Transcripts For CSPAN State Officials Testify On Rural Infra

President trump has made pres. Trump madeesident trump has improving our nations infrastructure a top priority. Infrastructure is critical to our nations prosperity. The Senate Environment Public Works Committee has jurisdiction over our nations highways and roads and its ports. These things allow for American Goods to go from the heartland to the coasts and even overseas. They allow for flood protection for both rural and urban communities that save lives. In addition our committee has jurisdiction over the environmental laws that impact the modernization of infrastructure. Doesnt matter whether the setting is urban or rural, rules and regulations can halt orri the modernization of infrastructure and the impact is particularly counter productive if theyre applied without understanding the difference between urban and rural. Our committee has members from both urban and rural areas. The members of this committee represent new york city and newport, rhode island, nebraska city, nebraska and mississippi. And even the town of wyoming, delaware. The diversity of these cities and towns makes it clear that solutions to address and pay for fixing our nations crumbling roads cannot be one size fits all. What works for baltimore, maryland, might not works for wyoming. Big ticket projects on the scale of the big dig in boston that cost billions of dollars or even projects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars are rare in rural and small states. Funding solutions that involve public, private partnerships as it has been discussed by Administration Officials may be Innovative Solutions for crumbling intercities but do not work for rural areas as todays testimony will show. As was stated in the written testimony submitted today on behalf of wyoming, montana, north dakota and south dakota, public, private partnership and other approaches that depend on a positive revenue stream from a project are not a Surface Transportation Infrastructure solution for rural states. This committee has a number of members who represent smaller rural states, delaware, alabama, rhode island, vermont just to name a few. We didnt forget West Virginia. I want to ensure that the voice of these states is not lost in the overall discussion of how to fix our nations infrastructure. I want to work with my colleagues to address issues important to our states while also not ignoring the legitimate needs of large metropolitan areas as well. Stated in the written testimony submitted by the five western states that i referenced earlier, federal highways in our rural states enable, quote, agriculture, energy and Natural Resource products which largely originate in rural areas to move to national and world markets. This is true. It makes no sense that to simply fix the roads and ports in our urban areas while ignoring the roads in inland ports in our rural areas that allow from products to get to the world markets. As testimony today will demonstrate, rural Water Systems also have unique challenges. Theyve been inundated by regulations from the epa which harms their ability. Rural Water Systems are challenged by the same regulations that big city Water Systems face but do no have the same resources to comply. Any Infrastructure Solutions this Committee Considers should help address rural challenges. These challenges include funding. Like their road project counter parts these systems are not the best candidates for loans. Its important to note written testimony today from the general manager of the Public Service district in West Virginia. He states, due to a lack of economys of scale in lower immediateen Household Incomes, Water Infrastructure is often less affordable a much greater cost per household. This means that a Water Infrastructure project poses a greater final risk compared to the metropolitan project and very importantly he says requires some portion of a grant, not just a loan to make the project feasible. The higher the percentage of grants required to make a project works results in less money repaid to the Funding Agency and a correlating demu in incorrelating diminution addition of the corpus fund. Were going to have to find new ways to help pay to modernize the important projects. Its my hope that in committee will work to find solutions that work for Rural America as well. I urge my colleagues to work with me in a bipartisan way to find these solutions. With that i turn to the Ranking Member for his statement. Thanks. Thank you for bringing us together for an important and i think invigorating hearing. I want to say to our guests from oklahoma and West Virginia, wyoming and from colorado by weigh of delaware and from delaware, welcome were delighted that youre here. Mr. Chairman, colleagues, these folks hear me say this more times than anyone i remember but my dad taught me born in West Virginia and grew up in virginia. My dad taught my sister and me that the things worth having are worth paying for and he used to say, i dont care if you owe somebody money, work three jobs till you can pay that off but you ought to take responsibility for your obligations. The other thing my dad used to say to my sister and me. If a jobs worth doing its worth doing well. From that i took the idea that everything i do i can do better. I think thats true of all of us. I think