[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PROGRESS REPORT: HURRICANE SANDY RECOVERY--ONE YEAR LATER
=======================================================================
(113-41)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 14, 2013
__________
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee, Columbia
Vice Chair JERROLD NADLER, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CORRINE BROWN, Florida
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
GARY G. MILLER, California ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
SAM GRAVES, Missouri RICK LARSEN, Washington
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
DUNCAN HUNTER, California MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
BOB GIBBS, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RICHARD L. HANNA, New York JOHN GARAMENDI, California
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida ANDRE CARSON, Indiana
STEVE SOUTHERLAND, II, Florida JANICE HAHN, California
JEFF DENHAM, California RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky DINA TITUS, Nevada
STEVE DAINES, Montana SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
TOM RICE, South Carolina ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois
TREY RADEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ iv
TESTIMONY
Hon. Peter M. Rogoff, Administrator, Federal Transit
Administration................................................. 3
Hon. Victor M. Mendez, Administrator, Federal Highway
Administration................................................. 3
Hon. Joseph C. Szabo, Administrator, Federal Railroad
Administration................................................. 3
Elizabeth A. Zimmerman, Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of
Response and Recovery, Federal Emergency Management Agency..... 3
Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick, Commanding General and
Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers............... 3
PREPARED STATEMENTS AND ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED
BY WITNESSES
Hon. Peter M. Rogoff:
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Answers to questions for the record from the following
Representatives:
Hon. Bill Shuster, of Pennsylvania....................... 48
Hon. Tom Rice, of South Carolina......................... 50
Hon. Victor M. Mendez:
Prepared statement........................................... 51
Answers to questions for the record from Hon. Bill Shuster, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Pennsylvania.. 58
Hon. Joseph C. Szabo:
Prepared statement........................................... 60
Answers to questions for the record from Hon. Bill Shuster, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Pennsylvania.. 67
Elizabeth A. Zimmerman:
Prepared statement........................................... 71
Answers to questions for the record from the following
Representatives:
Hon. Bill Shuster, of Pennsylvania....................... 86
Hon. Jeff Denham, of California.......................... 92
Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick:
Prepared statement........................................... 99
Answers to questions for the record from Hon. Bill Shuster, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Pennsylvania.. 105
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
PROGRESS REPORT: HURRICANE SANDY RECOVERY--ONE YEAR LATER
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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013
House of Representatives,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in Room
2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Shuster
(Chairman of the committee) presiding.
Mr. Shuster. The committee will come to order.
We are pleased to welcome our distinguished panel of
witnesses for this morning's hearing: the Honorable Peter
Rogoff, the Administrator of the Federal Transit
Administration; the Honorable Victor Mendez, Administrator of
the Federal Highway Administration; the Honorable Joseph Szabo,
Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration; Elizabeth
Zimmerman, Deputy Associate Administrator for the Office of
Response and Recovery for the Federal Emergency Management
Agency; and Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick, Commanding
General and Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Thank you all very much for being here this morning.
The purpose of today's hearing is to review the progress of
the gathered agencies in implementing the recovery objectives
and meeting programmatic deadlines authorized and mandated in
the Sandy Supplemental.
Hurricane Sandy made landfall on October 29th, 2012, as a
Category One hurricane just south of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Sandy was responsible for more than 130 deaths and $50 billion
in economic losses. As a result of the storm, the President
made major disaster declarations in 12 States and the District
of Columbia.
In response to this historic natural disaster, last January
Congress passed and the President signed into law the combined
Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 and the Sandy
Recovery Improvement Act of 2013, known collectively as the
Sandy Supplemental. The law authorized a new Emergency Relief
Program within the Federal Transit Administration and provided
$50.5 billion to certain Federal agencies who support disaster
recovery and assistance.
The law also authorized much-needed reforms and streamlined
disaster assistance programs authorized by the Robert T.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. Key
reforms included expedited debris removal, public assistance,
alternative procedures, Federal assistance to individuals and
households, and streamlined environmental review of hazard-
mitigation projects.
Since Hurricane Sandy devastated the east coast, the
Federal agencies have worked together with State and local
partners to get storm-affected areas and its citizens back on
their feet. Much has been accomplished, but there is still
considerable work to do.
The committee is committed to continued oversight of
recovery efforts and to working with the agencies represented
in this morning's hearings to achieve programmatic goals laid
out in the Sandy Supplemental. I look forward to hearing from
the witnesses on this important progress made to date and how
the committee can partner with agencies to ensure ongoing
efforts are efficient and that any challenges to recovery
efforts are addressed promptly.
Since your written testimony has been made part of the
record, the committee requests that you limit your summary to 5
minutes.
And, with that, I yield to the ranking member, Mr. Rahall.
Mr. Rahall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join with you in
welcoming our witnesses this morning.
Today's hearing is certainly timely. Over the weekend, we
were reminded once again of the wrath that Mother Nature can
visit upon humankind. News reports of the typhoon that struck
the Philippines paint a grim picture of devastation and
suffering, the magnitude of which is difficult to fathom.
It was just over a year ago that Hurricane Sandy made
landfall on our own shores. Ten months ago, Congress
appropriated tens of billions of dollars to aid in those
recovery efforts.
Helping each other in times of need is an honorable
American tradition and one that I believe deserves recognition
as we tackle Federal budgetary constraints. It is in our nature
to provide emergency aid to hard-hit communities, and it is our
duty to ensure that funds Congress has appropriated are
provided in a timely manner.
Although this hearing is entitled ``Progress Report:
Hurricane Sandy Recovery--One Year Later,'' Hurricane Sandy
actually collided with a nor'easter, morphing into a monstrous
superstorm. While the bulk of the damage occurred on the
northeastern seaboard, the storm's reach extended far and wide.
My own district in southern West Virginia experienced massive
snowfalls and widespread power outages. The roofs of family-
owned stores collapsed, destroying businesses. Trees toppled
under the weight of the snow, creating impassible roads,
isolating some residents and cutting them off from emergency
assistance.
In addition to providing needed post-Sandy funding,
Congress enacted the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act in January
to provide more flexible recovery tools. I look forward to
hearing from FEMA on the status of the implementation of that
act, particularly on the status of the rulemaking to review,
update, and revise the individual assistance factors, a matter
I had specifically requested in the legislation, to ensure more
timely and responsive disaster assistance and to direct greater
attention to the kinds of losses that we saw in West Virginia
and elsewhere.
I also look forward to hearing about the response and
recovery efforts of public transportation systems damaged by
Sandy. The damage to subway stations, tunnels, tracks,
maintenance facilities, and rolling stock was staggering. By
all accounts, transit systems in affected areas undertook
impressive efforts to quickly restore service to their millions
of riders and took interim precautions for this storm season to
better protect their assets. But now the longer term work must
be done to ensure that systems are built back stronger.
Again, I thank you for this timely hearing, Mr. Chairman,
and I yield back.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman. And, with that, we will
start off with the Administrator for the Federal Transit
Administration, Mr. Rogoff.
TESTIMONY OF HON. PETER M. ROGOFF, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL
TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION; HON. VICTOR M. MENDEZ, ADMINISTRATOR,
FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION; HON. JOSEPH C. SZABO,
ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION; ELIZABETH A.
ZIMMERMAN, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF RESPONSE
AND RECOVERY, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; AND
LIEUTENANT GENERAL THOMAS P. BOSTICK, COMMANDING GENERAL AND
CHIEF OF ENGINEERS, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
Mr. Rogoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Rahall,
members of the committee.
Hurricane Sandy devastated communities in its path and
triggered the worst public transit disaster in U.S. history. On
the day that Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast region, more
than half the transit trips in America were not available. And
even days after the storm, as systems in Boston and Washington,
DC, and Philadelphia came back online, fully a third of
America's transit trips weren't available.
This truly was a national transit disaster that required a
national response. And the Federal Transit Administration has
been fully engaged in that response, beginning even days before
Superstorm Sandy made landfall.
We are proud of the tremendous progress that FTA has made
over the last year to help the region recover. As the chairman
pointed out, a lot of work has been done and much remains to be
done. Today, work is underway to repair transit substations in
New Jersey, the Montague R Line train tube connecting Brooklyn
and Manhattan, the Green Point Tunnel connecting Brooklyn with
Queens, and many, many more projects are ongoing.
To date, we have allocated $5.7 billion to the hardest-hit
transit agencies in New York and New Jersey and affected
agencies in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
Massachusetts. The funding window is open. There are billions
of dollars in restoration and construction activity going on as
we speak. And we will be reimbursing the transit agencies for
this work as they bring funding applications to us.
Our rapid response to help restore service would not have
been possible without FTA's Emergency Relief Program. When
President Obama first proposed this program in his fiscal year
2012 budget, it was envisioned as an important mechanism for
strengthening FTA's ability to provide timely disaster
assistance to transit agencies whose assets are damaged or
destroyed.
I commend this committee for agreeing to the President's
request and establishing this new program through MAP-21. It
came just in time for Hurricane Sandy and has more than proven
its worth. Through this new authority, we believe FTA's
response stands as a model for Federal disaster assistance.
That said, I need to sound an important note of caution. At
present, unlike our partners at the Federal Highway
Administration, the FTA has no emergency relief funds available
for any catastrophic event other than Hurricane Sandy. That
means that we will not be able to respond in a timely way
should transit assets suddenly be destroyed by a tornado in
Arkansas, or a hurricane in Florida, or an earthquake in
California.
The President's budget request for fiscal year 2013 and
again in fiscal year 2014 each sought $25 million to capitalize
the FTA Emergency Relief Program so that we can be at the
ready. I strongly encourage Congress to appropriate these funds
so, when the next disaster strikes, FTA will be in a position
to respond.
For Sandy relief, as in all of our work, we are committed
to the highest level of financial stewardship. We are ensuring
that grantees don't receive both insurance money and Federal
reimbursements for the same claims. We are also ensuring that
grantees don't receive payments from both FTA and FEMA for the
same expenses. We are expanding on our well-established
procurement reviews and oversight processes to better detect
and prevent any possibility of waste, fraud, and abuse.
Good stewardship also means that taxpayers should not be
asked to pay for the restoration of the same assets a second or
third time. It is important to remember that many of the
transit assets that were flooded during Hurricane Sandy were
also flooded just 1 year earlier during Hurricane Irene. The
transit riders of New York and New Jersey should not have to
put up with the stress, the cost, and the inconvenience of
having the same transit facilities destroyed by one storm after
another.
That is why FTA, in accordance with the Disaster Relief
Appropriations Act, has dedicated a significant portion of the
appropriated funds to projects that will help transit agencies
better withstand future disasters. Importantly, we feel that
the taxpayer should not have to pay to restore these facilities
a second or third time. That is also why, in allocating these
resiliency funds, our highest priority will be on better
protecting the existing vulnerable infrastructure that is
serving millions of passengers each day.
Without adequate coordination, investments to protect one
rail yard against rising waters might only serve to flood a
neighboring rail yard that serves even more people. So FTA will
be very focused on regional solutions that consider the entire
tristate network as a whole.
As you can imagine, when making these resiliency
investments, there is no point and no value to the traveling
public or the taxpayer to protect one segment of a rail line if
it is only going to flood out 5 miles farther down that rail
line. So we will be looking at the systems as a whole and
ensuring that the taxpayers' dollars get the greatest bang for
the buck in protecting existing assets.
Thank you for your time. I will be happy to answer
questions when all of the other panelists have spoken.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much.
And, next, the Administrator of the Federal Highway
Administration, Mr. Mendez. You may proceed, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Mendez. Thank you very much. And good morning, Chairman
Shuster, Ranking Member Rahall, and members of the committee.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to discuss the Federal
Highway Administration's Hurricane Sandy response efforts.
Our country has experienced a number of devastating
disasters over the past year, from Hurricane Sandy to the
recent Colorado floods. The Obama administration is committed
to helping Americans recover from the damage caused by these
and other natural disasters.
Although lives lost from such disasters can never be
replaced, programs like FHWA's Emergency Relief Program play a
pivotal role in helping communities rebuild critical
transportation infrastructure. The ER Program provides funding
to States for the repair and reconstruction of Federal-aid
highways that have suffered serious damage as a result of
natural disasters or catastrophic failures from an external
cause. The program also provides funding for roads on Federal
lands.
In MAP-21, Congress made some changes to the ER Program,
and FHWA acted quickly to issue ER implementing guidance to
States prior to the act becoming effective. The Department also
acted quickly to issue MAP-21 rulemaking establishing a new
categorical exclusion for emergencies. We have already used the
authority to help expedite the delivery of critical
transportation projects in emergencies.
