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50–614 PDF 2009

AGENCY BUDGETS AND PRIORITIES 

FOR FY 2010 

(111–42) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JUNE 3, 16, 2009 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

PHIL HARE, Illinois 

JOHN A. BOCCIERI, Ohio 

MARK H. SCHAUER, Michigan 

BETSY MARKEY, Colorado 

PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama 

MICHAEL E. MCMAHON, New York 

THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman 

THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

PHIL HARE, Illinois 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizaon 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama 

BOB FILNER, California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

(III) 

(V) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vii 

Proceedings of: 

June 3, 2009 ......................................................................................................... 1 

June 16, 2009 ....................................................................................................... 36 

AGENCY BUDGETS AND PRIORITIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010, PART 1 

JUNE 3, 2009 

TESTIMONY 

Breen, Barry, Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and 

Emergency Response, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ........................ 6 

Dunnigan, John H., Assistant Administrator, National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce ..................................................................................................................... 6 

Johnson, Jr., Collister, Administrator, Saint Lawrence Seaway Corporation, 

U.S. Department of Transportation .................................................................... 6 

Shapiro, Michael, Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency .............................................................................. 6 

Thomas, III, John M., Vice President and Controller, Financial Services, 

Tennessee Valley Authority ................................................................................ 6 

White, David, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture .............................................................................................. 6 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Carnahan, Hon. Russ, of Missouri ......................................................................... 69 

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 71 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Breen, Barry ............................................................................................................. 72 

Dunnigan, John H. .................................................................................................. 79 

Johnson, Jr., Collister ............................................................................................. 89 

Shapiro, Michael ...................................................................................................... 105 

Thomas, III, John M. ............................................................................................... 110 

White, David ............................................................................................................ 116 

SUBMISSION FOR THE RECORD 

Breen, Barry, Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and 

Emergency Response, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, response to 

question from Rep. Brown of South Carolina .................................................... 19 

AGENCY BUDGETS AND PRIORITIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010, PART 2 

JUNE 16, 2009 

TESTIMONY 

Antwerp, Lieutenant General Robert L. ′′Van′′ Van, Chief of Engineers, U.S. 

Army Corps Of Engineers, Washington, D.C. .................................................... 43 

Frumkin, Dr. Howard, Director, National Center for Environmental Health, 

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia ......................................................... 43 

Page

VI 

Ruth, Commissioner C.W. ′′Bill′′, International Boundary and Water Commission, U.S. Section, El Paso, Texas ...................................................................... 43 

Salt, Terrance C., Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, D.C. ............................................ 43 

PREPARED STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Carnahan, Hon. Russ, of Missouri ......................................................................... 123 

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 125 

PREPARED STATEMENTS BY WITNESSES 

Antwerp, Lieutenant General Robert L. ′′Van′′ Van ............................................. 126 

Frumkin, Dr. Howard .............................................................................................. 131 

Ruth, Commissioner C.W. ′′Bill′′ ............................................................................. 144 

Salt, Terrance C. ...................................................................................................... 150 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Salt, Terrance C., Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, D.C.,responses to questions 

from the Subcommittee ........................................................................................ 159 

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(1) 

HEARING ON AGENCY BUDGETS AND 

PRIORITIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010, PART 1 

Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND

ENVIRONMENT, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eddie Bernice 

Johnson [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. The meeting will come to order. 

Good morning. Today’s hearing marks the first of two hearings 

on the fiscal year 2010 budget and the priorities of agencies under 

the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee. At today’s hearing, the Subcommittee will receive testimony from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Saint 

Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, the National Oceanic 

and Atmospheric Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. On the afternoon of June 16th, the Subcommittee will hear 

testimony from the Corps of Engineers, the International Boundary 

and Water Commission, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and 

Disease Registry. 

With respect to the President’s budget, let me start by saying 

that change has finally come. For most of the agencies here this 

morning, it is a welcome change. Only a year ago, I was conducting 

the budget request for the previous Administration, which was not 

adequate to meet the Nation’s needs. Today’s message is much 

more optimistic, at least with respect to investment in the Nation’s 

growing wastewater infrastructure needs and the commitment to 

clean, safe, and secure water for all Americans. 

For the Environmental Protection Agency, the President’s fiscal year 2010 request is $10.5 billion, the greatest level of funding requested for the agency since its inception and almost $3.5 billion 

more than the last request of the Bush Administration. Similarly, 

the Administration’s request for the Clean Water State Revolving 

Fund is $2.4 billion, the greatest level of funding requested for this 

program since it was enacted in 1987 and one that renews the Federal commitment to meeting the Nation’s growing wastewater infrastructure needs. 

The Administration needs to be commended for producing a 

budget that for the most part restores the prospect of a cleaner, 

more sustainable future. However, I would be remiss if I did not 

2 

state that in certain areas this budget could still undergo some improvement. 

For example, in EPA’s Superfund program, although the Administration requests an increase in funding for the program, the 

budget request has revised downward the number of sites that will 

be cleaned up in the current fiscal year from 35 sites to 20. In addition, the estimated number of Superfund construction complete 

sites for fiscal year 2010 is only 22 sites. 

While this is an ever so slight increase in the pace of cleanup, 

it is still a ways off of the pace that this agency has demonstrated 

in the past. I would gather that a leading factor for the slowdown 

in cleanup has been a lack of available funds for this program over 

the past few years and a slowdown in the Superfund pipeline of 

moving cleanup projects from the investigation phase to the design 

phase and to the implementation of effective cleanup plans. 

To that end, I am pleased that the Administration has renewed 

the call for reinstatement of taxes on petroleum, chemical feedstock, and corporate income that traditionally funded hazardous 

waste cleanups under the Superfund program. This effort, which 

was abandoned under the last Administration, should allow for an 

increase in the number and pace of cleanups and a return to the 

goal of ‘‘polluter pays’’. 

Another area of the budget that needs improvement is the request for the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Watershed 

Survey and Planning Program and its Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program. The fact that the President’s budget 

eliminates funding for these programs fails to recognize the vital 

role of the Agency in protecting and restoring watersheds damaged 

by erosion, floodwater, and other natural occurrences. These programs have proven critical for improving the quality of waters located in the agricultural regions of the Nation. 

I am pleased that representatives of the Saint Lawrence Seaway 

Development Corporation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority could also join 

us this morning. Like EPA and NRCS, the budgets of these agencies have points of praise and points of criticism. 

I am heartened to see that the President’s fiscal year 2010 budget continues a commitment to the renewal of the physical assets of 

the Seaway as called for in the Water Resources Development Act 

of 2007. This vital corridor between the Great Lakes region and the 

Atlantic Ocean is critical to the regional economies surrounding the 

Seaway and the hastened recovery and sustainability of the Nation’s economy. 

I am concerned about the decision by the President to eliminate 

funding for NOAA’s Coastal Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Programs. I understand the recognition in today’s testimony about how 

nonpoint source pollution control funding appears in the budgets of 

several Federal agencies, which I would surmise is an excuse by 

which funding for NOAA’s Coastal Nonpoint Program was eliminated. 

However, since all the three agencies are here today, it is fair to 

state that combined efforts following the elimination of NOAA’s 

Coastal Nonpoint Program, the flat funding of EPA’s Nonpoint 

Source Program, and the slight increase in the NRCS’s EnvironVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:47 Aug 17, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\50614.0 KAYLA
3 

mental Quality Incentives Program will not adequately address the 

continuing impact of nonpoint source pollution on the Nation’s waters. If we are serious about addressing nonpoint sources of pollution, we need to be honest about the investments that are actually 

being made to control what has become the single largest source 

of impairment to the Nation’s steams, lakes, and estuaries. 

I welcome each of the witnesses here this morning. I now yield 

to the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Mr. Boozman, for his 

comments. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Let me begin by saying that I support the President’s efforts to 

control Federal spending. However, the agency programs that we 

are examining today are truly investments in America. These are 

important programs that benefit our economy and improve the 

quality of life for our citizens. While I believe we must be diligent 

in our oversight of these agencies to be sure that programs are run 

effectively and efficiently, I do not support cutting programs or flat 

funding programs that have a proven record of providing economic 

benefits. 

It is inevitable that the Administration’s priorities and Congressional priorities will not always coincide. But for the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration programs that fall within the jurisdiction of 

this Subcommittee, I would like to think that we have the same 

goals of protecting our environment in a cost effective way. 

The Administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2010 continues a long trend of under-investing in the Nation’s water infrastructure. As a result, the general condition of our water infrastructure and water resources has declined. 

While I applaud the Administration for increasing their request 

for EPA’s Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund, the Superfund 

and Brownfields Programs are budgeted at a flat rate compared to 

previous funding levels. These are important programs that make 

contaminated areas fit for redevelopment. Many of the smaller and 

easier cleanup projects have already been done so the remaining 

work tends to be more complex and more expensive to complete. 

I do have a serious concern with the Administration’s proposal 

to reinstate Superfund taxes to the Superfund Hazardous Waste 

Site Cleanup Program. These punitive Superfund taxes unfairly penalize those who are not responsible for the pollution at the Superfund sites. Under this proposal, Superfund taxes would be levied 

on many companies and industries such as financial, insurance, 

real estate, retail and wholesale trade, and service businesses that 

have absolutely no connection to a Superfund site or to any environmental cleanup. 

Superfund should remain a recovery statute, not a punitive one 

on those who fuel the Nation’s economic engine. Cost recovery advances the polluter pays principle, not taxing innocent businesses. 

Shifting the burden to those who had no part in the site contamination is simply unfair and unwarranted. 

Another worthy program that has virtually been ignored by the 

Administration is the Small Watershed Program of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. This program provides small, cost efficient projects that protect our water and our land in rural AmerVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:47 Aug 17, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\50614.0 KAYLA
4 

ica. Under the Administration’s budget, the President proposes to 

terminate the Watershed and Flood Prevention Programs and essentially flat fund the Watershed Rehabilitation Program. 

The Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation is a transportation agency that manages the U.S. portion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. While the funding request for year 2010 may address the immediate operation and maintenance needs, I am concerned about the long term viability of the Seaway if the Corporation does not have the funds to invest in a major rehabilitation of 

this vital link between the cities of the Great Lakes and the global 

marketplace. 

The Tennessee Valley Authority does not rely on appropriations 

since it is self-financing. TVA derives all of its funding from revenues from the eight million people in seven States that it supplies 

with electricity. I, like many others in Congress, are concerned 

about TVA’s long term financial health. I am looking to the Board 

to provide some assurances that they can reduce the Authority’s 

debt while continuing to strengthen the economy in the Tennessee 

Valley. 

I thank all of the witnesses for being here and I look forward to 

your testimony. I appreciate your service. I yield back, Madam 

Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Ehlers? 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank you for 

holding this hearing on the President’s fiscal year 2010 budget. 

I would like to briefly discuss a portion of the President’s budget 

that I strongly support, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The 

Great Lakes are indeed a national treasure. The Lakes hold 95 percent of U.S. surface fresh water and are the largest system of surface fresh water on this planet. In addition to offering recreation 

and transportation options, the Great Lakes also provide more than 

30 million people with drinking water. 

Unfortunately, the health of the Great Lakes is threatened by 

aquatic invasive species, contaminated sediment, nonpoint source 

pollution, and habitat loss. Failure to protect and restore the Lakes 

now will result in more serious consequences in the future in addition to increasing cleanup costs. 

Since being elected to Congress, I have championed Great Lakes 

restoration efforts. I am encouraged that the President’s budget 

and the budget resolution that Congress passed both include $475 

million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Although this 

amount is still far short of what is needed to properly restore the 

Great Lakes, it is a very significant down payment. We now have 

to work with appropriators and the Senate to ensure that this Initiative is fully funded. We particularly need to ensure that Legacy 

Act is fully authorized at $150 million. 

I look forward to hearing more from our witnesses about how 

this Great Lakes Restoration Initiative will be implemented. Thank 

you, Madam Chair. I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. Now I will recognize Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this hearing 

today to review the budget of EPA, NOAA, and other agencies 

5 

under our jurisdiction. As this is the first budget for the new Administration, I look forward to hearing from the many agencies 

represented here with us today. 

As a representative of 75 percent of South Carolina’s coast, I am 

especially focused on EPA’s Beach Water Quality Program. This 

program supports State and local efforts to monitor water quality 

at our Nation’s beaches, something that is critically important for 

districts like mine that depend upon beach tourism for a major portion of our economy. I am pleased to see EPA’s continued support 

for this program, especially the Agency’s effort to modernize funding. Later this week the Full Committee will be marking up legislation to reauthorize the Beach Act and I am hopeful it will come 

to the Floor soon. 

I am proud to serve as Ranking Member on the Ocean Subcommittee of the Natural Resource Committee, which has a significant interest in the activities of NOAA. The portion of NOAA under 

the jurisdiction of this Subcommittee plays an important role with 

all the other NOAA responsibilities. I look forward to learning 

about the Administration’s priorities for NOAA in this regard. 

Again, thank you, Madam Chairman and Ranking Member 

Boozman, for holding this hearing. Thank you, gentlemen, for your 

testimony. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Now I will introduce our witnesses. Mr. Michael Shapiro is Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. Mr. Barry 

Breen is the Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Solid 

Waste and Emergency Response at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC. 

Chief David White is with the Natural Resources Conservation 

Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. 

Administrator Collister Johnson, Jr. is from the Saint Lawrence 

Seaway Development Corporation of the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, DC. 

Assistant Administrator John H. Dunnigan is with the National 

Ocean Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, in Silver Spring, Maryland. 

Finally, Mr. John M. Thomas, III, is Vice President and Controller 

of Financial Services at the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

I will recognize you in the order in which I called your name. Mr. 

Shapiro, you may begin your testimony. 

6 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL SHAPIRO, ACTING ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF WATER, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL 

PROTECTION AGENCY; BARRY BREEN, ACTING ASSISTANT 

ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF SOLID WASTE AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 

AGENCY; DAVID WHITE, CHIEF, NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; 

COLLISTER JOHNSON, JR., ADMINISTRATOR, SAINT LAWRENCE SEAWAY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; JOHN H. DUNNIGAN, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL OCEAN SERVICE, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE; AND JOHN M. THOMAS, 

III, VICE PRESIDENT AND CONTROLLER, FINANCIAL SERVICES, TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Good morning, Madam Chair and Members of the 

Subcommittee. Thank you for this opportunity to speak about the 

President’s fiscal year 2010 budget request for EPA’s National 

Water Programs. 

The request for our Clean Water and Drinking Water Programs 

is for $5.5 billion, which is about 53 percent of the Agency’s budget. 

This also represents an increase of almost $3 billion over our fiscal 

year 2009 level. It will enable EPA in collaboration with our State, 

local, and tribal partners to advance our mission of protecting 

human health and the environment and specifically to make America’s waters clean, safe, and secure. 

EPA has made progress in protecting and improving water quality. However, many challenges remain. The fiscal year 2010 budget 

request will help EPA to address these challenges by supporting 

our core water programs and by providing increased funding for a 

number of key priorities. In the remainder of my brief summary remarks, I would like to highlight three of these key areas: sustainable infrastructure and two of our priority geographic areas, the 

Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay. 

In terms of infrastructure investment, our Clean Water State Revolving Fund and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund provide affordable loans to local communities to finance public wastewater 

systems and other water quality projects, as well as drinking water 

systems in the case of the Drinking Water Fund. The fiscal year 

2010 budget request includes $2.4 billion for the Clean Water State 

Revolving Fund. 

This critical infrastructure program will preserve and create jobs 

and fund approximately 1,000 clean water projects. The funds will 

also prioritize green infrastructure, water and energy efficiency, 

and environmentally innovative projects for State, local, and tribal 

governments. The budget also includes significant increases for 

tribes and United States territories to address their significant 

unmet water quality needs. 

The budget also fully funds the cooperative agreements for the 

Water Security Initiative pilots, which will provide a proof of concept for enhancing the security of our water infrastructure. EPA 

will also work with State and local partners to develop a sustainability policy including management and pricing for future infrastructure funded through the State Revolving Funds to encourage 

7 

conservation and to provide adequate long term funding for future 

capital needs. 

For the Great Lakes, we know that this valuable aquatic resource provides drinking water, food, recreation, and transportation 

to about 25 million Americans. The fiscal year 2010 President’s 

budget request provides $475 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a coordinated multi-agency effort which focuses on 

critical challenges including toxic substances, invasive species, near 

shore health, nonpoint source pollution, habitat and wildlife protection, and restoration. EPA has worked closely with its Federal 

partners to target funding to the highest priority problems and opportunities in the Great Lakes and to ensure that there is increased collaboration, accountability, and transparency in our 

work. 

The Chesapeake Bay Program, which is authorized by Section 

117 of the Clean Water Act, is a collaborative regional partnership 

that has been working to restore the Bay since 1983. The President’s $35 million budget request will foster implementation of the 

Chesapeake Action Plan; advance efforts to reduce pollution from 

agriculture, development, wastewater, and air deposition; and support the EPA and States’ work to develop the Nation’s largest and 

most complex total maximum daily load for the entire Chesapeake 

Bay watershed. Additionally, the Chesapeake Bay Program will 

work closely with the rest of EPA and other Federal partners to 

implement the ambitious plans announced in the Chesapeake Bay 

Executive Order, which the President signed on May 12th. 

In conclusion, EPA’s Office of Water takes the responsibility of 

protecting and improving the Nation’s waters very seriously. America’s water is a public trust. The National Water Program is committed to innovative solutions that protect and improve the Nation’s water quality, promote water efficiency, and ensure environmentally sustainable water and wastewater infrastructure. EPA 

looks forward to continuing our work with this Subcommittee and 

to accomplishing these important National Water Program goals. I 

will be happy to respond to your questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. Mr. Breen? 

Mr. BREEN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am pleased to be 

here today to discuss the President’s 2010 budget request. In particular, I will discuss Superfund, Brownfields, and other programs 

under the responsibility of the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. With your permission, I will summarize it and 

offer the full testimony for the record. The President’s request of $10.5 billion for 2010 to carry out 

EPA’s mission represents a 37 percent increase over our 2009 

budget and the highest level ever for the Agency, as you observed. 

I am pleased to say that Brownfields cleanup and redevelopment 

is one of the Administration’s environmental priorities. The 2010 

budget request provides $174.7 million for the Brownfields Program, a $5 million increase from our 2009 enacted level. That includes $87 million for Brownfields program assessment, cleanup, 

revolving loan fund, and job training grants. 

Turning to Superfund, we continue to protect human health and 

the environment by cleaning up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites 

and conducting actions to mitigate immediate threats to human 

8 

health. The President’s budget provides $1.3 billion for the Superfund program and it maintains Superfund’s remedial cleanup program at essentially the same level as the 2009 enacted level. In 

2008, we obligated $462 million of appropriated, State cost share, 

and potentially responsible party settlement resources to conduct 

cleanup construction and post construction work at Superfund 

sites. That included more than $55 million to begin construction at 

16 new Superfund projects at 15 National Priorities List sites. Turning to homeland security, the 2010 budget requests $53.5 

million. With that money, we will continue to concentrate on key 

areas including laboratory capability and decontamination capability. It will help strengthen our responder base through training 

and exercise opportunities for our response support corps and incident management team volunteers as well as the base full time response workforce. Turning to the oil program, our budget request provides $18.4 

million. The oil spill program focuses on preventing oil spills from 

occurring, reducing the hazard of exposure to people, and responding to spills when necessary. Together with the Coast Guard, we 

evaluate thousands of spills annually to determine if assistance is 

required. On average, we either manage the spill response or oversee the response efforts of private parties at about 250 to 300 oil 

spill sites per year. 

Subject to your questions, that concludes my testimony. Thank 

you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. Chief David 

White? 

Mr. WHITE. Greetings, Madam Chairwoman. It is an honor to be 

here, Ranking Member and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. This is a heck of a hearing room. It is quite impressive. 

I’m going to visit with you today about three programs and give 

you a little overview of what we have done with some Recovery Act 

money. 

