Water Resources Development Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. WEBER of Texas. Mr. Chairman, my amendment deals with flood control levees and the way the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is assessing and rating these vital community-based, flood-defense systems.

The Corps has been developing levee risk ratings around the United States without the close involvement of local project sponsors, and this is unacceptable.

What is more, the agency is trying to characterize ``flood risk to our communities'' without routinely offering viable solution alternatives or well-informed site-specific cost estimates for these solutions. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Levee Portfolio Report from March of this year, the agency indicates the following on page 28: `` . . . there may be reluctance to share risk information with the public when an immediate and viable risk management solution has not been identified.''

Reluctance? Reluctance indeed.

The Corps has been developing a risk-rating tool called the Levee Safety Action Classification, or L-SAC. Local levee systems and affected communities are labeled as either very high risk, high risk, moderate risk, low risk, or very low risk for flood inundation.

Thus far, 13 percent of the Corps' program levees are in the very high, the high, or the moderate risk categories.

Notably, these systems are estimated to have 8 million people that live or work behind them. My own district includes such an area near Freeport, Texas, where nationally-significant manufacturing and R&D operations have occurred since 1940.

These Corps ratings, which are to be widely broadcast to affected citizens, businesses, and community leaders, will have significant consequences for life safety and important secondary concerns like property values, economic development, zoning, and local governance.

These ratings have been formulated without the sort of close local engagement that is required for successful flood hazard mitigation. Moreover, according to the Corps itself, the ratings are not accompanied by viable solution alternatives and cost estimates for these solutions.

We can and must do better than this.

My amendment enhances the Corps' L-SAC risk tool. It should not only assess levee system locations, conditions, and failure consequences from a Federal perspective, but also include affected levee owners and operators in communities in a completely integrated way to assess, communicate, and mitigate the full range of flood risks.

Only then will we progressively improve the L-SAC scores and, more importantly, improve local safety conditions with viable long-term economic solutions.

This amendment does not remove Corps risk assessment and communication duties that were assigned by the Congress in the 2007 WRDA. To the contrary, it supplements these duties by assuring, A, that individual levee system L-SAC ratings are transparent; and, B, that they play a meaningful role in expanding options and improving life safety outcomes.

This is a nonpartisan, meritorious proposal with national application. It increases transparency and it improves both risk communication and actual risk mitigation.

Finally, considering the scarcity of available taxpayer resources necessary for actual infrastructure improvements, my amendment also cuts some fat.

For example, number one, it foregoes reestablishment of the Committee on Levee Safety. That committee produced a draft report in January 2009, and later updated, that formed the basis of the 2014 WRDA, which, by and large, has not been executed.

Number two, the amendment eliminates the unfilled position of ``Administrator of the Levee Safety Program'' and accompanying authorization for ``such staff as necessary.'' The Chief of Engineers, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, eight Corps Division Commanders, 38 Corps District Commanders, multiple agency programmatic chiefs, and existing staff would seem sufficient to me to execute appropriate levee-related policy authorized by Congress.

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Mr. WEBER of Texas. Mr. Chairman, with that in mind, from the gentleman from Louisiana, if we can work together on this in attempting to address this.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time, and I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

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