Transportation infrastructure plays a critical role in
maintaining mobility for the American people, supporting our
residents, our businesses, and our economy. The importance of
our infrastructure comes into its sharpest focus after a
natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy.
From the moment that Hurricane Sandy hit in late October of
2012, Federal, State, and local agencies worked closely
together with an unprecedented level of cooperation to help
impacted States rebuild and recover.
I am proud to say that the Department and FHWA have been at
the forefront and center of all these efforts. Our priority was
to provide needed aid very quickly to help get the region back
on its feet and moving again by restoring the transportation
system.
At FHWA, our response started less than 24 hours after the
storm made landfall, as we began to process the region's first
requests for ER funding to rebuild roads and bridges. Less than
48 hours after Sandy hit, FHWA made available the first quick-
release funds, $10 million to New York and $3 million to Rhode
Island. Days later, FHWA made additional quick-release funds
available: $4 million to North Carolina, $10 million to New
Jersey, and $2 million for Connecticut. About a month later, we
provided an additional $20 million to New York and an
additional $10 million to New Jersey.
To date, FHWA has provided nearly $671 million in ER
funding to States and for Federal lands impacted by the storm.
This includes funding to reopen a nationally significant
landmark, Liberty Island, as well as funding for critical
coastal routes, including 12 miles of the Ocean Parkway in New
York's Long Island and 12 miles of Route 35 along the New
Jersey coast.
These are just a few examples of how States have used ER
funds in the past year to restore important transportation
facilities that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Emergency
relief funds are helping States across the country undertake
the massive job of restoring damaged roads and bridges so that
the public can travel safely and communities can rebuild.
In addition to implementing the ER Program, FHWA is looking
ahead to determine how we can help our infrastructure better
withstand natural disasters and how we can deliver projects
more quickly. We are engaged in activities across the country
to identify vulnerable highway infrastructure and minimize the
effects of natural disasters and catastrophic events.
We have also made some changes to our financial management
practices and quick-release process to help States receive ER
funding even more quickly.
As we continually brace for new natural disasters and
catastrophic failures, FHWA remains committed to helping States
repair and reconstruct infrastructure damaged by such events.
We will continue to explore innovative technologies and other
tools to help highway infrastructure better withstand the
effects of extreme weather events.
So, with that, Mr. Chairman, I conclude my remarks and will
be happy to answer your questions. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much.
With that, the Administrator of the Federal Railroad
Administration, Mr. Szabo. Please proceed.
Mr. Szabo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To you and Ranking
Member Rahall and members of the committee, I appreciate this
opportunity to testify this morning.
Hurricane Sandy is a vivid example of how closely our
Nation's economic and social wellbeing is tied to the health of
our transportation systems. With Northeast Corridor services
shut down, already-overwhelmed highways experienced even higher
levels of gridlock. Travel times for many commuters in so many
cases doubled or tripled, if service was available at all. And
when our transportation system suffers, travelers and
businesses feel the pain.
This should serve as a lesson to us that, as we rebuild, we
must ensure our transportation is more resilient. We must build
more redundancy into the system. And we must continue
approaching transportation planning regionally, just as we are
today through a multistate rail planning effort we call NEC
FUTURE.
FRA started preparing for Hurricane Sandy before it came
ashore. We activated an emergency relief docket so railroads
could apply for temporary regulatory relief to aid a timely
response and recovery. And after Sandy's landfall, we
coordinated technical assistance calls with railroad and
industry associations that safely fast-tracked the recovery
effort.
The damage was extensive. And let me be clear: The effort
that went into quickly repairing ties, ballast, tracks, signal
systems, pumping stations, circuit breakers, and other vital
infrastructure was truly remarkable. Overall, Amtrak had $31
million in infrastructure and equipment damage and $41 million
in lost revenues.
To support the recovery effort, we provided $30 million to
Amtrak through the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013.
And to be better prepared in the future, we invested a transfer
of $185 million from the FTA's Sandy recovery funding into the
Hudson Yards right-of-way preservation project to secure a
permanent path into Penn Station.
Another big step forward for increasing Northeast Corridor
redundancy and resiliency came through the Sandy Appropriations
Act, which included $81 million to assist such efforts.
However, this money cannot be spent unless the restriction is
lifted on Amtrak's ability to use working capital funds for
operating expenses, as currently provided for under PRIIA. We
propose an amendment in an appropriations bill to amend the
Sandy Act to delete this prohibition on temporary fund
transfers. That way, the money can be fully invested in better
preparing the Northeast Corridor to face future natural
disasters.
The Northeast Corridor has been the backbone of the
region's economy for two centuries. Today, it serves a
passenger rail market that is as strong and full of potential
as any in the world. But its capacity is constrained and its
resiliency, as Sandy taught us, must be fortified.
Clearly, we must better prepare the Northeast Corridor for
future natural disasters. That is one challenge. But this
challenge will be further served if we fully commit to
positioning this vital transportation asset to support the
Northeast's continued prosperity.
Our NEC FUTURE program is preparing us to move forward. It
will provide Northeast Corridor States and stakeholders with a
shared vision for investing in the types of rail services
needed to meet demand through the year 2040. But an additional
$25 million is needed to complete this critical effort.
Now is the time to complete the program. Now is the time to
provide rail with the predictable and reliable Federal funding
needed to strengthen the Northeast Corridor's resiliency and
its redundancy, in addition to its overall safety, reliability,
and efficiency.
Thank you. I look forward to questions.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Szabo.
And, next, from FEMA, Ms. Zimmerman. Please proceed.
Ms. Zimmerman. Good morning, Chairman Shuster. Good
morning, Ranking Member Rahall and members of the committee. I
am very pleased to be here and have this opportunity to speak
with you today.
When Hurricane Sandy hit landfall----
Mr. Shuster. Can you pull your microphone a little closer?
Ms. Zimmerman. Sure.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you.
Ms. Zimmerman. Is that better?
When Hurricane Sandy made landfall, battering dozens of
States along the east coast, FEMA was there. We were on the
ground before the storm, during the storm, and, obviously,
after the storm. We were there supporting our State and local
partners. We will be there for as long as it takes to help the
disaster survivors and the communities recover.
But FEMA does not do this alone. As it is noticed on the
panel here, our partners from Department of Transportation as
well as the Army Corps of Engineers are a part of the community
that we refer to as a community as a whole--everybody working
together in disaster response.
When it comes to the community working together, with our
friends at the Department of Transportation and FTA, we have
been working together very closely with the Sandy Recovery
Improvement Act and those efforts that came together to join us
in the partnership. We also have a longstanding partnership
with the Corps of Engineers in response and recovery.
In response to Hurricane Sandy, this committee is more than
aware of the 23,000 people that sought refuge in the temporary
shelters as well as the 8.5 million people who lost power as a
result of Hurricane Sandy. The storm flooded numerous roads,
tunnels, blocked the transportation corridors, deposited
extensive debris along the coastline, and displaced hundreds of
thousands of people.
FEMA coordinated the Federal Government's response to
Hurricane Sandy, working with its partners through the National
Response Framework and issuing 425 mission assignments to 29
Federal agencies.
The recovery efforts from Hurricane Sandy were guided by
the National Disaster Recovery Framework, which was published
in 2011. The NDRF is a guide for how the whole community works
together following disasters to best meet the recovery needs of
the individuals, families, and the communities, States, and
tribes.
It established a coordination structure for all interagency
partners, called the recovery support function, to work
together to solve problems to improve access to resources and
foster the coordination among Government and private
stakeholders. This structure remains in place and continues as
we transition from our joint field offices to a Sandy recovery
office, which will include both New Jersey and New York
disasters, that are still open and will be transitioning within
the next month.
For public assistance, FEMA is also providing grants
through the Public Assistance program which assists State,
local, and tribal governments, as well as certain private
nonprofits, in response to recovery efforts. FEMA has obligated
more than $3.2 billion in Hurricane Sandy Public Assistance
Grants. This is for the 15 States that were impacted by Sandy.
In addition to assistance for the emergency protective
measures and debris removal, FEMA's Public Assistance program
provides funding for the repair, restoration, reconstruction,
and replacement of infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed
by the disaster.
Over 3,400 public assistance projects have been approved
and more than $2.1 billion has been obligated in New York. In
New Jersey, over 5,000 public assistance projects have been
approved and over $950 million has been obligated. Eleven
additional States that were declared for public assistance due
to the efforts for Hurricane Sandy have been obligated an
approximate $150 million in assistance.
For individual assistance programs, FEMA has provided
assistance to over 182,000 disaster survivors in New York, New
Jersey, and Connecticut. The forms of assistance include
financial assistance, eligible home repair assistance and
personal property loss, as well as medical and funeral expenses
resulting from the disaster.
For the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act, the Sandy
Supplemental, just under 100 days after Sandy made landfall,
the Recovery Improvement Act came into law. It gave FEMA a
great opportunity to implement many of the initiatives they
have been working on and we have made significant progress on
legislation impacting the agencies so that we could move
forward from the post-Katrina reform act. But the Sandy
Supplemental was by far the biggest change to the Stafford Act
since the Stafford Act was signed into law.
FEMA has aggressively been applying the Sandy Recovery
Improvement Act, tackling 18 lines of action, 8 regulatory
projects, 2 reports, and at least 9 policies in the 383 days
since Sandy descended on our shores. To date, 13 of the 17
provisions are tracking for the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act
as we move these forward--provisions for public assistance, the
alternate procedures for permanent work, public assistance,
alternative procedures for debris removal, and the ability to
federally recognized tribal governments as sovereign nations.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you
for the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act and the work that has
moved forward on that.
In conclusion, I look forward to answering any questions
that you may have on that as we move forward. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Ms. Zimmerman. I appreciate that.
Finally, the Chief of Engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, General Bostick. Please proceed.
General Bostick. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Rahall, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify before you today on the Corps' continued work on
Hurricane Sandy recovery. I am also happy to join this panel of
interagency partners because it truly is a team effort.
The support from the Federal Government during the response
to Sandy was unparalleled, and the Corps was part of a larger
team that provided technical assistance and rapid-response
activities across the impacted areas. The success of these
efforts was a result of a dedicated and determined interagency
team, including the Corps, other Federal agencies, State and
local governments, and many others.
On January 29th, 2013, the President signed into law the
Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013. The act appropriate
$5.35 billion to the Corps to address damages caused by
Hurricane Sandy and to reduce future flood risks in ways that
will support the long-term sustainability of the coastal
ecosystem and communities and reduce the economic costs and
risks associated with large-scale flood and storm damages in
areas along the North Atlantic coast.
The Corps' Hurricane Sandy recovery program is structured
with three components: first, near-term; second,
investigations; and, third, construction components. We
continue to make progress on all of these efforts.
The near-term component supports emergency operations and
repair and restoration of previously constructed Corps projects
along the coastline and dredging of Federal navigation channels
and repair of Corps-operated structures.
I will mention a few areas: Beach repair and restoration of
existing projects along the Atlantic coast began in February of
2013 and is scheduled to conclude in the fall of 2014. The
Corps has placed approximately 12 million cubic yards of sand
to repair dunes and berms. Work continues to ensure these
projects are restored to their original design conditions.
Thus far, the Corps has obligated over $400 million to
restore damaged projects. The repair of navigation channels and
structures damaged in the storm began in February of 2013, and
most projects are scheduled for completion in the spring of
2015. Over $170 million has been obligated for this purpose.
The investigations component expedites completion of
ongoing studies at full Federal expense and also funds the
North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study to develop a risk
reduction framework for the 31,000 miles of coastline within
the North Atlantic Division's area that was affected by Sandy.
The comprehensive study team, which includes experts in
coastal planning, engineering, and science from more than 90
governmental, academic, and nongovernmental entities, has
developed a draft framework that is currently under review. The
team will continue its review and develop various tools to
assist with future planning efforts.
The study will also serve as a catalyst for future analysis
that will reduce risk to vulnerable populations, property,
ecosystem, and infrastructure. Up and down the coast, areas
where there were risk reduction projects in place prior to
Hurricane Sandy fared much better than those areas without
protection.
The third component of the program, the construction
component, will implement projects that were previously
authorized but not constructed at the time of Hurricane Sandy
landfall. It will also address projects identified for
implementation following the investigation process as well as
projects that fall within the Corps' Continuing Authorities
Program.
Planning, design, and expedited reevaluations are underway
for 18 authorized but not yet constructed projects, and
construction on several projects is anticipated to begin early
in 2014. Construction work on roughly half of these flood risk
reduction projects is expected to be completed by mid-2015. The
remaining construction is dependent upon the outcome of pending
reevaluation reviews.
