Roy Blunt: “I want to talk about the four amendments I filed on this bill. I will say right upfront, all four are supported by my…”

“I want to talk about the four amendments I filed on this bill. I will say right upfront, all four are supported by my Missouri colleague, Senator McCaskill, so they are bipartisan amendments. Two of them would deal with a property ownership issue created by an infringement by Federal regulators, by FERC. They both deal with a private power generating dam that was built in 1931. It created a lake called Lake of the Ozarks, and over the years private property owners have constructed literally thousands of homes that on this map beside me are impacted. The houses are the red dots. The other areas in there are thousands of buildings of one kind or another on a lake that is one of the most used lakes in the country. Some people go to those houses on the weekend and a lot of people live there all the time. This is their home. Since the 1950s, the Lake of the Ozarks has been the most visited lake by boaters in the Midwest. It is a lake that is not owned by the Federal Government. Tourism at this lake totals about $200 million annually. Because of this tourist industry there is lots of private investment. In 2004, Ameren Electric, the current owner of the lake--it was built, again, in the 1930s by Union Electric, which later became Ameren Electric--applied to FERC to renew their license to generate power at Bagnell Dam, which is the dam that was built to impound the water that created the Lake of the Ozarks.…”