Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I strongly support S. 2848, the Water Resources Development Act, WRDA, of 2016. I want to thank and commend Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member Boxer, and their staffs for developing a bipartisan bill to authorize and invest in our Nation's infrastructure--our harbors and waterways, flood and coastal protection projects, and drinking and clean water systems. I particularly want to thank them for including provisions on small dam safety from S. 2835, the High Hazard Potential Small Dam Safety Act that I introduced with Senator Capito. Like our bill, this legislation creates a new program in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, to assist States and communities in rehabilitating small dams that have high-hazard potential, meaning that they threaten human life and property if they fail. There are thousands of these dams across the country, and we have seen the damage they can cause in the instances when they have failed. While there are programs to address small agricultural dams that were built by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there is no Federal program to deal with the small dams that proliferate the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest, including 78 high-hazard potential dams in Rhode Island. The bill authorizes up to $445 million over 10 years to begin to address these structures, with funding to be disbursed on both a formula and a competitive basis.…”