The first one is Watershed and Flood Prevention. That is essentially two statutes, one from 1944 and one from 1954. We have 

done about 2,000 watershed projects, the small ones that were 

mentioned earlier, across the Country and about 11,000 structures. 

If you look at the total amount of money since 1947—and I didn’t 

normalize this number, this is just added up—about $6 billion has 

been spent. For this investment, we get about $1.5 billion a year 

in benefits, in flood control and various other things. 

You are right, Madam Chairwoman. You mentioned it; the Ranking Member mentioned it. This is not proposed for funding in the 

2010. For the last several years, this program has been almost 

completely or completely earmarked. The Agency has very little or 

no flexibility in this. I guess I would just simply echo the Ranking 

Member’s words that sometimes priorities collide. This is one of 

those instances. 

We do expect these projects to continue, many of them, because 

they do enjoy local support. I am sorry for the little handmade 

photos, but if you look at pages 16 and 17 on this, you are going 

to see some ring dikes. These were taken in the floodplain of the 

Red River Valley of the flooding this year. These are projects we 

can actually do with other programs to protect these farmsteads. 

9 

These are pure water quality projects because if that water gets in 

there, you have got chemicals, pesticides, fuel, and the wellhead for 

the producer. We can do those types of projects with other programs. 

The second program is the Emergency Watershed Protection Program. This is cleanup; removing debris; stabilizing banks from tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, volcanoes, you name it. In 2008 you 

were very generous with us. In the two supplementals, we received 

$490 million in EWP funding. We have about $67 million left in 

that account. That number changes all the time as money is returned and more requests go out. 

So the President’s budget really doesn’t propose to pre-fund this. We have $67 million left. My judgement, barring some awful calamity, is that that should be adequate. If something terrible does 

happen, this Body has always responded for America regardless of 

where it occurs. And that would certainly be an option to fund it 

in the future. 

The third program is Watershed Rehabilitation. This is a little 

concerning for me. These 11,000 structures, many of them were 

built 50 years ago with a design life of 50 years. Every day for the 

next 20 years, a watershed structure will reach the end of its useful life, every day for the next two decades. And we have got to fix 

these things. Things wear out. Metal rusts; concrete degrades. 

We have had another problem with these, that what you have 

built in a cotton field in Georgia is now a subdivision outside Atlanta. And any time you have people build below one of these structures, it automatically becomes a high hazard structure. We have 

got to go in there and upgrade these things. That is done under 

this program as well. The President’s budget does propose a small 

increase for that of $40.2 million. I would mention that the 2008 

Farm Bill put $135 million in mandatory funds so we are hopeful 

of that. 

The last item, in the Recovery Act we had $340 million. This was at the Agency’s discretion on how this was allocated. $145 went to 

Watershed Operations. We were able to fund 81 projects in 26 

States, and even one in the Northern Marianas, which I think will 

be great for the coral reef outside that island. With Watershed Rehabilitation we had $50 million. We funded 27 projects in 11 

States. 

Then the last one was the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, which allows us to actually purchase floodplain easements. 

That is what the money was designated for. We did a nationwide 

sign-up and we were stunned with the response. We had $145 million to distribute but we had more than $1.4 billion in applications, 

4,200 applications. Of that we were able to fund 289 recipients for 

the money we had available. 

In that program, there are four Members of the Subcommittee 

who have projects. I think only one of them is here, Mr. Griffith. 

Three floodplain easement projects were funded in his district. 

There are a couple of photos in here that kind of show them. There 

is one graphic one from Ohio that shows five or six houses right 

below a dam that will be relocated. 

I have expired or nearly expired my time. I appreciate your time. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

10 

Administrator Collister Johnson, Jr.? 

Mr. COLLISTER JOHNSON. Good morning, Madam Chair and 

Members of the Committee. Thank you for having us here today to 

talk about the 2010 budget requests. With your permission, I will 

submit my written statement for inclusion in the record and simply 

talk to some of the points in that written statement. 

I am very pleased, Madam Chair, that you alluded to the economic importance of the Seaway to the economy of the Midwest. It 

serves a vital role. It impacts 150,000 jobs and $4.3 billion worth 

of salary every year. It saves shippers about $3.6 billion a year, 

costs that would otherwise be passed onto consumers. So given an 

area of the Country that we all recognize economically is going 

through great challenges, we think it is more important than ever 

that the Seaway do its job properly. 

In order to do that job properly, we need to renew the assets that 

make up the Seaway. The Seaway was built 50 years ago. There 

really hasn’t been an asset renewal program that will assure that 

it does its job and stays open, and there will not be a catastrophic 

failure. So we were very pleased last year when the Bush Administration included for the first time an 83 percent increase in our 

budget for asset renewal. 

We were very pleased that the President has decided to continue 

that program in this budget. We believe that if we can continue 

that over the next 10 years—there are 65 projects that we want to 

fund—that we will have a Seaway that will be able to serve the 

Country for the next 50 years as it has in the past. 

This year also we are very hopeful that we will have some reforms passed that will allow maritime to be used more as a means 

of relieving congestion from road and rail. Harbor maintenance tax 

reform is essential for that. That serves as a real barrier to utilization of maritime. Congressman McHugh sponsored a bill, H.R. 528, 

that would reform harbor maintenance tax. There are many cosponsors. Of course, Congressman McHugh has now moved on to 

become Secretary of the Army so we will have to reintroduce that, 

but we are confident that we will get the support necessary to do 

that. 

Then I would also like to allude a little bit to the role that we 

play in terms of environmental protection for the Great Lakes that 

Congressman Ehlers talked about. It is the only waterway in the 

United States where every ship coming in has to go through a 

checkpoint, which is where we do inspections in Montreal. 

For the first time in the history of the Seaway, we now have a 

set of regulations that requires salt water flushing for all of the 

ballast tanks that come into the Seaway. Science tells us that saltwater flushing is very, very effective in terms of killing the freshwater organisms that otherwise could live in the Great Lakes. Also 

this last year we had 100 percent inspection of every ship so there 

is no more uninspected, untreated ballast water coming into the 

Great Lakes. We think this is going to have a very positive impact 

in terms of decreasing the rate of introduction of invasive species. 

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this year is 

the 50th anniversary of the Seaway. It was opened in 1959. We are 

going to have a celebration of that in upstate New York in the middle of July. Obviously anyone who has an interest in joining us for 

11 

that celebration, we would be more than happy to have them. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Dunnigan? 

Mr. DUNNIGAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. It is 

a pleasure to be here on behalf of the 12,000 women and men of 

NOAA who provide science, service, and stewardship to the Country every day. I am Jack Dunnigan. I am NOAA’s Assistant Administrator for Oceans and Coasts and the Director of the National 

Ocean Service. At NOAA we work to protect the lives and livelihoods of Americans and to provide products and services to the 

benefit of our economy, our environment, and the public safety of 

the Nation. 

What I would like to do this morning is to highlight some of the 

programs that help fulfill our responsibilities for understanding, 

protecting, and restoring coastal and marine resources. I would like 

to ask that my full written statement be included in the record, 

Madam Chair. And if it is okay, I will just summarize some of the 

high points. I would like to begin by talking about some of the recent things that we have done in 2008 that we think are of interest. 

NOAA in many ways is about weather and hurricanes, and we 

had two major hurricane events to respond to in the Gulf of Mexico 

in 2008, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. NOAA responds immediately 

as soon as a storm has passed by providing aerial images to aid 

emergency responders, by surveying waterways so that we can 

open those from obstructions, and by providing real time storm 

data for nautical charting and recovery. 

We also respond to oil spills. In 2008 we got to deal with both 

the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay as well as the New 

Orleans barge collision of DM932 on the Mississippi River. In those 

cases we did our hard work to provide trajectory predictions, to 

prioritize cleanup and restoration activities, to do injury assessments, and to initiate restoration planning. 

We do a lot of work in the area of marine debris. In 2008 we developed and implemented partnerships to turn derelict fishing gear 

into energy on the East Coast, building on a program that we had 

started in Hawaii. We estimate that every one ton of fishing nets 

that are processed can generate enough electricity to power a home 

for almost a month. So there is a real opportunity here. 

We reported last year on a couple of major, intense harmful algal 

bloom events on the eastern Florida coast off the Florida panhandle 

and in the coastal regions of Alabama and Mississippi. We worked 

last year to help reduce the impacts of invasive species by improving the understanding of ballast water management practices on 

ships and by integrating our National Benthic Inventory website 

with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Nonindigenous Aquatic Species 

Database. 

We continue to work with our transportation support information 

systems, especially our PORTS program that provides real time information to vessel operators moving in and out of the ports of this 

Country so that they can know with a lot of accuracy exactly how 

much water they have underneath the keel and how much clearance they have underneath that bridge that is right up ahead. 

12 

Looking towards the 2010 budget request, there are some very 

interesting things in there that I think the Committee will want 

to look at: 

We have an increase requested of $1.4 million for our oil spill 

program so that we can do some further modeling to develop a 

three dimensional oil spill model that can be used both by the responding agencies and for recovery. 

We are seeking an additional amount of $2.7 million in our 

harmful algal bloom forecasts so that we can create a national system. Right now, most of our efforts are focused in the eastern Gulf 

of Mexico. We would also like to work towards developing a national HAB event response capability. 

Our invasive species program is not seeking an increase in the 

President’s budget this year but we will continue to work hard in 

this area. There is about $2.7 million in there. We intend this year 

to be preventing and controlling ballast water, and modeling the effects of invasive species food webs in the Great Lakes. And yes, at 

NOAA we do recognize that the Great Lakes are oceans, too. We 

would also like to proactively assess and manage threats that are 

brought on by invasive species. 

We need an additional $1.2 million in the President’s budget to 

focus on increasing our hydrographic surveys. We have high priority hydrographic survey needs around the Country. We work 

hard, both with our own assets and with the private sector, to fill 

out and get the information that mariners need so that they can 

operate safely in our waters. 

In conclusion, Madam Chair, NOAA has made great progress, we 

think, to address our mandates and fulfill our missions over the 

last year. These efforts will continue in 2009. We ask the Committee to support the President’s 2010 budget request for NOAA’s 

programs where we provide products and services that benefit the 

economy, the environment, and the public safety of our Nation. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. John Thomas? 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking 

Member Boozman, and Members of the Committee. It is an honor 

to come before you to discuss the budget of the Tennessee Valley 

Authority. On behalf of TVA, we appreciate the oversight and support provided by this Committee. 

As a corporate Federal agency, TVA is financially self supporting 

through its operations as the Nation’s largest public power provider. In accordance with the direction of Congress, TVA pays its 

own way by using proceeds from power sales to pay wages, maintain assets, service debt, and fund stewardship and economic development activities. 

TVA’s mission is carried out in three areas: energy, environment, 

and economic development. TVA provides electricity for about nine 

million people through wholesale contracts with 158 local utilities. 

TVA also sell power directly to about 60 large industries and Federal installations. Our stewardship responsibilities include the integrated management of the Tennessee River for flood control, commercial navigation, water quality, and recreation. 

13 

We are in the process of finalizing our budget for fiscal year 2010. The proposed budget at this time assumes revenue of $13.6 

billion from the sale of electricity, operating expenses of $11.3 billion, and capital expenditures of $2.2 billion. The $2.2 billion in 

capital expenditures includes $223 million for clean air projects 

and about $1.4 billion for new generating projects including the 

construction of a second reactor at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in 

Spring City, Tennessee. TVA’s outstanding debt and debt-like obligations are estimated to be $24.9 billion at the end of 2010, an increase of $32 million from the previous year. 

As you know, a large coal ash storage facility failed last December 22nd at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of 

Knoxville. We are making steady progress in the cleanup and recovery. We continue to coordinate closely with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and other State and local officials. All 

work plans and schedules are being submitted to EPA for independent review and approval. 

Ongoing environmental sampling shows that air quality and 

drinking water continue to meet State and Federal standards. An 

independent engineering firm was retained to determine the root 

cause and we expect the results later this summer. To address any 

concerns about public health, TVA is contracting with Oak Ridge 

Associated Universities to provide the community with access to 

medical and toxicology experts who have knowledge and experience 

with the ash materials. All work is proceeding as quickly and safely as possible to fulfill TVA’s commitment to fully recover the area 

and do the right thing for the community. We estimate the recovery will cost between $675 million and $975 million, excluding regulatory and litigation costs. 

In addition to the Kingston recovery, TVA is working to meet 

some significant financial and operational challenges. Like many 

other areas in our Nation, the Valley is experiencing a downturn 

in industrial activity, which is impacting power sales. The budget 

plan adopted last fall assumed that power sales would be flat this 

year due to the onset of the recession. Now we expect sales to be 

down from 6 to 8 percent, or about $500 million in revenue. 

On the plus side, we are seeing relief through declining prices for 

fuel oil and natural gas. As a result, virtually all of the 17 percent 

rate increase enacted last October through TVA’s fuel cost adjustment has been rescinded. We are also seeing relief from record 

drought conditions which have impacted the area for the past three 

years. We expect TVA’s reservoirs to reach their normal summer 

levels for the first time since 2005. 

Looking ahead, TVA is working to obtain over 50 percent of its 

generation from clean and renewable energy resources by 2020. 

Currently, we are evaluating proposals for up to 2,000 megawatts 

of renewable energy and we are increasing our energy efficiency 

program with the goal of avoiding 1,400 megawatts in peak demand growth by 2012. 

The Tennessee Valley remains a great place to work and live. 

Earlier this year two major manufacturers of solar energy materials announced plans to build $1 billion plants in Tennessee. The 

plants together will create about 1,500 jobs. 

14 

In conclusion, we look forward to keeping this Committee, Congress, the Administration, and the people of the Tennessee Valley 

informed of our progress. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I would 

be pleased to answer any questions that you have. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

We are going to begin our first round of questions with Dr. 

Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I will concentrate my 

questions on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and other 

Great Lakes activities. I apologize to the others who don’t get 

asked questions, but you can just relax for a few minutes. 

I am curious how the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative will be 

administered. Mr. Shapiro, can you clarify that for me, please? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes, Congressman Ehlers. Resources that have 

been proposed by the President will be administered through the 

Environmental Protection Agency. But as part of our proposal to 

Congress, the EPA is requesting authority to transfer that money 

to other agencies who can play important and essential roles in 

helping to restore the Lakes. There is an existing framework, the 

Federal Interagency Taskforce, which is chaired by EPA. 

There is also a corresponding regional working group which has 

representation from all of the Federal agencies that have been part 

of the multi-year collaborative effort to develop good science and to 

plan activities in collaboration with State, local, and tribal governments and non-governmental groups aimed towards restoring the 

Lakes. 

The governance process, if you will, for the Federal funding really involves agencies collectively identifying the priority projects, 

both governmental and non-governmental, to address the concerns 

in the five areas that I mentioned in my opening remarks and then 

allocating the resources across the agencies. So it will be led by 

EPA but with an extensive effort to collaborate and work collectively with initially our Federal partners, but more importantly 

over time, the State, local, and tribal governments that have a 

major stake in the restoration of the Great Lakes. 

Mr. EHLERS. Let me also just comment that I am very pleased 

that this is a bipartisan issue. As you know, President Bush issued 

the call for the Great Lakes Regional Collaborative a couple years 

ago and President Obama is now following up with that. Even 

going back further, when the Democrats controlled the House of 

Representatives a few years ago, Congressman Rahm Emanuel 

sponsored a bill on the Great Lakes and I cosponsored it. The following year the Republicans were in charge and I sponsored a bill, 

slightly different, and Congressman Emanuel was pleased to cosponsor that. So we have had a good working relationship on this 

issue. 

A comment for Mr. Breen, he commented several times about 

Superfund and activities there. On the Great Lakes Legacy Act, 

which has been in existence now for some six years or so, one refrain I have heard repeatedly from the OOSA [phonetic] community 

and the environmental community is that it was by far the most 

effective cleanup program ever developed by the Congress. That 

raises the question, if the Legacy Act has proved to be so efficient 

and cost effective, should we perhaps look at the Superfund and 

15 

ask why can’t we run it the same way we ran the Legacy Act? Before I write legislation to do that, I would like your comments. 

Mr. BREEN. Thank you, Congressman. Of course, the two have 

somewhat different purposes. An important purpose of the Superfund is to address uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. So we have 

our own scope that we need to pursue with sometimes different 

kinds of remedies. So it is not always a surface water and sediment 

remedy that you would find in a Great Lakes environment. Frequently it is a soil remedy, a groundwater remedy, and occasionally 

a sediment remedy. We do have some sediment sites. But I bet 

most of the sites are soil and groundwater sites. So there is a considerable difference in the kind of approach that is needed. 

Mr. EHLERS. That is very true. But I think one of the big differences is that when we wrote the Legacy Act, we tried very deliberately to reduce the amount of time that lawyers could spend on 

each of the cases and put most of the money into direct action. 

Also, I think a big factor was the cost sharing between the Federal, 

State, and local governments which provided a great inducement 

for many of the actors to participate fully without dragging their 

feet. So you might just take a look at that. I am not saying there 

is a one to one correlation. But I think it is worth looking at that. 

I see my red light is on. It is amazing how the clock runs so 

much faster on my time than on other people’s times. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. EHLERS. But I will yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. Mr. Baird is recognized. 

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Dunnigan, I want to 

focus on your work. I am a big fan of NOAA. I appreciate all of the 

panelists here. 

You, I think, absolutely appropriately identified some of the 

major concerns like harmful algal blooms and hypoxia. We have got 

these problems off our coast in the Northwest. It is a growing 

worldwide problem, especially the hypoxia and algal blooms. 

There are two things that I don’t think got a lot of attention in 

your testimony, and I wonder if you care to expand on them? One 

is ocean acidification. As you probably know, I think just two days 

ago, the National Academies of Science from I think over 60 nations focused on ocean acidification as a profound problem associated with CO2 in the atmosphere. Also, I don’t think there was a 

lot of discussion of overfishing both within our regional waters and 

worldwide. Can you talk about both of those issues a bit and how 

the budget reflects those issues? 

Mr. DUNNIGAN. Yes, sir. Thank you and thank you for the kind 

words about NOAA. 

For ocean acidification, I think there has been a major emphasis 

within NOAA over the last couple of years in looking at what we 

call long term climate change and what one Member I know likes 

to call lethal overwarming and ocean acidification. NOAA is basically a science agency. So that is what we have been trying to understand better, the long term transport mechanisms. We know 

and we have known for decades that the oceans are a carbon sink. 

As we increase the amount of carbon that is in the atmosphere, 

16 

how much of it ends up being taken up by the ocean and what are 

the long term concerns? 

One of our concerns is the impact that that has on coral reefs because coral reefs around the world are endangered. Two weeks ago 

there was a major international commitment to the Coral Reef Triangle Initiative in Indonesia. The United States, although we are 

not one of the six countries, we have substantial presence in the 

central and western Pacific so we have a very strong interest in 

supporting those efforts. 

So we do recognize the problems and the scientific issues that 

are associated with the need to address ocean acidification. That is 

a major part of our research programs as we continue to develop 

climate models. The Administration has said that they are in favor 

of developing a National Climate Service so that we can improve 

our ability to respond. 

On overfishing, we recognize that there is a major problem with 

the need to address overfishing. Our new Undersecretary has engaged in this from the first day that she was on the program. The 

budget contains about another $50 million of new money that 

would be used to develop management programs that would help 

to address overfishing around the Country, including some additional funding for the Regional Fishery Management Councils that 

help make the plans and the regulations. So we are committed to 

following through on those responsibilities. There are pieces in this 

budget that actively support that. 

Mr. BAIRD. Great. I appreciate your attention to both of those 

issues. I have two just quick suggestions, if I may, for consideration. You may have heard me mention these before. 

One, I hope we will consider the possible use of UAVs, unmanned 

aerial vehicles, to patrol our marine conservation areas. These vehicles can fly for 20 plus hours. They don’t require landing strips. 

They don’t require pilots except on the ground. I think in a number 

of areas—especially with some international law—a UAV could target a fishing vessel in restricted waters; take a photo of it; and 

then have something like the Civil Asset Forfeiture, which we do 

with drug dealers, to confiscate the boat; and then buy more UAVs. 