thats also true of every federal and state program, infrastructure, roads highways, bridges, water, waste water. My hope today youll help us sort of think outside the box a little bit. Its easy to come up with ideas on how sotospend the money. How are we going to raise that money . Need some help there and need some help in figuring out how do we get help from the same money or less money. For the record, i have that couple documents mr. Chairman be submitted for the record. I hold them in my hand. Without objection. Thanks so much. As i think most of us know our new president has raised the issue of america needing to modernize and rebuild aged infrastructure as a point of concern. Democratic senators recently released a blue print for dressing infrastructure at large, much more broader than that including water and waste water. I believe that members on both sides of the aisle are supportive of addressing this problem. This could be one of those issues that unites us and at this point in time in our nations history we could use a few of those. As a recovering governor i look at most legislation through a particular lens and the lens i look at it through is how a particular investment make for a more nut touring environment for job preservation. In this case we got a bunch of factors i want to mention a couple of them. Quality of our workforce, the skills they bring to the workplace is important. Affordable energy. Public safety. The idea of having access to capital and access to foreign markets. Research and development, investing in the right things that jfrt job creation. Tax policy, common sense regulations, access to decision makers, clean air, clean water, predictability. Businesses need predictability. In 2013 an outfit called Global Institute, they issued a report called game changer and km analyzes how the u. S. Could dramatically transform and expand our economy. In one of the top Game Changers that they gave us was infrastructure investment. Heres what they said the report show we need to invest between 150 and 180 billion more in infrastructure every year. Just to make up for years of underinvestment and to enable robust future growth. They said in the Global Institute if we invested it at this level it would add some where between 1. 4 to gdp every year. Almost double. Create 1. 8 million new jobs by 2020. For a lot of people on the sidelines that would like to go to work and need to go to work this would be a great place for them to go to work. One of the best ways to invest and get the most from our dollars is to maintain our existing infrastructure. Not just to do big, fancy new projects but to maintain our existing infrastructure. Its critical for the economy. Helps people in businesses move more efficiently. Last year the average commuter every year they give us a new update, they wasted 42 hours per person sitting in traffic, not moving. Not moving anywhere and thats sort of a typical thats like a work week for a lot of people just sitting doing nothing. Modern more modern infrastructure would mean less time. Our Nations Health our wealth security, rely on production of goods and services. Every day people and goods move across and array of physical systems chg are collectively known as our Critical Infrastructure. Its ageing and in need of significant Capital Investments to help our economy continue to grow. 2013 infrastructure report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers some of them are here today. They gave us for roads, dams, Drinking Water a d, d. They graded our inland water ways with d minus. Ports received a c, bridges received a c plus. Im particularly interested in hearing three key areas that while financing techniques are a tool that may be appropriate for some kinds of projects, financing by itself will not solve all infrastructure needs regardless of whether we are rural or urban state. Secondary i hope to hear more about is the need for broad infrastructure, broad Investment Strategies and while traditional forms i feel we need more investments to protect our natural infrastructure as well including our shorelines, ecosystem restoration. Risk to man made increases and many cases becomes unmanageable. Many cases becomes unmanageable. Im interesting in hearing how the federal government can be be more efficient with our current funding streams and get the most out of every dollar of federal investment. Infrastructure is a shared responsibility. In some cases with the private sector. I want to ensure that were helping state and local governments with this shared burden while giving them the flexibility they need. I also want to know how we can prioritize the assets we have first before budding new assets that we cant afford to maintain. Finally, this is no one size fits all approach to solving this challenge. Current administrator of the shoreline and waterway Management Section within the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and environmental control. I call him mr. President , president of the american shore for our nation. Hell be discussing a wide range of Water Infrastructure issues and why protect our natural infrastructures is important. Shalin comes to this hearing for the Colorado Department of transportation. Stolen from the state of delaware where he was the secretary of the department of transportation. There he led response to two