Of the identified continuing authority projects,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Maryland, and Virginia are currently scheduled to receive beach
erosion and coastal storm damage risk reduction projects. We
expect the majority of this work to be completed by 2016.
In the year since Hurricane Sandy, we have heard from many
residents in the impacted communities regarding their concerns
about coastal storm damage risk reduction features. We continue
to communicate with the local communities about the purpose of
these projects and to clear up misconceptions about the use of
real estate.
Hurricane Sandy demonstrated the vulnerability of our
coastal communities and the need for all levels of Government
to communicate risk clearly and to continually take this on as
a collective, shared responsibility to reduce residual risks.
I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much, General.
I appreciate all of your testimony.
Now I would like to ask several questions, mostly to Mr.
Rogoff.
You spoke at length about the significant amount of money
you are setting aside for resiliency projects in the transit
system. What you didn't mention in your verbal testimony, but
it is clear in your written testimony, is that you also believe
there is a need to protect against threats from climate change.
My concern is that the Supplemental package was not sold to
Congress as a bill to fight global warming. However, it appears
in your testimony, at least your written testimony, that it is
a top priority for the FTA, resiliency moneys to mitigate the
effects of climate change.
Therefore I guess we need to know how you are going to
ensure that that $5.8 billion, I believe, in resiliency money
will be spent directly on Sandy-related expenses and not on the
administration's agenda or climate change.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, Mr. Chairman, our focus is on protecting
the existing transit infrastructure that supports millions of
people, almost a third of the Nation's transit ridership, from
whatever threats it is exposed to. We are keenly focused on,
obviously, the impact of the last storm but also scenarios that
protect us from the next storm. So if the wind was coming from
a different direction in the next hurricane, we need to be
prepared for those water incursions.
I can assure you, we are looking principally, first and
foremost, at the damage assessments that resulted from Sandy
and what needs to be protected going forward. We are going to
be mindful of the fact that the water levels are rising in that
region; they have been. And we want to make sure that we are
not going to make investments with taxpayer dollars that are
then going to be inadequate as the water level continues to
rise.
Mr. Shuster. How are you going to prioritize those
resiliency projects?
Mr. Rogoff. As I said in my oral remarks, and I believe
they are also in my written remarks, our highest priority,
number one, right away, is to protect the existing
infrastructure, especially the subway infrastructure but also
the Long Island Railroad, Metro North, and New Jersey Transit
infrastructure.
Much of this infrastructure was built decades ago. Mr.
Nadler and I were at an event in Brooklyn over the Montague
Tube. That is one of the pieces of infrastructure that we will
be looking to protect. That infrastructure is 93 years old and
was never built with water incursions of this kind in mind. And
that is what we need to protect, because the R train that runs
through that tube is serving tens of thousands of people a day.
Mr. Shuster. And what criteria will you base the
competitive grants to be awarded?
Mr. Rogoff. First and foremost we will base it on whether
they have a comprehensive plan to protect existing
infrastructure that is serving passengers now, and how many
passengers. We know what we want to avoid. We want to avoid an
investment that protects one part of the line but not the other
part of the line.
We also are going to infuse in that criteria a regional
approach because, as I said in my oral remarks, much of the
infrastructure is so close together, between what the Long
Island Railroad uses, what the Subway uses, New Jersey Transit,
and Amtrak, we could cause inadvertent harm by protecting one
piece of infrastructure from water incursion only to flood a
neighboring piece of infrastructure that could be serving even
more passengers and could do even more damage.
So our highest priority is going to be on the
infrastructure that serves existing passengers and, also,
making sure that all of the agencies are playing well in the
sandbox and have a comprehensive plan so that the taxpayer
investment has the maximum level of protection.
Mr. Shuster. And talking about taxpayer investment, will
the cost-benefit analysis be----
Mr. Rogoff. It will be.
Mr. Shuster [continuing]. The highest priority?
Mr. Rogoff. It will be an elemental part of the application
process. We need to be careful, like I said, to make sure that
there is a regional approach and the cost-beneficial project
for one piece of infrastructure doesn't do unknown damage to
the neighboring piece of infrastructure.
Mr. Shuster. Well, but the cost-benefit really needs to be,
in my view----
Mr. Rogoff. It----
Mr. Shuster. And it is up to us, the stewards of the
taxpayer dollars, to make sure that that is central.
Mr. Rogoff. And that is one of the recommendations that has
also come out of Secretary Donovan's Sandy Task Force and is
going to be an elemental part of our analysis.
Mr. Shuster. And how will you make this transparent to the
taxpayers? What process will you go through to make sure we can
see how the process was laid out so that everybody is clear
that cost-benefit was the highest priority?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, I think we have a good history now, I
believe, with this committee in terms of providing transparency
in our discretionary grant-making decisions. Obviously, the
committee has oversight authorities. We also have the Inspector
General, who has considerable resources to oversee our
processes. And we are more than happy to brief any subgroup or
group of the committee on precisely how we are going to go
about it.
Mr. Shuster. It is also a concern to me, making certain
that these transit authorities are not diverting these funds to
their own projects out there that aren't part of the moneys
that Congress intended and that you ought to be administering
towards the resiliency, towards mitigation. Is that----
Mr. Rogoff. I totally agree. We have been very clear. In
terms of the volume of potential resiliency investments that
have been identified for us, they go well beyond the amount of
funds that we will have available. So we are going to be
focused on the have-to-haves, not the nice-to-haves.
Mr. Shuster. I didn't hear the last part.
Mr. Rogoff. We are going to be focused on the have-to-have
projects, the ones that have the maximum impact with the
taxpayer dollars on protecting existing infrastructure. The so-
called nice-to-have projects will have to take a backseat.
Mr. Shuster. All right. Well, and we have seen throughout
our recent history, a lot of times, when you put these kind of
dollars out there, they are diverted, they are not used wisely.
So it is extremely important, obviously, to this committee and
to the taxpayers that those things are done in a way that are
transparent and they are done for its intended purpose so that
we don't get mitigation malpractice, which we have seen, you
know, many, many times in our recent history.
Mr. Rogoff. I completely agree, Mr. Chairman. I think one
of the benefits of running this program now through FTA, this
is not to criticize the FEMA approach, but we have had an
ongoing relationship with these transit agencies, knowing
precisely what their capital plans have been for years. And we
will be able to see straight up whether dollars are going
towards something that has been planned for 9 years without a
mitigation benefit versus true protection against the next
disaster.
Mr. Shuster. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Rogoff.
And, with that, Mr. Rahall?
Mr. Rahall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, I want to commend the entire panel for your
dedication to public service.
I want to also commend, Mr. Chairman, an individual that is
in the audience listening to the testimony today, and that is
the president of Amtrak, Joe Boardman.
Welcome, Mr. Boardman. And I, again, commend you for your
being here and listening to this testimony.
I have a question for Mrs. Zimmerman. And I want to
particularly thank FEMA, as well, for assisting on a particular
issue in my congressional district in Logan County with which I
have discussed directly with your director. And it is moving
forward in a very positive resolution. I appreciate that.
But my question to you, Mrs. Zimmerman, is in regard to the
Sandy Recovery Improvement Act, which directed FEMA to review,
update, and revise the individual assistance factors, as you
know. What is the implementation status of this provision? And
has FEMA reached out to States and tribes to identify the
issues and concerns that resulted in this provision being
enacted?
Ms. Zimmerman. Yes, we did. Thank you, Ranking Member.
First off, as soon as it passed, we took a look at that,
and we made outreach to our partners through the National
Emergency Management Association and the International
Association for Emergency Managers, as well as the tribal
constituents, to talk to our State and local and tribal
partners to examine the individual assistance criteria.
As you know, the criteria has been out there for a long
time, and we needed to take a look at that and what really
indicates when a community has been impacted and those disaster
survivors and what it means. So we did that outreach starting
almost immediately after the act was passed, pulled together
those pieces of information, and we have been working with that
to move it forward to be able to provide some guidance.
We have drafted our proposal, and we are going to be
working through the process of rulemaking to put that out there
for stakeholders to once again take a look at it and to make
comment before it goes into law. So we are in the process of
that, and we appreciate all the outreach and the comments that
we did receive from our constituents.
Mr. Rahall. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is all the questions I have.
Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you.
Mr. Gibbs is recognized.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Microphone.
Mr. Gibbs. Is it working? There we go. I can see, it has a
loose wire in there, I think. Anyway, I wanted to----
Mr. Shuster. Flood damage.
Mr. Gibbs. Yeah. Flood damage, he says.
A couple questions to General Bostick.
General, you know, we are working through the WRDA bill, as
you know, the Water Resources Development Act. And one thing we
are trying to do in the WRDA bill is streamline some of the
studies, not eliminating studies, but, you know, doing it in a
shorter period of time to bring the costs down and bring these
projects to fruition.
And I know especially in the construction authority part of
the emergency legislation for Hurricane Sandy, it talks about--
and you mentioned this in your testimony--previously authorized
Corps projects designed to reduce flood and storm risk, you
know. And then it goes on to say in the law, ``modifying these
existing Corps projects that do not meet these standards,'' and
it goes on. But in that area of the law, I believe that
environmental NEPA and economic analysis are waived.
And so I guess my first question is, what impact are you
seeing, you know, by--that is going further into streamlining
in this emergency legislation. Has it been positive? Or what
challenges for the Corps have we seen by, you know, doing some
things and not having to do the economic analysis on those
modifications or environmental impacts? Have you got any
comment on that?
General Bostick. Yes, Representative Gibbs. First, thanks
to the entire congressional team that has been working WRDA. It
has been very positive for us, that we will execute some of the
missions that come out of that, assuming it is passed, to see
the bipartisan support and the progress.
In terms of the work that we are doing in Sandy, we feel
fairly good at the progress that we are making. And the
interagency support has been fantastic, from my view. We have
been given authorities to move quickly, especially on the flood
control and coastal emergency projects, where we are able to
bring those back to the design conditions for those that are in
the North Atlantic Division area.
So that work is proceeding well. The work that we are doing
in O&M is proceeding well. We still are working with the
interagency partners, as we should, and we have not seen any
holdup in our progress. So we feel good about where we are at.
Mr. Gibbs. And you feel comfortable about any modifications
to those authorized construction activities, not having to go
through more studies and more analysis, that, you know, things
are going along fine? You are OK with that?
General Bostick. I am comfortable with the way the law was
published, or it was passed. And we are working within that law
and have no issues with it. Any modifications to the projects
that we have are approved at the Assistant Secretary of the
Army of Civil Works level, Ms. Darcy. And our work with her and
in conjunction with OMB has gone well.
Mr. Gibbs. Good.
A second question regarding nonstructural alternatives. Has
there been local requests versus--you know, lots of times,
there is lots of--I think the locals request a lot of
structural alternatives. What is the status on nonstructural
alternatives? I know that you have had that authority since the
1940s.
And then, also--well, I guess answer the first part. Has
there been requests from any locals on doing nonstructural
alternatives?
General Bostick. We have not had requests for nonstructural
alternatives, but, as an engineering agency, we believe that is
one of the options. And as we do the comprehensive study review
that was directed as part of the Supplemental--we received $20
million for that--I am certain that those types of
nonstructural opportunities will be an option to consider.
Mr. Gibbs. After Hurricane Katrina, was there much
nonstructural alternatives implemented, put in place? Or what
is the status?
General Bostick. There were no nonstructural alternatives
that were requested, but one of the first--or, actually, the
first Chief's Report that I signed was an ecosystem restoration
project of the Barataria Basin.
And it is lines of defense that help reduce the risk of
these disasters. When a storm comes in, it could hit flush on a
city or you can have some lines of defense. Part of that lines
of defense is ecosystem restoration, marshlands, it is barrier
islands----
Mr. Gibbs. Yeah. Let me just ask a followup on that. I know
during our WRDA hearings there were some entities that were
really pushing nonstructural alternatives. So let me make this
clear. So I think you said in Hurricane Sandy there hasn't been
any requests for nonstructural alternatives, and the
nonstructural alternatives for Katrina was limited to some
restoration but not anything more comprehensive than that?
General Bostick. We had no requests for nonstructural
alternatives.
Mr. Gibbs. OK. Thank you. My time has expired. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
And Ms. Norton is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
you for this followup. I have already learned and begun to
think about things I did not know.
I thank all the witnesses for their very important
testimony.
I have been struck by the differences between emergency
relief for highways and for public transportation. And I
understand why--apparently, since 1972, we have authorized out
of the Highway Trust Fund, apparently automatically, $100
million for emergency relief for the Highway Administration.
