Congressional Subcommittee Hears Testimony on Water Resources Research Amendments Act
On Thursday, June 17, the House Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Water and Power held a hearing on H.R. 5487, the Water Resources Research Amendments Act of 2010.
The bill, submitted by Subcommittee Chairwoman Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Santa Fe Springs), would amend the Water Resources Research Act of 1984. The original act
authorizes and helps to fund research related to water resources by a designated research institute in each state and territory in a program managed by the U.S. Geological Survey. The research institutes are primarily universities.
The changes the amendment would make include expanding the time between agency reviews of the program by the Secretary of the Interior from every three years to every five years, allowing research of “alternative approaches” to increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of water treatment, and extending the $12 million annual appropriation through fiscal year 2016.
Testifying on the bill were John Tubbs, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the Department of the Interior, Prof. Deborah Swackhamer of the University of Minnesota, Maurice McTigue of George Mason University, and Prof. Henry Vaux, Jr. of the University of California at Berkeley.
In her opening statement, Chairwoman Napolitano discussed the importance of having “trained, scientific thinkers” work on the problems our nation faces related to water quality and quantity, but also stressed the need for better access to research results.
Both Ranking Member Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), whose opening statement listed some of the projects undertaken by the program that he believes to be frivolous, and McTigue discussed the lack of organization and availability of the results of the research. McTigue described the difficulty he experienced in his effort to find results on the websites of the various institutes, as well as some of the overlap between the institutes’ research that he encountered.
Rep. McClintock also stated concerns about increasing the reporting requirement from every three years to every five years, and providing further funding at all, when the first three year report on the program since the last extension of it has yet to be submitted. Prof. Swackhamer said that, in research like this, “the outcomes may take years to reveal themselves,” and explained that the usual research cycle is five years. She also pointed out that the institutes are required to file reports with the U.S. Geological Survey annually.
Prof. Vaux, Jr. talked about the importance of the program in terms of training students who could join the water resources professional community in the future. “Last fiscal year, over one thousand students were trained,” he said. He also pointed out that federal money for research, particularly in this area, has not grown with inflation.
Tubbs said that the Department of the Interior “strongly supports” the bill and answered a claim made by Rep. McClintock that not all of the state institutes are meeting the “matching fund” requirement of the program. “We don’t know of any [institutes] not doing it,” he said.