I think this would be particularly useful in areas like our own 

marine conservation areas, which President Bush expanded last 

year. If you look at the Galapagos, if you look at south Florida, we 

have got major reserves off our coast in the Northwest that really 

we don’t have enough patrol. I think that is a viable way, an economical way, and a safer way than having pilots out over these distant waters. I hope we can look at that. 

The other thing is, as you know, I am a huge fan of Aquarius. 

It is a unique resource. I would encourage NOAA and our scientific 

agencies to consider sponsoring and supporting a worldwide establishment of Aquariuses for some of the other major ecosystems on 

earth. We have got one off Key Largo but I think there are many 

other areas with different ecosystems where we need that kind of 

sustained, long term tracking. So I hope NOAA will fully fund and 

add some money, not only to the Aquarius that is currently operational, but to actually begin an exploration of whether a few other 

Aquarius-type research stations could be made available elsewhere 

in our Country and the world. 

17 

With that, I yield back. I thank the Chair and thank our witnesses. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. The Chair now 

recognizes Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. Shapiro, at previous hearings witnesses have told us one of 

the reasons that we have a big infrastructure problem is that communities have not maintained the infrastructure and do not have 

a plan for replacement. If this is true, does EPA think it is reasonable to ask as a condition of getting financial assistance that we 

do not repeat this problem? What is EPA doing to ensure that communities are effectively managing their assets? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Thank you. You have identified a very important 

issue, one that EPA has been working hard to address through our 

sustainable infrastructure efforts. We have partnered with just 

about all the major organizations representing professionals in the 

water and wastewater communities to develop essentially a set of 

principles and actions that would characterize what we would consider to be well-managed utilities. Many of those address the issue 

of asset management: maintaining and inventorying your assets; 

making sure that you have got an appropriate process to identify 

when repair, rehabilitation, or replacement is necessary; as well as 

developing a sound financial program. 

I think the question of whether a plan like that should be required in order to be able to get funding is one that we have not 

taken a position on. But certainly we have encouraged utilities at 

all levels to take those practices into account, to adopt asset management and environmental management systems as well as sound 

pricing strategies in order to maintain the future viability of the 

infrastructure. 

We recognize that this has been a problem historically within the 

industry. We are seeing much greater acceptance now of these 

kinds of planning approaches and a much more professional approach to maintaining assets as a result of the work we have done 

as well as many of our partners, as I said, including all of the 

major professional organizations dealing in this area. 

Mr. BROWN. Do we have any way of inventorying the projected 

backlogs of deficiencies in our infrastructure? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, we have our needs surveys, which are conducted separately for wastewater and drinking water facilities. 

Each of those surveys is conducted on a four year cycle. So we 

know, for example, that the identified needs for wastewater as of 

the last survey, which was conducted in 2004, were about $202 billion worth of projected investment needs. 

Now, for some of those the funding may have already been identified for it. So we didn’t try in these surveys to identify what the 

unfunded portion of that might be. That is a total list of needs. On 

the drinking water side, it is over $330 billion. So we have a pretty 

good handle on roughly a 20 year time horizon in each of those 

areas as to what the needs are, as can be best either identified or 

forecast by the utilities themselves through these surveys. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you very much. That is what I was concerned 

about, that there is a tremendous amount of need out there that 

18 

we are trying to meet. If we don’t meet it, I think we are going to 

certainly, under a disaster portion of time, have to deal with it. 

Mr. Breen, if I could ask you the next question. On the Superfund program, EPA proposed increasing spending for the Superfund program but the Agency says it will complete construction on 

fewer Superfund sites next year as compared to the previous years. 

Why would that be? 

Mr. BREEN. Let me see if I can help by offering context, then an 

explanation, and then a little more context. The first context is that 

our construction completion projections have been lowered for 2009. 

The construction completion projection for 2009, we have lowered 

from 35 down to 20. We discovered this after we had submitted the 

2009 budget. So we went ahead and, as part of the 2010 budget, 

wanted to make sure the Congressional Offices knew that we were 

projecting lower for 2009. For 2010, we are projecting 22 construction completions. So it is 20 for 2009 and 22 for 2010. 

This is not the first time we have found ourselves in this situation. In the 2007 budget, we lowered the projection from 40 to 24 

for much the same reasons. After the budget had been submitted, 

we discovered that we didn’t think we were going to make the 

number we had originally projected. We didn’t want to mislead 

anybody along the way by leaving a more optimistic number out 

there while the budget was being executed. So the lowering is not 

that we have actually done less at the moment. It is that we think 

we will end up doing less and we wanted to make sure everybody 

knew that. 

If I have overshot my time, I better be careful about going any 

further. 

Mr. BROWN. I thank you. My time has expired. But if you could 

just tell me very quickly, what percent do you think we have addressed now in our Superfund locations? 

Mr. BREEN. We do have that number. Let me get it for you for 

the record in terms of the overall National Priorities List and the 

number that we have reached construction completion at. We have 

that number and I can get that to you.[Information follows:] 

19 


Insert offset folio 35 here 50614.035
20 

Mr. BROWN. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam 

Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you. The Chair recognizes Mrs. 

Napolitano. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I have several questions for Mr. Shapiro. Southern California for 

many years has been tapping into groundwater and alternative 

water sources. What role is EPA playing in supporting recycling, 

tertiary treatment—and now there is a fourth treatment, ultraviolet irradiation and others, to be able to clean it even better—desalination, and other alternative approaches to produce more usable water being that we do have climate change and that we do 

have drought and that we are trying to conserve and restore more? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Thank you for that question. EPA has played and 

can play a number of roles in dealing with issues of water reclamation and reuse as well as conservation. 

We don’t regulate water quantity directly. We can’t require 

reuse, but we do have authorities that come to play. Certain of the 

kinds of activities that you referred to can access the Drinking 

Water Revolving Fund as a source of financing. We also, to the extent that reclaimed water is used to recharge aquifers, would regulate that activity under the Underground Injection Control Program. 

We are very deeply interested in the issue of water conservation, 

of using less to begin with. We again don’t have regulatory authority in that area but we think as part of a conscientious approach 

to managing infrastructure appropriately, water conservation 

should play a key role. So we have a voluntary partnership program, WaterSense, which encourages consumers to purchase water 

efficient products. It also partners with manufacturers to set specifications for products that meet high goals for water efficiency. 

So in addition to being able to address the issues of reclamation 

and reuse, we think starting with conservation is a critically important first step. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. You do mention the WaterSense program. 

What was the Administration’s request for the WaterSense program? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. The base budget for that is around $2 million per 

year. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Is that sufficient? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, it certainly is sufficient to maintain the program at the level that we have right now. Obviously, we have ideas 

for new product categories and more ambitious goals. As resources 

become available, we will undertake additional activities. But it 

certainly meets our needs at the moment in terms of the level of 

the program. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Does that include any education to the public? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. An important component of WaterSense is getting the message out to the public, both generally in terms of the 

importance of water conservation as well as making consumers 

aware that you can achieve water efficiency by making the right 

product choices. One of the things we do with our many partners 

is encourage them to use our communication materials as well as 

21 

our logos were appropriate in order to make the public aware of the 

opportunities that are available. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I am sorry. My time is running out and I have 

another question, Mr. Shapiro. It has to do with chlorine. It is a 

big issue because of the transportation and the safety hazard, especially transporting it on rail and truck. Do you feel the chemical 

industry can do more to produce a safer product? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, at this point the Water Office has done a lot 

of work on the issue of disinfection. There are alternatives that are 

currently available to communities. They don’t all work equally 

well in different situations. So we have encouraged utilities to look 

closely at the choices they face and, where appropriate, to minimize 

the use of pure chlorine gas. There are other chlorine-related products that can also be used. 

But at the end of the day, we feel it is important for water utilities to have the ability to weigh the options and make the choices 

that are protective for their communities and to accomplish their 

goal. At this point in time, it appears that there still is a need for 

the use of conventional chlorine treatment. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Is there any information that is given on a 

regular basis to the water agencies so they are aware of some of 

the new technologies that might be available to them? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. We certainly share with them the information that 

we have concerning alternatives and the factors to consider in their 

use. We also share approaches to kind of optimizing their disinfection activities to minimize the need to use quantities of material. 

So we try to share information on a technical level as well as provide direct assistance in some cases. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some 

other questions I will submit in writing. It has to do with quagga 

mussels. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. The Chair now 

recognizes Mrs. Candice Miller. 

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate 

the witnesses. 

I certainly associate myself with some of the comments from my 

colleague from Michigan, Mr. Ehlers. He is on the west side of 

Michigan and I am on the southeast side of Michigan but we share 

a principle of advocacy for the protection of our magnificent Great 

Lakes. They contain 20 percent of the fresh water drinking supply 

of the entire world. Of course a big issue there in addition to water 

quality has been invasive species. 

So Administrator Johnson, first of all congratulations on the 50th 

anniversary of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. That is a wonderful 

thing. It is amazing that has happened since all these years, or 

most of those years, at least two thirds of them, we have all been 

dealing with the experiences that we have had and the negative 

impact of invasive species. So when you said that there is—now, 

I wrote this down—100 percent inspection, no more uninspected 

ballast water coming into the Great Lakes, I thought I was going 

to get up here and do a little jig. That is a fantastic statement to 

hear. 

If you could, perhaps just flesh that out for me. What is your experience with that? Now, I know you have several hundred salties 

22 

that come into the Great Lakes. As they enter in through the Saint 

Lawrence Seaway, if you are doing that kind of inspection, could 

you sort of help me understand the mechanics of that? 

Mr. COLLISTER JOHNSON. Sure. Thank you for the question. We 

instituted something called an enhanced inspection process in Montreal for all ships coming into the Great Lakes. Obviously, most of 

them are salties. That consists of Transport Canada, us, the Canadian Management Corporation, and the U.S. Coast Guard. 

So the notion is that until there is a national standard for ballast 

water, until there is technology for ballast water treatment, we 

have to do what we can to protect the Great Lakes. It has been 

shown in the sciences that flushing ballast tanks, be they tanks 

with water in them or not, with salt water really does a very effective job of killing the fresh water organisms that would live in the 

Great Lakes. 

So every ship coming in needs to flush its tanks out in the open 

ocean with full salt water. When they do come in, they are inspected to make sure that that is done. There was a compliance 

rate last year of 97.8 percent. Of the ones that didn’t comply, those 

tanks are sealed. They go in the Great Lakes, they come back out, 

and they are inspected again to see that the seal hasn’t been broken. 

So we really think this is an effective program, pending further 

technology that will treat ballast water. 

Mrs. MILLER. Do you think it is having much of an impact? 

Mr. COLLISTER JOHNSON. Yes, I do. 

Mrs. MILLER. I mean on slowing down the commerce? 

Mr. COLLISTER JOHNSON. Yes, I do. I mean, in a perfect world, 

Congresswoman, this would have been done many years ago. But 

we can’t do anything about the past. We have to do something 

about the future. The recent science has shown, although it is too 

early to tell, but since 2006 there has been a noticeable drop in the 

rate of introduction of invasive species. I am just very hopeful that 

that is going to continue and we can prove that down the road. 

Mrs. MILLER. Well, hats off to everybody that is involved in that 

program. We have to get our Coast Guard reauthorization in the 

ballast water programs through legislation through the Congress, 

certainly. But in the interim, to hear those kinds of numbers and 

what is happening is just fantastic, fantastic news. So hats off. 

Mr. COLLISTER JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mrs. MILLER. I have got about a minute left, so I have a quick 

question for Mr. Shapiro. I was writing down some notes as you 

were speaking as well about sustainable infrastructure investment 

in the Great Lakes. You have $2.4 billion in the State Revolving 

Fund and 1,000 Clean Water projects. You know, in southeast 

Michigan the unfortunate, dubious distinction that we have in the 

city of Detroit—the sewage treatment and water—but the sewage 

treatment plant for the city of Detroit is probably the worst offender in the Great Lakes basin because of the huge network. It 

services several million people. 

We would like to do a better job but for all kinds of reasons, not 

the least of which is GM declaring bankruptcy this week, have not 

been able to. You cannot believe how bad it is getting in Michigan. 

I do think that our unemployment rate is going to be in Depression 

23 

era numbers probably by September for the State. It is unbelievable what is happening there. Yet we want to clean up the Great 

Lakes. Can you talk a little bit about perhaps how some of the 

funding that you are looking at could be targeted towards the worst 

offender in the Great Lakes basin that wants to be an active participant in cleaning up our Great Lakes? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, the funding that was proposed for the Great 

Lakes Restoration Initiative is specifically for non-infrastructure 

activities. So given the problem you described and the needs for 

Detroit, that money would not be directly available for projects that 

involved hard infrastructure or improvements to the treatment 

plant and the sewer systems directly. Clearly, the increase in funding for the Clean Water Act Revolving Fund as well as the Recovery Act funding, which also included a $4 billion pot of money for 

supporting clean water infrastructure, are possible sources of funding. 

But that said, I recognize that as that pot of money gets allocated across States using the formulas that we use, which are in 

our statute, the amount of money available to any one State is 

often not large compared to the kinds of needs that a large metropolitan area would have, which might be in the millions if not billions of dollars. So we recognize that it is at best a partial answer 

in many cases. 

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Ms. Edwards. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you all 

for your testimony. I just have a couple of questions for Mr. Shapiro. Obviously, from the State of Maryland, greatly in regard to 

what we are doing around the Chesapeake Bay but also looking at 

green infrastructure in our State and around the Country, I was 

curious to see that in the President’s budget his request includes 

legislative language extending a 20 percent reserve for green infrastructure projects or projects that propose water or energy efficient 

improvements to wastewater treatment projects. This is something 

I very strongly support and that Members of this Subcommittee 

have also. 

But I have gotten information from Maryland that the total 

amount requested from the Recovery Act green reserve was approximately $150 million. Yet the State is only required to set 

aside $24.3 million of the Recovery Act allocation. It is my understanding also that there are other States that are experiencing exactly this same situation with more requests from green reserve 

than the dedicated funding. 

So I wonder in your review of the implementation of the Recovery Act whether this is your understanding. Also, since there seems 

to be such demand for green infrastructure might we want to consider more than simply a 20 percent reserve in the budget to accommodate the need for things that obviously would be energy efficient in the long run? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Thank you, Congresswoman. I think this is a very 

good question. I think, frankly, the reason for the 20 percent set 

aside in the Recovery Act, which we carried forward into the 2010 

budget, was to provide a hard floor and not a ceiling. There was 

24 

some fear on the part of folks that because of the historic patterns 

of funding, and because of the relative newness of green infrastructure and some of the innovative energy efficient technologies, that 

there might be a reluctance—especially given in the case of the Recovery Act the need to get money to work quickly—there might be 

a reluctance on the part of States to go down that path, they might 

in fact kind of under fund green infrastructure. So the 20 percent 

is in there as a floor, as I said. It is a good thing, to me anyway, 

that States are getting more requests above the 20 percent level. 

I think the question of whether to raise the floor is a tough one 

because there are many very important needs that States have in 

terms of funding infrastructure. We want them to take a hard look 

at where they will get the greatest results in terms of water quality, sustainability, and long term energy and water efficiency. It becomes a hard thing to kind of dictate precise percentages to States. 

So for the purpose of this budget, and again we will see how 

things work out as projects get funded and completed, but we are 

comfortable with the 20 percent floor. But I think as you go higher, 

you may be beginning to impact some other non-green infrastructure projects that are also critically important to achieving water 

quality goals. 

So that is a balance that States, I think, are in a position to 

make. But in general it is good news that they are embracing the 

idea of green infrastructure. 

Ms. EDWARDS. It is. I would just urge you that although it is a 

floor, the States seem to be treating it almost as a ceiling. So we 

might want to consider ways that we actually could encourage 

more of that investment without imposing it on some other States. 

Just in my time remaining, we have had the TVA before of us 

a number of times, and I am curious about your purchase of energy 

and renewable energies. I wonder if you have thought about or considered—and this is completely speculative—a fee and tariff program so that you could, for example, encourage the development of 

solar. In a very decentralized way, if homeowners or communities 

implemented solar and they had extra, could you buy it from them 

and put it out on a grid? Can you just give me some thoughts about 

that? 

Mr. THOMAS. I can. Thank you very much for the question. We 

have a couple of things going on. One is that we do currently have 

a program where we offer consumers the opportunity to essentially 

pay extra to fund green power types of initiatives. That is a program that is in place. We also have committed $192 million in our 

current budget submission to promote other energy efficiency programs similar to that in design such that they would encourage 

people to conserve energy as well as promote other, more efficient 

energy uses. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you. My time is expired. I would only conclude by saying one could look at these kinds of programs, if we 

were really creative about it, as reducing our need to further develop nuclear capabilities. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes 

Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I am sorry I had 

to speak on the Floor and didn’t get to hear everyone’s statements. 

25 

But I do have a couple of questions or comments for Mr. Thomas 

with TVA. 

Mr. Thomas, when I got here in the very late 1980s, at that time 

TVA was spending 34 cents of every dollar servicing its debt. I 

thought it was shameful that the leadership of TVA in the late 

1970s and 1980s had gotten TVA into such heavy debt. I did write 

the Federal Financing Bank and we worked out an agreement to 

restructure some of that debt at a lower rate. 

But I am wondering about the debt that you have now. While 

you have brought it down some, it is still a tremendous debt. What 

percentage of TVA’s expenses is going to service its debt now? Do 

you have most of that debt into long term debt that won’t be affected that much if the interest rates shoot way up like some people are predicting? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, sir. Thank you very much for the question. 

TVA’s current debt is $24.9 billion. To service that, we spend approximately $1.4 billion in interest each year. That is about 10 percent of our total operating budget. So we are, in conjunction with 

the Board, adopting a strategic plan. In 2007, we committed to paying down the debt that was associated with the existing assets we 

have over the life of those assets. So we are including that in our 

budget plans. As well, most of our debt is termed out in long term 

bonds and are not subject to the volatility of interest rates. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right, good. Now, the main thing I want to mention is this coal ash spill. It didn’t occur in my district but it was 

close. So I went down and had a briefing and a helicopter tour and 

everything several months ago. This spill that you had, it was five 

and a half months ago now, what I saw at that time was a war 

room of people. There must have been even at that time hundreds 

of people from every conceivable Federal, State, and local agency. 

There were people from all over the Country working to clean up 

that spill. It seemed to me that everything humanly possible was 

being done. 

The reports have almost all been very, very good, although it is 

very expensive. I have seen articles about $1 million a day or something like that. But I see in this briefing we have got, in the most 

recent submission dated May 1, it acknowledges that the total estimated cleanup costs for the Kingston site range between $675 million and approximately $975 million. But here is really what concerns me: This estimate does not include the potential costs for additional regulatory actions, litigation, fines, or penalties that may 

be assessed against or settled by TVA. 

I have noticed that we have had law firms and people coming in 

from New York, California, and all over the Country. We have a 

lot of people apparently with dollar signs in their eyes who want 

to make money off of this. As I have said, you have already had 

all these people from all these agencies plus private contractors 

working on this. And now EPA is overseeing this cleanup. 

What I am hopeful is that the EPA and TVA will keep in mind 

that already we are told, because of the Energy Bill going through 

the Congress, that people’s utility bills are going to go way up. 

Now, if we get into just tremendous costs in regulatory fines, litigation, assessments, and settlements, it is going to hurt a lot of poor 

and lower income people in my area. Because while everyone wants 

26 

to see the people whose property was affected made whole and 

cleaned up as much as possible, 99.999 percent of the people I represent or maybe 100 percent of the people I represent weren’t affected by this spill. I don’t want to see their utility bills go way up 

because of the Energy Bill that is going through the Congress now 

and TVA’s expenditures. 

So I hope that you will do everything you can and encourage the 

other leadership of TVA to not just come in and make ridiculous 

settlements because the money is not coming out of your pockets. 

I hope that the EPA will keep in mind that there are a lot of people 

who are already having trouble paying these utility bills. I hope 

that we won’t just let these costs just explode even more. It is already at a ridiculous level, in my opinion. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Hare, you are recognized. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I just have a couple 

questions for Mr. Breen. What is the current number of Federal facilities that are listed on the Superfund’s National Priorities List? 