And, of course, I guess that is because you can see the damage
to the bridges after a hurricane, and to the highways.
Now, shall I say, in our wisdom, apparently in MAP-21, for
the first time, we authorized emergency relief for transit, as
well. But, unlike highways, no funding source was allocated, so
we had a big fight here to make sure that there were funds for
Sandy for that relief.
Now, there are major cities of the United States which
grind to a halt if their subways, their underground transit,
does not go. And we already know about New Jersey and New York.
I hope we never have to hear about Chicago. And I certainly
hope we never have to hear about the national capital area
region, because when Metro stops, the entire Federal Government
shuts down. We have had Snowmaggedon here, several days
shutdown. We know what happens. I think Sandy sends a shot
across everybody's bow about your underground transportation.
Now, this committee has long supported pre-disaster
mitigation. Indeed, we have had studies done that show, on the
average, four-to-one savings for pre-disaster mitigation.
Now, I would like to know what these words, ``resiliency
projects,'' mean. I understand New York is up and running, but
that is about all you can say for it. When you say a resiliency
project, Mr. Rogoff, what is the difference between a
resiliency project and a repair project?
Mr. Rogoff. A resiliency project, Mrs. Norton, is one that
protects against the next storm rather than repairing----
Ms. Norton. So who did the repair in New York or New
Jersey, and is that different from who did the resiliency? Or,
I suppose what I should say, are the fund sources different?
They had to get up quickly just to get people to work.
Mr. Rogoff. That is correct. But the emergency relief
statute that you have identified in MAP-21 provides authority
to fund both. And, indeed, the President's budget request, when
he sent it up here for Hurricane Sandy, identified requests for
both. I would----
Ms. Norton. But what is the request for the emergency
relief funding for transit?
Mr. Rogoff. Originally, the request was $11.7 billion, if
my memory serves. We then were given $10.9 billion. And after
sequester, that was lowered to $10.5 billion.
Ms. Norton. No, that is for Sandy.
Mr. Rogoff. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. I am talking----
Mr. Rogoff. Oh.
Ms. Norton. Has the administration supported anything
comparable to the $100 million that comes out of the Highway
Trust Fund for highways?
Mr. Rogoff. Yes, it has. For the last 2 years, both in the
2013 budget and in the 2014 budget, the administration has
requested $25 million as an initial capitalization for the FTA
Emergency Relief Program so that we could be ready to respond
immediately, just as the Federal Highway Administration is, to
disasters as they occur. We are still waiting to see funding
for that request.
Ms. Norton. None of us knows what will happen, but I
certainly--given what this committee already knows about what
we call pre-disaster relief on the ground, I would certainly
hope that at least this small amount, $25 million for MAP-21,
as a starter could begin us down the same road for underground
transit, bearing in mind that not only do we have that clearly
the case for large cities, but increasingly what cities and
counties want to do is to put their own transit below where we
could all see them.
And I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Rice from South Carolina is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Rice. I am just curious about Federal participation and
State and local participation and what the relationships are. I
live in a coastal area and, obviously, am very concerned about
hurricanes. And I just think we need to have a conversation
about what the appropriate level of Federal response is.
With respect to the Highway Administration and replacing
these roads, is the Federal Government putting the roads back
on its own, or are we looking for State and local
participation, as well?
Mr. Mendez. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question.
We work very closely with the State DOT, and, in turn, we
work indirectly with the local governments. But based on our
rules, I believe, it is only the State DOT that can request the
funding. But they certainly are looking for local issues, as
well, during an event.
Mr. Rice. Well, is the Federal Government providing 100
percent of the replacement funds, or are the State and local
governments participating? Is there a set percentage that the
Federal Government does, or are we looking for a 60/40 split, a
two-thirds/one-third split? What are we doing?
Mr. Mendez. There are two scenarios. First of all, there
is, after the event, a 180-day scenario where you want to get
things back on track. So you are not doing permanent repairs;
you are doing interim repairs. At that point, if it is on a
Federal highway system, it is a 100 percent Federal share. For
permanent repairs to an interstate, it is a 90/10 split. If it
is not an interstate, it is generally an 80/20 split.
Mr. Rice. What confuses me is the total appropriations that
we approved in Congress were over $60 billion between the two
Sandy relief bills that we did. I heard earlier testimony and I
read in the papers that the damage was $50 billion. So what I
am curious about is where the extra $10 billion is going.
We need to have a conversation about what the appropriate
level of Federal contribution should be. What about on the
transit systems? I mean, the Federal Government doesn't own or
control or run any of these transit systems; is that correct?
Mr. Rogoff. That is correct, we don't own them. But we do
provide the majority of the capital funding for them as opposed
to State and local government.
Mr. Rice. OK. So when we are putting these things back, are
we contributing 100 percent of the money to do it, or is
State----
Mr. Rogoff. Only in--following with the Presidential
emergency designations, which follows not just FTA relief but
other forms of Federal relief, there is a period right after
the storm for which reimbursable expenses are at 100 percent.
Then that ratchets down to 90 and 75, depending on the
President's emergency designations.
Mr. Rice. How much is going into the transit systems in New
York and New Jersey for these repairs? Have you got an estimate
of what the total is going to cost?
Mr. Rogoff. We do for disaster. We can't necessarily say
yet for----
Mr. Rice. Can you give me a range?
Mr. Rogoff. I can give you a number, sir, if you just give
me a moment. In terms of our estimates for what we expect,
response and recovery for the New York-New Jersey area we
expect to be $5.827 billion. And agencies will get resiliency
funds on top of that. Some of this resiliency money was sent by
formula. Roughly $3 billion of it, at least, will be done on a
competitive basis to make sure we are getting the best projects
for the buck.
Those estimates were done jointly by the FTA and FEMA as a
result of damage assessments done together very shortly after
the storm.
Mr. Rice. OK. So that total, is that the Federal obligation
or is that both?
Mr. Rogoff. That is a combination of Federal and local
because, like I said----
Mr. Rice. OK. And what percentage of that is Federal?
Mr. Rogoff. You know, Mr. Rice, I am going to ask you to
let me get you those numbers as part of the record because----
Mr. Rice. Just roughly. Is it over 50 percent?
Mr. Rogoff. Oh, yes, sir.
Mr. Rice. Seventy percent?
Mr. Rogoff. Over that, because----
Mr. Rice. Ninety percent?
Mr. Rogoff. Part of it will be--like I said, part of it
100, part of it 90, part of it 75, depending on when the actual
bills come in. And that is not just an FTA dynamic; it covers
other disaster relief programs across the Government.
Mr. Rice. It seems to me that the Federal response to
disasters has kind of changed in the last 10 years. I know when
Hugo hit South Carolina, I believe the damages were about $6
billion and the Federal Government contributed about $2
billion. But now we are talking about damages of $50 billion
and the Federal Government is contributing $60 billion.
Mr. Rogoff. I am not sure that is correct. I think the
thing to look at, Mr. Rice, here is what falls under the
definition of ``damage,'' because there are other damage
expenses that are not reimbursable by any Federal program that
I am sure the New York and New Jersey folks would point to the
costs for which they are not getting reimbursed for.
Mr. Rice. And I think you are explaining some of it when
you say you are putting money into resiliency, which is more
than just repair. You are talking about further capital
improvements.
Mr. Rogoff. Correct.
Mr. Rice. But I think we need to have a conversation about
what the Federal role is.
Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
And, with that, Mr. Nadler is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Administrator Rogoff, the chairman talked a few minutes ago
about climate change. And forgetting that for the moment, we do
know that, whether it is caused by climate change or not, we
are getting more of these bad storms, the sea level is rising,
and we are getting higher storm surges.
Does the FTA have enough resources to protect the transit
system in New York and other vulnerable areas, given our
expectations over the next--and our--in light of our experience
what the recent storms and storm surges have been, do you have
enough resources to protect the transit system in New York and
other vulnerable areas, or will there still be unmet needs?
Will the $3 billion for resiliency projects be enough to do
everything necessary to protect our coastal and low-lying
cities from the long-term threat of rising sea levels and
extreme weather events?
Mr. Rogoff. No, it won't, sir. As I said in my oral remarks
earlier, the stakeholders in the area have identified potential
resiliency investments that far exceed what we have in the
Federal envelope as a result of the Sandy Supplemental, which
is why we are going to seek to ruthlessly prioritize the
Federal dollars to the best projects with the greatest impact.
Mr. Nadler. When you say ``far exceed,'' $3 billion, when
you say ``far exceed,'' do you mean 4? 44?
Mr. Rogoff. I have heard numbers well north of $11 billion
or $12 billion. But I can't individually verify those estimates
because they----
Mr. Nadler. Order of magnitude $11 billion, $12 billion.
Mr. Rogoff. At least. If you look at the reports that Mayor
Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo have done, as well as others, you
will see a wide universe of potential investments----
Mr. Nadler. This is a problem we are going to have to
address.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, you are talking about the most transit-
dependent region of the country. I don't need to tell you that.
This is an area where car ownership is at the lowest levels in
the Nation. And the entire economy in the region is dependent
upon an operating transit system.
Mr. Nadler. Some people think, and I can detect in the
questioning by the prior Member, I think, that maybe we
shouldn't spend money on--disaster money on resiliency; we
should only spend it on recovery. What would happen if we only
spent money on recovery, we restore the systems exactly the way
they were? After all, the Montague Tunnel has served us for 93
years, serve us another 93 years. Why should we improve it?
Mr. Rogoff. Because we will pay to restore it over and over
and over again.
Mr. Nadler. So it wouldn't be cost effective.
Mr. Rogoff. We do not believe so.
Mr. Nadler. OK. Let me ask you also that--Sandy
Supplemental provided $118 million to Amtrak, which included
$32 million for expenses related to consequences of Hurricane
Sandy, and $86 million to advance capital projects on the
Northeast Corridor infrastructure recovery and resiliency. I
think you said before that Amtrak was not able to use the $86
million. Why is that?
I am sorry, Administrator Szabo.
Mr. Szabo. There is language in the Sandy Act that actually
restricts a provision under PRIIA which provides for the
temporary transfer of funds for Amtrak to help smooth out their
cash flows. And so it is important. All it takes in order to
correct this problem is the deletion of four words in the Sandy
Supplemental Act, and those four words are ``or any other
act.''
Mr. Nadler. Why were those four words put in there?
Mr. Szabo. I can't speak as to why they were put in there.
But I certainly know what the effect of them are, it was to
undo, in essence, a provision that is provided for in PRIIA
that allows for more effective cash management. And so with
this money restricted, there are so many important projects
that are necessary. You know, you just talked about the need
for resiliency to make sure that when we repair something that
we are going to be able to build it to a higher standard that
will be flood resistant. I think of Substation 41, just there
between New York and New Jersey, which was out during the storm
and ended up severely restricting the flow of Amtrak commuter
trains in and out of New York.
Mr. Nadler. So if those words were removed and the $86
million were made available, it would be used for hardening
infrastructure, in effect.
Mr. Szabo. Exactly. Making sure that it is built to modern
standards that are going to resist----
Mr. Nadler. Making sure that existing infrastructure would
be more resistant for future forms.
Mr. Szabo. Exactly.
Mr. Nadler. Let me ask one thing. My time is beginning to
run out. But, Administrator Rogoff, I think it is important for
people to understand the real impact of the storm on our
region's transit system. Can you talk a little bit about the
extent of the damage, the number of people affected, and the
timeline for how quickly service was restored?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, the timeline in which service was
initially restored is actually a large success. But you are
talking about a service between Metro North and the Long Island
Railroad and the subway system that serves close to 40 percent
of the transit riders of America, and I should add, obviously,
New Jersey Transit in that region. Right in the tristate
region. And the damage was extensive.
For New Jersey Transit, whole rail lines were washed out,
we had to procure 350 buses immediately after the storm just to
provide alternative mechanisms for the commuters from New
Jersey to get to work. As you know, Brooklyn and Manhattan were
cut off from one another. And even in the case of the
Rockaways, Queens was cut off from Queens. You are talking
about a region where, like I said, it is the largest transit-
dependent population where the economy could not function
absent the mobility of workers. You are talking about the need
for getting people at all hours to hospitals. Just for health
care of the people in the region. I don't think you can
overstate the impact or the elemental importance of the transit
system.
Mr. Nadler. My time has expired. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank the gentleman.
Mr. Hanna is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hanna. Thank you for being here. Mr. Rogoff, in your
written testimony, you indicate that the FTA will be holding
back about a billion dollars, $4.5 billion remaining in the
public transportation recovery projects. How long do you
anticipate holding that back and why? And are there not enough
existing recovery needs identified?
