Author Archive
Hidden, But Not Forgotten: The Engineering Role in Legacy Site Remediation
November 5th, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
Gold King Mine Spill Emergency Retaining Ponds. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
ASCE Provides Expertise at Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Academies
August 4th, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
Whit Remer, ASCE Government Relations staff, Sam Carter, Rockefeller Foundation, Bill Wallace, ASCE Member, Jessie Handforth Kome, HUD
WRRDA One Year Later
June 18th, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
Just over a year ago President Obama signed the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014 (WRRDA) into law. It was the first major water resources bill Congress passed in nearly seven years. Historically, major water resources bills were signed on a two year cycle, but partisanship and a ban on congressional earmarks made the legislation increasingly difficult to pass. Below are some of the major provisions of the law and how far along they have come in the last year. Levee and Dam Safety Programs WRRDA reauthorized the National Dam Safety Program and establishes a Levee Safety Initiative. The Dam Safety Program was last authorized in 2006 and the levee program expands an existing program beyond federally owned levees. WRRDA authorizes $13.9 million annually for the dam program which provides grants to states for activities such as inspections, training programs and public safety awareness campaigns. The levee program is authorized at $79 million annually and charges FEMA and the Army Corps to inventory the estimated 10,000 miles of levees across the country and develop consistent guidelines for designing, building, operating and maintaining the vital flood control structures. For both programs, we recommend full congressional appropriation. While new appropriations are negotiated, the Corps and FEMA should rely on WRRDA authorization and existing funds to set these up. Water Infrastructure Finance Innovative Authority WRRDA establishes a new lending program called the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers for major water resources projects. The program works cooperatively with the Department of Treasury and is modeled off the popular transportation lending program TIFIA. EPA has so far embraced the program and has held a series of informational webinars on its progress and is reportedly hiring staff to oversee the program. The 2015 omnibus appropriations bill gave EPA $2.2 million in administrative costs to get the program up and running and the recently released FY16 draft House EPA appropriations bill provides $4.2 million over two years. The Army Corps has yet to provide any public information on their efforts to start the program and recent Corps appropriations bills make no mention of the program. One thing we’re keeping an eye out on are efforts to remove the prohibition on using tax-exempt bonds to fund the 51% of project cost not eligible for funding through WIFIA. Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and Inland Waterway Trust Fund Arguably two programs to make the most headway following the passage of WRRDA are the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF) and Inland Water Way Trust Fund (IWTF). WRRDA provided important fixes to these two programs desperately needed to meet demands placed on our on waterway transportation systems. First, WRRDA set new target appropriations for the HMFT, which both the House and Senate hit in their FY16 funding bills. Previously Congress only appropriated a fraction of the funds collected back into related O&M activities. On the inland side, the biggest progress made since WRRDA was actually a result of a late 2014 December bill that extended numerous tax benefits set to expire at the end of the year. Stuffed in that bill was a 9-cent increase to the barge diesel fuel user fee which funds the IWTF. The increase was widely supported by the inland waterway community. Clean Water State Revolving Fund WRRDA made several changes to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF). The new CWSRF provisions provide loan flexibility, lower interest rates and extended repayment periods of 30 years. CWSRF funds may also now be used to implement watershed plans, water conservation, stormwater recapture, and for technical assistance to small and medium treatment works. Reports from the field show the expansion of eligible activities are being utilized. ASCE and other stakeholders also advocated for Qualifications Based Selection (QBS) requirements in the update, which were ultimately adopted in EPA’s implementation guidance to its regional offices. Army Corps of Engineers Project Prioritization Identifying water resources projects ripe for federal investment in the era of earmark bans has proved to be a headache for Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers. To comply with the self-imposed ban, WRRDA Sec. 7001 requires the Corps produce an annual project list for Congress which outlines potential new authorizations. Because the list originates with the Administration rather than with Congress, the process complies with the earmark ban. The Corps released its first report in February, which was front and center at a House Transportation and Infrastructure committee hearing last week. According to testimony by Rep. Gibbs, Congress envisioned a process where nonfederal sponsors would recommend projects to the Corps, which would be included in the list so long as the federal government had some jurisdiction over the project. The issue is only 19 of the 114 projects identified by nonfederal sponsors were included in the report—the rest were relegated to an appendix and according to some congressional lawyers are therefore not eligible for funding. It’s likely Congress will provide cleared instructions on 7001 in the next WRRDA; in the meantime all eyes are on the Army Corps and White House Office of Management and Budget, which also has oversight over the list. Conclusion As described above, a lot has been done in the last year since WRRDA was signed. While this may help tick up the ASCE Report Card for Americas Infrastructure Cumulative Grade of D+, much work lay ahead. There is still a $60 billion backlog of projects at the Army Corps and skepticism remains that WRRDA’s public private partnership can help reduce that backlog. President Obama’s proposal for new public infrastructure financing still needs support in Congress. We hope Congress will stick to its goal of passing a WRRDA every two years. In the meantime, they should appropriate funds for the programs that were authorized in the last WRRDA 2014.EPA Finalizes WOTUS Rule
