It snowed the afternoon they worked the Hill this year. Some held umbrellas over their heads as they made their way through the city. Some flipped up their collars. There was a lot to do. The National Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2007 (S. 775), the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act of 2007 (H.R. 389), the Water Quality Financing Act of 2007 (H.R. 720), and other issues before the 110th Congress required attention.
More than 130 members from across the country came to Washington, D.C., last month to participate in asce’s policy week activities. The event, held March 5–9, marked the seventh consecutive year that ASCE has conducted training sessions and sponsored advocacy activities to help members lobby for legislation aimed at boosting the quality of the nation’s infrastructure.
“We’ve identified eleven pieces of legislation that we think would raise the grades on the nation’s infrastructure if Congress were to take action on them,” Brian Pallasch, asce’s director of government relations, said on March 7 during a training session conducted as part of the Society’s Leadership Training in Government Relations Program. “These are short-term steps that we can take to begin solving some of the nation’s most immediate infrastructure problems. Hopefully when you talk to your legislators or their staffs today, they will know something about our Raising the Grades campaign.”
The legislative strategy recently outlined by ASCE, formally entitled Raising the Grades: Small Steps for Big Improvements in America’s Failing Infrastructure, includes the following actions: enacting the National Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2007 to establish a national commission on infrastructure; reauthorizing funding for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport and Airway Trust Fund and increasing user fees as necessary for continued funding of that agency’s Airport Improvement Program; ensuring that funding is forthcoming for the surface transportation programs authorized under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU); using all funds that accumulate in the Highway Trust Fund to invest in the nation’s surface transportation system; reauthorizing the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act of 2001; enacting the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act of 2007; establishing a national levee safety program; enacting the Water Quality Financing Act of 2007; authorizing $1 billion in annual funding for the Safe Drinking Water Act’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund; enacting the Water Resources Development Act of 2005 (S. 728); and ensuring the integrity of the Inland Waterways Trust Fund. “All week we’ve been pushing this,” Pallasch emphasized. “We’ve bought ads on local radio; we’ve placed full-color ads in policy papers; we’ve also placed banner ads on Web sites.”
Perhaps the most pressing legislative issue that members lobbied for was the National Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2007, which was introduced in the Senate on March 7 by George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), Tom Carper (D-Delaware), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D–New York), and Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota). If enacted, the legislation would create a national commission on infrastructure aimed at ensuring that the country’s infrastructure met current and future demands and bolstered economic growth. The legislation would also require that the commission conduct a comprehensive study of infrastructure and develop recommendations for a federal plan that would outline national infrastructure priorities and define the criteria to be used by federal, state, and local agencies in assessing infrastructure needs.
“The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina made painfully clear the urgent need for improvements to our aging infrastructure,” said Voinovich in a recent press release. “Our infrastructure is collapsing due to insufficient funding. And the deterioration of our nation’s waterways and infrastructure systems is impacting our economy, our environment, and the overall welfare of the American people. This legislation gets to the heart of the problem by establishing a commission that will provide concrete recommendations for future infrastructure needs. When enacted, this commission will lead the way in providing long-term solutions to the dire problems we currently face.”
asce members were also informed of the importance of gaining support for the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act of 2007, which would establish a program within the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund dam rehabilitation and repairs. The legislation would also create a public fund to award grants and thus defray the costs incurred in repairing or rehabilitating publicly owned dams. “There are around thirty-five hundred unsafe dams in this country right now,” noted Brad Iarossi, p.e., m.asce, a former president of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, during one of the training sessions. “This is largely because our dam population is aging. By the year 2020, eighty-five percent of the dams in this country will be fifty years old or older. And as we learn more about how dams fail, as we’re able to predict large flood or earthquake events, we’re seeing that lots of these dams that we built with the best of intentions thirty or forty years ago don’t meet current standards right now. So we have this growing list of unsafe dams that have become a big problem.”
In 2006 asce’s Board of Direction adopted Policy 280, which deals with dam safety and “supports the enactment of state and federal regulations and legislation to protect the health and welfare of citizens from the catastrophic impact of dam failure.” The policy also urges the U.S. government to take “responsibility for the safety of all federal dams and federally regulated dams . . . [including] funding [for] the Dam Safety and Security Act of 2002,” and asks that “federal agencies, including the departments of Defense and Interior . . . be adequately funded to operate and maintain their dams as well as to provide sufficient security improvements.” asce assigned dams an overall grade of D in its 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, and since then there have been modest gains in improving the quality of the dams that have been deemed unsafe. Experts estimate that more than $10 billion would be needed over the next 10 years to address the deficiencies of all the nonfederal dams whose failure would cause loss of life.
