James Oberstar: “the structural integrity of dams throughout the United States has been a concern of the Committee on Transportation and…”

“the structural integrity of dams throughout the United States has been a concern of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its predecessors going back to the Rivers and Harbors Committee in the very beginning of this Nation. We have repeatedly visited the issue of dam safety and enacted dam safety programs in years past, reauthorizing in 1996, and this legislation is an update of the 1996 legislation. The Corps of Engineers, at the direction of our committee and through the reauthorization we provided, working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has identified 79,777 public and private dams in the United States of which 11,811 are high-hazard dams. What is troubling to us on the committee is that the number of high-hazard dams has increased by over 20 percent in the last 6 years. Clearly action has to be taken. We have had 125 failures between 1999 and 2004. This legislation will put FEMA on alert, put the Corps of Engineers on alert, raise visibility of these issues and provide the tools necessary to take action to protect citizens living below these structures from catastrophic failure that can wipe out whole communities. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S. 2735, the National Dam Safety Program Act, which reauthorizes and amends the National Dam Safety Program.”