June 4th, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
Last week the Obama Administration released a final rule setting new bounds on the reach of federal water jurisdiction. The “Waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS) rule is more than 20 years in the making. Uncertainty stemming from three Supreme Court decisions left the two primary agencies responsible for implementing the rule—the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corp of Engineers—with no choice but to write new guidance on when the federal government could require a permit for projects that impact water they may eventually reach traditional jurisdictional waters. After years of reviewing and developing science to support the underlying rule the two agencies released a draft for public comment in April of 2014. Following significant backlash against the rule, the agencies twice extended the public comment period, eventually receiving more than one million public comments. ASCE held a special webinar on the proposed rule with top administration officials; one of nearly 300 stakeholder meetings the agencies undertook. ASCE submitted public comments urging key changes to the rule with input from technical committees. After nine months of reviewing comments and rewriting the rule, EPA and the Corps published a final rule last week.How the New Rule Stacks Up
EPA and the Corps received a lot of feedback (and criticism) on the draft rule. ASCE was among the commenters, striving to provide constructive feedback that would lead to a clearer rule for engineers working on water resources projects. The final rule addresses eight of the nine areas ASCE made recommendations, making significant and substantive changes urged by ASCE and other stakeholder groups. Here are a few of the changes:- The draft rule regulates all tributaries “without qualification,” in the agencies own words. ASCE urged a more refined definition of tributary that provides clarity on descriptive characteristics of upstream tributary features. The new rule underscores that jurisdictional water must demonstrate “volume, frequency, and duration of flow sufficient to create” a bed, bank and ordinary high water mark. References to flow were previously not included in the draft rule.
- Under the draft rule “adjacent” waters were defined as those “bordering, contiguous or neighboring” traditional navigable waters. ASCE and other stakeholders expressed concern with the potentially broad definition of neighboring. The new rule sets bright-line rules on when an adjacent body of water is considered neighboring. The final rule provides that neighboring waters are those that are:
- Within 100 feet of the ordinary high water mark
- Located in the 100-year floodplain and not more than 1,500 feet from the ordinary high water mark
- Located within 1,500 feet of the high tide line
- Riparian Areas and Floodplains. The final rule spends multiple page recognizing concerns comments expressed over the terminology associated with riparian areas and floodplains. To clarify the final rule accepts the recommendation of ASCE to adopt the standard FEMA 100 year flood plain map widely used and recognized in the civil engineering practice.
- ASCE expressed concern with the term “uplands” used in the draft rule when referring to construction of ditches. The final rule eliminates the term “uplands.”
- Stormwater control features. Many ASCE members expressed concern that the new rule would bring under jurisdiction stormwater control features, such as municipal separate storm systems or green infrastructure features. The rule addresses at length the concern ASCE raised with regard to stormwater control features such retention ponds, gutters and rain gardens. The final rule specifically excludes “stormwater control features constructed to convey, treat or store stormwater that are created in dry land.” ASCE will continue to urge that EPA and the Corps continue to encourage the use green infrastructure.
Adapting Infrastructure to a Changing Climate
June 2nd, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
Every week this blog, Save America’s Infrastructure highlights the well-documented deterioration of our country’s once world-class infrastructure. It’s been our position for a while that the primary threat to America’s infrastructure is a shortfall in investment. However last week ASCE published a new paper highlighting an emerging critical stressor engineers aren’t yet prepared to address: the impacts of extreme weather caused by climate change. Adapting Infrastructure and Civil Engineering Practice to a Changing Climate, a new report, authored by ASCE’s Committee on Adapting to a Changing Climate (CACC), is rich with information documenting the challenges of climate change to the engineers who design and maintain our nation’s infrastructure. The committee comprises more than a dozen leading engineers from across multiple sectors that spent two years compiling science data and formulating recommendations for civil engineers to recognize and—adapt infrastructure to—the threats of climate change. The committee identifies two major challenges of climate change to the engineering practice:- The absence of regional and local climate models. A vast majority of current climate science is performed at the global scale. Engineers require more localized models to effectively design infrastructure. The authors suggest increased research and science across disciplines to better understand likely regional climate scenarios and develop scalable localized models.
- Current engineering practice utilizes historic data to design infrastructure (known as stationarity). Instead, the authors suggest incorporating future climate trends into infrastructure design and adopt low-regret, adaptive approaches.