Later in the day on March 7, after the training session, three members of asce’s Georgia Section—Raymond J. Wilke, P.E., M.ASCE, John E. Underwood, P.E., M.ASCE, and Andrew C. Kennedy, P.E., M.ASCE—met with Camila Knowles, a legislative assistant of Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia). The meeting, which took place in room 416 of the Russell Senate Office Building, focused on key infrastructure issues related to asce’s action plan. “The National Infrastructure Improvement Act is an effort to get a full report back to Congress on current and future needs on infrastructure,” said Wilke, who is the president of the Georgia Section. “It will also help us focus on the long-term solutions for our nation. Where can we improve the grades the most with the least amount of money? Where are we going to get the biggest bang for our buck? This legislation will ensure that a report is done and goes to Congress in 2009. It is very specific about the types of people who would need to be on the commission. One of the benefits for [Chambliss], if he were to come on board as a cosponsor, would be to have a major role in guiding this across all areas of infrastructure.”
Wilke also underscored the importance of the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act of 2007. “The need for dam funding has gone up as we’ve identified more and more unsafe dams, and this bill actually provides money to do something about it,” he said. “Two-thirds of the money would come from the feds and one-third would be a state match. So this bill is not just asking the feds to do all the work. This would be based on proportionate state funding. I believe Georgia is ranked eighth in the country in terms of the total number of dams per state, so we would have the eighth-largest share of the money.”
The bill, which was introduced in February by Representative John T. Salazar (D-Colorado), calls for $200 million over five years to repair state and locally owned dams. Georgia would be expected to receive about $6 million of this amount. The state currently has approximately 179 dams seen as posing a safety risk and more than 100 dams requiring repair or rehabilitation.
The next morning, Voinovich and Carper spoke at a breakfast meeting held at the restaurant Charlie Palmer Steak, which is on Constitution Avenue across the street from the U.S. Capitol in the building housing asce’s Washington, D.C., office. “I’m concerned about the level of our debt and our fiscal responsibilities,” Voinovich said. “If you look at where we’re going today, we’re in deep, deep trouble. Our national debt is the highest it’s ever been. We’re at war and we just keep driving up the debt. I learned a long time ago that you don’t solve problems by sticking them in a drawer. We’re falling behind, and there are a lot of things that need to be done. I appreciate the value of asce’s mission and feel very proud to be among a group like yours. I want to thank you all for being active in this organization and stepping up and helping us with this infrastructure push.”
In his remarks, Carper too expressed enthusiasm for asce’s infrastructure initiative. “We need an infrastructure that makes sense for this country, our economy, and our kids,” he said. “What I want to one day say about what we did in 2007 is this: We had a bunch of engineers from all over the country get together behind a piece of legislation that George Voinovich and Hillary Clinton and Norm Coleman and I got passed. Then the commission went to work and its work was adopted by a president who said we’re going to do these things because they’ll help us have a better future ad a better life and because they’re good for our country. Let’s go to work!”
All told, members visited more than 200 congressional offices. On March 9 their lobbying efforts yielded some encouraging results, as the House passed the Water Quality Financing Act of 2007. The legislation, introduced in January by Representative Jim Oberstar (D-Minnesota), would provide $14 billion for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund over four years, beginning with $2 billion in fiscal year 2008. This fund, which provides low-interest loans and grants to state and local governments to rebuild wastewater treatment plants, has suffered from declining federal investments in recent years.
The nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure systems each received a grade of D– on asce’s 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. That assessment noted that although the country faces a shortfall of $11 billion annually in the amount needed to replace aging facilities and comply with drinking water regulations, federal funding for drinking water remains at less than 10 percent of the total national requirement. Many wastewater systems have reached the end of their useful design lives, and the overflows that occur during major rainstorms and heavy snowmelts are discharging billions of gallons of untreated sewage into U.S. surface waters each year. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2005 that the nation would have to invest $390 billion over the following 20 years to replace existing systems and build new ones to meet increasing demands.
“Clean drinking and wastewater systems are some of the greatest advances in improving public health,” asce’s president, W.F. Marcuson, Ph.D., P.E.., Hon.M.ASCE, said recently. “As a result, protecting America’s drinking and wastewater systems is vital to the health, safety, and welfare of the public, and we commend chairman Oberstar for his leadership on this critical national issue.”
—Mark Fitzgerald