Agricultural News
Oklahoma Watershed Rehabilitation Projects Will Be Stopped Dead if CR is Approved
Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:49:10 CST
The federal Continuing Resolution (CR) working its way through Congress now to try to avoid a government shutdown contains language that would kill Watershed Operations and Watershed Rehabilitation in the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and apparently prohibit any NRCS employees from working on current rehabilitation projects already funded and in progress. The Continuing Resolution is not funding for the next federal fiscal year, but is for the current fiscal, already five months underway - and its effects would be immediate.
"This would be a crushing blow to Oklahoma's flood control infrastructure," said Mike Thralls, executive director of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. "Oklahoma has six projects under construction, nine more with designs complete and awaiting construction and 12 in planning or design stages. As we read the Senate CR language, all projects would simply stop dead at whatever their state of progress." Thralls said. "And they would stay that way until such a time as the state can find funds necessary to complete them," Thralls said. "That is highly unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future considering the state's current fiscal pressure and current budget deficit of more than $500 million," Thralls said.
"Four of those projects now under construction were funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)," Thralls said. "A lot of people worked hard to a secure a state bond issue for conservation purposes and were finally successful two years ago. The bulk of that money was intended as state cost match to capture federal funds for watershed rehabilitation at the rate of two federal dollars for every state dollar," Thralls said. "If federal funding for watershed rehabilitation were to end, the cost to the state would triple," Thralls said. "And this CR curtails NRCS staff from providing technical assistance that is vital to any future rehabilitation projects, from design and support staff all the way to onsite inspection," Thralls said. "And for ARRA projects currently under construction, this could constitute a breach of contract that will put people downstream from high hazard dams at risk."
Oklahoma leads the nation with over 2,100 upstream flood control dams, but there are over 11,000 projects across the nation. In Oklahoma over 1,000 of the 2,107 dams will be over their design life in the next 10 years and could be in need of rehabilitation to meet dam safety standards.
"If this program is killed in this year's Continuing Resolution, I see little hope of it being revived in next year's budget," Thralls said.
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