I pledge to and we leave these remarks from the pennsylvania governor to go live to capitol hill for a Senate Hearing looking at the nations infrastructure and modernization efforts, being held by the Senate Environment and public works committee. These things allow for American Goods to go from the heartland to the coast 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 and delay the modernization of infrastructure and the impact is particularly counterproductive 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 new port, rhode island, nebraska city, nebraska, and mississippi. Wheatland, wyoming, 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, bridges and dams cannot be one size fits all. What works for baltimore, maryland, may not work for bags, wyoming. Big ticket products or projects on the scale of the big dig in above the than 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 had been discussed by Administration Officials may be Innovative Solutions for crum e crumbling inner cities 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, idaho, montana, north dakota and south dakota, quote, Public Private partnerships and other approaches to Infrastructure Development 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, alaska, iowa, nebraska, rhode island, vermont, just to name a few. 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. When i 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 but to simply fix the roads and ports in our urban areas while ignoring the roads and inland ports in our rural areas that allow for products from wyoming, nebraska, or iowa to get to the world markets. As testimony today will demonstrate, rural Water Systems also have unique challenges. They have been inundated by regulations from the epa, which harms their ability to modernize and to function. Rural Water Systems are challenged by the same regulations that big city Water Systems face, yet do not have the same resources to comply. Any Infrastructure Solutions this Committee Considers should help address rural challenges. These challenges include funding. Like the road project counterparts, these systems are not the best candidates for loans. It is important to note written testimony today from mike mcnulty, the general manager of Putnam Public Service district in West Virginia, he states, due to a lack of economies and scale and lower medium Household Incomes in Rural America, Water Infrastructure is often less affordable, much greater cost per household. This means a Water Infrastructure project poses a greater financial 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 work results in less money repaid to the infrastructure Funding Agency and a correlating diminution of the corpus fund. So were going to have to find new ways to help to pay to modernize the new projects. 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. Thank you very much. Thank you for bringing us together for an important and i think invigorating hearing. I just want to say to our guests from oklahoma, West Virginia, wyoming, the other wyoming, and from colorado, by way of delaware and delaware, welcome, were delighted that youre here. Mr. Chairman, colleagues, these folks are here, more times than anyone i remember, but i my dad taught me, born in West Virginia, grew up in West Virginia, my dad taught my sister and me that things worth having are worth paying for. Things worth having are worth paying for. And said, i dont care if you owe somebody money, work three jobs until you pay that off. But you ought to take responsibility for your obligations. The other thing my dad used to say to my sister, we had a choice to do jobs around the house and the garden, a job worth doing is a job worth doing well. And 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 is youll help us think outside the box a little bit on how to pay for this stuff, easy to come up with ideas on how to spend the money, always hard to figure out how are we going to raise that money. Need help there. And then some help in figuring out how do we get better results for less money or for the same amount of money. That was an audible and now my statement. For the record, i have something i want to ask unanimous consent, a couple of documents 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, some of us here in this room, recently released a blueprint for addressing infrastructure challenges writ large, not just highways, roads, bridges, but much more broad than that, water and waste water. I believe members on both sides of the aisle are supportive of addressing this problem. This can be one of those issues that actually unites us and this point in time in our nations history we could use a few of those. This is important for more reasons than not. As a recovering governor, i look at most legislation through a particular lens, a lens i look at it through is how does a particular investment make for a more knenurturing environment f job creation. In this case, got a bunch of factors that impact on nurturing environment for job creation. I want to mention a couple of them. We dont think about this, i dont think that much. Quality of our workforce, skills they bring to the workplace is important. Affordable energy, public safety. The idea of having access to capital, access to foreign markets, research and development, investing in right things that generate job creation opportunities, tax policy, common sense regulations, access to decisionmakers, clean air, clean water, predictability, businesses need predictability. And in 2013, an outfit called an arm of mckenzie, big consulting company, they issued a report called game changer. And it analyzes how the u. S. Could dramatically transform and expand our economy. One of the top Game Changers they gave us was Infrastructure Investment. Here is what they said, the report showed we need to invest between 150 and 180 billion more on infrastructure every year to make up for years of underinvestment and to enable robust future growth. They said in the Global Institute told us in their report, if we invested at this level, it would add somewhere between 1. 4 and 1. 7 to gdp every year. Almost double gdp for the last quarter, create 1. 