Tags: climate change, resiliency
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Dam Safety Deserves Awareness
May 29th, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
Extreme storms in Texas and Oklahoma are testing the strength of many dams this week. Our thoughts are with those affected, and it is hoped that there are no dam failures contributing to the challenges these communities face. Such failures have had dire effects; it was this same week back in 1889 when the worst dam failure in U.S. history occurred – known as the Johnstown (Penn.) Flood – when the South Fork Dam failed killing more than 2,200 people. On Sunday – May 31st –we commemorate this day as National Dam Safety Awareness Day to remind ourselves of the lessons learned after that failure.
As we approach National Dam Safety Awareness Day, it’s important to take a minute to underscore the state of dam infrastructure across the nation, given a “D” grade in the Infrastructure Report Card.
Dams are an extremely important part of this nation’s infrastructure—equal in importance to bridges, roads, airports, and other major components of the infrastructure. They can serve several functions at once, including water supply for domestic, agricultural, industrial, and community use; flood control; recreation; and clean, renewable energy through hydropower. However, dams also pose a tremendous potential hazard to downstream residents and infrastructure, so dam owners and regulators must observe proper safety methods to maintain these important functions and minimize downstream risk.
Could the South Fork Dam failure happen today? Advances in dam safety engineering practices and regulation coupled with emergency action planning make living near a dam safer. Historically, dams that failed had some deficiency, which caused the failure. These dams are typically termed deficient. Currently, there are about 4,400 deficient dams in the U.S. There are dams with this classification in nearly every state. (A majority of states and federal agencies define a deficient dam as one that has been found to have hydraulic or structural deficiencies that leave it more susceptible to failure.) Lagging behind is the number of deficient dams that have been repaired. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) has determined that it could cost up to $18 billion to rehabilitate the back-log of non-federal (those subject to state regulation) high-hazard potential dams that need repair. High–hazard potential dams, should they fail, would most likely cause loss of life and significant economic losses.
To help address these investment needs, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014 reauthorized the National Dam Safety Program. While ASCE and ASDSO have made advances to promote dam safety programs, increase awareness, provide training, and fund rehabilitation initiatives, there are still significant financial shortfalls. Tell congressional appropriators to fully fund the WRRDA authorized programs. It should not take another Johnstown or a dam failure in Texas and Oklahoma to raise awareness to fund these essential safety programs.
This post is co-authored by Lori Spragens, executive director of ASDSO.
Tags: Dam Safety, dams
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Water Week Focuses on Efficiency Technologies, Aging Infrastructure and Value of Water
April 15th, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
We are in the midst of this year’s Water Week, which includes a marathon four-day affair in Washington, DC that brings water wonks from across the country together to discuss trending water issues with lawmakers and regulators. The week kicked off with a presentation by Robert Glennon, author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It. Glennon’s message of how to build a sustainable water future resonated with many in town from the arid west, especially those from California, which is facing the worst drought in 1200 years. As an additional challenge, as illustrated by this map from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),the nation’s fastest growing areas also have some of the highest per capita water use, which will further strain water resources throughout the country. Strain placed on the nation’s aging water infrastructure, graded a “D” in the ASCE Report Card for Americas Infrastructure, can lead to serious measures, including rationing or higher service rates. Water Week attracts a diverse group of stakeholders, including the most well represented industry clean water agencies (utilities that treat wastewater). With higher demand on aging systems, strict regulatory mandates, financially stretched rate-payers and the threat of extreme weather, clean water utilities across the country are grappling with major demand, financing, capital upgrade and operations and maintenance issues. These obstacles are pushing utilities to find cost-effective and efficient solutions for treatment and to look for sound ways to best use their end product. For the first time in the history of Water Week, the Water Reuse Association was a major sponsor. The organization is the primary trade group for reclaimed water, which with minimal purification can be used for irrigation or with special purification can be placed back into service. As is almost always the case, much of the discussion this week came back to one theme: how to pay for needed infrastructure upgrades. Utilities can increase rates, rely on federal government loans, issue bonds or seek private funds. While rate increases are unpopular, many argue that we under value and under pay for water services in the U.S., a concept that the Value of Water Coalition is trying to change. For traditional finaicincing, the State Revolving Fund (SRF) program remains popular, but new eligible activities approved in the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) means the competition for dollars will be greater than ever. Competition for SRF funds may be exacerbated if projects rely on the fund to round out project financing due to the current prohibition on tax-exempt bonds in WIFIA. It’s encouraging to see that when the water industry comes to DC to make the case for more federal support, they do so by showcasing a plethora of new technologies for water efficiency and plans to make their communities water cleaner and better for the environment.Infrastructure’s Latest Buzz Word: Resilience
March 11th, 2015 | By: Whitford Remer
