House and Senate Votes Soon
On May 15, the House Transportation and Infrastructure and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committees released a final Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA). The House is likely to vote on the final WRRDA bill next week, while the Senate will reportedly take it up shortly after the House. The bill incorporates a number of AGC priorities that the association has consistently advocated for throughout this process, including:
- Establishing a sound procedure for authorizing new, high priority projects while deauthorizing obsolete ones;
- Expending the full amount of revenues generated by the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for harbor maintenance. The bill would do so by FY 2025 through gradually increasing the annual percentage spent on actual harbor maintenance;
- Allowing more Inland Waterway Trust fund revenues to pay for projects aside from Olmsted Lock and Dam;
- Creating a public-private partnership pilot program that will allow the USACE to leverage government funds with private dollars on public works under its jurisdiction;
- Streamlining the project review process under the “3x3x3” program, which limits feasibility studies to 3 years and $3 million, while requiring the three levels of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)—District, Division and Headquarters—to concurrently conduct reviews of such studies; and
- Limiting the time environmental claims could be filed on water resources projects’ environmental impact statements from 6 to 3 years.
- Most notably, the bill would authorize 34 new projects for approximately $12 billion, while deauthorizing about $18 billion-worth of projects that have remained on the books for years without any action. To view the projects authorized, go to page 176 of the bill. AGC will provide more details on the WRRDA bill after further review of the text.