Mr. Rogoff. No, that isn't the issue, Mr. Hanna. The issue
really has to do with the fact, as I said earlier, that roughly
$5.8 billion estimate of recovery costs was a very early
estimate. It was done very quickly after the storm by FTA teams
in concert with FEMA teams and our project management oversight
contractors. We want to make sure--we believe, first and
foremost, we have an obligation to pay for the recovery costs.
And we want to make sure that we don't find that there are
latent recovery costs that are discovered for which we would
then need to come back to Congress for yet more money.
And there have been examples that we are already seeing in
the tristate area. We learned from Katrina that subsurface
damage only starts to rear its head months after the storm. We
want to hold moneys in reserve for that purpose. We are
concerned about the fact that project costs may rise from these
initial estimates, especially when everyone is competing for
the same contractors to do them.
So again, we do believe that our first and highest
responsibility is to pay for the recovery and we want to make
sure we have enough money in the bank to do it without having
to come back to you all.
Mr. Hanna. Is that because you don't have the capacity to
anticipate the full extent of the damage or the recovery
process? Twenty percent is a substantial amount of money to be
guessing at.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, but 20 percent, when you add the
possibility of latent damage that we haven't yet seen. We are
already getting reports from the Port Authority and from New
Jersey Transit and the MTA of a higher than expected level of
failures. There may be some equipment that we hoped to repair
that may have to be replaced. I think it is prudent to withhold
those funds. You can be sure they are not going to lay fallow.
We will put them to appropriate use. But we think it is
critical to make sure we do not send out resiliency grants only
to discover that we shorted ourselves on the needs for
recovery.
Mr. Hanna. I understand. Also, Mr. Rogoff, in your written
testimony, you highlight the rebuilding of the A train subway
tracks to the Rockaways and Queens as a major success for rapid
completion. Are there--I guess the question is, what did you
learn about that? Are there means and methods and ideas that
you have come up with that might be similar to how we went
about repairing the I-35 West Bridge in Minnesota and that may
work in a nonemergency situation that we can apply to things
like the new WRTA and MAP-21.
Mr. Rogoff. Understood. I believe, sir, that one of the
things that we need to be attentive to, and I don't necessarily
want to say this is a parallel with the I-35 bridge. But I can
tell you in the transit experience, one of the reasons why the
Rockaways was a success is because the MTA already had a very
capable contractor on board that they were able to put to work
right away. And I think one needs to understand, this committee
will be in receipt of reports from the inspector general and
one of the things they are going to tell you is that we had to
take an openminded view on certain procurement issues as to
whether we were going to allow limited competition procurements
or even sole-source procurements to enable the transit agencies
to get service up and running as quickly as possible. I commend
that to your attention, because I think sometimes when we get
too burdened by the rigor of Federal rules it can slow us down.
The President said that he was going to eliminate red tape
wherever he could to put this money to work. I think we have
made great progress in doing that, and we look forward to
explaining the judgment calls that we made there in order to
get service on the street as soon as possible.
Mr. Hanna. Do you have an idea of the premium generally
that you pay for hiring contractors under emergency
circumstances, if it is 10, 20, 30, some percentage?
Mr. Rogoff. I wouldn't want to venture a guess.
Mr. Hanna. Would you agree that there is one?
Mr. Rogoff. I think so in terms of--you are talking about
people who are able to deploy overnight and have the equipment
or have access to the equipment. And when you are talking about
a project as expansive as the Rockaways, I toured it very
shortly after the storm. You are talking about literally
hundreds of feet of railroad that were dangling in the air like
a swinging bridge because all of the supports had been washed
away. That was a ton of concrete to have to replace. And to do
it smarter, I don't doubt that there was some premium to be
paid. I am also concerned about the premium that we may pay
when all of these contracts are being competed for at the same
time in the years to come. We need to be mindful of that.
Mr. Hanna. My time has expired. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Maloney has a commitment to--the ranking member would
like to yield 5 minutes to Mr. Maloney so he can get his
question in.
Mr. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that
very much. And I want to commend you and the ranking member for
holding this important hearing. Thank everyone on the panel for
their service.
General Bostick, if I am not mistaken, you and I were
together at Stewart Air Force Base, Air National Guard Base, in
January or February welcoming home the Joint Task Force Empire
411th Engineer Brigade. Am I right about that, sir?
General Bostick. Yes, sir. Good to see you again.
Mr. Maloney. I also think, if I am not mistaken, you are a
graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point,
which I have the honor of representing. Am I right about that?
General Bostick. You are correct.
Mr. Maloney. Which explains your outstanding service to
your country.
And I want to tell you, sir, because that, of course, that
is in my district in the Hudson Valley, but it is also one of
the great jewels of the United States. And thank you for your
service. But my question, sir, is--I have a quick question, I
have a more complicated question. My quick question is, there
was a commitment as part of the Sandy Supplemental Aid package
to conduct a coastal flooding study, $20 million study. And it
is my understanding that it is meant to include areas in the
Hudson Valley that would extend up to both sides of the river,
up to Poughkeepsie. I was hoping to get your thoughts on the
status of that study. And if I can get your commitment that the
Hudson Valley will be, as I believe it is supposed to be
included in that study.
General Bostick. This comprehensive study was in the
Supplemental directed the Corps of Engineers to work with--
working with up to 90 different organizations, interagency
locals. And we are looking at the whole North Atlantic Division
coast. And that whole coastline. And the areas impacted by
Sandy in North Atlantic Division. The draft report is near
completion, we are reviewing it, and the final report will come
to Congress January 2015.
Mr. Maloney. And that will include a look at the Hudson
Valley, sir?
General Bostick. I will have to look at the specifics of
the Hudson Valley. But my understanding is anything that was
impacted by Hurricane Sandy in the North Atlantic Division and
the Hudson Valley would be included.
Mr. Maloney. Well, if I could ask you to take a look at
that and get back to my office, I would appreciate that, sir.
General Bostick. I will do that.
Mr. Maloney. My second question relates to the timeliness
with which we are conducting these projects. I think I would
direct this to Administrator Mendez. Sir, there is--it is a
fact that Hurricane Sandy did unprecedented damage in the
Northeast. But prior to that in the Hudson Valley we also
experienced Hurricane Irene in August of 2011, and Tropical
Storm Lee. You know, there is a community I represent called
New Windsor, New York; there is a little bridge there called
Forge Hill Road bridge. It is Route 74. It is how you get
between Route 32 and Route 94. The bridge was washed out as
part of the flooding. The embankment gateway. It is a little
two-lane bridge. If you went there the morning after the storm,
sir, this is--this is what it would look like. It is a simple
little bridge. It could be in any town in America. There is no
doubt about what caused the damage. There is no doubt that it
needs to be replaced. But it is a two-lane bridge. It could be
anywhere. And folks got to go all the way up to Route 94, all
the way around. It is causing all kinds of bottlenecks. If you
went to Route 74 today, this morning, this is what it looks
like. It is taken over 2 years, sir, and still no construction
has started.
Can you tell me--I would like to--I would like to get your
commitment that we can find out what the heck is going on with
the Forge Hill Road bridge, specifically. But can you tell me
why it takes 2 years to get a simple little bridge built. If
Task Force--if Joint Task Force Empire, the 411th Brigade,
which was building bridges, if I am not mistaken, General
Bostick, all over Afghanistan, that we welcomed home earlier
this year, was put on this in a combat environment in
Afghanistan, General, is it fair to say you could do this in
under 2 years?
General Bostick. I don't know the conditions of that
specific bridge. But we did bridges and we could do bridges in
Afghanistan in under 2 years.
Mr. Maloney. Right. In a combat environment with people
shooting at them. They built a lot of them in Afghanistan. Why
can't we get a bridge built in America in the State of New York
in under 2 years? If you could help me with that, sir, I would
love to understand. And I would love to get your commitment on
this specific project.
Mr. Mendez. You do have my commitment. I don't know the
details of that. But we will go look at it. I will raise some
questions with our folks in New York.
But let me just kind of step back a little bit. I can
assure you that at least in today's environment, as an example,
in the State of Washington earlier this year on I-5, a major,
major interstate, a bridge got hit by a vehicle and the bridge
dropped. And working with WSDOT, Washington State DOT,
ourselves, and the Coast Guard, and a lot of other people, they
were able to restore that, replace it, a permanent replacement
in less than 6 months, I believe. So it can be done. I just
don't know what happened on your situation. So let me look into
that and we will get back to you.
Mr. Maloney. I appreciate that very much. I would like that
very much. And I think that--I think that if we--you know, it
would be nice thing, wouldn't it, if we--if we can't do it in
less than 2 years, maybe we ought to get Joint Task Force
Empire to build some things in the United States as rapidly and
as efficiently that is they are building them in Afghanistan
and we might be a better country.
My final question would be directed towards the--towards
FEMA. And I guess I would like to know, I guess this would be
directed to Deputy Administrator Zimmerman. Ms. Zimmerman, if
you could help me with the Wallkill River, in particular. There
is a--there is a--there was a rule in existence--my time is
out; so maybe you could just give me this commitment and
contact my office. But there is an issue with providing FEMA
relief to lands that are largely agricultural property. This
means a lot of folks who are farmers aren't getting help right
now under the FEMA programs. It is a real issue in Orange
County that is really suffering from Hurricane Irene and these
other storms. If I could get your commitment to work with me on
this I would sure appreciate it.
Ms. Zimmerman. Yes, you have our commitment to work with
you.
Mr. Maloney. Thank you. I will yield back my time, Mr.
Chairman. And thank you again for the indulgence.
Mr. Shuster. The gentleman doesn't have any time to yield
back, but that is OK. That is OK. I want members of the
committee to take notice, I let Mr. Maloney go on because he
was asking a question that every member of this committee has
asked at some point in their career probably many times, why we
can't get things done faster. And hopefully with the passage of
MAP-21 they have some stuff in there for transit, which has
enabled the Federal Transit Administration to move quicker on
problems like this.
So again, that is--that is the question we all keep asking
around the table, let's do stuff faster. If you take one thing
away from this committee, I think it is a very bipartisan
approach; let's move things quicker.
And with that, I yield to Mr. Webster for 5 minutes.
Mr. Webster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a timing
question also. So thank you for highlighting that.
Back in 2004--this would be to Ms. Zimmerman--central
Florida in a 45-day period of time were impacted by three
hurricanes, all of which were stronger than Sandy, Charley,
Frances, and Irene.
And there are--there were many local municipalities and
others who were sub-grantees from our grantee, which is the
State of Florida, our division of Emergency Management, headed
at that time by your administrator now, Mr. Fugate. And today,
the audits are taking place, 10 years later. Many of the people
are gone, people don't remember, whatever, but they are being
audited. And in many, many cases asked to give back money that
supposedly was given to them. And the point is, the timing to
recover funds a decade after a disaster, and this is only the
first, Charley, and there are two other hurricanes that will
follow after this, which were again within that 45-day
framework, that these local communities are going to have to
produce documents, which they may or may not have. I don't
know. But I know it is a difficulty.
I heard another member of this committee talk about that
when we were doing the bill, the FEMA bill. She was the mayor
of West Palm Beach and they too were having the same problems.
I guess my question is in the case of Sandy recovery, what
initiatives are being taken by FEMA to provide greater level of
certainty for these grantees and sub-grantees to avoid a
similar recovery process 10 years from now that will--as
opposed to possibly closing out these public assistance
projects earlier and so that audits could occur hopefully in a
timely manner.
Ms. Zimmerman. Great. Yes. That is one of our concerns too,
is to make sure as projects get completed that we are auditing
them and going through and working with the paperwork with the
applicant so that the grantees, as they administer the money
and as the sub-grantees are out there doing the project and
completing them. So one of the things is, we have taken a
stronger approach when we set up and we put together the
project worksheets, working with the applicants, the folks that
are on the road, on the ground, it is the damages that they
have incurred. So we are putting stronger criteria out there so
that when we are documenting the projects to see what has been
completed or what needs to be completed, making sure we have
all of that documentation upfront as well as monitoring it as
we work through the process.
So working closer with our grantees and sub-grantees to
make sure that documentation is there and the closer
collaboration throughout the project.
Mr. Webster. I have one other question, and that is, there
has been a lot of talk about resiliency and resilient
construction. Do you know anywhere in a statute or in rule or
in guidance documents--even though I know we have had documents
here from FEMA that talk about resilient--that ``resilient
construction'' is defined?
Ms. Zimmerman. So, yes. So when we have projects, whether
it is through our public assistance program or our hazard
mitigation grant program, we include mitigation to a project--
when something's been destroyed, and it might be old
construction, whatever, we look to make those more resilient.