Infrastructure projects that incorporate elements of resilience—the ability of a project or program to respond adaptively to threats such as storm surge or extreme weather and bounce back from disasters—are attracting new attention and challenging the engineering profession to design for a changing world. As much of our infrastructure in the U.S. reaches the end of its design life and development abroad continues to soar, this is a critical and opportune time to rethink the way traditional infrastructure is designed and built. Governments are now teaming up with private industry and nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) to ensure infrastructure is fit for the future. Numerous international, private sector and government sponsored initiatives now require developers to demonstrate sustainability, resilience and adapting to potential impacts of climate change in the project design. One such example is the United Nations’ (UN) new effort. Last week Boston hosted the UN’s U.S. launch of the RISE Initiative, a new platform intended to bring together nontraditional stakeholders, such as the insurance industry and civil engineers to the resilience and financing discussion. Housed under the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the RISE Initiative seeks to ensure that infrastructure investments are risk-sensitive. That requires better transparency, coordination and information sharing among all players in infrastructure development, including policy-makers, engineers, financiers and insurers. Resilient projects may require developers to incorporate design elements that are more costly at the outset, but increase the durability of the project long-term. ASCE recently released a report on life-cycle cost analysis, which explores the benefits of considering the lifetime cost of a project, rather than just the initial cost to build it. Following Superstorm Sandy, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased its focus on making our infrastructure more resilient. It hosted a Rebuild-By-Design, a design competition in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation. The competition began by soliciting the best ideas for rebuilding in the Sandy-affected region. Teams then refined projects to ensure high levels of sustainability and resilience, with winning projects receiving grants for implementation. HUD recently launched a second competition, the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC) which is similar to Rebuild-By-Design, but open nationwide to natural disaster affected areas with $1 billion at stake. The RISE Initiative and HUD competitions are just two examples of the strides being made to build infrastructure more resilient, and therefore better poised to bounce back after extreme weather events.Tags: resilience
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ASCE Participates in White House Event on Building Green Infrastructure
October 22nd, 2014 | By: Whitford Remer
The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) invited ASCE to participate and join a new working group called the Green Infrastructure Collaborative. The Collaborative is a broad network of federal agencies, NGO’s, and private sector entities focused on promoting and implementing green infrastructure across government and in the private sector. ASCE members and staff attended the first of several meetings this month at the White House to share and build knowledge around green infrastructure technologies and policy issues from the perspective of various stakeholders. In particular, ASCE has committed to conducting research and providing information on stormwater best management practices, low-impact development, and focusing attention of environmental and water resources engineers on sustainable development principles. See ASCE’s full commitment along with other participating organizations, including the federal government. Also on this month, CEQ released a fact sheet related to building community resilience by strengthening America’s natural resources and supporting green infrastructure. The fact sheet is part of an ongoing effort to focus on resilience following a Presidential Executive Order on Climate Preparedness issued last November. A number of important announcements were revealed in the fact sheet, including the results of a new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) screening-level vulnerability assessment tool for coastal projects, which finds that roughly one third of USACE coastal projects are vulnerable to climate change. View more of the actions announced in the fact sheet.
ASCE member, Charles Rowney (center) with Shannon Cunniff, Environmental Defense Fund (left) and Susan Gilson, National Association of Flood & Stormwater Management Agencies (right)
ASCE Submits Comments to US EPA on the Use of QBS to SRF Programs
September 10th, 2014 | By: Whitford Remer
ASCE recently submitted comments to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on guidance the agency developed following the the recently enacted Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) of 2014. WRRDA makes a number of changes to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program administered by EPA and recently developed guidance for its regional offices on how to implement the new provisions. One of the major changes is that all architectural/engineering (A/E) contracts under the CWSFR must now comply with federal or state-approved Qualifications-Based Standards (QBS). ASCE has advocated for QBS provisions to apply to the SRF program for over a decade and applauds the new WRRDA language. QBS provisions ensure the government and citizens who rely on critical infrastructure receive the best possible A/E services based on competence, qualification, background and track record of competing firms, subject to negotiation of a fee that is fair and reasonable. QBS procedures were originally established by the Brooks Architect-Engineers Act of 1972. Our three comments to EPA were straight forward:- Follow the letter of the law and ensure that A/E contracts under the CWSRF are backed by federal or state approved QBS provisions.
- Ensure firms are ranked based first on qualification. Cost must be negotiated during the second step of the procurement process.
- Require all projects co-mingled with SRF funds to also be subject to QBS provisions.
Tags: Clean Water State Revolving Fund, EPA, QBS, wrrda
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