hurricanes, introduced Performance Management, reduced agency debt by 30 while delivering 2 billion in infrastructure improvements. I wrote one more note here, were not blue states. Were not blue states or red states. Were the United States. We got states that are largely rural, more urban. The needs that we have in our rural states whether its water or transportation are different from maybe what we have in places like where ben and i come from and represent. But we have to look out for each other. We have to look out for each other. If we do that, well all be ahead in the game. Thank you so much. Welcome, everybody. Would you like to welcome your oklahoma witness . Yes, i would and let me mention for the benefit of our witnesses and anyone else who might be interested, the Commerce Committee and this committee have nine members that are on both and were meeting at exactly the same time. If you see members going back and forth were doing double duty this morning. And i think we can do a better job of coordinating those committees. I want to introduce the goodlooking witness we have. I already introduced tony. No, im real pleased to introduce one of our witnesses because ive known Cindy Bobbitt for a long period of time. She was the elected to the grant county board 13 years ago and currently serves as the chairman of the board. Shes been actively involved for the past eight years with the National Association of counties serving in many different capacities including vice chair of the National Transportation steering committee. Furthermore, she serves on the technical Oversight Working Group with the federal Highway Administration office of safety. As you can imagine, commissioner bobbitt is passionate about our nations infrastructure needs and her experience makes her an incredibly well qualified and informed witness for this committee. Grant county is an extremely rural agriculture county in the North Central part of oklahoma that relies heavily on proper infrastructure and has many infrastructure needs. In fact, they say that grant county has as many bridges as they do people. Commissioner bobbitt knows the issues that Rural Businesses face as she and her husband run a farm, growing wheat, grain, alfalfa and cattle. They have deep routes in oklahoma as their farm has been in their family since the land run of 1893. Commissioner bobbitt grew up in rural life driving a tractor at age nine and she bought her first piece of lantd when she was 16 years ole. She knows first hand the importance of agriculture industry to oklahomas economy and the needs in getting those goods to market. Commissioner bobbitt, i want to thank you for being here and for coming all the way from grant county to washington, d. C. Thank you, senator. Could i invite you to please introduce your witness. Thank you. It is a great deal of pleasure to introduce my friend, mike mcnolte who has the general who is the general manager of Putnam County West Virginia hes testifying on the behalf of Putnam County but also the West Virginia rural Waters Association and the National Rural Waters Association. Mike is known as an expert in our state and throughout the nation in this area. He received a bachelors of science from West Virginia tech and a masters from marshal university. He served as the general manager since 2004 and he was previously the director of the bf rural water association. Rural communities and everybodys referenced this have had particularly challenges in West Virginia. Not only do we have Rural Communities but tough terrain that pose challenges in the maintenance of Drinking Water. Mikes found a way, very creatively in his area to work with the Regulatory Compliance and leverage the federal dollars. And we talked just yesterday theres still some people left that we cant forget about it and we wont forget about but i know hell bring valuable insight to this committee. Thanks for coming from West Virginia. Thank you. Thank you, senator. Id also like to introduce bill panose. Whos the 17th director since hes a graduate of California State University where he studied both physics and forren physics and forensic science. Immediately prior to headingaway. Heading wydot well hear from our witnesses and well start from the department of transportation. I do want to remind the witnesses that your full written testimony will be made part of the official hearing today so please keep your statements to five minutes so that we may have some time for questions. I look forward to hearing all the testimony today beginning with mr. Panose. Thank you. Members of the committee, director of the wyoming department of transportation. Today im presenting a statement for my own state of wyoming and the transportation departments of idaho, montana, north dakota and south dakota. As Congress Considers Surface Transportation Infrastructure investment, we hope that our comments will enhance understanding of transportation challenges facing rural states. Let me again get right to our key points. Federal transportation investment in rural states benefit the nation. Highways in our rural states enable truck movements between the west coast and the large cities of the midwest and the east. They benefit people and commerce at both ends of the journey. Our highways enable significant agricultural, energy and Natural Resource products to move from their rural po