Through the public assistance program we do have mitigation
dollars that can be used on top of the project funding.
Mr. Webster. Right. But what I am asking, is there a
definition of ``resilient construction'' anywhere in any
document that you know of?
Ms. Zimmerman. I would have to get back with you on that
one.
Mr. Webster. OK. Thank you. Yield back.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
Ms. Brown is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rogoff, thank you very much for meeting with the mayor
of Orlando, Buddy Dyer, and the other mayors and everybody from
central Florida with their concern about the projects that I
guess, because of the $24 billion shutdown and the sequester,
12 projects are caught up that are ready to go. But because of
what is going on in Congress, these projects may not be able to
move forward. Can you expound on--it is not just Orlando, it is
central Florida, it is 12 other projects around the country.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, there are a number of projects. You are
talking specifically about our New Starts program?
Ms. Brown. Yes, sir.
Mr. Rogoff. Our New Starts and Small Starts program. And we
did, in 2013, as we have in prior years, ask for increased
funding for that program, because we were signing up more
meritorious projects around the country. Some of them very
large that are going to serve a great many passengers. And as
Mr. Shuster pointed out, we are speeding up our processes at
the request of this committee and others, and our own desire to
move projects more quickly. Unfortunately, in 2013, rather than
get the funding increase that we sought, we got frozen through
the continuing resolution and then sequestered below that. And
the result is that every FTA New Start project that had a full
funding grant agreement had their scheduled payment reduced in
2013.
Now, looking forward, we obviously don't know the outcome
of the appropriations process for 2014. So we don't know
whether we will be able to fully fund all of our existing
obligations in 2014. And not knowing that, it is very hard to
predict whether we will have additional funding as we have
requested in our budget to fund additional projects.
Our entire appropriation may be taken up with the multiyear
commitments we have already made. I think SunRail Phase 2 is
the project of greatest concern to you, it is one of those
projects that is in our pipeline. We have--I testified here and
elsewhere before that our ability to fund new projects in the
pipeline will only be determined by whether we can get
sufficient appropriations to pay off our existing obligations.
Ms. Brown. Thank you. Mr. Szabo, I need to go back--I know
Mr. Boardman is here, and that has been acknowledged. But back
to the $118 million that only $32 million have been able to be
spent. Have the leadership in the House Transportation
Committee and in the Senate, have they been contacted? Because
basically after the hurricane, we took the train up. And we met
with the stakeholders all the way up. And they told about the
importance of harding the area so that, you know, we wouldn't
have the flood coming in.
So this is--can we have a list of how that $86 million is
intended to be spent? And what is the status? Have you
contacted the leadership? Because I am sure that the leadership
on both Houses would want to make sure that what happened with
Sandy doesn't happen again.
Mr. Szabo. Yes, Congresswoman, we will be able to provide
for you for the record a list of projects that would be
appropriate for the additional what is now $81 million to
ensure that resiliency of the infrastructure. We have continued
to have dialogue, with what it would take for an appropriate
fix. And again it is really a matter of simply deleting four
words, and those four words ``or any other act.''
Ms. Brown. Well, did not the President have the authority
to just, you know, change those words?
Mr. Szabo. Not once it is adopted into--you know, into
statute.
Ms. Brown. I see.
Mr. Szabo. If we go back to the original provisions under
PRIIA, the Secretary has the authority, we provide the
appropriate oversight at FRA to ensure that these temporary
transfers are just that, temporary. Those things that are
appropriate on a day to day to smooth out cash flow, and ensure
at the end of the year that it is a clean audit. And that is
important----
Ms. Brown. Is this what the attorneys told you?
Mr. Szabo. That is correct.
Ms. Brown. Fire those attorneys. Thank you very much. I
yield back my time.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentlelady.
Mr. LoBiondo is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. LoBiondo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank our panel for
being here. I would like to thank my colleagues in the House
for the strong bipartisan effort that it took to get the Sandy
relief package passed. Our entire delegation in New Jersey and
many others worked very hard. But I particularly want to thank
Mr. Sires, Mr. Pascrell for some incredible work. We have
partnered together on many issues, and this was another one
that yielded a very good result.
As we look to the aftermath of Sandy, I want to point out
that our strong support and efforts continue for the thousands
of people who are still displaced. A lot of folks think that
since we are a year afterwards that everything is pretty well
settled. And we made a lot of progress. But there, again, are
thousands that are still displaced and devastated by the
aftermath of the storm. I think reforms that Congress put in
place after Katrina have resulted in a marked improvement with
a Federal response to Sandy, and much good progress and work
has been done because of the strong partnership that has been
created.
And for a lot of people they think this is just some
Federal money poured into it. But this is the Federal
Government, numerous agencies, the State of New Jersey, local
communities that have come together in an extraordinary way. In
the Sandy relief package, we gave a lot of flexibility to the
State of New Jersey. Governor Christie has an incredible hands-
on attitude about how to work with the Federal agencies and
determine where this money could be best put. But with all that
good progress, because of flaws in the formula which no one
could foresee, we have a number of communities that have just
fallen through the cracks. The Bayshore communities in
Cumberland County, while a very small part of Cumberland County
geographically, have just been devastated.
We have got Little Egg Harbor Township, we have got Mystic
Island, we have got Tuckerton. These places have fallen through
the cracks, and the suffering that these folks are undergoing
is no less than the ones who were in the more inclusive areas.
So we need to try to find the flexibility. And we are working
with Federal agencies to continue to see if there is room in
the language. So we are going to be that coming back, trying to
see what we can do on this.
Tourism is a tremendous mainstay for New Jersey. It is
almost a $40 billion industry. So the recovery efforts focused
early on on trying to recover for the tourism season were
pretty successful. Infrastructure projects had great success.
And General Bostick, I want to tell you that the Army Corps
in Philadelphia has been nothing short of outstanding. These
folks understand how to partner to get results, to get things
done. They have been a pleasure to work with. They have gone in
each and every community, looked at what we needed to do of how
to get this done, and I think a real model for how some other
Federal agencies to work. So while this Federal, State, and
local partnership has been mostly effective, we still need to
work even harder to make sure that we finish the job for those
people who really have fallen between--between the cracks.
Again, this is a result of a strong bipartisan effort that
I think we can look to with a lot of pride. We can see that
this work has resulted in tremendous amount of progress. But
sort of unrelated to Sandy, but certainly a part of it, is what
is happening with the flood insurance maps. And here again, we
have had a pretty united effort from our delegation. Senators
Menendez and Booker are fully engaged. But this is adding to
the misery that the people of New Jersey along the coast are
experiencing with the aftermath of Sandy.
So we have a very strong bipartisan effort with a number of
folks that are working on this. And we hope to have a
successful conclusion. So I would like to once again thank
those Members of the partnership for their work, but remind
everybody that we still have an awful lot that has to be done
and we need the strong effort to continue. Mr. Chairman, thank
you very much.
Mr. Duncan [presiding]. Thank you. Mr. Bishop is next.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the
panel both for your presentation today and also for all the
work that you have done and continue to do on behalf of the
people we all represent. I want a particular word of thanks for
FEMA, who was on the ground in my district within hours of the
storm hitting and stays there and has done a great job, and a
particular word of thanks also to the Army Corps of Engineers
who continues to do great work.
And, General Bostick, in addition to thanking you, I want
to pay particular thank you and commendation to David Leach and
Joe Vietri, who are sitting behind you, who have done great,
great work in our district and throughout the Northeast.
Real quickly the gentleman from South Carolina before was
raising issues having to do with cost and what--the remedy we
have put in place. And he was suggesting that we had a $50
billion need against which we were proposing a $60 billion
solution. And I just--I think it is important that we all have
the same set of numbers. The Governors of New York and New
Jersey provided a very, very detailed list back in the fall of
2012 to the White House. That list was north of $80 billion
worth of needs that they were requesting the Federal Government
to address. The response was $60 billion, $10 billion of which
was essentially additional borrowing authority for the flood
insurance program. So that left roughly $50 billion, which has
been reduced by discrimination.
So what really we are doing is providing approximately $45
billion or $47 billion against an $85 billion need. So plenty
of money. I mean, lots of money, $47 billion. But it is not as
if we are throwing money at problems and not having identified
problems with any degree of specificity.
Let me just go to a couple of things real quick. The
President made a commitment to eliminating red tape for the
Sandy recovery efforts. And my question, General Bostick, is to
you, is, is that commitment really being acted upon? And do we
really have a commitment to expedite projects to the greatest
extent possible from the partners that the Corps must work
with? And I am speaking specifically about OMB, Fish and
Wildlife, Department of the Interior. Is there truly a
Governmentwide commitment to eliminating red tape so that we
can put solutions in place as quickly as possible? And, if not,
is there anything this committee can do to assist you in
completing your efforts?
General Bostick. Mr. Bishop, thank for that question, and
also thanks for recognizing members of my team and also the
team that is doing the work in North Atlantic Division and
across the Corps.
To your question, in terms of Sandy and the post-Sandy
work, we feel like we are moving as fast as we can safely move.
And we think the interagency work, the work with OMB, the work
that is happening on the ground with the locals is moving as
fast as we can safely move. And we feel good about the
authorities that we have been given. I think if you look
broader in terms of the work that the Corps must do, there is
more work to do in terms of streamlining our efforts and making
us all work together to move quickly. But in terms of post-
Sandy construction, we feel good about where we are at.
Mr. Bishop. OK. Thank you for that. We talked a little
about funding. The Corps had $5.35 billion. And that is--that
is an enormous amount of money. But is it sufficient to repair
the damage that was caused by 100-year storm, and is it
sufficient to repair the damage in such a way that we will not
have damage to that extent if we are hit by additional storms
going forward? And let me just add a little bit also. One of
the things that I am very concerned about is we are going to
make repairs, particularly to our shorelines, but those repairs
are going to require ongoing maintenance. And to the extent--is
it possible for the Corps to sequester some portion--bad word--
set aside some portion of the funding so that there could be a
pool available for ongoing maintenance so that it doesn't all
fall on either the annual appropriations process or the local
governments?
General Bostick. That is a complex question, sir.
Mr. Bishop. Sorry.
General Bostick. What I would say is it is going to be yes-
and-no answer. Yes, it is enough in the areas that we have been
asked to respond to immediately. The flood control and coastal
emergency. Those projects, the O&M projects that were direct in
our authorities. The comprehensive study, the $20 million to do
the comprehensive study. I feel we have adequate funds to do
what we have been asked to do there. There are some projects
that are authorized but not constructed. There are some
projects that may come out of ongoing investigations. The
comprehensive study is not going to produce projects, but down
the road it may produce ideas that the Congress may want to
seek projects. And there is not enough money for that.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Shuster [presiding]. With that, Mr. Davis is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thanks
for holding this hearing.
Thank you to each and every one of you for being here
today.
Joe, I would really like to talk to you about some high-
speed rail issues in Springfield to Chicago to Saint Louis, but
we will save that for another day.
I really have enjoyed hearing some of the questions and the
testimony relating to some of the processes that are followed
post-disaster. And I think in this country, when it comes to
disaster relief, we do a great job on the ground early. FEMA
needs to be congratulated. All of your agencies do a phenomenal
job. But we have the problems post-disaster. And it seems to
me, too, that in many of the processes that take place
afterwards we don't dedicate enough time to try and make them
easier on the average hardworking taxpayers of this country,
too, who may still have to deal with agencies like FEMA and
others.
And with that in mind, I know Mr. Webster talked about the
audit process that sometimes takes up to 10 years to address
issues relating to taxpayer dollars being spent. We all want to
save taxpayer dollars, Administrator Zimmerman, but we have to
get a better process, too, that is in place so that those
audits get done more quickly, not just on the public assistance
projects that my colleague, Mr. Webster, mentioned, but also
when it comes to individual assistance.
And we are going to see this in the aftermath of Hurricane
Sandy. We have seen it in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
and many disasters near my district along the Mississippi
River, where, years from now, individuals will get letters
stating that they now owe FEMA money.
So I would urge you to continue to work towards making the
process on the front end better so that we avoid these problems
in the future. Because you know who they call? They call us.
And then we call you. And it is unfortunate when that process
has to happen.
I do want to address, because I know that flood maps and
mapping issues are frustrating folks along the eastern
seaboard, too, as they are in and along the Mississippi River.
As you know, we have a project that we are working with the
Corps of Engineers to try and upgrade our levies in the metro
east, while it seems we are in a race with FEMA to avoid the
flood insurance rates going up drastically. It seems we should
have better coordination.
