Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the ``Twenty-First Century Dams Act,'' which I introduced today. I would like to thank Senators Padilla, Wyden, Stabenow, Peters, Gillibrand, and Bennet,…
Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the ``Twenty-First Century Dams Act,'' which I introduced today. I would like to thank Senators Padilla, Wyden, Stabenow, Peters, Gillibrand, and Bennet, who have joined me in introducing the bill.
This bill represents a remarkable and historic coalition of groups that are often at odds: environmentalists, the hydropower industry, and dam safety advocates have come together to advance this proposal to modernize our nation's more than 90,000 dams. This breakthrough agreement is the result of a process launched three years ago and led by Stanford University's Woods Institute and Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, with additional direction from the Energy Futures Initiative.
Our Nation's dams serve many important public purposes, including water supply, flood control, recreation, and, where appropriately mitigated, clean energy generation that will help slow climate change. But the dams also block off key habitat for fish, and can reduce flows needed for the health of rivers.
As a result, conservationists have often fought proposals to upgrade older hydropower facilities or construct new water-powered energy- storage projects, undertaking lengthy regulatory disputes over environmental safeguards.
The historic coalition advocating for this bill has agreed to try a different approach by working together. They jointly support three principles for modernizing dams known as the ``3 Rs'': rehabilitate, retrofit, and remove.
1) First, rehabilitate. Our bill increases investments in rehabilitating dams to improve their safety. Many of our nation's dams were built more than 50 years ago to safety standards that are insufficient today, all the more so because climate change is increasing the extreme weather events, like super storms, that dams will have to withstand to avoid catastrophic failures.
2) Second, retrofit. Hydropower provides the United States with more than seven percent of its electricity and over 90% of its current electricity storage capacity. Both the private and Federal hydropower fleet generate electricity, and hydropower facilities can complement variable solar and wind power sources and provide long-duration energy storage, critical to decarbonizing the grid. DOE estimates that by maintaining and retrofitting existing powered dams, U.S. hydropower electricity output could reduce carbon emissions by 5.1 billion metric tons by 2050 while supporting nearly 200,000 clean energy jobs. Retrofitting dams also includes measures to make them less ecologically damaging.
3) Third, removal. There are ample opportunities to remove unnecessary dams that no longer provide benefits to the population, have safety issues that cannot be mitigated in a cost-effective way, and/or have significant environmental impacts that cannot be addressed. Dam removals can improve public safety, restore the natural functions of rivers, help endangered fish species, create jobs, protect important environmental and cultural resources, and increase the climate resilience of U.S. rivers.
I would like to now talk about how the bill would advance each of the ``3 Rs:'' rehabilitations, retrofits, and removals.
Rehabilitations of dams to improve their safety has long been a goal of mine. As Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, last year I funded for the first time the Army Corps of Engineers' loan program under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, or WIFIA. This program focuses on dam safety, and will use $14 million in federal appropriations to back loans supporting approximately $1 billion in dam safety projects.
Dam safety has been underfunded at Federal, State, and local levels for many years. There are nearly 6,000 non-federal high hazard potential dams, which are at high risk of failure with probable loss of human life if they were to fail. The Association of State Dam Safety officials has estimated that the total cost of rehabilitating these dams exceeds $20 billion.
The bill proposes a series of investments to meet this critical need:
FEMA's grant program for non-Federal high hazard potential dams would be funded at $1 billion over 5 years, up from $10-12 million per year in recent years.
2) USDA's Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act would provide another $500 million for rehabilitating non-Federal dams over 5 years, up from just $10 million in the most recent appropriations bill.
3) The Army Corps' WIFIA program, which I mentioned earlier, would be funded at $250 million over 5 years, a 250% increase over the most recent appropriations bill. This could support as much as $15 billion in loans for non-Federal dam safety projects.
4) The bill would also authorize funds to building existing state regulatory oversight capacity, mapping the potential consequences of dam failure, and modernizing the National Dam Safety Program.
Dam safety funding in the bill totals $2.405 billion over five years, plus $15 billion in lending capacity to rehabilitate dangerous non- Federal dams.
While public safety is paramount, it is also critical that we manage our dams as part of a comprehensive strategy to address climate change. As I mentioned before, hydropower facilities can ``firm up'' variable solar and wind power sources, critical to decarbonizing the grid, by both producing 24/7 electricity and providing substantial electricity storage capacity for variable resources.
The coalition proposal has a two-part strategy to advance the second ``R'' of retrofitting dams. First is investing in existing Federal dams, which make up roughly 50% of all U.S. hydropower generation. Federal dam investments are essential to maintain this energy resource.
The bill authorizes $11 billion over five years to improve the safety and renewable energy generating capacity, and reduce environmental impacts of federally owned dams across the United States. These investments are focused on the largest Federal dam-owning agencies, including:
1) $8 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers;
2) $2 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation;
3) $650 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and
4) $350 million for the Forest Service.
The bill also authorizes $200 million for the Department of Energy for research, development, and deployment to support innovative waterpower technologies, technologies to improve retrofitting and rehabilitating hydropower dams, and furthering the contribution of hydropower to grid resilience.
