NRMCA Announces Multiple Victories on Federal Water Resources Issues

Last week, the House and Senate announced that they had finalized the Conference Report to H.R. 3080, and S. 610 the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA). The report will be voted on by the House on Tuesday and the Senate expects to take it up before the Memorial Day recess. WRRDA both reforms and authorizes the programs of the Army Corps of Engineers’ (Army Corps) Civil Works programs related to navigation, flood risk management, recreation, infrastructure and environmental stewardship. NRMCA was able to secure several major victories in the WRRDA conference report.

NRMCA’s resilient construction language is included in Section 3022 (Durability, Sustainability and Resilience) of the final text as a directive to the Army Corps to encourage the use of resilient construction techniques to the maximum extent practicable in carrying projects. The majority of the Senate’s Blunt Nelson amendment language was included in this section. The section clarifies, for the purposes of the bill, that a resilient construction technique will  "allow a water resources infrastructure project - to resist hazards due to a major disaster and to continue to serve the primary function of the water resources infrastructure project following a major disaster; reduce the magnitude or duration of a disruptive event to a water resources infrastructure project; and have the absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, and recoverability to withstand a potentially disruptive event."

Additionally, NRMCA removed the materials references from the resilient construction section that were originally included in the House bill. Materials were placed in a more appropriate section (3021, which is about the use of innovative materials) While we advocated for material neutral language, we are nonetheless happy that competing materials - geosynthetics and advanced composites - are not listed as resilient materials and that roller compacted concrete is included along with the competing materials.  

Finally, NRMCA secured two directives in studies that were included in the Conference Report. The first, asks the National Academy of Sciences to consider the reduction in long-term costs and vulnerability to infrastructure through the use of resilient construction techniques (Sec. 3023), and the second asks the U.S. Government Accountability Office to make any recommendations on the use of resilient construction techniques to reduce future vulnerability from flood, storm and drought in its study on the management of flood, drought and storm damage (Sec. 3024).