Ranking Member Kaptur Statement at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request Hearing
Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Ranking Member of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee's fiscal year 2024 budget request for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation hearing:
**As prepared for delivery**
Thank you very much, Chairman Fleischmann. Welcome.
We are here today to discuss the fiscal year 2024 budget request for the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. Your agencies play a critical role in strengthening our economy, sustaining life on Earth, and ensuring public safety against the now-constant onslaught of natural disasters across the country.
Thank you for your fortitude and for joining us today.
Investments in the critical water infrastructure of our nation give people a secure source of vital sustenance while supporting a family’s ability to work in good-paying jobs and spur economic growth. The lack of freshwater means annihilation and dislocation.
The essential investments in our annual appropriations bills, combined with the historic Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act, are beginning to address our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and build back a better America.
This last year – and just this last weekend – mark yet another extraordinary period of extreme weather across the country.
California just faced the twelfth atmospheric river event since late December. These events are now too commonplace. The massive amounts of rain and snow they deposit, and the widespread flooding and hurricane-like winds that accompany them, take a particularly heavy toll on town after town and have especially harmed farmworkers and their communities who live in the most vulnerable places. For the first time in modern history, California, according to our Census Bureau, is witnessing an outmigration of its population.
Across the southwest, the severe drought has resulted in the Colorado River crisis. This river is a lifeline, as you well know for millions of our fellow citizens. Experts are now saying that Lake Mead and Lake Powell are unlikely to refill for another 50 years.
In the southeast, Hurricane Ian devastated Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, causing more than $100 billion in damage and at least 150 fatalities.
Last summer, there was devastating flooding across Kentucky and Missouri, which damaged thousands of homes, businesses, and infrastructure. Deadly flooding hit Kentucky again just last month.
In my region, ice typically covers 70 percent of the Great Lakes. But this year it covered just 6 percent, the smallest amount ever recorded in history. This may have serious implications across for our water and native species in our region for the coming spring and summer seasons.
The United States had 18 different billion-dollar weather disasters in 2022. And last year is building on an increasing trend. A recent report found that 90 percent of the counties in the United States suffered weather disasters in the last decade, impacting 93 percent of the country’s population – more than 300 million people. It is undeniable that we are witnessing growing weather events stemming from climate change occurring in real time before our very eyes.
With this new normal, it is critical for agencies that are project-based, like the Corps and Reclamation, to think more broadly and plan regionally, and implement solutions on a watershed and sub-watershed basis to make our communities more resilient.
In the Great Lakes region, projects like assuring passage through the Soo Locks are prime examples of investments that will turbocharge the resiliency and efficiency of our maritime transportation system. Similarly, the Brandon Road project is addressing the economic and environmental damage unleashed by invasive carp species. I hope we can continue to work together to maintain support for Ohio’s ports, that not only play a vital role to support continued economic development but also serve as a source of dredged material that can be used to increase shoreline resilience to the impacts of climate change.
As we begin our discussion on this fiscal year 2024, I must say I am again disappointed by the proposed reductions of $1.3 billion for the Corps of Engineers and $485 million for Reclamation. While historic investments were made through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act in both of your agencies, we have significant work to do to better protect Americans against severe drought, flooding, and storms.
There is bipartisan support in Congress for the work that your agencies undertake on behalf of the American people. Your work is not just necessary, it is critical. Thank you for being here, and we look forward to your testimony.
With that, I’ll close my remarks, and I look forward to discussing this request.