Mr. BREEN. I don’t have the number directly in front of me. It 

is quite a few. It is probably, I am guessing, 100 to 150. It is in 

that ballpark. 

Mr. HARE. Of that number, EPA has established the goal by the 

end of this fiscal year that all of the sites will have interagency 

agreements with the EPA for the orderly cleanup of the facilities. 

What percentage of the current Federal facilities do not have interagency agreements? 

Mr. BREEN. I don’t know the percentage. I believe we are down 

to about 10 that don’t have signed interagency agreements. But we 

can get you that number precisely. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you. I would appreciate that. Mr. Breen, in the 

past the EPA has identified the so-called Superfund pipeline which 

identified the number of proposed and listed toxic sites and where 

these sites were in the investigation, study, or construction process. 

My last question is can you provide the Subcommittee with a current pipeline for both Federal facilities and non-Federal facilities? 

Mr. BREEN. You want the number of sites at their stages in the 

pipeline? 

Mr. HARE. Yes. 

Mr. BREEN. Yes, we can. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you. I would appreciate that. 

I just have one other brief comment before I leave. Mr. White, 

I am only in my second term but I have to tell you that your enthusiasm when you testified for your Agency, you know, they are awful 

lucky to have you. We have a great panel here, but I just wanted 

to let you know that I could tell you have a genuine love of what 

you do. I appreciate that. I don’t know if you had anything else you 

wanted to add because you only had five minutes, but I have three 

minutes and 14 seconds. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. WHITE. God bless you, sir. I was kind of feeling like the guy 

that never gets picked for the team. 

Mr. HARE. That happened to me a lot in grade school, let me tell 

you. 

27 

Mr. WHITE. Actually, I misspoke earlier. Two of those floodplain 

easements were in your district. There were two Democrats and 

two Republicans on this Subcommittee with about equal amounts 

of money on those floodplain easements. 

I want to thank you. I am a career person. I spent 30 years with 

this Agency and I am going to flat slap guarantee that everything 

we can do that is honest and ethical and transparent and fair to 

conserve this Nation’s resources, we are going to do. And you can 

flat slap take that to the bank. 

Mr. HARE. Well, I represent a district that has 237 miles of the 

Mississippi River and seven locks. We have had some tremendous 

flooding there and a lot of devastation. I was just in a community 

called Gulfport that had a population of 250. It currently has 10. 

They are trying to certify the levee; they don’t know what they are 

going to do. There are just a number of things that when you see— 

and you mentioned, I think you talked about agriculture in your remarks—you see that when some people say these are just agricultural levees, well, behind that levee is a farmer who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment and land and all those 

kinds of things. 

So they can’t plant for a year or perhaps two. I have talked to 

some of these farmers and they are wonderful people, but you just 

see the devastation that they have gone through. It breaks your 

heart. I toured that town the other day and there isn’t anything 

left of it because of the breaches. 

So I appreciate everything. I looked at your pictures and I have 

to tell you, it is nice to see that work is being done and that people 

can actually be saved. I appreciate what you folks do. 

Mr. WHITE. Thank you, sir. We are more the mom and pop operation. The Corps are the big guys on this block. 

Mr. HARE. Right. Well, thank you, Chief. I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Cao? 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

My first question is addressed to Mr. White. I represent the second Congressional district of Louisiana which was devastated by 

Katrina, so one of my main issues is coastal restoration. My question to you has two parts. The first part is, how are you working 

with the Army Corps of Engineers in order to address the issue of 

coastal restoration? The second part is, how can the money that 

you all receive through the stimulus package be used to restore the 

coast, especially along the Gulf Coast areas? 

Mr. WHITE. Thank you, sir. I should mention that I was in New 

Orleans a couple of months ago and they took me around to the 

9th Ward and various places. It is really shocking the way things 

are yet today. 

My Agency, through the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, worked hand in glove with FEMA and mostly with the Corps 

for debris removal. You all appropriated millions and millions of 

dollars for us. Most of that work is now done. 

We don’t have any stimulus money specifically for coastal restoration but we are talking to some of the parishes down there. Is 

there a parish outside there called Burgemanns? 

Mr. CAO. Plaquemines. 

28 

Mr. WHITE. Plaquemines. They have a proposal to actually look 

at taking some of the easement funds we have and some of the 

Restoration funds and instead of making a hard, fast seawall to actually try to put back the softer, gentler nature’s way with long leaf 

pines and native grasses that would absorb the impact of the flow. 

I was really intrigued by their proposal. I hopefully will get to visit 

with them more on that, sir. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you very much. 

My second question is directed to Mr. Breen. It deals with Superfund, Brownfields, and land revitalization programs. New Orleans 

pretty much has a lot of contaminated areas. One of the main locations that I am concerned with is called Gurtown. There, in the 

predominantly African American community, the children are playing on top of a playground that is located in land that is contaminated. How do you prioritize with respect to providing grant money 

to clean up these locations? 

Mr. BREEN. Thank you. So there is a Superfund program and a 

Brownfields program. They each have separate processes. The 

Superfund program uses the National Priorities List primarily for 

funding long term remedial action, that is the kind of action that 

would take a substantial length of time to manage. 

On the Brownfields side, that is the more lightly contaminated 

sites. The grant process there is one with a national competition. 

Applicants submit typically once a year and we run a process. I expect we will be getting the next process out in the next few months. 

Then there is a panel that evaluates the applications by looking at 

a number of factors. But the kinds of factors you identified, particularly great need and an opportunity for revitalization, would be 

strong factors in that competition. 

Mr. CAO. Okay. Thank you very much. 

My last question is directed to Mr. Dunnigan. Louisiana probably 

produces close to a third of the Nation’s seafood. We have a problem with the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. I would 

like to know what plans you have in addressing the issue of the 

dead zone. 

Mr. DUNNIGAN. Yes, thank you very much. There has been an 

interagency effort underway for the last four years that is led by 

the EPA to deal with the hypoxia problem in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The NOAA role in addressing that is to help provide the science. 

So what we have been able to identify is that the nutrients that 

are coming down the Mississippi River that are ultimately causing 

that dead zone are really a function of water runoff associated with 

agriculture. So the question for all of us in the Federal Government 

is to figure out ways of dealing with the agriculture industry in a 

way that can be responsible so that they can do good practices that 

will alleviate the problem. 

On a continuing basis, we fund year to year monitoring of the 

size of the dead zone. Dr. Nancy Rabalais from Louisiana State 

University is the person that runs that program for us. I was talking to her last week and they are getting ready to go to sea again 

later this month to begin their annual studies. So our role on that 

is to help with the science and to collaborate with EPA, the Corps, 

the Agriculture Department, and other Federal agencies as well as 

the States. 

29 

Mr. CAO. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Hirono? 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am very supportive of 

this historic increase in funding for EPA, particularly the Clean 

Water SRF and the Drinking Water SRF because those of course 

will be very much useful to the State of Hawaii. 

However, I do have one concern. That is the non-funding for the 

Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program. Mr. White, 

you testified that most of this money has been earmarked, some 

$24 million, which leads me to think that perhaps we should actually add funding so that your Agency can also prioritize projects. 

That is kind of a rhetorical comment. 

Before I get to my question for you, Mr. White, though, I wanted 

to set the stage. Agriculture in Hawaii in the most recent past really consisted of huge plantations growing sugar cane and pineapple. 

We are down now to basically one sugar plantation. You can imagine when these plantations closed the huge economic displacement 

that occurred in dozens of communities. Thousands of acres became 

available for other uses and clearly we are not going to put development on or pave over all of these acres. So what Hawaii is moving toward is diversified agriculture. 

In order to do that, they need water. The sugar plantations relied 

on pretty extensive irrigation systems in order to run their plantations. These systems are the major sources of water for diversified 

agriculture in Hawaii. I also note that Hawaii is one of those 

States where we have to pretty much ship in some 80 percent of 

our food. We can’t truck in our food; we can’t rail in our food. So 

we are very dependent and therefore very interested in becoming 

much more food self sufficient. 

So we do access this program that you have zeroed out for maintaining our irrigation systems. I note in your testimony that you 

anticipate that unfinished projects will continue to receive local 

support. But that is just it. There is not enough local money. It 

takes millions of dollars to maintain these vast water systems. So 

if you have some other program that we could access instead of the 

Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program, I would like 

to hear that. Otherwise, I would hope that we could reconsider zeroing out this program. 

Mr. WHITE. If I would have known what company made Rolaids, 

I would have bought stock in them last week because this is the 

one question that I have been fearing until the Ranking Member 

gave me the perfect answer. Sometimes priorities collide. You certainly do have that option to reconsider. 

I am well aware that Hawaii does make use of earmarking these 

programs. It primarily is for irrigation systems to ensure that your 

farmers have an adequate water supply. You have some interesting 

land ownership patterns there and a lot of people will not actually 

qualify for some of the hard core agriculture programs because of 

their income restrictions. Also, we are very concerned about the 

coral reefs off the coast. Coral reefs are one tenth of 1 percent of 

the ocean but they provide habitat and life for 25 percent of the 

life in the ocean. So it is absolutely critical. 

30 

You have a vote and you have a Chairwoman or Ranking Member. You can reconsider anything, ma’am. 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you. I am glad that you apparently have an 

awareness of some of the really unique situations and circumstances in Hawaii. One of the reasons that we are able to use 

this particular program for what we need is because it has flexibility. There are a lot of other Federal programs that do not meet 

the particular unique needs of Hawaii. But this is one that does 

and that is why I would appeal to not just you but also our Chair 

for continuing support of this program. Mahalo. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Boozman. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

We appreciate you all being here. I appreciate you being such 

that we really, I think, have learned a lot today. 

Let me ask you, Mr. Shapiro, just a couple of things and then 

I have a question for Mr. Dunnigan. Let me go ahead and ask that, 

Mr. Dunnigan, so you can think about it. We understand that in 

recent years NOAA has received appropriations to fund shipboard 

testing of ballast water treatment systems. Can you tell us the status of the testing and what the results you have gotten are as far 

as efficacy of the shipboard tested ballast water treatment systems? 

Is NOAA required to submit a written report to Congress within 

90 days of the completion of the testing? Have any reports been 

submitted to Congress? If not, perhaps you can send us some of the 

preliminary stuff that you have found. 

Mr. Shapiro, we have all watched the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler and things. We see the entwinement of markets 

overseas as a result of making things back and forth as far as parts 

and things like that. How have the Buy American provisions in the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act impacted EPA’s ability 

to implement the Act? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Well, among the issues that we have had to deal 

with in terms of implementing the Recovery Act, I think we have 

probably spent more time and more debate on how to interpret and 

implement the Buy American provisions. It took a while for OMB 

to get its guidance out. They did in April and then we issued EPA 

specific guidance based on the OMB guidance. But because those 

types of provisions had not been applicable before to infrastructure 

and because the Recovery Act implemented a Buy American approach, it was different from some of the earlier Buy American legislative provisions that had been in place. It really charted some 

new ground for us. 

We are at the point now where we have guidance out. We are 

continuing to get a large number of questions from municipalities 

as they go to bid or consider bids and encounter problems in certain product areas. And we are getting some concerns expressed by 

other countries, especially companies in Canada and in Mexico, 

who kind of view the market in North America as being a single 

market. So it has caused a lot of challenges. In the end, I think 

we will be able to get the projects done and awarded. But it has 

been a challenge for us. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. I think that is something we really need to watch. 

I know you have got a limited waiver provision or whatever. But 

31 

that is something I think that you need to watch and let us help 

if we need to in the future. 

Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, not less 

than 20 percent of the funds that were appropriated for the Clean 

Water State Revolving Fund are to be used to address green infrastructure and water or energy efficiency improvements. Does EPA 

have a system set up to make sure that the proposals that you are 

receiving are effective? This technology is new. Some of it is real 

old and has been perhaps ineffective or hasn’t been used in a while. 

This new stuff we don’t really know. Do you have a rating system 

that you are using? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. We don’t have a rating system per se. Each of our 

regional offices will be reviewing the list of projects identified by 

States for the green infrastructure component more to make sure 

that they really are legitimate green infrastructure projects. 

We think that the technologies in fact are out there. They are 

proven. Like with other technologies that municipalities have to 

choose from in dealing with wastewater issues, some prudence is 

advisable in terms of making sure the approaches that are being 

developed reflect sound engineering principles. We have a lot of 

guidance out there, as do other organizations, in terms of how to 

build things like green gardens and green roofs and other types of 

green infrastructure. So there is a wealth of very valid technical information available to municipalities and their consultants that 

will allow them to choose appropriately. 

But we are taking a closer look at the green projects than we do 

typically in reviewing State use plans because we want to make 

sure that these really are valid projects that meet the intent of 

Congress’s requirements. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Dunnigan, can you comment very quickly on the ballast 

issue. 

Mr. DUNNIGAN. Yes, sir. I am going to have to get you a more 

complete answer to your question about the exact status of that 

project and any reporting requirements that we have for Congress. 

We are certainly willing and would love to have the opportunity to 

work with the Committee staff. 

Our focus has been on the science of what happens when 

invasive species get loose in ecosystems and how they can be controlled. We also worked to help develop the type of approval certificate for a ballast water management system through the Intergovernmental Maritime Organization. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Good. That would be real helpful. I know the 

staffs on both sides would like that information. Thank you, 

Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Titus? 

Ms. TITUS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I represent Nevada and 

much of the State is considered a national sacrifice zone. I am referring to the Nevada test site. So anything we can do to clean up 

other parts of the State is very helpful. 

That is why I am glad to see you, Mr. Breen, say that 

Brownfields cleanup and redevelopment continues to be one of your 

top environmental priorities. The budget request, though, of $175 

32 

million doesn’t seem like very much for a national effort to clean 

up Brownfields. I wonder if that really is enough. You might elaborate on how you are able to leverage those dollars. 

Also, I agree with you that one of the best ways to clean up the 

contaminated sites and address the blighted properties is to consider what the future uses of the land will be. I am especially interested in the whole concept of Brownfields to Brightfields that 

would link solar energy projects to former Brownfields. Would you 

comment on that and tell us what EPA plans to do? How much of 

a priority will that be and how much money might be going to that 

sort of thing? 

Mr. BREEN. Yes, thank you very much. First on the Brownfields 

appropriation request, as you observed the 2010 appropriation request is approximately $175 million. That is a little more than the 

2009 enacted, I think about $5 million more. But it does come on 

top of the Recovery Act appropriation to Brownfields, which is an 

extra $100 million. So the 2009 to 2010 amount is really about 

$450 million when looking at the two years; $170 to $175 million 

plus $100 million is the ballpark. 

Of course, Brownfields is not the only game in town. Federal 

funding is not the only source of funding. So thankfully many 

States have sibling programs that we work with. In fact, an important part of that $175 million from the EPA is to directly fund 

State programs that then leverage private dollars and local dollars. 

So there is a lot of interest in exactly the kind of work that you 

observed. 

Finally, the other Federal cleanup programs are doing similar 

tracks with other kinds of sites. So the Superfund program itself 

has hundreds of millions of dollars for the most contaminated sites 

and the RCRA Corrective Action Program cleans up typically ongoing facilities for chemical plants. So there is a lot of work on the 

land cleanup program. 

On Brownfields to Brightfields, we are working on this. We are 

looking to collaborate with the Department of Energy’s National 

Renewable Energy Lab, NREL, where we hope we can map all the 

contaminated facilities across the Country—at least those that 

have Federal involvement in them—and match that up with the renewable energy opportunities including solar, which you mentioned, but perhaps others as well. That way, these facilities could 

be turned from something where it is a community concern to a 

source of community pride. 

Ms. TITUS. I think that would be great, solar especially in southern Nevada, as it provides a real opportunity. I know a number of 

years ago in the legislatures of Nevada I sponsored the State 

Brownfields bill. At that time, nobody knew much about it. It 

wasn’t a very appealing name. It wasn’t very sexy like other legislation. But I think it makes a big difference so I am very supportive of what you are doing there. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Mr. Perriello? 

Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you very much. 

I have a question, Mr. Shapiro. My understanding is EPA is currently reviewing about 150 to 200 mountaintop removal permits. Of 

the ones reviewed so far, roughly 90 percent have been permitted. 

33 

Do you expect that percentage to remain in place with the remaining permits? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. It is tough to predict. As you have indicated, we 

have started a review focusing on those that were furthest along 

in the process. As you indicated, a relatively small percentage have 

been identified for further review by the Agency and discussion 

with the Army Corps of Engineers and the permitees. As we go forward, it really depends on the mix of proposals that are present. 

The kinds of considerations that weigh in our judgement when 

we decide to raise issues have to do with the scope and scale of the 

impact of the proposed mine, the sensitivity of the resources that 

might be impacted, and at least our initial assessment of the degree to which damages have been avoided to the maximum extent 

practicable. 

So I think that although the evidence we have in the first 200 

is sort of the best we have to project into the future, we can’t guarantee. We are not shooting for a specific percentage. We are really 

shooting to identify those that are seriously problematic and to try 

to address them. 

Mr. PERRIELLO. When you say that you are looking at the ones 

furthest along, do you mean that have done the most to look at potential impacts on the ecosystem and environment or simply furthest along in terms of investment and development? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Furthest along is in the Corps permitting process. 

I thank you for that question to allow me to clarify. What had happened is that because of some uncertainty involving lawsuits that 

were in play, there had been kind of a hold up in the backlog of 

permits that developed over time. 

So in fairness to the permitees, we sort of focused early attention 

on those that were furthest along in terms of temporal readiness 

for permitting in the view of the Corps’ process. Again, as we continue to work our way through that backlog, we will try to do that 

in a way that kind of respects the amount of time it has taken already to get the permit up to where it is. 

Mr. PERRIELLO. Is there an issue at all with a lack of funding 

for oversight that creates a hindrance to your ability to review and 

suggest alternatives to some of these mountaintop removal situations around Appalachia in particular? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. At this point I think we have, in my view, resources to do the job in front of us. Like anyone else, I think if we 

had more staff who were experienced in this area, it is possible 

that we could move faster. But I think we are able to juggle the 

resources that we have, again by focusing on those that are of the 

highest priority, getting the maximum results in terms of our investment of staff. 

Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. Now I will finish 

the first round of questioning with a couple of questions. 

Mr. Thomas, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced that it 

would complete its root cause analysis on the Kingston coal ash 

storage failure in June of 2009. But your oral testimony indicated 

it would be later this summer. When do you think there might be 

a specific date that this report will be completed? 

34 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you for that question. I am sorry, we do believe that it will be sometime towards the end of June but at this 

point we just don’t know the specific date. When I stated later this 

summer, it was intended that it would be June. But there is a likelihood that it could go further. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. And you are planning to submit a report 

to this Committee? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Okay. Your estimate for the cleanup is 

between $675 to $975 million. Does this include the expected long 

term cleaning cost? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, ma’am. That does include some allowance for 

what the long term remediation costs are. As we get further in to 

the reclamation activities, we will have a better understanding of 

what the long term estimates will be. But it does include some 

funding for that. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. So this might not be the total? Do you 

think it will fall somewhere between $675 and $800 or would it be 

$975? Or would it be beyond that? 

Mr. THOMAS. We do not know that the final estimate will be. As 

we move through the work and uncover more activities, it could be 

more, or it could be that we can find more cost effective ways as 

well. But this is our current estimate. I do believe that it would be 

subject to change over time as we have more information. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you. 

Mr. Shapiro, again, the Administration should be commended for 

its request for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. You mentioned in your testimony that the increase in investment will preserve and create jobs. Do you have any estimate on the number of 

jobs that will be increased and the funding that it will affect? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. EPA hasn’t separately estimated the number of 

jobs. I believe it is the Council of Economic Advisors that has come 

up with some general guidelines in terms of projecting jobs. They 

would say that roughly for every $92,000 of investment a job would 

be created directly or indirectly in the economy. 

