Congresswoman Heather Wilson, First Congressional District of New Mexico
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| Word-duh |
July 18, 2005 |
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Dear Friends,
If you turned any of the white columned buildings in Washington upside down, letters would fall out. Every agency is full of acronyms. We even create tortured names for legislation so that they make nice acronyms like "The FAIR Act" or "The SAFE Act". Who could be against a law that is fair or safe?
When an acronym becomes an English word pronounced like it has vowels and all, you know it has an important life of its own. So it is with WRDA -- pronounced "WORD-duh" -- the Water Resources Development Act. As it happens, it is pretty important.
We passed the reauthorization of WRDA on Thursday and it has some important things for New Mexico in it.
In the fall of 1998 I went down to the South Valley the day after a huge rain storm to see the damage. For many years, water has pooled in the south valley after storms until it evaporates causing lots of damage to property. Because lots of entities are involved -- the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy, the City, the County, Isleta Pueblo, AMAFCA, etc. -- there was no master plan to solve the problem.
After a lot of wrangling, all of these entities came together under the umbrella of the Army Corps of Engineers -- the federal experts on floods and rivers. The Corps was tasked with doing a comprehensive assessment of the flooding and coming up with a plan to deal with it.
That plan has been going through a lot of phases of design and engineering, and pieces of the work under the umbrella of the master plan are underway. But the WRDA bill will authorize a large federal committment to get it done -- $19.4 million, with the federal government contributing $12.6 million and the rest coming from local government.
The bill will also authorize another $15 million to help local towns with water conservation, wasterwater treatment, and surface water protection. In the last round of WRDA, the Congress authorized $25 million for this work which has helped the village of Tijeras and the town of Bernalillo upgrade their water systems.
And there is a new federal/non-federal 50-50 partnership of up to $15 million we were able to add to this version of WRDA for watershed projects in urban areas including on the Rio Grande. This can include small habitat rehabilitation, and removal of invasive species like Russian Olive and Salt Cedar.
All of these things will help Albquerque and its long term water future. I guess that`s worth an acronym.
Wish you were here,
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