Donald M. Payne: “shortly after I was elected to represent Virginia's Fifth Congressional District, I learned of the Sandy River…”

“shortly after I was elected to represent Virginia's Fifth Congressional District, I learned of the Sandy River Reservoir. It was a local project which was much-needed to provide drinking water in my district. The county had spent millions of its taxpayer dollars building a dam and clearing a site only to be told by the Corps of Engineers that it could not be filled because it violated legislation on wetlands. The project sat unfilled for years and years as a monument to the failure of government to serve the people. My Transportation Committee was working on transportation reauthorization, then known as ISTEA, and I worked on a bipartisan and collaborative basis with my colleagues and with the leadership of the committee, Norm Mineta and Bud Shuster at the time. We inserted language requiring the Corps to fill that reservoir. I worked along with Senator John Warner, a Republican from Virginia, who did the same thing in the Senate bill, and we passed the bill. President Bush 41 signed the bill, about which, incidentally, he said was one of the best things he did during his Presidency. Today, the Sandy River Reservoir is a beautiful 750-acre body of water providing drinking water to thousands of Virginians and is recognized as one of the best freshwater fisheries in the Eastern United States. Bipartisanship, collaboration, and congressional action, the Congress working for the people as it should, and may it always be so.”