But EPA has not done a separate analysis of that. We are asking, as projects go into construction and funding, we will be gathering some additional information on how many people are actually 

employed at those jobs. But at this point we don’t have a separate 

estimate. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Dr. Ehlers for a second round. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you very much. I have just a few brief questions. Mr. Shapiro, how will the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative 

be administered? In particular, I am wondering what role the 

EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office will play. Will they be 

tasked as a lead agency? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. Overall, EPA is given the lead for the Initiative but operationally it will be managed through the Great Lakes 

Program Office with a lot of interaction from the Office of Water 

as well as the Administrator’s Office, given the importance of this 

Initiative to her and to the Agency. 

35 

Mr. EHLERS. How will you ensure accountability of the other 

agencies that are involved? Do you have that structure developed 

yet? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. We are beginning to. It has been a fairly intense 

process of moving through the budget process. But in effect, each 

agency—in developing the plan that we have for using the money 

in fiscal year 2010—each agency has come up with a specific set 

of projects that it has identified that fit into the overarching Great 

Lakes collaboration strategy. They have been agreed to by a consensus process across the agencies as being an important early investment. 

In the context of proposing each of those projects, the agencies 

have had to identify measures of progress and results that they 

will track and report back to us on. Again, we are still putting that 

entire process in place. But we are very much focusing on accountability for the use of the money, transparency to the public in 

terms of how that money is used, and identification of clear results 

and criteria with respect to each of the projects that are being proposed for funding. 

Mr. EHLERS. Will the output from the collaborative agreement 

play a role in these decisions? 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Yes. In fact, the architecture for what we are doing 

really derives from the 2005 strategic plan report that the collaborative came up with. The ways in which we have organized the 

projects and set priorities really reflect the perspective of that report as well as the specific priority areas and actions that were 

identified in that report. 

Mr. EHLERS. Well, I have to say I am very excited about this opportunity. I think it is really important. You have heard all of the 

discussion about how important the Great Lakes are. It is crucial 

to the future of this Nation, particularly as water becomes more 

and more important to the future of our Nation. 

So I wish you well and I hope it all works out. I am just delighted with what I have heard. Thank you very much. 

Mr. SHAPIRO. Thank you. We are excited, too. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. That concludes 

our questions. Let me thank all of the witnesses for being here. I 

hope that the requests that were made for you to follow up will be 

given attention. 

Thank you. The Committee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

36 

HEARING ON AGENCY BUDGETS AND 

PRIORITIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010, PART 2 

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND

ENVIRONMENT, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:44 p.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson 

[Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Ms. JOHNSON. The meeting will come to order. Good afternoon. 

Today’s hearing marks the second hearing on the President’s fiscal 

year 2010 budget request and the priorities of agencies under the 

jurisdiction of the Subcommittee. 

At today’s hearing, the Subcommittee will receive testimony from 

the Army Corps of Engineers, the International Boundary and 

Water Commission, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

As I noted at the Subcommittee’s last hearing, for the most part, 

the President’s fiscal year 2010 demonstrates that change has finally come to Washington, and, for the most part, most agencies 

within the jurisdiction of this Subcommittee is a welcome change. 

For example, in the fiscal year 2010 budget request, President 

Obama has requested the highest funding level ever for the Environmental Protection Agency and the single highest request for 

EPA’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund since it was enacted in 

1987. While only 1 year ago, I was concluding that the last administration’s budget was not adequate to meet the Nation’s needs, 

this budget message is much more optimistic. 

However, as I also noted at the last meeting, there are portions 

of this budget that I do not agree with and believe could undergo 

some improvement. That is my overall impression of the fiscal year 

2010 budget request for the Army Corps of Engineers, which, although the highest request for the civil works program on record, 

is still close to 6 percent below their appropriated levels for the 

agency in fiscal year 2009. My greatest disappointment in the 

Corps’ budget request is for the investigation and construction accounts which are respectfully 40 percent and almost 20 percent 

below last year’s appropriated levels for these accounts. For the investigations account, this disappointment stems from a concern 

that at the requested amount, the Corps of Engineers would be unable to plan and design the next generation of projects within its 

core missions of environmental restoration, flood damage reduction 

and navigation. In fact, the President’s budget requests funding for 

only three new project specific studies and two new programmatic 

studies. 

In addition, if enacted at the levels proposed, the fiscal year 2010 

investigations budget could have a negative effect on staffing levels 

37 

at the Corps’ district offices, because the salaries of the Corps’ employees are paid from the project funds and in part from funds for 

project studies. 

In addition, the need for new projects is increasing and it is critical to maintain and enhance the capability of the Corps’ planning 

mission both for the civil works program and for its military competency. 

For the construction account, I am disappointed that the budget only requests $1.7 billion for the construction of environmental restoration, flood control, shore protection and river and harbor 

projects. As was evident during the debate of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Corps had identified approximately $12 billion in so-called ready-to-go projects where work 

could be undertaken almost immediately upon enactment. Clearly 

this unmet need was not addressed by $4.6 billion that was actually appropriated for the Corps in the Recovery Act. However despite this fact, these so-called ready-to-go projects do not reappear 

in the budget request for fiscal year 2010. 

I am equally disappointed that the budget only requests funding 

for five new starts that were authorized in the Water Resources 

Development Act in 2007. That monumental piece of legislation authorized a myriad of projects across the varied missions of the 

Corps which are vitally important to local community needs. However for the most part, these authorized projects were passed over 

for funding in the budget request. 

The one point of praise for the Corps of Engineers’ budget request is the close to 14 percent increase in funding for operation 

and maintenance of Corps’ projects and facilities. Operation and 

maintenance funds are necessary for the preservation, operation, 

maintenance and care of existing river and harbor, flood damage 

reduction, environmental restoration and related projects. The administration’s request for this account recognizes the importance of 

operations and maintenance needs and restores a commitment to 

reliable and efficient operations of our Nation’s vast water infrastructure. 

I am pleased we are joined this afternoon by witnesses of the 

International Boundary and Water Commission and the Agency for 

Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Both agencies have received slight increases over their fiscal year 2009 appropriated levels. 

However, the issues that I am most interested in deal more with 

policy than with funding. For the IBWC, I am concerned about 

your decision to move ahead with the construction of wastewater 

treatment facilities to address sewage flows emanating from Tijuana, Mexico at the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. As you should know, our Committee colleague, Mr. Filner, has been an ardent advocate for addressing Mexican sewage 

in Mexico, as was enacted through the actions of this committee 

and the Tijuana River Valley Estuary and Beach Sewage Cleanup 

Act of 2000, as amended. 

What I failed to gather from your testimony is why the IBWC 

has seemingly ignored the implementation of this law and has chosen to return to a plan that has been repeatedly rejected by this 

committee over the years. 

38 

For the ATSDR, my attention focuses not on what is in your 

budget request, but on the importance of what you describe as 

meeting new challenges in the future related to toxic exposure. I 

am encouraged by your Agency’s participation in a national conversation on public health and chemical exposures which seems to 

center on rethinking how average individuals may come into contact with toxic chemicals and exploring ways to minimize these 

contacts. 

As a former nurse, I understand the potential impacts that toxic 

substances can have on human health. Over the past few years, the 

Subcommittee has held several hearings on emerging exposure 

pathways to chemicals of concern, including the presence of emergent contaminants in drinking water and surface water. We have 

seen an ever-growing body of evidence that these chemicals are 

harming the natural ecosystems and may be posing a similar 

threat to human health over the long term. This Subcommittee will 

continue to track your efforts as well as the efforts of the National 

Center of Environmental Health, and I look forward to your recommendations from the conversation. 

I also applaud your efforts with respect to the recent coal ash release in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Power Plant. 

This Subcommittee has been closely following this issue, and I have 

traveled to Kingston to see this spill firsthand. I would appreciate 

your keeping the Subcommittee informed of your efforts. 

And, again, I welcome each of the witnesses here this afternoon, 

and I yield to the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Mr. 

Boozman, for any comments he might have. Thank you. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair, for calling this hearing, 

which is a continuation of the hearing that we held 2 weeks ago 

to examine the administration’s budget proposals and priorities for 

the coming fiscal year. Today we will hear from three additional 

agencies whose work falls within the jurisdiction of our Subcommittee, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. section of the 

International Boundary and Water Commission, and the Agency 

for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. 

The military realm of the Army Corps of Engineers is literally 

older than the Nation itself. Its civil works mission is almost as 

old. It began with the mission of supporting navigation to expand 

the commerce of a young Nation. Later, Congress added the mission of reducing flood damages, to address the economic and social 

suffering caused by such events and, most recently, Congress gave 

the Corps the mission of restoring the quality of our aquatic ecosystems. 

For nearly two centuries, the civil works mission of the Corps 

have contributed to the economic vitality of the Nation and improved our quality of life. At the same time, the civil works side 

of the Corps represents an experienced, engineering workforce that 

can be quickly mobilized to address a national defense threat or a 

natural disaster. 

The fiscal year 2010 budget request by the administration for the 

Corps of Engineers is a little more than 5 billion. This request is 

318 less than what Congress enacted in fiscal year 2009. Given the 

fact that the navigation projects and the flood damage reduction 

projects provide economic benefits to the Nation, I would like to see 

39 

the administration place a higher interest in the Corps’ work. All 

of the Corps’ projects put people to work, which is another reason 

to put these investments high on the priority list. 

I am concerned that the Corps has not been able to produce a 

final Chief’s report for a new Water Resources Development Project 

in a number of years. While I know that this is somewhat the result of Congress not funding a robust study program in the investigations account, I believe the Corps needs to look at how it can 

streamline its study process so that good projects can come before 

the Committee more quickly for authorization and consideration. 

The International Boundary Water Commission is charged with 

identifying and solving boundary and water problems arising along 

the nearly 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico. We 

share a lot of water and water infrastructure with our neighbor to 

the south, so it is important that these resources are well managed, 

well developed, and well maintained. 

Like so many other places in the country, the Commission has 

a number of levees and dams in its inventories that are in need of 

repair or rehabilitation. It is important that this agency have the 

resources and the priority to make these facilities safe and efficient. 

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is a 

branch of the Centers for Disease Control, is the Nation’s public 

health agency for chemical exposure. It has the task of preventing, 

determining, and mitigating health effects at sites with toxic exposures. This is very important work. It includes a recently begun 

study of the potential health effects of the coal ash spill in Tennessee last year. 

I thank all of you for being here and look forward to your testimony and yield back, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Mr. Cao. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I thank you for holding 

this important hearing today. 

The work of the Army Corps of Engineers is particularly important in my district, the Second District of Louisiana, which includes 

parts of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes in southeastern Louisiana 

which was devastated by Katrina back in August of 2005. Many 

homes, including mine, and much of our public facilities, police stations, firehouses, hospital, health clinics, and schools were destroyed by the floodwaters that rushed into the city when levees 

failed. 

Our communities, including the remarkable city of New Orleans, 

are still struggling to rebuild. But we are making progress, thanks 

to the sustained oversight by this Committee, including our Ranking Member, John Mica, and the Chairman, James Oberstar. I am 

proud to call these esteemed gentlemen colleagues and to share in 

their level of New Orleans and desire to see my district rebuilt. 

The Army Corps’ work is critical to ensuring the health and safety of my constituents, given the significant construction and ongoing operations by the Army Corps of Engineers in my district. I am 

interested in hearing from Lieutenant General Van Antwerp about 

the status of several key issues, including a follow-up to my letter 

of August 27, 2009 regarding the permanent pump project. SpecifiVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:47 Aug 17, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\50614.0 KAYLA
40 

cally, I would like to know what resources would be required for 

the Corps to construct the highest level of protection that is offered 

by Option 2(a), the legal status of the inner harbor navigational 

canal LAP project and the Corps’ plans for disposing dredged materials generated during construction, and, finally, how the Corps in 

Louisiana is spending the dredging dollars available from the fiscal 

year 2009 omnibus appropriations bill and the stimulus bill, especially given as reported in the Saturday’s Times Picayune newspaper, these dredged materials would make a significant impact on 

coastal reconstruction. 

You and I ultimately share the same goal: the recovery of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. I remain your partner in seeing this 

endeavor through and ensuring we do not repeat past mistakes. 

Thank you again, Madam Chair, for holding this very important 

hearing. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Congressman Brown. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Thank you, Madam Chairman 

and Ranking Member Boozman, for holding today’s hearing to review the Army Corps’ budget of 2010. While there are some improvements, this request continues to pattern under the White 

House Budget Writers Union Corps as a low priority. This resulted 

in a budget that significantly ignores the needs of the Corps, especially its navigational program. 

According to testimony just last month, there are about 900 harbors in the United States and around 700 of those are not dredged 

to the authorized depth. That means seven out of nine ports are 

not being kept up to standard. Yet we are sitting on a harbor maintenance trust fund that is expecting a balance of over $5 billion by 

the end of this fiscal year. 

Congress created the trust fund to support the maintenance of 

our harbors. Instead, the trust fund is used as a budget offset. This 

has especially hit harbors and waterways that support small communities such as the port of Georgetown in my district. Because 

funds are not appropriated, these harbors silt in, causing traffic to 

go to other ports. At the end of the day, unless a Member of Congress is fighting for that particular harbor, the only funding it receives is enough to tell us about how bad things are. If a Member 

fights for the project, they are attacked for earmarking. 

I have statements here from the South Carolina State Ports Authority and the harbor pilots from both the port of Georgetown and 

the port of Charleston that I would like to submit for the record, 

Madam Chair. These statements go into even more details about 

the impact of reducing funding on even major ports like Charleston, and the devastating impact of little funding for harbors like 

Georgetown. 

I note that the request includes a proposed new use navigational 

pilot program which is costing at least $700,000 to even bring it 

dredged to the harbor for work. I am interested in learning more 

about this proposal. While I am pleased that there is some attention being paid to the small harbors in the budget, I am concerned 

that this proposal will erode current Federal responsibilities for 

maintenance of these harbors. 

41 

Madam Chair, because of the economic importance of our port, 

we on this Subcommittee must begin to pay more attention to the 

Corps’ navigational program. Port-related jobs go far beyond just 

those doing the maintenance work. Port operations in South Carolina facilitates over 260,000 jobs and creates nearly $45 billion in 

economic activity each year. Stewardship of these navigational 

projects should be our top priority. 

I want to thank the representatives from the Corps for coming 

here to testify today and I look forward to their testimony. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much,. 

Mr. Diaz-Balart. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. I 

also want to thank all of you for being here today. I want to thank 

the Chairwoman for holding this hearing. And obviously it is always a privilege to see a Floridian here among us. Good to see you, 

my friend. 

I have some concern regarding funding for Everglades restoration. Now, first in the President’s fiscal year 2010 budget, he requested slashing the construction account by 423; actually, almost 

$424 million. And as we all know, in 2007 Congress finally enacted 

the long-awaited WRDA legislation which authorized the first three 

restoration projects, which are Picayune Strand, Indian River Lagoon and Site 1. Now I have been informed however, that—my understanding is that in a typical fiscal year that the Corps funds 

about 240 construction projects, but that in fiscal year 2010 budget 

only 86 projects. I don’t know if that is accurate. But including— 

just five new starts will be constructed is my understanding. 

Now, additionally, the investigations account was cut by $68 million. This account is vital. It is important for studying the potential 

projects, restudying authorized projects, and planning and specification for projects, obviously, just prior to construction. As you 

know, CERP involves 68 projects in total. So this funding is vital 

to ensure that other projects are able to move forward. 

Now, I understand that—I guess the Corps would like to see 

$214 million in fiscal year 2010, is my understanding, for restoration, including beginning construction of the three authorized 

projects. But this funding, obviously, must compete with other national priorities such as—a lot of other priorities with a much 

smaller pot. Again, that is part of my concern. 

Now, I don’t know if you all had a chance to see in the Miami 

Herald this morning, there is an article about the current land federation dispute among the Water Management District, South Florida Management District, the Corps and the offices of the OMB, 

the administration. The article states that the cost-sharing issue 

must be resolved by the administration before any Everglades dollars can be spent on anything, including the funding that was provided in the stimulus. Again, that is what the article states. 

Specifically, there is a statement there by Stu Applebaum, that 

says that, quote, could potentially lose some of the $183 million set 

aside in fiscal year 2009 for the Everglades. 

Then, Mr. Salt, I believe you sent a letter yesterday, I believe, 

to Chairman Visclosky stating your decision to remove Site 1 from 

the Civil Works Recovery Act funding plan. Obviously, both Picayune or IRL were also deemed ineligible for stimulus dollars. So I 

42 

am not going to get into the whole issue about what projects should 

have been there, should not have been as new starts, but obviously 

this raises serious concerns. 

In the letter it says that if appropriations for Site 1 are made 

available in fiscal year 2010 energy and water appropriations bill, 

then Site 1 will become eligible to receive Recovery Act funding if 

obligated Recovery Act funds for civil works activities remain available at that time, and then we will consider allocations for such 

funds to Site 1. 

So again, obviously, the combination of a potential zeroing out of 

fiscal year 2009 in stimulus dollars, the fact that the first three authorized projects now are ineligible for stimulus dollars, and now 

a significant decrease in construction funding for fiscal year 2010 

leaves me with some serious concerns regarding this administration’s commitment to Everglades restoration. 

Obviously, this is a critical time for the Everglades, as we all 

know. It took 7 years to enact WRDA. That was Congress’ fault. 

And any further delays in commencement of construction of these 

important projects could be, frankly, very detrimental for ongoing 

efforts. So basically I am a little concerned about what the commitment is for Everglades restoration. Will it be a priority for this administration? What steps are going to be taken to ensure immediate action on the cost-sharing master agreement by the administration so we can move forward on that? And then, obviously, we 

need to see if we can ensure that our dollars are specifically reserved for Site 1, as well as Picayune and IRL, assuming that there 

is funding in fiscal year 2010. Again, those are some of the concerns. 

I know it is a mouthful, but I just wanted to bring those out 

there. And we will stay in touch and continue to talk. But I just 

wanted to make sure that I threw those concerns out there. 

Thank you for your time, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

We have before us today, Mr. Terrance Salt, Acting Assistant 

Secretary of the Army for Civil Works at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington; Lieutenant General Robert L. ′′Van′′ Van Antwerp, Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Washington; Commissioner C.W. ′′Bill′′ Ruth, International Boundary 

and Water Commission, U.S. Section, El Paso, Texas; and Dr. Howard Frumkin, Director of the National Center For Environmental 

Health Agencies for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia. 

43 

TESTIMONY OF TERRANCE C. SALT, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR CIVIL WORKS, U.S. ARMY CORPS 

OF ENGINEERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.; LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

ROBERT L. ′′VAN′′ VAN ANTWERP, CHIEF OF ENGINEERS, U.S. 

ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.; COMMISSIONER C.W. ′′BILL′′ RUTH, INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY AND 

WATER COMMISSION, U.S. SECTION, EL PASO, TEXAS; AND 

DR. HOWARD FRUMKIN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR 

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, AGENCY FOR TOXIC SUBSTANCES AND DISEASE REGISTRY, CENTERS FOR DISEASE 

CONTROL AND PREVENTION, ATLANTA, GEORGIA 

Ms. JOHNSON. If you will begin your testimony in the order of 

your being named, I would appreciate it. Thank you for being here. 

Mr. SALT. Chairwoman Johnson, Representative Boozman, distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to present the President’s budget for the civil works program 

of the Army Corps of Engineers for fiscal year 2010. Developing 

this budget we have sought to achieve four principal objectives: 

First, focus our construction funds on those investments that provide the best return from a national perspective in achieving economic, environmental, and public safety objectives. 

Second, to support the safe and reliable operation and maintenance of key existing water resources infrastructure. 

Third, to improve Corps project planning and program performance. 

And, finally, to advance aquatic ecosystem restoration efforts, including restoration of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands and Florida’s 

Everglades. And, Congressman Diaz-Balart, clearly I need to come 

and chat with you about that effort. 

