Russ Feingold: “today I voted in support of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. While I have concerns about the $15 billion…”

“today I voted in support of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. While I have concerns about the $15 billion price tag of the Senate bill and Congress' failure to prioritize these new projects and the nearly $60 billion of authorized but unconstructed Corps projects, I strongly support the reform provisions in the underlying bill. These reforms are absolutely essential for improving the Nation's water resources planning and should be the baseline of reforms coming out of conference. These important reform provisions include independent peer review of costly or controversial Corps projects; dramatic improvements to the Corps' mitigation process; modernizing the Corps' woefully out of date planning guidelines; establishing a new national policy that directs the Corps to avoid impacts to floodplains; and requiring an interagency assessment of the nation's vulnerability to flood and related storm damage and recommendations to improve the Nation's various flood prevention programs. Senator McCain and I have long championed these reforms, and I thank him and his staff for their continued commitment to this important issue.”