The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT ACT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S3282-S3283 on May 8, 2013.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT ACT
Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Water Resources Development Act or the WRDA bill that we are considering on the Senate floor. I wanted to begin by thanking leadership on both sides of the aisle for moving this very important legislation to the floor so we can act on it.
This legislation is important because it funds vital infrastructure projects that make our country stronger, safer, and more competitive. I wish to begin by talking about one of those flood protection projects, permanent flood protection for the Red River Valley. The Fargo-Moorhead Area Diversion Project will establish permanent flood protection measures for the Red River Valley region of North Dakota and Minnesota.
It will, in essence, divert water around--actually water that is now almost an annual flood event--population centers, channel it safely downstream for both States. In fact, it will protect nearly one-quarter of a million people and billions of dollars of property in one of the Midwest's most dynamic, productive, and growing metro areas on both sides of the North Dakota-Minnesota border.
Furthermore, this vital infrastructure will not only protect lives and property, it will actually save the Federal Government money. This is very important at a time when we face deficits and debt, something we very much need to address.
So let me explain. This project will actually save the Federal Government money. When the waters threaten, as they have in 4 of the past 5 years, many agencies of the Federal Government are mobilized to protect life and property. That includes the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Coast Guard, even Customs and Border Protection, which has been called in to monitor the advancing waters of the flood from the air, and other agencies as well.
Those are just Federal agencies. In addition, we have State and local agencies that respond as well. Many of them also rely on Federal funding. That includes agencies such as emergency management, the National Guard, State departments of transportation, highway patrol, water commission, human services, departments of health, and many others.
The point is the flood fight requires a lot of work and it costs a lot of money. We are doing it every year. It involves the enormous task of building miles and miles--not feet, not yards, but miles of temporary earthen dams, dikes, and levees. That means moving heavy equipment such as backhoes, bulldozers, dump trucks, as well as tons and tons of dirt. It means activating the National Guard to devote its resources and equipment to the task of fighting the rising waters.
The flood fight also involves filling sandbags, literally millions of sandbags to protect homes and businesses. It involves deploying industrial pumps to try to move water out faster than it is moving into the cities. That, I tell you, is very fast at the height of the flood, thousands of cubic feet per second.
It means calling on local police and highway patrol officers to work overtime to direct traffic, provide security, and keep order. Ultimately it means paying out millions in taxpayer dollars year after year, and that is the point. We are fighting this flood every single year, and we are expending these dollars every single year.
Then there is another phase after the water recedes and then comes the cleanup: removing those dams, dikes, and levees, disposing of those millions of sandbags, cleaning the streets, repairing the damage, and addressing the multitude of costs and time-consuming tests necessary to get things back to normal. Again, as I have said, you are doing all of this on a temporary basis, and you have to do it all over again the following year. In fact, the expense of mounting a successful flood fight year in and year out amounts to many millions of dollars every year.
For example, the successful flood fight of 2009 cost Fargo-Moorhead about $50 million. When you lose the flood fight, the cost is much greater in both human terms and in financial terms.
For example, in another community, a much smaller community, Minot, ND, lost the flood fight in 2011, destroying or damaging more than 4,000 homes and displacing thousands of people. The Federal Government has put more than $632 million--let me repeat--more than $632 million into the city's recovery efforts to date, and we are still not done.
A similar flood in the Fargo-Moorhead metro area would be far worse and far more expensive. The Army Corps of Engineers predicts a 500-year flood in the Red River Valley would cost more than $10 million in damage, and that doesn't even take into account the impact in terms of human cost and difficulty to families and to businesses.
Let's look at how the costs of such a flood are typically shared. This is very important when we do the cost-benefit analysis. Typically local government covers 15 percent of the cost. The State pays about 10 percent of the cost, and the Federal Government pays by far the largest share of the cost. The Federal Government is paying 75 percent of the cost every single year--oh, except, in severe disasters, FEMA recommends raising the 75-percent Federal share for public assistance, the repair of infrastructure, to 90 percent Federal cost after you meet a certain threshold.
When you have very significant damage and higher losses, now the Federal Government is picking up as much as 90 percent of the cost, particularly for the public infrastructure. That cost, in our case now, is incurred on a year-in and year-out basis.
In fact, Fargo-Moorhead has not only had to mount a flood fight but then conduct cleanup afterwards in 4 out of the last 5 years, including this spring. That is my point. That is exactly my point. With permanent flood protection, which is provided through the WRDA bill, we can break that cycle. With one-time spending we can protect people on a permanent basis and do so much more cost-effectively. Once you build it, you are done with the endless and traumatic sequence of fighting floods and cleaning up after them. Not only that, but the cost-sharing for permanent flood protection is lower for the Federal Government. The Federal share would be less than half of the cost of the permanent project, 45 percent of the permanent project. That compares with 75 to 90 percent the Federal Government is obliged to cover for the annual flood fight or, worse, if you lose the flood fight and you have that recovery effort.
We are saying for the permanent protection, the non-Federal share, Federal share 45 percent. The non-Federal share is more than half, which means State and local government will cover 55 percent of the cost, which is actually the majority of the project. We have already lined up those funds. At that local level and the State level, we are ready to go.
This is a two-State effort, as I said. That cost is incurred by the State of North Dakota, by local government, and Minnesota, and it breaks out as follows: Minnesota would cover about 10 percent of the non-Federal share or about $100 million. North Dakota will cover 90 percent of the non-Federal share, about $900 million, divided evenly between the State and local municipalities, each putting in about $450 million.
In the end you can't put a price on the kind of hardship and despair that losing a home or a business means after the fact. You can help to spare people that hardship in the first place with permanent flood protection.
That is what the Fargo-Moorhead diversion is all about, and that is why it is so important to North Dakota, to Minnesota, and to the Red River Valley region of the North. The Water Resources Development Act, however, does more. It is key to building and rebuilding vital water infrastructure projects throughout our Nation, projects that will make us stronger and safer.
Moreover, the WRDA bill includes streamlining provisions to help us complete worthy projects more cost effectively with less bureaucracy, with greater savings, and with less redtape. In addition, we work conscientiously through the process to make sure we do these vital projects right. They have been subjected to full corps review, including cost-benefit analyses, in an open and transparent way.
For all of these reasons and more, I urge my colleagues to support the Water Resources Development Act for the peace of mind permanent flood control and protection will give to the people of our region and other regions throughout the country.
I yield the floor.
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