And along that line, the LOMA process. The LOMA process is
a process that I found some personal frustration with in
helping individuals walk through that. And I want to ask you a
question. What is your average time it takes for a LOMA request
to actually be--from filing date through adjudication?
Ms. Zimmerman. Thank you for that question, Representative
Davis. That falls within our Flood Insurance and Mitigation
branch. I come from Response and Recovery. And I would not be
able to give you a quote, as far as how long that process
takes. So we would be happy to get that information back to you
and give you that timeline.
Mr. Davis. Can you get that person here in the next minute
and 42 seconds?
Ms. Zimmerman. Well, let me see.
Mr. Davis. Would you take my question back?
Ms. Zimmerman. Yes, definitely.
Mr. Davis. Because it goes with the whole--it also goes
within the responsibility of FEMA and within the area that you
are responsible for, too. Because it is the entire process,
whether it is a mapping process, whether it is the disaster
assistance process, whether it is actually making sure that
individuals and public entities get the funds that they need
and deserve. And it is an overall frustration for Members like
me that we just see one agency within different departments
seemingly work against themselves. And that is what we are
trying to fix here.
And I believe this committee--I agree with Chairman
Shuster. We have seen Chairman Shuster and so many people on
this committee in a bipartisan way put forth efforts to
streamline processes. Because what is happening now sometimes
isn't the best. And each and every one of you know a better way
to move the bureaucracy. And we need to hear from you, too, and
we need to hear from all of your agencies on how we can make
the processes better post this disaster and the many more that
are sure to come.
And, with that, since I asked the question to the wrong
person, I will yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
Now Mr. Sires is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Sires. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
meeting.
Before I start, I want to thank my colleague LoBiondo for
his hard work and the kind words. He took the leadership and we
were able to secure the money that New Jersey needed. So I feel
real good about my colleagues.
You know, one of my pet peeves when I was in the New Jersey
Assembly was always putting money, every year--beaches,
replenishment, and everything else that went along when we had
a storm. And this resilience program, to me, I think it is
extremely important. Because we would build it, and it would
break again.
So I guess my question to you now is this: Knowing that we
need to do this resilience and knowing that we need to fix this
or we can have the money to do the infrastructure that is going
to be able to withstand the storms, are we better off now or
better prepared for a future storm than we were before Sandy?
Have we done some of the work that needed to be done in
infrastructure to withstand some of the storms in the future?
Mr. Rogoff. I will take a quick piece of that, but I only
have a small piece of that answer, Mr. Sires.
We have at the FTA allocated not just recovery money but we
have also allocated $1.3 billion to the transit agencies in the
region, including New Jersey Transit and the MTA, for what we
call local priority resiliency.
The concept for that funding was this: If you are going to
go into a tunnel and you are going to restore it and do the
necessary restoration, it makes sense and certainly is
efficient from the perspective of the taxpayer to complete the
resilience element of that project at the same time.
So the classic example is you have rail tunnels that also
have the signal and the electrical work and the ductwork at the
ground level. And putting it up to the roof doesn't cost all
that much, and, Lord knows, you don't want to have to shut down
the tunnel twice.
So, yes, we are in the midst of doing that construction. It
is not completed yet, but there are what I would call, kind of,
small bore resiliency efforts that are underway.
Mr. Sires. Well, I am glad to hear that, because one of the
problems that we had in Hoboken, New Jersey, was the signals.
Apparently, there were, like, 1,200 signals that went because
of the slope of the--so this is where the resilience money will
be spent, I would assume.
Mr. Rogoff. That is one part of it. We----
Mr. Sires. There are others, I am sure.
Mr. Rogoff. We expect to compete a larger chunk of it for--
--
Mr. Sires. Because the other question is going to be to
Lieutenant General Bostick.
You know, one of the visits that I made after the storm
were the ports. And the ports were hit hard, their
infrastructure. So I was just wondering if you are working with
the ports in order to raise the grid, you know, the electrical
grids, and make everything somehow able to better stand the
storms and the floods that hit these ports. Because, as you
know, the ports in our area, there were 250,000 jobs, and that
is impacted. And I must say that they were back within a few
days. Almost a week, they were back functioning.
So I was just wondering if the Army Corps of Engineers was
working with the ports on their resilience program to make sure
the infrastructure is capable of handling some of these storms.
General Bostick. Representative, we work with the ports,
but our responsibility by the authorities that we have are
primarily in the O&M and the dredging work that we do. And then
we do some work on the coastlines.
We are working very closely with the Department of Energy
and Deputy Secretary Poneman and his team in terms of response
capability. Our authorities also allow us to respond quickly
with generator support.
But in terms of the infrastructure of the electrical grid,
that is not an area that we work.
Mr. Sires. All right.
One of the questions that I asked Governor Christie during
this whole storm is, we had a ton of generators delivered to
New Jersey, but some of these places weren't able to hook them
up because, you know, the way where the hook is--or it did not
fit.
So I was just wondering, is that a State, I guess,
requirement or a Federal requirement where we can make
something that everybody has the same ability to switch on?
Maybe I am not making myself clear. For example, the gas
stations, they couldn't get the power because, although you had
a generator, these generators couldn't be hooked on. You
couldn't deliver the gas because they didn't have the same way
of delivering the gas.
Do we need something that is--everybody is the same,
basically?
Mr. Rogoff. One thing I think does touch on this, Mr.
Sires, is if you look at the Hurricane Sandy Task Force report,
the whole issue of the availability of fuel in the event of a
storm was actually quite critical. So, yes, they could get
generators, but they couldn't necessarily get the fuel to fire
them up.
Mr. Sires. Right.
Mr. Rogoff. And, similarly, for transit operators and even
for evacuation needs, how we redeploy fuel so it is available
when we actually need it at its most critical time is one of
the issues that the task force is looking at.
Mr. Sires. That would be a State issue or Federal issue? I
am sorry.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, I think, like everything else here, it is
a partnership.
Mr. Sires. OK.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
And, with that, Mr. Farenthold is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Farenthold. Thank you very much, Chairman Shuster.
And I have seen a great improvement in the response to
Sandy after Katrina. And my goal is to continue that level of
improvement as we continue to face natural disasters. We all
hope and pray that they won't happen, but they always do.
Obviously, there are funding issues associated with this.
You know, I think it is a whole other issue about how we
address funding for natural disasters. Do we continue to do
these as supplemental bills, or is it something that we should
be planning for because we know it is going to happen?
But along the lines of continuing improvement and learning
from these issues, I know, Ms. Zimmerman, you aren't the flood
insurance maps expert, but is there some analysis that you all
are working with that department to determine the accuracy of
these maps as predictors of damages, specifically with respect
to hurricanes? They are, kind of, unusual, very powerful
weather events. Is there some process underway to determine the
accuracy of the flood maps and, for that matter, any of our
other predictive mechanisms?
Ms. Zimmerman. Yes, I can guarantee you that we are looking
at the maps, looking at their accuracy, as we are updating all
of the maps going forward. And they are one of the tools that
we do look at as to when we are looking and doing our hazard
and risk analysis of all communities across the United States
and really working with the State and local partners to assess
those risks. So it is one of the many pieces that we have when
we do look----
Mr. Farenthold. And I ask this question because I am
concerned about--I am also concerned about the science and
accuracy behind the map. I think Mr. LoBiondo and Mr. Davis and
several other folks have expressed some concern about the
mapping process. And I do think that is important in our
preparation for disasters, even above and beyond just
determining the flood insurance rates. And I would join with
the other Members in encouraging you to take back to your
office that the maps are an area of interest to this committee
and to Congress as a whole.
Let me ask General Bostick with the Corps real quickly,
there is a constant battle for dollars between maintenance and
new projects. And, you know, one of the concerns that I hear
from some of the folks back in Texas is that there isn't enough
money for maintenance. And there is an attitude within the
community, and I am not sure how deeply it extends into the
Corps, but an attitude of, well, we will wait till the next
hurricane and it will fall down and then they will have to find
money to fix it.
How are we determining in the Corps what is necessary to do
in maintenance to keep vital facilities open? Where are our
challenges there, and how successful do you think we are being
at that?
General Bostick. This is a significant area of concern for
me and all of the Corps leaders and employees. We are managing
about $250 billion worth of projects that the Congress has
authorized and asked us to manage, and we have very little
dollars in which to do that. The reality is we are doing mostly
operations and maintenance versus new construction. Very little
new construction work, in fact.
So our focus is how do we use the precious dollars that we
have to continue to operate. One of the things that we are
doing in our Civil Works Transformation is to look at our
infrastructure strategy and determine, within that strategy,
that portfolio of $250 billion worth of infrastructure, what
should we retain? What should we repurpose? And what should we
divest of? There is just too much infrastructure that we can no
longer properly maintain.
So part of the strategy has got to come back to the local,
the State, and the Federal leaders and say, this is no longer
serving the purpose for which Congress authorized it.
Mr. Farenthold. Or, of course, we could pull all the Harbor
Maintenance Trust Fund back into harbor maintenance. That might
help.
And, Mr. Mendez, let me ask you a question. Also, thank you
for coming down to the district I represent, Corpus Christi. I
hope you enjoyed your visit.
One of our ongoing problems throughout the country is the
condition of our bridges. And can you tell me quickly what
happens when we have a weather event, a hurricane, lots of
water, to substandard bridges? And can you just spend the next
couple seconds telling us how bad it is or is not?
Mr. Mendez. Well, let me just give you numbers that I do
have. Throughout the Nation, we have close to 600,000 bridges.
Of that, about, I would say, maybe 150,000 of them may not meet
current design standards or could use some form of either
replacement or some kind of refurbishment, if you will. So that
gives you an understanding as to how the bridges are.
And, obviously, depending on a specific condition on a
specific bridge, a lot of water may not be a good thing if you
have a lot of scour or your columns are being eroded.
Mr. Farenthold. All right. Well, I see my time has expired.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Farenthold.
Mr. Carson is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Carson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Madam Zimmerman, your written testimony mentions the
President's Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force. This task
force recently published its reports with recommendations to
help the impacted areas and effectively encouraged resilient
rebuilding approaches.
I am very interested in the benefits of resilient building
and rebuilding techniques which can improve pre-disaster
mitigation. Will you highlight some of the task force
recommendations for us and describe how this committee can help
these recommendations become implemented?
Ms. Zimmerman. Sure. Thank you, Representative.
The task force report did come out. I believe there are 69
recommendations in the report. And as we move forward to build
more resilience, as we have been talking about on a number of
questions and answers here today, looking at projects and we
would look at it holistically instead of just the FEMA Public
Assistance Program. We repair what was damaged or destroyed,
but we want to make sure what we are repairing has some degree
of resiliency to it, some mitigation efforts to go into it, so
that we are not continually rebuilding the same structures and
putting them back the way they were.
So, throughout the report, it has a number of
recommendations and things that I know folks are working on,
the working groups, to move that forward and to define how do
we build back more resilient. And as experienced here on this
panel, bringing all Federal agencies together, as all of us
received different funding sources through the Sandy Recovery
Improvement Act, and how do we put those dollars to the best
use so that we are not duplicating funding. Also, to make sure
that when we come to the resiliency that we are looking at what
is the best case, going back to what is the benefit-cost of
this and are we making sure that we are using the best use of
the money so that we are not going to come back in and have to
rebuild.
So I know, through the recommendations in the report,
several Federal agencies, as well as working with our State and
local partners--because it goes beyond that, and it is looking
beyond just Sandy, whenever disaster strikes, and how we come
together to make sure that we are building more resilient.
Mr. Carson. Thank you.
My followup is for the entire panel. A common complaint
after past disasters is the constant changing of FEMA staff,
who often provide conflicting answers on project eligibility.
This leads to problems not only early on but often later on in
the process when the audits are conducted and find various
costs and projects were ineligible for funding.
What steps might FEMA be taking to provide continuity in
FEMA's decisionmaking with respect to recovery projects and to
really ensure that correct information is being provided to all
applicants?
Ms. Zimmerman. I will take that one.
What we have done is we have really instituted to
documenting our process and to do training. We have put forward
in the last 2 years a number of guidance documents and to
making sure that our staff is trained out there in the field.
Mr. Carson. Uh-huh.
Ms. Zimmerman. So when there is transition, a lot of our
workforce are disaster reservists. They are out there for a
period of time and move from disaster to disaster. But we want
to make sure that when somebody has to leave and somebody new
comes in that there is a transition period. So that they are
working through getting to understand the applicants that they
are assigned to and working with their projects.
And, as I say, just the guidance documents and the training
to make sure folks are doing it the same way so that you are
not getting that one person says one thing and the next person
comes in and says the other thing. So we are trying to put that
together, and we have been doing a lot of training. We have
trained over 400 of our Public Assistance Cadre members so that
they are trying to do the system the same way.