The budget provides funding for the development and restoration 

of the Nation’s water and related resources within the three main 

civil works program areas: commercial navigation, flood and coastal 

storm damage reduction, and aquatic ecosystem restoration. Additionally, the budget supports hydropower, recreation, environmental stewardship, water supply services at existing water resources projects owned or operated by the Corps, protection of the 

Nation’s regulated waters and wetlands, the cleanup of sites contaminated as a result of the Nation’s early efforts to develop atomic 

weapons, and emergency preparedness and training. 

The total discretionary funding of $5.1 billion in the fiscal year 

2010 budget is the highest amount ever requested by the President 

for the civil works program. The budget proposes the enactment of 

legislation to authorize a lock usage fee which would over time replace the diesel fuel tax now paid by most commercial users of the 

Inland and Intercoastal Waterways. 

This proposed legislation will address the declining balance in 

the Inland Waterways Trust Fund. This affects the government’s 

ability to finance the non-Federal portion of the Federal capital investment in these waterways and will do so in a way that improves 

economic efficiency compared to the existing fuel tax by more closely aligning the cost of those who use the Corps locks for commerce 

with the capital costs that the Corps incurs on their behalf. 

44 

The administration stands ready to work with the Congress and 

stakeholders interested in these capital investments to help pass 

and implement this proposal. 

The fiscal year 2010 budget continues the civil works program’s 

commitment to a performance-based approach to budgeting. The 

Army applied objective performance guidelines to focus construction funds on those investments within the three main mission 

areas of the Corps to provide the best return from a national perspective in achieving economic, environmental, and public safety 

objectives. 

Similarly, the Army used objective performance criteria to allocate O&M funds in the fiscal year 2010 budget. The O&M criteria 

consider both the condition of the project and the potential consequences for project performance if the O&M activity were not undertaken in fiscal year 2010. 

In fiscal year 2010, the Corps will focus efforts on developing 

new strategies, along with other Federal agencies and non-Federal 

project partners, to better manage, protect and restore the Nation’s 

water and related land resources, including floodplains, flood-prone 

areas, and related ecosystems. 

I would like to speak for a minute about the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which provides $4.6 billion for the Corps’ civil works program. The Corps is managing 

these funds and successfully achieving the Recovery Act stated purposes; obligations and expenditures commenced in early May on 

clearance of the Corps’ project plans and lists. 

Projects were selected based on the fundamental tenet of prudent 

management and investment in infrastructure and ecosystem restoration that will provide long-term benefits for the Nation. The 

civil works allocations are fully consistent with the President’s direction provided in his executive memorandum of 20 March 2009, 

ensuring responsible spending of Recovery Act funds. 

Moreover, the civil works allocations are consistent with the additional project selection criteria provided in the conference Committee report accompanying the act. The project programs or activities that are accomplished with Recovery Act dollars will be obligated and executed quickly, will result in high immediate employment, have little schedule risk, will be executed by contract or direct hire of temporary labor, and will complete a project phase, a 

project, an element, or will provide a useful service that does not 

require additional funding. 

Also, as stipulated in the Recovery Act, no funds will be used for 

any project that, at the time of the obligation, has not received appropriations provided for energy and water development. Essentially, no new starts. The wide geographic distribution of projects 

spreads the employment and other economic benefits across the 

United States. 

Funding also is distributed across the civil works programs to 

provide the nation with project benefits related to inland and coastal navigation, the environment, flood-risk management, hydropower, recreation and more. 

Since I last appeared before this Committee, I am pleased to report that as of close of business June 12th, the Corps has obligated 

more than $320 million. On-the-ground work has begun and real 

45 

progress is being made. This administration has made rebuilding 

America’s infrastructure a priority to resources provided for the 

Army’s civil works program in the President’s budget for fiscal year 

2010, as well as the resources provided to the stimulus bill to work 

and help achieve this objective. 

Madam Chairwoman, I am proud to support the fiscal year 2010 

budget for the Army civil works program. I look forward to working 

with the Subcommittee and to your support for the President’s 

budget proposals. Thank you, ma’am. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Lieutenant General Van Antwerp. 

General VAN ANTWERP. That is fine, ma’am. Thank you. 

Chairwoman Johnson, Representative Boozman, distinguished 

Members of the Subcommittee, it is really an honor to testify before 

you on the President’s fiscal year 2010 budget. 

I would like to start out just by giving a little bit about the civil 

works program, because it is really an amazing thing when you 

hear it rolled up. We own and operate over 650 dams. In navigation, we have 12,000 miles of inland waterways that we are responsible for. My folks tell me that would stretch halfway around the 

world if you strung it all together. We have 241 lock chambers at 

195 different sites. We dredged over 204 million cubic yards. A football field piled high with that would be 10 miles high. 

Flood damage reduction: we have 383 reservoirs in the Corps of 

Engineers. We have 11,000 miles of levees, which constitutes about 

16 percent of the levees in this country. Environmental protection, 

of course, we approved 53,000 permits last year. Hydropower, we 

have 75 sites and 350 generators that generate a lot of the hydropower for this Nation. We added 372 million visitor days to our 

projects last year as a backdrop for what we do. 

This is a performance-based budget. It completes ten projects; 

four in navigation and six in flood and coastal storm damage reduction. A little breakout by percentage, 11 percent of this budget is 

environmental, 35 percent navigation, and 32 percent is in the 

flood and coastal storm damage reduction. 

As was mentioned already, it includes three new watershed studies. In the construction program, it has 93 construction projects 

and they include 10 dam safety projects, nine projects that address 

significant risk to human safety and eight project completions. 

There are 15 mitigation or environmental projects like the Everglades, Columbia River, Missouri River Basin, and there are five 

new starts. They were, all five, very high-performing projects. 

The operation and maintenance, ma’am, that you acknowledge, 

this is a 14 percent increase. There are a lot of projects out there 

built in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s that we really need to get at. 

Representative Cao, just a little bit on New Orleans. We are 

going to make that 2011 deadline for the hurricane-reduction system and we are very proud of the incredible work that has been 

done down there. 

There is also 25 million in investigations for coastal wetlands 

this year. We went back to the 1930s, and looked at the amount 

of coastal wetlands in this country. We have lost a million acres 

since 1930. Pretty amazing. 

46 

And I will just close here by talking about Iraq and Afghanistan 

just for a moment, although it is not directly under the purview of 

this Committee. I just want to tell you that your Corps of Engineers has had 10,000 civilian members of the Corps of Engineers 

deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan since 9/11 doing phenomenal 

work over there. We are having a little bit of a change in that the 

workload in Iraq is going down. At the same time, we are doubling 

our workforce in Afghanistan. So, very exciting things out there. 

Finally, Mr. Salt did cover the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 

I will just say that in the 5 weeks that we have had the funds 

available, we have obligated $322 million. And by the end of this 

fiscal year, 30 September, we will have 45 percent of that $4.6 billion under contract. 

Ma’am, I look forward to the questions of this Subcommittee. 

Thanks for the privilege of testifying today. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Commissioner Ruth from El Paso. 

Mr. RUTH. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Boozman, 

and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 

discuss the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water 

Commission’s fiscal year 2010 budget request and priorities. The President’s fiscal year 2010 budget requests a total of $76.25 million for the USIBWC, including $33 million for salaries and expenses and $43.25 million for construction. The S&E request covers 

expenses related to salaries and expenses and USIBWC’s administrative costs, as well as funds needed for the continued operation 

and maintenance of the U.S. portion of binational infrastructure 

and projects along the United States-Mexico border. The President’s fiscal year 2010 budget requests $43.25 million for the construction account. Of this amount, $21.4 million is requested for flood control rehabilitation efforts to continue with upgrades to the aging levees in the USIBWC’s Rio Grande’s flood control projects along the upper and international reaches of the Rio 

Grande. Levee rehabilitation is one of HSIBWC’s top priorities. 

These upgrades, which include structural improvements and raising the height of levees, are needed to provide protection for communities along the Rio Grande during a 100-year flood event in accordance with criteria established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and to enable certification to FEMA standards, 

thus alleviating the need for border residents to purchase costly 

flood insurance. 

Another one of my top priorities is to complete the South Bay 

International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Diego, California. We have requested $6 million in fiscal year 2010 to construct an administration building and laboratory facilities. The 

USIBWC awarded a contract in 2008 for construction of the secondary treatment component of this plant, which is currently under 

construction and is scheduled to come on line by the end of the calendar year 2010. 

Recent safety of dams inspections have identified seepage problems at the two international storage dams on the Rio Grande-- 

Amistad and Falcon. Funding of $5 million is requested for the 

U.S. share of the cost required to conduct further binational investigations to determine viable remediation options. 

47 

We are requesting funding in fiscal year 2010 for the Nogales 

International Outfall Interceptor, which is a pipe that conveys 

wastewater from Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona, to the 

Nogales International Wastewater Treatment Plant. Constructed in 

1970 and 1971, the 9-mile long pipeline has deteriorated over time. 

The IOI must be repaired or in part replaced to avoid adverse environmental impacts and to ensure a reliable operation of the wastewater collection and treatment system. The fiscal year 2010 request of $750,000 represents USIBWC assumed a 50 percent share 

of the cost for the project’s design. We have requested $3 million to begin reconstruction of the 

American Canal. Located in El Paso, Texas, this 1.5-mile-long, concrete-lined canal was built by the United States in 1938 to convey 

Rio Grande waters to U.S. water users. It has deteriorated over 

time and it is at risk of being unable to deliver water to U.S. users. 

In fiscal year 2010, USIBWC intends to design the needed improvements and undertake environmental remediation measures. 

Our fiscal year 2010 request includes $400,000 for reestablishment of approximately 43 acres of riparian habitat to mitigate for 

the environmental impacts of sediment and vegetation removal 

that took place under the Colorado River Boundary and Capacity 

Preservation Project. This project was undertaken to restore the 

flow capacity of the Colorado River Channel at Morelos Dam. 

Funds in the amount of $4.4 million are requested for facilities renovation and heavy equipment replacement programs. We are also requesting $2.3 million to improve security at our facilities in a post-September 11th world. This fund will fund measures to address security and vulnerability risks at critical 

transboundary infrastructure, such as Falcon and Amistad Dams, 

our field offices, and headquarters facilities. 

Madam Chairwoman, thank you for the opportunity to testify 

today, and I would be pleased to respond to any questions you or 

other Members of the Committee may have. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Dr. Frumkin. 

Dr. FRUMKIN. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman Johnson, 

Ranking Member Boozman, other distinguished Members of the 

Committee. On behalf of the new Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Administrator of the Agency 

for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Dr. Thomas Frieden, I 

would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 

I would like to give you a brief overview of ATSDR’s scientific 

and programmatic activities and then discuss ways in which 

ATSDR is taking a fresh look at how we can serve communities 

concerned about toxic exposures. ATSDR, as you know, is the principal Federal nonregulatory public health agency charged with protecting the public from toxic exposures. The Agency was formed 

about a quarter century ago under the Superfund Act, or CERCLA, 

and was assigned by Congress with four principal responsibilities: 

The first is protecting the public from toxic exposures. We do 

that by assessing exposures at hazardous waste sites and making 

recommendations for protecting health; by assessing other kinds of 

chemical releases such as contaminated schools or smokestack 

emissions and, again, making recommendations for protecting pubVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:47 Aug 17, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00087 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\50614.0 KAYLA
48 

lic health; and responding to emergency releases such as the coal 

ash spill in Tennessee that you mentioned earlier, Madam Chairwoman, and, again, making recommendations for protecting public 

health. Much of that direct protective work is done in collaboration 

with State agencies whom we fund and support. 

Our second major responsibility is building the science base on 

toxic chemicals. We carry out that mission through intramural research in toxicology and epidemiology, through a small program of 

funded extramural research, and through assembling the results of 

other people’s research into authoritative documents such as this 

Toxicological Profile. 

Our third major responsibility is educating the public and healthcare providers about the effects of hazardous chemical exposures. 

Congress recommended that both the public and health-care providers needed to know more and charged us with that job. We 

carry out public educational activities, we produce user-friendly 

fact sheets such as this, and produce educational materials for physicians, nurses, and other health-care providers. 

Our final responsibility is conducting registries. We register 

groups of people who have been exposed to a particular substance, 

such as at the World Trade Center or in Libby, Montana, and follow them over time both to communicate with them subsequently 

and as a platform for research. 

We have been very successful in our quarter century of existence. 

We have addressed a large number of hazardous waste sites. We 

have established the concept of community service in environmental health. We have advanced environmental justice considerations. We have advanced science in many ways. And we have carried out many educational activities. 

But this is a time for reevaluation, and that is very high on our 

agenda for the coming year. We are a shrinking Agency. When I 

began my service almost 4 years ago, we had roughly 400 on-board 

staff. We now have fewer than 300, requiring that we do our job 

better with less. 

Circumstances are changing. As you mentioned, Madam Chairwoman, we now recognize new chemicals that are emerging, new 

pathways of exposure, and health outcomes not fully appreciated 

25 years ago. The science has advanced in many ways, 

toxicologically and in terms of biomonitoring. We have undergone 

public and congressional scrutiny over the last year and that has 

called on us to take a hard look at the way we do our work. And 

we have a culture of continuous quality improvement that would 

call on us in any event to do those things. 

During this past year, we have undertaken a management review of our management procedures and we have identified a number of opportunities for improvement and have made those. We 

have undertaken an external review of our science administration- 

- our clearance and production of science documents and have improved those. But perhaps most important is the National Conversation on Public Health And Chemical Exposures to which you 

referred earlier. This is a 1- to 2-year process, about to be launched 

next week, after about a year of preparation in which we will convene agencies from across the Federal Government and at the 

State and local level with a number of other stakeholders nationVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:47 Aug 17, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\50614.0 KAYLA
49 

ally. Environmental groups, community groups, industries, public 

health groups and others will take a hard look across the entire 

system that we have set up nationally to protect the public from 

toxic chemicals. 

We believe there are major opportunities for collaboration among 

agencies to avoid redundancies, to fill gaps and, in general, to perform more effectively and more efficiently at protecting the public 

from hazardous chemicals. We have several hundred people registered for a launch next week, and we are very much looking forward to performing that analysis with stakeholders; to generating 

practical, actionable recommendations, and to implementing those 

over coming years to improve our national approach to protecting 

the public. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. I look forward to answering any questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you so very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I am going to call on Mr. Filner to start first on 

the questioning. 

Mr. FILNER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. And thank you for 

your questions about the situation in San Diego and Tijuana. Mr. 

Ruth did not answer them, but maybe we will get him to answer. 

By the way, General Van Antwerp, I somehow would not use the 

word ′′exciting′′ to talk about Afghanistan. It is a sad situation. We 

are losing young men and women. I don’t find that exciting. Try 

another word. 

Just for my colleagues’ quick rundown, I represent the whole 

California-Mexico border. We have two major cities across my district: Tijuana with several million people, Mexicali with about a 

million. Each one has less than half of the facilities necessary to 

treat sewage. Raw sewage gets dumped into gullies and canyons 

and comes over in what are generally referred to as the two most 

polluted rivers in America, the Tijuana River and the New River. 

I am not happy to say I am probably the only Congressman in 

America that says 60 million gallons or so of raw sewage flows 

across my district. So we are very dependent on the work of the 

IBWC. 

Unfortunately, what I just said about raw sewage flowing 

through my district, I said 10 years ago and 20 years ago. We 

haven’t done the job. 

Madam Chairman, you said we were off to a new start with the 

new administration. I wish I was excited. I read Mr. Ruth’s testimony and it is just not accurate. It said, for example, that in 1997 

when you started the waste treatment plant, you said in the interest of addressing public health and environmental concerns as expeditiously as possible, the USIBWC and the EPA decided to construct the South Bay plant; decided to construct the South Bay 

plant in stages. Build the primary treatment—advanced, primary 

and then the secondary. 

Look, you ran out of money because you underestimated what it 

would do, and you didn’t meet the law. So we didn’t do the secondary treatment. Now you intend, you say, to deal with it after 

10 years or so. And as I read your testimony, you are saying that 

the new secondary plant—which I don’t know how you are doing 

50 

for 6 million, because it was estimated for another 100 or something—would treat 25 million gallons per day; is that correct? 

Mr. RUTH. That is correct. 

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Ruth, you know as well as I do—you have 

worked on this back to eternity—25 million gallons per day was 

what it was when we started building the thing 10 years ago or 12 

years ago. It is now double that and it is projected for even more. 

So when you finish your secondary treatment plant, we are going 

to be right back where we were in 1997, right? It will still have 

50 million gallons of extra raw sewage that is untreated and flows 

across and into the Pacific ocean? 

Mr. RUTH. I can speak to that point. 

Mr. FILNER. Madam Chairman asked—we passed two laws 

signed by two different Presidents that said don’t do this; do a 

treatment plant that would treat the whole capacity in Tijuana, 

and that we would do it, and the IBWC ignored two laws of Congress. 

Do you want to answer why we didn’t do that? 

Mr. RUTH. Well, unfortunately, sir, I wasn’t here for 10 years of 

those discussions. I was here for the period prior to that when the 

decision was made. 

Mr. FILNER. You were appointed last year? 

Mr. RUTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FILNER. For what length of time? 

Mr. RUTH. For the end of the year. 

Mr. FILNER. Until the end of 2008? 

Mr. RUTH. Yes, until the present administration makes a decision for—— 

Mr. FILNER. So you are really not there. 

Mr. RUTH. I can assure you I am there. 

Mr. FILNER. But your appointment only lasts until the President 

appoints a new one. 

Mr. RUTH. That is correct, until—— 

Mr. FILNER. I am sorry. My time is quick. But why didn’t we do 

what we said in those two laws that were passed by Congress? 

Mr. RUTH. The original plant was constructed to an advance primary plant and the decision was made in the early 1990s to do 

that. The plant was constructed and put into operation in 1997. 

Unfortunately at that time, there was no money to take it to secondary. 

Mr. FILNER. It was meant to be secondary. 

Mr. RUTH. It was meant to be a secondary. 

Mr. FILNER. It wasn’t planned to be a primary? It was planned 

to be a secondary. 

Mr. RUTH. It was planned to be a secondary treatment facility. 

And the moneys that were available were only enough money to 

build the advanced primary portion of that plant. Then over the 

next 10 years, the decision was made to construct and finish out 

the plant as it was originally intended, for 25 million gallons per 

day. And that is what is being done now. That contract was let in 

November of this year and it is scheduled to be completed by the 

end of 2010. 

Mr. FILNER. What about the additional 25 million gallons of 

water that we can’t treat of sewage? 

51 

Mr. RUTH. I just got a report from Mexico, just dated this month, 

June of 2009, Mexico’s intention is—and they are constructing two 

treatment plants in Mexico. One was just commissioned this last 

week. The other is scheduled to be put on line by the end of this 

year. And they laid out their infrastructure in Tijuana to utilize 

those plants and to utilize that water for reuse, and they showed 

a very detailed report of what their intentions—— 

Mr. FILNER. For how much? How much capacity? 

Mr. RUTH. The capacity of those plants were each about 7.5 million each, and they can be increased in size. They can double that 

size. They are moduled to where they can go to the 25 million. 

Their intentions are that they will reuse all of the water that Tijuana is generating and that they do not intend to send any additional water to the United States. This was a statement made by 

SES this past week. 

We have been working very closely with Mexico through our 

Mexican section of the International Boundary and Water Commission and they have made improvements at the San Antonio de los 

Buenos plant or Punta Banderas as they refer to it. So the combination of the new plant—— 

Mr. FILNER. You should go down there again. Half the sewage is 

not even treated and ends up in San Diego. But I know my time 

is up, Madam Chair. 

We have a long talk, Mr. Ruth, to—you are simply wrong about 

the history of the last 10 years, because it doesn’t take into account 

the two pieces of legislation we have passed. And I haven’t heard 

anything about the New River anyway. So we have a lot of stuff 

to talk about. 

Mr. RUTH. I will be glad to speak with you any time. 

Mr. FILNER. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. Mr. Boozman. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you. First of all, I would like to say that 

I think that the work that the Corps is doing in Afghanistan is exciting and very commendable. And I say that, and I think my colleague will agree, in the sense that rebuilding the infrastructure, 

helping the Afghanis with those kind of problems—which is what 

the Corps is engaged in and what you are talking about—again, I 

think that is very commendable and I think it is very exciting and 

I think it will help us working with our NATO allies with the outcome. 