8 million new jobs by 2020. For a lot of people on the sidelines would like to go to work, need to go to work, this would be a great place for them to go to work, working on the projects. Same report they found that one of the best ways to invest and get most from our dollars is to maintain our existing infrastructure. Not just to do big, fancy new projects, but to maintain existing infrastructure. Infrastructure investment is critical for the economy in part because the direct jobs would create in construction, restoration work, and displaced workers we can help get back into the workforce, which we need to do. Just as important is the fact that modern infrastructure helps people in businesses move more efficiently, last year the average commuter, every year they give us a new update, we wasted 42 hours per person sitting in traffic, not moving. Not moving anywhere. And thats a typical thats like a workweek for a lot of people. Just sitting. Doing nothing. More modern infrastructure would mean less time, fewer resources wasted. Our health and security rely on production and distribution of goods and services. Every day people and goods move across an array of physical systems known as our Critical Infrastructure. It is aging and in need of significant capital investments, we know that, to help our economy continue to grow. 2013 infrastructure report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers, some here today, they gave us for roads, dams, Drinking Water, waste water, a d. D. They graded our inland water ways and levies with a d minus. Bridges received a c plus. As we hear testimony, im pleased in hearing witnesses in three key areas. First, 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 were rural or urban state. Secondary, i hope to hear more about the need for broad infrastructure and broad investment strategy. While traditional forms of infrastructure like roads and ports are essential to our economy, i feel we need more investments to protect our natural infrastructure as well including our shorelines, echo system restoration. Without these protects, risk to man made infrastructure increases and many cases becomes unmanageable. Finally, im interested in hearing how the federal government, i think were interested in hearing how the federal government can be more efficient as i said earlier with our current funding streams and get the most out of every dollar of federal investment. Infrastructure is a shared responsibility with state and local governments and with the private sector. I want to ensure were helping state and local governments with the shared burden while giving them the flexibility they need, and i also want to know how we can make sure were prioritizing the most critical investment and working to maintain the assets we have first before building new assets that we cant afford to maintain. Finally, one no one size fits all approach to solving this challenge. Got to work on the bipartisan manner, really address the concerns. Build consensus on the path forward for the shared state responsibility to our economy. Lastly, mr. Chairman, colleagues, got a couple of people here before us, i know pretty well, and want to welcome all of our witnesses, first introduce tony pratt, current administrator in the Delaware Department of Natural Resources, current president i call him mr. President , president of the American Shore Beach Preservation Association for our nation. Hell be discussing a wide range of Water Infrastructure related issues. And why protecting it is important to restore our roads and bridges. Shailen bhatt, comes to this hearing as a current executive director 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 reduce the agency debt by 30 while delivering 2 billion in infrastructure improvements. I wrote one more note here, i said, were not blue states. Were not blue states. Were not red states, were the United States. We have states that are largely rural, states more urban. And the needs we have in our rural states, water or transportation are different from what we have in our more 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. Thank you, senator carper. Senator inhofe, would you like to welcome your oklahoma witness . I would. 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, on both, and theyre meeting at exactly the same time, so 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. Anyway, i want to introduce the good looking witness we have. The i already introduced tony. No, i im real pleased to introduce one of our witnesses, because ive known Cindy Bobbitt for a long period of time. Shes a commissioner of grant county oklahoma. She was 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 agricultural 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 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, feed grains, alfalfa and cattle. They have deep roots 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 9 and she bought her first piece of land when she was 16 years old. She knows firsthand the importance of agriculture industry to oklahomas economy and the needs in getting those goods to market. Thank you for being here and for coming all the way from grant county to washington, d. C. Thank you, senator. Senator capito, could you please introduce your witness . Thank you, mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure for me to introduce my friend, mike mcnulty, the general manager of the Public Service district of Putnam County, West Virginia, testifying on behalf of Putnam County. Mike is known as an expert in our state and really throughout the nation in this area. He received a bachelors of science from West Virginia tech and he has a masters from marshall university. He served as the general manager since 2004 and previously the director of the West Virginia rural water association. Rural communities and everybody is referencing this, have had particular challenges in West Virginia not only do we have Rural Communities, we have some tough terrain to pose significant challenges for the deployment and the maintenance and operation of Drinking Water and waste Water Infrastructure. You know what, mike has found a way, very creatively, in his area, to work with the Regulatory Compliance and leveraging the federal dollars to extend a lot of municipal water to a lot of people. And we talked just yesterday, still some people left, that we cant forget about, and we wont forget about, but i know hell bring valuable insight to this committee and, mike, thank you for coming from West Virginia and the others from West Virginia rural water association. Thank you