Mr. Carson. What, from the individual witnesses, are the
top two factors that have effectively restricted your agency
from being able to implement what Congress directed you to do
in the Sandy Supplemental legislation? I only have a minute
left.
All right. Think on it.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
If anybody would like to answer that in writing, we
certainly would appreciate those types of responses. You could
maybe even make it the top three. That would be helpful to us.
With that, Chairman Duncan is recognized.
Mr. Duncan.Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I
had to speak on the floor and had other obligations that kept
me from being here the first hour or so of this hearing, so I
apologize if I am repeating something.
But I have a news report from just a little over 2 weeks
ago that says, though the Government aid has been slow to
trickle over the past year, already the cases of fraud have
piled up, and officials are warning that as more money gets
freed up, more will try to bilk the system. And it says that in
just one county, Monmouth County, there have been 210 cases in
just that one county that have been opened.
And then, also, I understand that there is concern from
past disasters and also possibly in this one that some agencies
or individuals have been given money that--that FEMA had
already reimbursed the people or they had gotten from insurance
proceeds.
And I am wondering--so I have two questions. One, what is
being done, or is enough being done, to make sure that there is
not as much fraud in this situation as there has been in some
of the other disasters? And, secondly, what happens when you
later find out--or do you later make efforts to find out
whether agencies have gotten money from more than one source?
Mr. Rogoff, we will start with you.
Mr. Rogoff. Sure. Well, Chairman Duncan, we have a very
limited universe of grantees. We are making grants directly to
transit agencies, so we are not making them to individuals
within the communities.
But we have stood up a number of measures to ensure that we
ensure the absolute minimum and hopefully embody a zero
tolerance for waste, fraud, and abuse. For any grantee
receiving over $100 million or more, which includes all of the
big ones in the New York-New Jersey region, we are requiring
them to have their own integrity monitors. We are doing a risk-
based approach not only to every grantee but to every grant.
We have procedures in place with FEMA. We see every award
they might make to any transit agency and they are seeing every
award that we make to every transit agency to ensure that there
is no duplication. And we are currently working with FEMA to
make sure that transit agencies cannot double dip on insurance
and Federal assistance, and we are going to be modeling our
approach on theirs.
It gets complicated. We have hired insurance experts to
help us in the following respect. Some transit agencies have
individual facilities that were insured. Some are getting a
lump-sum settlement from their insurer for all of the damage,
which includes both transit assets and nontransit assets. And
we are going to make sure that even when they get a lump sum,
it is prorated on their transit damage so they are not just
putting their insurance settlement against some other universe
of cost and letting us pay for all of the transit damage. So I
think we have a very good series of procedures in place.
Mr. Duncan. All right. Ms. Zimmerman.
Ms. Zimmerman. Going back to the cases for individual
assistance, post-Katrina we had an improper payment rate of
between 9 and 14 percent. Since that time, we put into place a
number of stopgaps and a number of things that we do internally
to be able to doublecheck, and a year ago, our improper payment
rate was .03 percent. So as we go forward in trying to get the
money out there quickly to disaster survivors following
disasters, there are a lot of checks and balances that we do
within our own system at our processing centers.
So moving forward we are hopeful there won't be a lot of
that. But, as you know, when we get the money out there after
we have been able to validate damages in someone's home, if
they do get insurance coverage, then we do go back and ask them
to see what the insurance covered and what things were not
covered and if we are able to cover those, so there will be
some cases where we may have to ask for refunds back based on
money that we have provided to disaster applicants.
For our public assistance projects, as was stated, we are
working----
Mr. Duncan. Have you asked for any refunds in this
situation yet?
Ms. Zimmerman. From disaster applicants? I believe we have
from a few.
Mr. Duncan. Let me ask you about something else. When Mr.
Sires mentioned, as he said, a ton of generators that were sent
there that couldn't be used, I remembered when FEMA had many
thousands of trailers that they ended up with, brand new
trailers but for another disaster that just ended up sitting
there. Are you familiar with the generators that he is asking
about and are we going to read about things like in the future
on this?
Ms. Zimmerman. I know we work very closely with the Corps
of Engineers when it comes to generators. We provide
generators, working with the Corps of Engineers to install
them. General Bostick?
General Bostick. What we did in post-Sandy, I think there
was an effort from the President on down, including the
Governors, to push forward with as much assets as we could. So
we had more assets available in some areas than they needed.
The other thing that Representative Sires brought up is the
connections. What we do prior to a storm is to conduct
assessments, and the Corps conducted about 2,400 assessments of
critical infrastructure, like hospitals, police stations, fire
stations and those sorts of things. Since Sandy hit a major
city, the type which we had not seen before, there were
generator requirements on things that were not critical
infrastructure. So we did not have connections on those. And it
is really up to the States to help us with that.
Mr. Duncan. All right. My time is up. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman. With that, Ms. Esty, 5
minutes, please.
Ms. Esty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank
the panel for your answers and for staying all the way to the
last person, who I think is here today. I, too, have been
shuttling back and forth with the Science Committee where we
are having a vigorous debate about climate change.
It is my hope that we can learn from what your agencies
have done, what best practices should be going forward. I come
from the State of Connecticut. We still have people rebuilding
in my State. So there are two areas I would like to get your
comments on and feedback about.
First, to return to the remarks from my colleague, Mr.
Gibbs, a little bit earlier, so General Bostick, this is for
you, we have learned a lot in Connecticut about the
vulnerability of our shoreline, most of which is unprotected.
The State has been trying to address through nonstructural
alternatives, but, frankly, there just hasn't been support for
that. And as our policies tend to focus on replacement, I would
hope that these comprehensive surveys are used with now rising
sea levels, increasing severity of storms, to really take a
good hard look at nonhard structure alternatives that may allow
us in places like Long Island Sound, both on the Connecticut
and the New York side, and I would like your comments and
thoughts about what we could do on a congressional level to
facilitate the Corps and any of your agencies to really explore
cost-effective ways of expending taxpayer dollars to better
protect life, limb and property.
General Bostick. Thank you for that question. I think we
are going to learn a lot from the comprehensive study. It will
come to Congress in January of 2015, and I think Congress will
have the opportunity to act on that and determine the way
forward. We will and have considered climate change and sea
level rise and more frequent storms and higher storm surges and
the impact that that could have. Part of that study will
include the kind of options that you are talking about,
nonstructural options, as well as structural. So I think all of
that is on the table and we will have great flexibility in the
way forward.
I think the critical thing for the country is to decide how
it wants to prioritize and where it wants to prioritize its
precious resources; and realize it is going to be not just a
Federal solution, but a non-Federal, local, tribal and all of
us working together.
Ms. Esty. Thank you. Now I would like to turn to the
transportation side. As you well know, we had rail lines
underwater in Connecticut for a considerable period of time.
That will not be the last time we have that happen. So I would
like you to talk a little bit about what alternatives,
particularly given the complexity of the ownership of those
rails in Connecticut, and whether there might be funding that
is available to address what, in some ways, this is the
resilience question we have been talking about over and over
again here today, what that has to do with everything from 100-
year-old catenary lines that we are relying on, and an energy
transmission system that is inadequate to deal with these
issues, as well as rail beds that are too low. And all of
these, and as we know, any one piece, the weakest piece is
going to bring the whole system down on the most heavily used
passenger rail system in the country.
So if you can talk about sort of the intermodal impact of
that, I-95 is already jammed, there is no place for those cars
to go. We have experienced this twice already this year, and it
wasn't Sandy, it was accidents that caused this. So if you can
give us some thought. And frankly, the Governor is here for
Connecticut today and he is going to want to know from me is
the State going to be able to get some assistance in raising
those rail beds, which is, indeed, clearly one of our choke
points and one of our risks for resiliency.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, Ms. Esty, I can tell you that all the
transit agencies that were impacted by Sandy are eligible for
this resiliency funding. And we are already obviously in a
detailed conversation with Metro North about it.
Certainly, you make a good point. The fact that Joe and I
should jointly address this question is indicative of the
challenge. The line that runs along the shoreline is shared by
Amtrak, ConnDOT trains and Metro North trains. It is a critical
asset. Probably more rail passengers use that than most every
other district represented here on the dais, with the exception
of Mr. Nadler's probably.
That is why our priority for our resiliency funding is
going to go to regional approaches where we see that
cooperative conversation between Metro North and Amtrak and
ConnDOT--making sure that there is one comprehensive solution,
not a solution that protects one segment of rail only to flood
another.
Mr. Szabo. I think I would just add to that, I mean, Peter
gave the appropriate answer for the immediate solution. For the
longer term solution I come back to a couple points I made in
my testimony talking about the importance of regionalism,
regional planning, the importance of moving forward with our
NEC Future vision and making sure that we are then meeting the
needs of all of these transit and intercity passenger rail
operators comprehensively, because the point has been well
made, it is the weakest part, you know, link in the chain, that
ultimately breaks down the whole system.
Ms. Esty. Thank you very much. I yield back.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentlelady. I have just one final
question and just a remark. Mr. Rogoff, the final question will
be to you, but I have a remark first.
I just want to make sure that Members and panelists know
and one of my colleagues may have alluded to that I think we
are only about recovery, when certainly this committee and what
you do with these funds are about recovery. They are also about
mitigation. But we certainly want to do what is smart and try
to raise the level to prevent these things from happening again
or mitigating so that there is a lot less damage.
But there comes a point, with the limited dollars that we
have, that we may be able to raise it a level or two. But to go
to that third and fourth and fifth level, I believe that is
when the States and the local governments have to step in and
say, OK, if we want to take it three or four levels up, that is
something the taxpayers of New York or New Jersey or New York
City need to do, because the Federal Government is coming in
with taxpayer dollars from the States that are not directly
impacted by it.
So, again, I want to make it clear that I think that
certainly recovery, raising it up, let's be smart about it,
make the investment, if it makes sense to do it.
The other concern that I have is this is a new program, the
transit program, and many times administrations spend the money
that is not intended, what Congress had intended. In fact my
mother used to say to me, I gave you an inch, you took it a
mile. And whether it is a Republican administration or a
Democrat administration, that kind of thing, my mother's wisdom
is right, we give you an inch and you take a mile.
So the final question, Mr. Rogoff, is back to the cost-
benefit. I think it is so important to make sure that a cost-
benefit is paramount, also making sure it is transparent so the
public can see that, and I think the public understands cost-
benefit analysis. What would you see as a scenario where you
would say, well, the cost-benefit analysis is here and we
really have got to take a different tact on that? Because maybe
there are those scenarios out there. Can you think of one that
might give us some guidance?
Mr. Rogoff. Quite frankly, not offhand. Well, let me
provide one. Depending on what you include in costs and what
you include in benefits, there could be a community for which
the transit access is absolutely critical but the number of
transit riders doesn't generate as much by way of benefits so
the solution is that those people lose service. I don't even
have a place in mind when I think about that right now.
But why do we have an Essential Air Service program? Well,
a decision has been made by some that we need to maintain that
connectivity for those communities and those airports where
they otherwise wouldn't get it. I could see a scenario where we
would make a judgment that it is absolutely essential that that
community continue to have access to transit, even if there are
comparatively few riders. But we are not there yet. I can
assure you, as I said earlier, cost-benefit is going to be
elemental to our analysis.
If I could raise one other thing only because Mr. Webster
is still here and he raised a question that I feel I could help
answer. He asked earlier if resiliency investments were defined
anywhere on paper. They will be shortly, at least for purposes
of the Federal Transit Administration, because we will be
putting out a notice of funding availability inviting
applications for those resiliency investments and we will
obviously, in that notice, have to define what is eligible and
what is not. So I just wanted to call that to his attention,
because there will be something on paper to look at at that
time.
Mr. Shuster. I appreciate that. And, again, this committee
and this Congress needs to have that transparency. We saw the
TIGER grants and nobody can ever figure out exactly why they
went where they did. I have my own thoughts on that. But,
again, transparency is important and I think cost-benefit
analysis is absolutely central to the whole question.
So, again, I thank all you for being here. I appreciate you
spending your time here. Are there any further questions from
any Members of the panel? Seeing none, I would like to thank
each of our witnesses for their testimony today.
I ask unanimous consent that the record of today's hearing
remain open until such time as our witnesses have provided
answers to any questions that may be submitted in writing and
unanimous consent that the record remain open for 15 days for
any additional comments and information submitted by Members or
witnesses to be included in the record of today's hearing.
Without objection, so ordered.
Again, thank you all for taking the time today. I
appreciate it greatly. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:13 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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