Mr. Salt, in looking at the budget, I see a lot of numbers and 

things, and yet I only can gauge it by what is happening with some 

of the events that I know about. And as you know, the Ozark Dam 

on the Arkansas River is a project that is located—happens to be 

located in my congressional district. But besides that, it is a project 

where we have appropriated a lot of money. The project is almost 

two-thirds done. The construction is such that the thing is all torn 

up, and now it appears in the President’s budget that we are just 

walking away from it. In the figures I have seen, the government spent $40-plus million. It is a public-private partnership. The ratepayers of Arkansas 

through their utility have spent $20 million. How much more 

money will it cost to walk away from the project if we do away with 

the current contract? 

52 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I understand—I think you are asking me what the 

termination costs of the current contract are—I believe 20 million 

dollars is the estimate. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. So we are spending $80 million again with the 

thing two-thirds complete. The ratepayers of Arkansas that have 

come up with $20 million, will they be reimbursed for the money 

they have spent? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I am not sure I know the answer to that. I am 

assuming the answer is no. I am assuming that the answer is that 

the protocols that are set up for that are that they would not be 

reimbursed. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. What sense does it make to start a project with 

all that is involved in getting this type of project done, a huge commitment of money—at that time everybody agreed that the project 

was worthwhile. The cost ratio was figured, and now I am being 

told that the cost ratio is being refigured, and it is a lower rate. 

What common sense can you use when you have spent that amount 

of money to redo your cost ratio in the middle of the stream? 

The other thing is electricity rates are going up now as we speak, 

as well as energy is going up. I mean, again, can you explain that 

to me? 

Mr. SALT. I am not exactly sure of the question. I think—if the 

question—— 

Mr. BOOZMAN. How can you refigure the cost ratio when you 

have got a project that is two-thirds done, and then decide that it 

is not a worthy project? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I wasn’t aware that we redid the cost ratio. I can 

check on that. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. How can you decide when it is two-thirds done 

that it wasn’t a worthy project to begin with? 

Mr. SALT. I think as we put this budget together, one of the factors were that we would focus on the higher performing projects so 

that we would be able to free up money to have new starts for some 

of the even higher performing projects. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. But it doesn’t make any difference that the project 

is two-thirds complete when you decide to shut it down? How 

much—can you find out how much electricity—again this is hydropower. This is what we are trying to do in this country as far as 

greening up things, good project. Right now it is all torn apart. Can 

you tell me how much hydropower was generated before, how much 

hydropower is generated now, and then how much will be as we 

walk away? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I don’t have those numbers in my head. I have 

them in a book here. I can—— 

Mr. BOOZMAN. We are going to have—my understanding is is 

these turbines have been ordered, this $60-plus million worth of 

stuff is going to be delivered, and much of that is going to be out 

on the street adjacent to this structure, just kind of out there. I 

mean, is that correct? What are we going to do with the stuff that 

we have ordered? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, we are looking at a number of options to pursue 

that, one of which is—just by way of a little bit of a background 

on this as we put our Recovery Act list together, our assumption 

was that this was a likely candidate for the budget. So it was not 

53 

one of the projects we considered when we put the Recovery Act list 

together. When the final policy decisions were made with respect 

to the budget, it was a performance matter, for the performance of 

our ongoing construction projects, and this project fell below the 

line. So we are now in the—I am in the—— 

Mr. BOOZMAN. What is the remaining benefit to the remaining 

cost ratio of the project? 

Mr. SALT. The remaining benefit to cost ratio is higher than the 

total benefit to cost ratio. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Are there projects with lower ratios that are being 

funded in the President’s budget? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I believe the only exception would be projects that 

would be funded to complete; that we added—that we allowed 

those to complete. I think this is the only project that fell into this 

category, and as I indicated, were—as we look at our opportunities 

and the rethinking of the Recovery Act funds, obviously this one is 

higher than—— 

Mr. BOOZMAN. I don’t mean to interrupt. I am sorry, but we have 

got to move on in fairness. I would just say this. You guys do a 

lot of good work. I would hate for this to be the poster child of what 

is going on with the OMB budget, with you guys, and with the Recovery Act. I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. Mr. Hare. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is really directed to 

Mr. Salt and General Van Antwerp. My district has—I am from 

Central Illinois—247 miles of the Mississippi River and seven locks 

and dams. I toured the Quincy Lock and the lockmaster had me 

hit the lock with my fist, and a piece of concrete about the size of 

a football came off. And literally some of these locks, they are using 

duct tape to keep these things together. 

Mr. HARE. First of all, we have a huge problem, I mean, if these 

locks fail. The second problem is, just from the corn growers and 

the producers lose the 6 days with having to break the tows down. 

But, you know, most importantly, say, if Quincy wants to use hydroelectric off of it for the things, the frustrating part is, you know, 

there is no money to fix these, to replace them. And I think it is 

critical, you know, not just for my district but just for people in 

general. 

So my question is this to you. I understand that 50 percent of 

the funds that are needed to repair the locks or modernize these 

structures come from the Inland Waterways Trust Fund, which is 

broke or nearly broke, and it is due the diesel tax, which hasn’t 

been indexed for inflation in decades. 

You folks could help me out a lot here if you could tell me, from 

your perspective, what do we need to do to be able to come up with 

the money. Because, as was mentioned earlier by Mr. Boozman, the 

estimated number of jobs created or that would be used if these 

locks were repaired would be 28,000 construction jobs. When you 

think about that, that is a tremendous number of people being able 

to go back to work and help their families out. 

If you could help me out here with some suggestions on how we 

can come up with—I know it is tremendously expensive to replace 

these. My fear, though, is these locks are going to fail, maybe, and 

then what are we going to do? 

54 

If, literally, they are being held together with duct tape—and I 

don’t mean totally, I don’t mean to put it that way, but literally you 

see how they are falling apart—and all it takes is a couple tows 

to hit one of these things hard enough and we have a real severe 

problem here, what can we do, from your perspective, to be able to 

come up with the necessary funding, whether we change this mechanism or what do we need to do so that, one, we can replace these 

locks or repair them, get people back to work, and give our producers who have a—as I said, Brazil has a 6-day advantage on a 

trade deal just by having to break these things apart. 

So, you know, I am just really looking for suggestions from you 

on how we can do this and how we can get started on the road to 

being able to being able to fund this program. We passed it, the 

President vetoed it, we overrode the veto. And here we have a tremendous opportunity, but we don’t have any money. 

So I know that might be a question that maybe doesn’t have an 

answer, but I certainly would be open to any suggestions you have 

in terms of how do we get this thing moving. 

Mr. SALT. As I mentioned in my oral statement, the administration has put forward a proposal to restructure the user fees for the 

Inland Waterway Trust Fund. And, as I said, we are certainly willing to work with the Congress to try and work on that part of it. 

I think, sir, you are bringing up a huge issue not just with the 

inland waterways infrastructure, but the whole issue of aging infrastructure throughout the country. I think you are right; it is a 

large problem. I look forward to working with the Committee as we 

try and think about how we deal with those important issues, not 

only for the inland waterways, but for the water resource infrastructure throughout the country. 

Our various flood protection levees and dams are not in great 

shape and, by default, we are ending up dealing with them all as 

dam safety issues, which is not the most cost-effective or best policy way to deal with that. 

So I think we in the administration understand this is an enormous issue that you have raised, and it is one that we owe our best 

thinking. And we look forward to working with you and the Committee as we try and do that. 

Mr. HARE. Sir? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Sir, we are meeting with the industry 

and with the users right now. And we have some levels. We think 

right now it is $86 million, which when you put the 50-50 and you 

get double that. But it really needs to be about 250 doubled to 

about 500 to get at what you are talking about. 

We know the condition of our lock chambers, and you saw the 

condition as well. That is what it is going to take. A number of our 

people are meeting with industry. We have a proposal here, but we 

need to find a way and do it pretty soon, as you recognize. 

I think something good could come out of this meeting with industry, because of an unscheduled outage. And that is what you 

are talking about. A scheduled one they can deal with, they can 

work around it. But an unscheduled one, that is what really kills 

the industry. 

Mr. HARE. I know my time is up, but I just wanted to put a plug 

in for Colonel Sinkler, who I know is down in Louisiana now. He 

55 

is a wonderful man, and we miss him terribly from our area. But 

he worked on the floods and a number of things. 

And, you know, from my perspective, I have had an opportunity 

to work with the Corps, not just in this position, but when I 

worked for a Member for 24 years. And I thank you for all the 

work that you do do. I think the problem has been we just haven’t 

given you the resources that you need to be able to do the things 

that you really do. 

But I appreciate what the Corps does. And anything that we can 

do to get these things fixed and rebuilt them, you know, I would 

be happy to help you in any way I can. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Cao? 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And, General, I also commend the Corps’ work in Afghanistan 

but especially the work of the Corps in Louisiana. 

In your testimony, you stated that the Army Corps dredges annually 204 million cubic yards along the 12,000 miles of inland waterways. Of that 204 million cubic yards, according to The TimesPicayune, 63 million tons come from the Louisiana coast, coastal 

areas. But of that 64 million tons, the Army Corps only uses 12 

percent to rebuild Louisiana marshlands. 

My question to you is, what plans do you have to more efficiently 

use the dredge material to restore Louisiana coast lands, especially 

from fundings under the fiscal year 2009 omnibus appropriation 

and the stimulus bill? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Well, Congressman, that is a great question. There are a lot of uses for this dredge material. And some of 

the limitations are based on the cost of disposal, some of it is on 

the cleanliness of the material and other things. 

We in the administration are taking a close look at how we can 

beneficially use these materials, because they are a benefit if you 

want to replenish a marsh area or a wetlands. 

We are taking that under advisement. We have heard you here 

today. We agree that we really need to look at this and make sure, 

as much as possible, we are using this material where it helps to 

reduce storm damage, where it can also replenish some of the 

marshes and wetlands. 

Mr. CAO. Do you have an estimate with respect to how much it 

would cost to use more efficiently the amount of dredge material 

that you dredge from the waterways? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Well, we know what it costs us to dispose 

today. 

There is open ocean dredging, open ocean disposals, which is 

usually the least expensive way to dispose of it. But I think we are 

at the point now, because of the vulnerability of our coastlines, we 

really have to look at other options. We are looking at this in a 

broad policy arena to see what is the best way to do it. 

And I defer to Mr. Salt here to take on the policy part. 

Mr. SALT. Sir, currently, the national guidance for the Corps is 

that they look at projects, like dredging projects, on the economic 

merits. So when you look at the benefits of a beneficial use, it is 

56 

not always economic. The way the program is being implemented 

ends up with not a very effective way, as you are pointing out. 

We are committed to relook at those policies so that we can properly account for the environmental benefits in those kinds of 

projects and not penalize projects such as you are referring to that 

would allow for the beneficial use of those materials and greatly increase that type of activity. 

Mr. CAO. And I have one more question in connection with the 

Corps, and I would ask for a very brief answer. 

Can you describe the Corps’ approach to analyzing how the coastal ecosystem will be affected by the hurricane protection alternatives evaluated in the LACPR report? 

General VAN ANTWERP. The LACPR report is looking at everything from barrier islands to creating wetlands to things that are 

nonstructural, like relocations. I think that there is great possibility of some solutions in there that will provide more, what I call, 

risk reduction of the coastline in Louisiana. 

In addition, some things like the structural part on the Lake 

Borgne surge protection barrier is going to provide tremendous 

amount of risk reduction to the people, as it really blocks, virtually 

blocks, what is coming in the inland waterway there. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, General. 

And my last question is to Dr. Frumkin. What plans to do you 

have in place to evaluate and protect the health of African-American communities? And I have in mind a very polluted area in New 

Orleans that is called Gert Town in New Orleans. 

Dr. FRUMKIN. We use the same tools in our toolbox for AfricanAmerican communities that we do for all the communities we 

serve. We have a great deal of experience with minority and poor 

communities, because, unfortunately, hazardous waste sites are 

disproportionately located near such communities. 

Close collaboration with the community, good communication, 

using staff who are well-trained and experienced in careful communication; careful assessment of the health hazards not only posed 

by toxic exposures but by other threats that the community may 

face, be they lack of access to medical care, underlying medical conditions, and so on; and then generating recommendations that are 

actionable by the authorities responsible for acting on them. That 

could be the State health department, local health department, and 

others. 

So the combination of community involvement, of careful, comprehensive, science-based evaluation of health hazards and generation of useful recommendations would be our standard approach. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Bishop? 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thank you to our witnesses. 

I represent eastern Long Island, about the last 70 miles of Long 

Island, so I have about 300 miles of coastline in my district. And 

our office works quite closely and quite cooperatively with the New 

York District of the Army Corps. And I want to commend them, 

57 

and particularly Colonel Tortora, for the service that they provide 

both to our district and to our constituents. 

I am concerned about what appears to be the continuation of a 

policy of the prior administration on the part of this administration 

with respect to beach nourishment. We know that beach nourishment projects that were shovel-ready were taken out of the eligibility list for funding under the stimulus bill. 

And so my question to you, Mr. Salt, is very simply, what is the 

policy of this administration with respect to a Federal role in beach 

nourishment projects? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, you are correct that the policy call was not to fund 

those projects in the Recovery Act. But in the President’s budget, 

beach nourishment and renourishment projects with a benefit-cost 

ratio of 2.5 or greater were included in the budget, to include the 

Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point section of New York. 

Mr. BISHOP. If I may, I don’t wish to be argumentative, but isn’t 

the majority of the funding in the President’s budget for the Fire 

Island to Montauk Point reformulation, isn’t that the court-ordered, 

west of Shinnecock project, the Westhampton Beach, the 

Westhampton Dunes project, which has an ongoing several-milliondollar-a-year, court-ordered requirement for beach nourishment? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I don’t know about that part. 

Mr. BISHOP. I think I am right, sir. 

Mr. SALT. But I would just say it was included in the budget because of the storm damage reduction benefits that it provided. 

Mr. BISHOP. Again, I will say I think, if the $5.8 million that is 

in the budget for Fire Island to Montauk Point, I believe that the 

lion’s share of that is pursuant to a court order. So it is nondiscretionary on the part of the administration and on the part of the 

Army Corps. 

So I guess my question is, should we rely more, in terms of 

where the administration is going with respect to this policy, on 

the exclusion of the beach nourishment projects from the stimulus 

funding, shovel-ready projects, or should we rely more on what you 

say is implicit in the President’s budget for fiscal 2010? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I believe this is the first time an executive branch 

proposal for beach renourishment is in a budget in many years. I 

think it has been a fairly longstanding executive branch policy not 

to propose beach renourishment. This is first time that we have 

done that. And the basis for the budget decisions were the storm 

damage protection that these projects provided. 

Mr. BISHOP. I am in full agreement that the storm damage protection that these projects provide ought to be a very high priority. 

But if you are citing the $5.8 million for the west of Shinnecock 

and the Westhampton Dunes project as evidence of the administration’s commitment to funding beach nourishment projects, I would 

suggest that that is not the best evidence we could have because 

that is a court-ordered process. 

And so, again, I will say, absent the court-ordered mandate that 

the administration fund that project, is there any other reason for 

us to believe that this administration’s policy with respect to beach 

nourishment is different from the prior administration’s? 

58 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I would say that all of the beach nourishment and 

renourishment projects in the budget are evidence of the policy 

that I am describing. 

Mr. BISHOP. Okay. If that is the case, then, can you tell us why 

the policy decision was made to exclude the shovel-ready beach 

nourishment projects from the stimulus bill? 

Mr. SALT. I think the best I could do on that is that the policy 

was under discussion during those times. As we worked through 

that, there were proposals that would include them, and then we 

ended up not including them in the final recommendation. They 

were included in the budget, but not in the Recovery Act. 

Mr. BISHOP. Okay. But, again—I am sorry, Lieutenant General, 

did you want to respond? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Congressman, I was just going to say— 

my folks handed me a list—there are seven other projects that are 

beach renourishment in the fiscal year 2010 budget. 

Mr. BISHOP. That is very welcome news. And I am glad to hear 

that the administration recognizes that these are projects that 

must go forward in terms of habitat protection, in terms of shoreline protection, and in terms of storm damage mitigation. 

Thank you all very much. 

And, Madam Chair, I have exceeded my time. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Brown? 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony today. 

Secretary Salt, if I can begin with you, the administration likes 

to talk up its commitment to the infrastructure, yet the budget request before us continues to underfund the Corps. 

When is the administration going to come to Congress with a 

proposal to utilize the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund to do what 

it was intended to do, to dredge our ports? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I am not sure how to answer that. I think, as in 

the case of all the others, we try to look at the needs and to put 

together the budget proposals to fund the highest-priority needs in 

a way that would allow us to fund those highest-priority needs and 

include new starts, new construction projects within our available 

funds. 

Mr. BROWN. Are you familiar with the Port of Georgetown in 

South Carolina? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I am not—I think General Van Antwerp—— 

General VAN ANTWERP. Yes, sir. 

Mr. BROWN. I mentioned in my opening statement the problem 

we have to obtain funding to continue to operate that port. I noticed in the President’s request that he requested $795,000. You 

know, you can’t bring a rig in there to start dredging for that 

much. And so that is almost, I guess, a figure that doesn’t mean 

anything, if we are not going to be able to utilize any dredging. In 

fact, I think the need is something like $11,300,000. So—when I 

said $795,000, I was on the wrong line. It was $250,000 that they 

recommended for dredging. 

Tell me how we are going to be able to keep that harbor open. 

General VAN ANTWERP. Sir, we have a couple issues. 

59 

One is that in fiscal year 2008 there was a million dollars appropriated for construction, but no cost-sharing partner was available. 

So, in accordance with the fiscal year 2009 appropriations, we are 

going to revoke those funds. 

Now, if asked to look at our O&M budget in its entirety and see 

if there are other available funds, we will do that. We understand 

the criticality of Georgetown Harbor, I assure you of that. 

Mr. BROWN. But I know it is one of those harbors, like we mentioned I guess the other 700 or whatever around the country, that 

probably doesn’t have the ton miles like the Mississippi River does 

to maintain the dredging, but it is one of those catch-cans. If you 

don’t dredge it, the boats won’t come. Right? And if you don’t have 

the tonnage, then you can’t afford the dredging. So this is a major 

concern. 

I guess it leads me up to the next question, and you might answer this one, Secretary. Your budget request contains a low commercial use navigation pilot project. Can you go into more details 

about this proposal? What will you use the $1.5 million requested for this project to 

do? And so, is it the intent to turn the operation and maintenance 

account into a cost-sharing account like the construction account? 

That is a lot of questions in one. 

General VAN ANTWERP. They are all good questions, too. 

The pilot program is really to look at all the harbors together in 

a more comprehensive way, to analyze, where do the ships come 

from? What is needed? Because if you have one harbor that has the 

depth but the others do not and can’t get in there... the pilot is 

really to look at it as a system. And I think it will reveal where 

the dredging absolutely has to be done-- it is kind of equalizing the 

whole system. 

Mr. BROWN. So that the cost share is not down the road, you 

don’t think? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Not for the study. We will look at it as 

the dredging goes. Now, if it takes Inland Waterway Trust Fund 

dollars, that is back to the problem we were discussing earlier on 

the amount of funds that are in that fund. 

Mr. BROWN. I represent most of the coast of South Carolina, and 

of course the Intercoastal Waterway is a big part of my district too. 

So my question would be that—and we appreciate this. The stimulus funding spent on the Intercoastal Waterway is much appreciated. We are grateful for that. 

However, the budget request continues the recent history of providing the project with little more than caretaker dollars. Does the 

Corps have an investment strategy for the AIWW, or will budgets 

continue to do little more than mosquito abatement along what 

could be a marine highway for the entire East Coast? 

And I might add to that, I mentioned a little bit in my opening 

statement—and my time has just expired. But we have to, in order 

to get funding to make it workable, we have to get earmarks. And 

you know the bad word there. And so, maybe could you help us on 

that. 

