the subcommittee of the national wildlife federation greatly appreciate the opportunity to share our views on the recommendations of the national levee safety program we also want to compliment the prodigious work of the committee for assembling in assembling this report on quite on a quite compressed time schedule this is a very broad subject the report provides many important insights the conditions confronted by the nation states and communities faced with reliance on aging and in some cases poorly constructed levees yet we are concerned that the report fails in some fundamental ways to adequately approach current and future risks chairwoman the report traces the history of an aging constantly deteriorating and often poorly designed constructed and maintained stock of levees and environments that are in many cases facing growing flood risks which has led us to the point of rapidly increasing risks and costs of flood related damages it begins to frame out how a series of often poorly coordinated federal programs combined with quite serious public misperceptions about risks involved have driven to a dangerous over reliance on levees too often to the exclusion of other critical hazard mitigation approaches when combined with the growing risks associated with global warming and climate change changes in snowpack and runoff more frequent and more severe storms increasing sea levels and erosion along coasts and population increases and major ongoing changes in intensifying land uses and urbanization that are increasing flood risks it is clear that the risks and costs of flooding to many communities and society as a whole are rising and alarmingly madam chair one at the broadest level our concerns with the proposal fall into three categories the scope of levees safety in the proposal is too narrowly defined to assure flood risk reduction over the long term protection and restoration of the environment and implications of climate change sea level rise changes in watersheds are given to little recognition and finally too great an emphasis is placed on the federal government to resolve problems should properly be led by state and local agent and of these as a federation reads it the committee has principally to find the focus of levee safety to assessing and managing the condition of the le themselves rather than placing them in the full context of the flood plains in which they are located we believe it is unwise to approach the nation's levees as divorced from what is happening in their floodplains the federation believes that absent viewing levees in their full context the narrow focus may lead to compound in costs and increasing risks rather than the opposite the other end and extremely critical concern is failure of the committee's proposal to clearly include among responsibilities of the commission and states to identify and consider environmental factors in developing broad levee safety plans congress gave important new direction in word two thousand and seven in a new national water resources policy that that added critical new criteria and considerations such as focusing on sustainable at anomic development seeking to avoid the unwise use of flood plains and flood prone areas and protecting and restoring functions of natural systems yet these are essentially under reflected in the committee's proposed levee safety program without question enormous ecological damage has been caused by excessive reliance on levees as primary and sometimes only flood damage control strategies in many areas in some regions millions of acres of ripe ariane wetlands riparian lands and flood plain lands have been cut off drained and divorced from levees divorced by levees from their natural connection with rivers and asked us as a result we are now witnessing not only enormous adverse environmental effects but also growing flood risks and costs from the losses of natural flood control systems we are also concerned that if that the effectiveness and and the program needs to be  revised to address that we are concerned that the effectiveness of the levee safety commission or a key agency assigned such leadership would be limited without the establishment of an overall strengthened and coordinated federal approach to water resources that she'd be built on regional and watershed concepts committee recommend the committees recommended this but by offered no basic proposal to address it the federal  there is a strong question whether the levy safety commission or individual federal agency could cause the called for substantial alignments of federal flood hazard mitigation flood hazard mitigation and environmental program sufficient to serve as a major motivator for states to develop strong levee safety programs the federation and a number of other members of the national levee safety committee review team made strong recommendations that revitalization of a cabinet level u water resources council could be the best means to help focus the resources of the numerous federal water related programs to convince states to actively engage not only in levee safety but also in a desperately needed effort to reduce flood risks through a long full range of tools and reduction of risk reduction means across the nation finally we would we want to say we are greatly concerned that the committee has recommended the federal government should essentially presume responsibility for much of rehabilitation costs for urban levies by flatly recommending a sixty five percent federal thirty five percent nonfederal cost share we believe it is entirely premature to make such a recommendation at this stage we do not know what the total cost maybe and we have not fully explored the range of ca share and financing options that may be available again we greatly appreciate the opportunity to present the views of the national wil federation regarding the recommendations of the national level safety committee we believe that the committee however has fallen short in a number of key areas which if not addressed would greatly hamper the effectiveness of moving forward with levy safety thank you and i would be happy to respond in the question thank you very much dr leslie harder chairman johnson ranking member bozeman and members of the subcommittee very much appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today about the importance of a national of the safety program my name is leslie harder and i currently serve as a senior water resource technical adviser for h d r incorporated a national employee own architectural engineering consulting firm i'm of member of the american council of engineering companies a c e c whose six thousand member firms employ more than five hundred thousand engineer and engineering professionals across the nation and i'm one of members of the national committee on levee safety whose recommendations you are now considering in short as the chair and ranking member very well summarized we are at a critical juncture in our nation's history the risk to people and infrastructure is growing  as a result of more than one hundred years of neglect or levee systems now i have a little handout that i made hopefully you all have it up there to emphasize certain points like to turn to the second page on the second page there's a photograph of a dread taken about one hundred years ago constructing one of the levee systems in california which actually is part of the federal control system today this is the technology in the techniques that actually constructed many of the levees now currently protect us across the nation and even though this may be one hundred years old even the more recent levee construction a few decades ago are not a lot better they're basically long piles of loose dirt well what do we know about these long piles and so on the next page we do recognize they are integral to our communities they are critical for the protection of people property and other infrastructure now the chair and the ranking member did a great job of summarizing what we don't know about all these levees the over one hundred thousand miles that we don't know exactly where they're at there are unknown integrity we do know one thing they are aging and they are deteriorating we also know that there are no national standards or approaches and there's liability issues and these liability issues are burdening our current flood risk reduction efforts on the next page or the twenty recommendations that the committee put together on behalf of a c e c engineering community supports all of these