The coalition has also proposed establishing a 30% tax credit for investment at qualifying facilities in dam safety, environmental improvements, grid flexibility, and dam removals, with a direct pay alternative. Due to Senate rules regarding committee jurisdiction, it makes sense to move this tax credit provision separately. Senators Cantwell and Murkowski have introduced separate bipartisan legislation regarding this tax credit proposal, which they are actively discussing with the Senate Finance Committee.
Let me now turn to the third ``R''--removal of unnecessary dams. Around the nation there are thousands of dams, in many cases built a century or more ago, which no longer provide significant societal benefits, but block fish passage to critical habitats and otherwise harm river ecosystems.
A twenty-first century dam strategy would be wholly incomplete without provisions to remove these unnecessary dams. The bill creates an interagency council and a stakeholder advisory committee to help administer funding to remove dams where appropriate. Identifying candidates for dam removal will follow these guiding principles:
1) The dam owner must give consent;
2) The priority is to remove dams that pose a significant public safety hazard, or non-powered dams whose removal would provide significant ecological value; and
3) Consideration of the extent to which the dam provides critical beneficial uses, the magnitude of public benefits from dam removal, and the cost-effectiveness and technical feasibility of dam removal.
Because dam removal can be a difficult issue, I believe it is critical to establish the framework in this bill for identifying which dams are appropriate for removal, and which are not. Within this framework, the bill authorizes $7.5 billion in funding over 5 years for multiple Federal agencies with dam removal authorities, including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Forest Service, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The broad goal of these provisions is to reconnect 10,000 river miles through the removal of 1,000 dams. In addition to ecological benefits that could transform the prospects for many endangered fish populations, these projects would also create over 100,000 jobs.
I want to again congratulate the hydropower industry, environmental community, and dam safety advocates that have come together in the coalition proposing this bill. This is an historic coalition, and the coalition's proposal gives the Senate a remarkable opportunity to advance three critical goals:
1) Rehabilitating aging dams that pose public safety risks and need major investments to withstand the extreme flooding events that are coming with climate change;
2) Retrofitting our Federal and non-Federal dam fleets to increase clean energy generation and slow climate change, while reducing the dams' environmental impacts; and
3) Removing unnecessary dams to open up critical habitat for endangered fish populations and restore the health of our precious rivers.
Our colleague, Representative Annie Kuster (NH-02), has introduced this legislation in the House of Representatives together with Representatives Don Young (AK-AL), Kim Schrier M.D. (WA-08), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Debbie Dingell (Ml-12), Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05), Nanette Diaz Barragan (CA-44), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), and Scott Peters (CA-52). I look forward to working with these House members to advance this important bill.
I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this legislation. Thank you, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the ``Fighting Homelessness with Services and Housing Act,'' which would establish a new Federal grant program to increase support for comprehensive services paired with housing to address our Nation's current homelessness crisis.
As we have seen with the growing diversity of our homeless populations--families with children, veterans, individuals with mental health conditions and struggling with addiction, people who simply could not keep up with increases in rent--our Nation's homelessness crisis is not going to simply resolve itself on its own.
According to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are more than 580,000 homeless individuals and families in the United States. More than 25 percent of this population is in California, with approximately 161,548 homeless people sleeping on the streets on any given night.
In a Nation as prosperous as ours, we can and we must do better, especially as we address this crisis in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. Our city, County, State, and Federal governments must work hand-in-hand with the non-profit and private sectors to establish collaborative efforts to significantly address the issue of homelessness.
The good news is that we have seen a model that works: supportive housing, which helps meet homeless individuals and families where they are. This approach can help stabilize an individual or family and change their life. Supportive services such as mental and physical health care, substance abuse
treatment, education and job training, and life skills such as financial literacy are critical components. Paired with intensive case management, supportive housing models make a difference.
One success story is the Downtown Women's Center in Los Angeles. This shelter allows homeless and formerly homeless women to transform their lives through a combination of permanent, supportive housing and workforce development. This would not be possible without the Center's partnerships with the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Department of Health, and other critical stakeholders. I've visited the Center and encourage my colleagues to do the same to see why this model works.
It is imperative that we support State and local efforts, as well as nonprofit service providers, as they work to get people into housing to both mitigate the spread of the coronavirus and address their long-term needs.
Without a doubt, it will take a significant investment to solve the current homelessness crisis. That is why I am introducing the ``Fighting Homelessness with Services and Housing Act,'' which would authorize a new Federal funding stream of $1 billion per year, subject to annual appropriations. Grantees must serve individuals or families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless by providing housing paired with a comprehensive set of services and must provide a 25 percent match for any Federal funds received.
Because each individual and every community is unique, the grant program created by this bill would be flexible in order to work in any region or for any homeless population.
This bill supports the great work already being done across the Country, allowing local governmental entities and non-profit organizations to expand their capacity and ensure a greater reach by putting Federal dollars where they will make the most effective impact.
This legislation is supported by a wide coalition of local governments, housing, health, and child welfare organizations, including the Mayors and CEOs for U.S. Housing Investment, National Alliance to End Homelessness, Corporation for Supportive Housing, National Association of Counties, National League of Cities, National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.
I hope my colleagues will join us in supporting the bill and moving it through the Senate, especially as we continue to contend with the increase in homelessness amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Thank you, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