Madam Chair, if I could just have another 30 seconds? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mrs. Napolitano? 

60 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Madam Chair, and to both Mr. 

Salt and to General Van Antwerp. 

I am from southern California, and the Corps owns and operates 

the Whittier Narrows Dam in my district, which is San Gabriel 

River, on the rivers. The Los Angeles County Public Works, the 

Southern California Water Replenishment, and my office have been 

working with your offices in Los Angeles to update a study for a 

feasibility for raising two to three feet the conservation pool, costing about $300,000. 

It is only an update of a study which would allow the courts to 

increase the water level in the conservation pool, thereby capturing 

additional storm water for up to 2,200 households each year. If the 

study is not completed, not done, we will continue to lose to that 

water to the ocean. Of course, as you well know, we are suffering 

from extreme droughts in southern California, so we would be losing those acre feet. 

The study has been held up by the National Dam Safety Review 

process. Although the court has found no structural problems with 

the dam, we continue to find stalling, if you will. I would request 

that you look into the situation and see if we can’t get that dam 

feasibility study completed to increase that water storage capability. 

Then the other question would be regarding reuse, recycling, and 

desalination, all critical to southern California. And to both of you, 

again, southern California has been adapting for decades now to 

the shortage of our traditional water resources by tapping into 

more of our groundwater and alternative water sources. 

Could you tell me what role the Corps is playing, will be playing 

in supporting the recycle, reuse, desal, and other alternative water 

supply projects to assist in being able to prepare for the continuance of the drought cycle? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Well, ma’am, let me talk first about the 

Whittier issue. 

I think the feasibility study did recommend increasing the existing water conservation pool. We owe you a further answer as to 

where we are headed and how we might move this along. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. And I still am waiting for an answer. 

General VAN ANTWERP. Right. Right. I understand. 

On the other part, a lot of the water that is drawn off and used 

by municipalities is actually replaced back into the watercourse. 

We have a number of actions to see how we can maximize the use 

of that. Now, some of it goes for irrigation and other things, but 

a lot of the water, after it is run through the treatment plants, is 

put back into the watercourses. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Replenishment. 

General VAN ANTWERP. Replenishment. 

We are not doing a lot, to my knowledge, with desalinization. I 

think it has possibilities for the future though. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Are you also checking out the fourth treatment that is leaving that recycled water cleaner? 

And to that point, I would like to ask also, not only you, but Mr. 

Frumkin, in regard to the meds found in recycled water, what is 

happening to be able to ensure that people with, say, lower imVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:47 Aug 17, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00100 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\50614.0 KAYLA
61 

mune systems are not affected, whether it is the children or elderly? 

It goes to the subject of the fourth treatment, which supposedly 

now does clean it to a greater extent to where it not only can be 

used for commercial and industrial ag uses, but melding very easily 

with virgin water. 

Gentlemen? 

Dr. FRUMKIN. We understand the need to balance conservation of 

water with protection of the users of the water, maintaining the 

safety and health standards in the water. 

I can’t speak specifically to the projects in southern California 

that you referenced. But other parts of our agency are very much 

engaged with the issue of water safety and reconciling those health 

and safety needs with conservation needs. I would be happy to provide you with further information, if you would like. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Do you have any findings that would indicate 

whether or not this is adequately addressing the issue of removing 

those contaminants? 

Dr. FRUMKIN. Not that I am aware of. That doesn’t mean we 

haven’t, but I just don’t know them as I sit here. So I will have 

to get back to you. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I would appreciate it. That is a great issue for 

us, and I would love to maybe have an opportunity to dialogue with 

you separately, because those are things that are critical to our 

area. 

There was another question. This one is to Mr. Ruth. 

I was born and raised in Texas, so I am very much involved and 

concerned about the Rio Grande and the fact that, years ago, one 

of the states in Mexico withheld the water from the dam, from the 

Rio Grande, because there was a drought. And so, according to the 

compact that was made on not only the Rio Grande but also the 

canal—well, the Rio Grande and then the Colorado River water 

going into Mexico. 

Ms. JOHNSON. The time has expired. We are looking forward to 

multiple votes in about 10 minutes. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I will put it in writing. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. Olson? 

Mr. OLSON. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. 

And before I get started with the questions, thank you all for 

coming and giving us your testimony today. But I would like to 

identify myself with the comments of our Ranking Member, Mr. 

Boozman, our freshman colleague, Anh Cao. And thank you, General and all the soldiers—and I see a sailor over there—for your 

service here in our country and overseas, Iraq and Afghanistan. We 

couldn’t have had the success we have had in those nations without 

the engineers. And our Army Corps of Engineers, our Navy Seabees, and our Air Force Red Horse are doing an extremely fantastic 

job over there. And I just wanted to make sure you know that we 

appreciate what you have done. 

I represent the 22nd District of Texas, which is southeast/southwest Houston. So the Port of Houston and Houston Ship Channel 

is very important to my district. And during the last 5 years, the 

Federal appropriations have been below the amounts that the 

62 

Corps itself has estimated they need for the construction and operations and maintenance accounts of the Houston Ship Channel. 

The construction account went down from 100 percent of what 

the estimate was 5 years ago, now it is down to 40. O&M, from my 

numbers, were 83 and now they are down to 48. The Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel is the second total tonnage port 

in the United States. It is the first largest port in our country, in 

terms of foreign tonnage. It serves the second largest petrochemical 

industry in the United States. And the Coast Guard has estimated 

that, if the port shut down, it would cost our Nation—our Nation, 

not just the central part of our Nation, our Nation itself—$60 billion per month. 

And I know that we are in tight years when it comes to the budget and that the Corps has many, many worthy projects. And I want 

to ask you if using the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for its intended account, dredging, will ease the financial burden on the 

Corps and allow for more projects to be undertaken. And how much 

would that help if we did that? 

Mr. Salt? General? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I am not sure if you are talking nationwide or if 

you are talking just with Houston. I think that—— 

Mr. OLSON. Just, I mean, nationwide, how much would that 

money help? I mean, certainly, we would love to have it all come 

to Houston, but I am not under any illusions that that is going to 

happen. 

But how much would that—I mean, that trust fund was set up 

for dredging, and, unfortunately, we have used that money for all 

sorts of other things. So how much would that help if we actually 

stuck to our guns and used it for what its intended purpose was? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, obviously it would help in dealing with the backlogs in the harbors that we are talking about, yes, sir. 

Mr. OLSON. General Van Antwerp? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Well, there is, I understand, around $5 

billion or more in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, so it would 

be very useful. 

We did recognize in your particular harbor the very much needed 

for the United States. And that is why it was included in the Recovery and Reinvestment Act at a level of $87 million. So it is recognition for that individual port. But I think the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, you know, the dollars are there and could be 

used. 

Mr. OLSON. Well, thank you for that, sir. I mean, certainly it is 

not the—if you had to design a port, having all that silt coming 

down from the river up above wouldn’t be the place to design it. 

It does need constant maintenance, and we greatly appreciate all 

you have done there. 

I would like to also talk a little bit about the Inland Waterways 

Trust Fund. The administration’s proposal was to increase the 

trust fund through a lockage fee. And that was mentioned in your 

testimony, Mr. Salt. 

That idea has been rejected by the Congress in the past. And, as 

I understand it, talking to some of the operators on the inland waterways, the lockage fee could more than double the taxes paid by 

63 

the industry and would increase the cost of shipping their commodities. 

The Inland Waterways User Board and the Army Corps have 

been working with the industry to revise the capital projects and 

the business model to improve construction and funding of 

prioritized waterways. And do you think it would be more prudent 

just to wait until they have developed a solution before imposing 

a lockage fee? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I think we have made a proposal, and we look forward to working with the Congress and the users, as I mentioned 

in my testimony, as we try and find a solution to this. 

I think Congressman Hare mentioned in his testimony in terms 

of the backlog and the need to find a way to resolve this. I think 

the administration is committed to trying to find a way, obviously 

with the Congress and with the affected interests. 

Mr. OLSON. Thank you for that answer, sir. I have my doubts 

about the lockage fee. But, again, I would encourage you to sit 

down, you know, the users and the Corps and yourself, and try and 

work out a solution. 

And I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you, Madam 

Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Edwards? 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

And thank you for your testimony today, gentlemen. 

Many of us recognize the critical role of the Army Corps in our 

efforts to address the deep impacts of climate change on so many 

of our communities and on our waterways, and these all fall under 

your responsibility. And yet, Mr. Salt, last Congress, your predecessor testified before the Committee’s hearing on climate change 

and suggested that the Corps was undertaking, quote, ′′risk-based 

planning′′ to consider uncertainties such as the effects of climate 

change on Army Corps projects. 

How is the President’s fiscal year 2010 request for the response 

to climate change at Corps facilities similar to or different from 

what was described to the Committee last Congress? 

And I wonder if you could describe in a little bit more detail the 

practical and consistent and cost-effective approaches and policies 

that you will now consider under the fiscal year 2010 budget. 

Mr. SALT. Ma’am, that is a huge question, and—— 

Ms. EDWARDS. I know. And we just have 4 minutes, so—— 

Mr. SALT. Our budget includes a $5 million new proposal to 

begin climate change adaptation, to take it out of the thinking 

about climate change into what are we going to do about climate 

change. 

The near-term opportunities are to deal with our project operations. And we actually have quite a bit of emerging data on areas 

like change in snow melt rates, the timing and the amounts of 

snow melts. And so we are contemplating, if Congress appropriates 

these funds, that we would be able to proceed with pilots that 

would result in examples of how we would adapt primarily with operations. 

As we move beyond that, with sea level rise and the impacts we 

talked about earlier with some of our coastal issues, with the 

64 

changes in our rivers, the impact on our infrastructure, the Corps’ 

infrastructure, is enormous, I think both in terms of the Principles 

and Guidelines that Congress asked us to work on. 

As we consider additional emphasis on this, it is going to be a 

major part of our policy initiative and budget initiatives probably 

for the entirety of this administration. 

Ms. EDWARDS. And would you say that that is a marked change 

from what was done by the Corps previously around the areas of 

climate change? 

Mr. SALT. I would say the Corps is one of the leaders in thinking 

about climate change and doing the analysis. What we are now trying to do is take it from the scientists and move it to the adaptation part of the climate change. 

We are looking beyond adaptation, we are looking at modifying 

Corps projects to be more energy-efficient, less of a carbon footprint. Across the whole spectrum of the climate change issues, I 

think all of these are important policy initiatives of the administration. And I would look for a growing interest in this area throughout the administration. 

Ms. EDWARDS. And so where would you say that the strategy or 

analysis of using risk-based planning models falls now in the 

Corps’ view about how you are viewing your budget and expenditures for climate change? 

Mr. SALT. I want to let the Chief talk about the risk-based approach in the Corps. Basically, you take a look at the various uncertainties, climate change has some huge uncertainties, and so 

you take those uncertainties, and then you examine the risks 

across the full spectrum of those uncertainties and then try and 

come up with an analytical process that allows you to make the 

best investments as you move forward. 

Ms. EDWARDS. General, do you have a comment? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Yes, ma’am. I will put it in the context 

of the levees down in Louisiana. We know that we could expect 

some sea level rise due to climate change, and so you have to plan 

that in. If your levee is going to be a 24-foot-high levee to provide 

100-year protection, 25 years from now, 50 years from now, that 

may have to be either reworked several times or you can supercharge it right now and make it so that it will last longer under 

those conditions. 

So that is the risk. And then you, of course, have the cost; with 

that goes additional costs. 

Actually, in Louisiana we are planning for upgrades, the next upgrades of that levee system in the 25- and 50-year mark. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Okay. 

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Ehlers? 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

I have a few questions about the Great Lakes. Obviously, something of a huge concern to the Great Lakes community and particularly the fishing industry and the non-industry fishing is the Asian 

carp. 

What is the status of the barriers? We have been going around 

and around with you folks for far too long. It seems to me it wasn’t 

65 

that difficult a construction project. Do you have good news? Are 

they both finished? 

General VAN ANTWERP. They are finished. It is whether or not 

we can utilize them to their full capacity, because there still is experimenting going on to see its effect on the navigation industry 

and other things because of the charge associated with the fish barrier. 

But they are operating. The fish barriers are complete. 

Mr. EHLERS. They are completed, they are operational. 

General VAN ANTWERP. To my knowledge. I really need to take 

that for the record and get back with you on the level of operation 

of them. But we were operating them below their capacity because 

you can increase the charge, as I am sure you are aware. 

Mr. EHLERS. You mean voltage, not charge. 

General VAN ANTWERP. The voltage, right. 

Mr. EHLERS. Okay. The replacement lock at Sault Ste. Marie, I 

understand you are at least moving dirt, or are you further along 

than that? 

General VAN ANTWERP. I am going to have to get back with you 

on that. I am not sure where we are. 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I would tell you that I believe there is a contract 

this year, on the funds that were provided this year. Because of the 

benefit-cost ratio for that project, it is not included in the fiscal 

year 2010 budget. 

Mr. EHLERS. It is not included, you said? 

Mr. SALT. That is correct, sir. 

Mr. EHLERS. I was understanding it was. Well, if you can let me 

know on that. 

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which is the EPA will be 

in charge of implementing a $475 million project, does any of that 

go to the Corps, or are you not involved in that at all? 

Mr. SALT. Sir, I am not aware of any of the EPA funds that have 

been distributed to the Corps. We have contributed our own appropriated funds, including the fish barrier that you mentioned before, 

towards that. We have just started our discussions with EPA, and 

I don’t know if—I think it is still possible that some of that would 

come to the Corps, but I don’t know that any has been provided 

to us at this time. 

Mr. EHLERS. And, finally, the dredging problem in the Great 

Lakes. As you know, the commercial shipping has been hampered 

or they have reduced their loads because they can’t get into and 

out of the harbors. How are you coming along on getting caught up 

on the dredging? 

General VAN ANTWERP. We were able to—under the stimulus 

package, or the Recovery Act, include $400 million in there. This 

certainly wasn’t all for the Great Lakes. So we are able to get at 

some of the more crucial dredging requirements. 

And, sir, I do have an update on Sault Ste. Marie. The fiscal year 

2009 appropriation was $17 million. The last event that we have 

had was awarding the coffer dam contract. They are excavating for 

that now, and you are absolutely right on that. 

Mr. EHLERS. Okay. What is the estimate on how long that will 

take? Do you happen to know that? 

66 

General VAN ANTWERP. Generally, a project of that nature is 

probably a couple-year project. But there are no fiscal year 2010 

funds in the budget. That was correct also. 

So the coffer dam normally takes probably a year to year and a 

half, but there are no funds in fiscal year 2010 for that project. 

There is a capability of $123 million. 

Mr. EHLERS. Okay. Well, I hope you are able to finish all these 

before I die. And I am getting fairly old, so I would appreciate 

speeding it up. 

Thank you very much. I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

I am going to ask Ms. Norton if she will come take charge as we 

go vote. 

But before I leave, I would like to say that I have been a very 

strong and consistent supporter for flood control for Dallas, Texas. 

And we ran out of our luck last week and had quite a bit of flooding. Are you aware of that? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. JOHNSON. And I know that we are in the process of trying 

to move forth a little bit with some of that correction, but I wonder 

if you could give me any kind of a progress report as for a timetable. 

General VAN ANTWERP. Well, one of the things we had last week 

was a pump failure of a locally operated pump. We are looking at 

whether we can use some of our emergency funds to assist in getting that back online for the next event. 

As we looked at the Trinity Flood Control project—is that your 

question, ma’am? Along there? There are a couple of milestones, 

and I reviewed them today. And on Thursday afternoon we are 

going to meet with you. I think General Cox will meet with you, 

unless you can make the 2 o’clock meeting. 

We have a mark on the wall for April 20, to make the decision 

whether or not it is feasible to have the tollway inside of the levee 

system or on the northern levee system. So we have a way ahead. 

We are working with the local authorities. And I think it is a good 

plan. We will lay the timetable out on Thursday. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

I will mail out some of the questions that I have. 

I am going to turn it over to Ms. Norton so we can go vote. 

Ms. NORTON. [Presiding.] I thank you, Madam Chair. And I am 

just going to sit here to ask what I hope will get us simply a 

verification of a matter. 

We have always worked very closely with the Corps and very 

much appreciate the work you have done here. Of course, that 

work tells us a lot about pre-home rule in the District, because 

much of the infrastructure, for example, the sewer and water infrastructure—and the Corps is deeply involved in even home rule in 

the District of Columbia. 

One way has to do with the FEMA maps, where the Corps had 

been using a temporary structure rather than levees, because the 

Federal presence at the Mall is in a flood plain. Now, the Federal 

Government—one part of the Federal Government tells the other 

part of the Federal Government—I guess it is Mr. Salt—one part 

67 

tells the other, ′′You have to put real levees in here,′′ and all agreed 

that that would be done. 

I am writing because the city informs me that, while they were 

forced to begin some work by FEMA, and although this project was 

quintessentially shovel-ready, that it hasn’t been identified by the 

Corps for work, although I can’t think of a more classic stimulus. 

In any case, I don’t care where the money comes from. 

We have searched your budget, and I simply want verification that what we have found, which is $6.79 million I believe, is for 

Federal responsibility and you are accepting Federal responsibility 

for this Federal project in the middle of the worst downturn. 

Obviously, the District would not have gone forward since only 

a tiny, tiny fraction of what is not in the Mall, where we have few 

homeowners, is all Federal stuff. I just want to—when I saw that, 

particularly given the fact that the District still thought that it was 

on the hook and I was advising it, ′′Maybe you ought to stay on 

the hook,′′ rather than simply proceed to do the work of the Federal 

Government as to who is the only—the only entity I know that can 

write a check these days is the Federal Government. So then we 

said, ′′Let’s do our homework,′′ because that didn’t sound like the 

Army Corps to just leave us out here stranded. Is this D.C.—it is called D.C. Flood Protection Project $6.79 million for the full cost of the levee project mandated by the new 

FEMA maps? 

General VAN ANTWERP. That will get us to the 100-year protection, or what we call 1 percent. So it does qualify. 

One of the things—the FEMA maps are going to be updated in 

November. So what we are looking at with the District is to sign 

a Memorandum of Agreement which will allow them to start on the 

design. And we think this probably has to be between the Park 

Service, the city, and the Corps. 

Ms. NORTON. Yes, because they did a design on their own dime. 

And I take it they will be reimbursed. Because then the Corps and 

the Park Service said, we would like a more expensive version. And 

apparently some of that work has to, therefore, be done again. 

So I take it that the District will be—I think they may have spent as many as $2.5 million—that they will be reimbursed for 

that expense. 

General VAN ANTWERP. Right. And that is what the memorandum would do. It would allow them to go ahead so that work 

is started, so that, as I understand it, that then FEMA can allow 

no additional flood insurance. Even though it is not finished, it is 

started. That is what the Memorandum of Agreement will address. 

We are working with the city and the Park Service to get that 

done. 

Ms. NORTON. Because they will then have assurance that the 

work will continue because the Corps is going to pick up the cost. 

And to the extent that the District has put out any money on 

threat from FEMA, they—and that is why I look at this $6.79 million, which is a little more than I expected. That is because the 

District has had to do some outlay in the meantime. Is that correct, 

sir? 

General VAN ANTWERP. Right. And that is all-inclusive and will 

bring this to the 100-year protection, that $6.79 million. 

68 

Ms. NORTON. Well, the District has put out money on its own 

that it would—on a Federal project. I am just trying to understand 

whether this—— 

General VAN ANTWERP. It will be a reimbursement. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. 

General VAN ANTWERP. Right, right. It will be a reimbursement. 

And that is what the memorandum will do, is create the conditions 

of that reimbursement. 

Ms. NORTON. All right. This is a hearing very much worth attending, because you made me do my homework. I came thinking 

I am going to have to ask my friends from the Corps how could 

they do that to us. 

And I have come on behalf of our own city and, if I may say so, 

the 20 million visitors who come every year and the 200,000 Federal workers who work here, on behalf of all of them, I appreciate 

that the Corps has stepped forward on this important matter. 

Thank you very much. 

And the hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:37 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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