recommendations they're all important now the ones in red are chosen to highlight today in the following pages so the first of these to is the need to develop a common set levee standards we do not have common standards or criteria today different federal agencies use different standards the states use different ones it will be necessary to base our future investments and priorities using common standards and common language so the committee has recommended the development of interim guidelines and eventually over a five year period a national levy safety code on the next page is a recommendation for developing tolerable risk guidelines these are basically the guidelines for target levels of protection or risk for different communities not every community needs the same level of protection a small town in california does not need the same level of protection a new orleans does for instance on the next page is mandatory risk based flood insurance i probably can't say enough how much this is needed there are so many reasons for this first of all it's probably the fastest way to speed financial systems to flood victims it will limit financial damages to public agencies and the taxpayers it will improve understanding of flood risks and the need to take individual responsibility risk based premiums will motivate the public to improve flood protection and regardless of the level of protection any community has everyone who lives behind a levee it at some point will have a fair amount of risk next page is designing delegate state levy safety programs the comm recommended such programs it's clearly an intent of congress to have the states are uniquely positioned overseeing coordinate such activities and we believe that the primary implementation of a national program for nonfederal levees will be through  state programs on the next page national the rehabilitation improvement mitigation fund most of our recommendations are associated with the basic due diligence of managing critical infrastructure but after begin looking at our levees we're going to find lots of of deficiencies and they will be persuasive pervasive and so we need a fund to rehabilitate them and this is what's intended as a cautionary grant program now we're always concerned about costs but if we don't do something like this our inaction will be that we as a nation will be pain a lot more later on the next page is the recommendation of replace the term certification as it's used with themas national flood insurance program if we replace it with something like compliance determination or determination it would avoid them or misperception by policymakers the general public and liability insurers that this is a warranty which is it is not on the next page addressing the liability issue when congress originally task the corps of engineers to begin constructing flood control project it recognized that it could not afford to build these projects and also be liable for them so federal immunity against liability was built into the process and today that federal immunity is being challenged but state agencies local agencies and the private firms that serve them do not have any such protection at all and as a result both in the private sector and public sector engineering organizations are reluctant or unable to provide engineering services because the liability and states and local agencies are reluctant or even refusing to sponsor new flood control projects for fear of quarry new liability which they cannot afford the national levy safety program cannot achieve success without resolving this issue and then finally we certainly endorse the need for a public involvement education awareness campaign inclusion on behalf of a c e c in the nation's engineering industry i want to thank the subcommittee once again for focusing attention on this important issue and for the opportunity to testify before we strongly urge you in the toe of congress to take up legislation to create a national level safety program chairwoman johnson ranking member member bozeman members of the house subcommittee on water resources and environment thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony i made to hany in the public works director for the city of  levee system was constructed by the united states army corps of engineers recently i represent the american public works as a member of the review team for the national committee on levee safety flood control systems which include levees are among the infrastructure that a p w a members plan design build operate and maintain i submit this statement today on behalf of the more than twenty nine thousand public course professionals who are members of the the recent recommendation to congress by the national committee on levee safety is to establish a national latest fifty program had to require mandatory risk based flood insurance in levied areas the economic impact of these recommendations for the federal government has been under review by the office of management and budget but the economic impact on the local governments and on our citizens taxpayers may not be receiving that is the attention that is necessary and one while some issues brought forward by the public works community were addressed by the national committee on levee safety a significant portion of our feedback seems to have been overridden by other a moratorium on the schedule relating to provisional accreditation letters now being taken on levees that are effected this would provide for a reasonable period of time for elected and appointed officials nationwide to discuss this issue in depth with appropriate federal agencies their citizens local businesses and other state holders before initiating efforts towards levy compliance determination additionally this would allow a more thorough understanding of the needs of the federal government to institute policy change and for local governments to assess and address the impacts that may result next publicize the anticipated cost to property owners for ensuring properties against flood damage include information related to what cost reduction for that coverage may result if a property owner is quote protected by a compliance levy close quote next we suggested to the national committee on levee safety that the administration and they have a national levee safety program should be retained by the u s army corps of engineers the corps could promulgated rules related to when and if a program could or should be delegated below the federal level based on race well criterion the corps should be augmented with the appropriate budget staff and equipment to accomplish this as a routine function to supplement the efforts of cork and retain consultants to complete assessments and other work throughout the district we believe the rose results would be far more standardized and significantly reduce overall costs than if the project is undertaken by individual communities and significant is to modify the threshold of lives at risk as a determinant of federal financial aid availability the focus on human safety is the highest priority stated in the report we agree and the report indicates the emphasis should be placed where there is a risk of ten thousand lives if a levee fails that's threshold of danger to human lives will likely exclude smaller communities with respect to receiving any federal funding to improve levees even the larger cities may have difficulty attaining that ten thousand lives threshold however inundation protected area of our town as just one example will possibly affect the number of that number of jobs due to the business centers being within the letter seized me and let me protected area the economic loss could become devastating and there should and should be in some means of incorporating that economic loss in the formula we also think that the that other associations should be brought in that have an interest for instance the national league of cities the national association of counties u s concert conference of our levee system since it was built has been locally not federally funded we have paid for all of the maintenance and we maintained it religiously as a member of this review committee up determine not everybody has done that but there needs to be some measure of that taken and i think we need to take more time and members of the house subcommittee thank you for conducting the hearing and inviting us to present our concerns our recommendations for the public works community a p w stands ready to be resourced in this as this goes