STATEMENT OF SENATOR GEORGE V. VOINOVICH
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
EVERGLADES HEARING
MAY 11, 2000

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and let me start out by thanking you for holding this hearing today on the future of the Everglades. I consider this to be of tremendous importance to this nation and I am pleased to be here.

Mr. Chairman, I am no stranger to the Everglades.

When I was Governor of Ohio, in response to my interests in the Everglades and thanks to the courtesy the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, I spent a day observing the environmentally impacted areas of the Everglades by helicopter and airboat.

In addition, my wife Janet and I have made many visits to Florida including trips to the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge and Everglades National Park. I have enjoyed fishing in the Florida Bay and fishing for snook in the Everglades.

This past January, I had the opportunity to participate with you, Mr. Chairman, and our colleague, Senator Graham, in this Committee's Everglades field hearing in Naples, Florida.

While I was there, I had the opportunity to fly over portions of the ongoing water quality restoration efforts associated with the stormwater treatment areas of the Everglades Construction Project. I also got the chance to revisit the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge and tour it by airboat.

I mention all of this to emphasize that I have invested a lot of time on the Everglades, and in particular, the Comprehensive Restoration Plan.

I am unequivocally committed to the fact that the Everglades are a national treasure that must be protected and restored. Having said that, my detailed review of the Comprehensive Plan has also convinced me that the Everglades Comprehensive Restoration Plan was rushed to this Congress for its consideration.

At a cost of $1.1 billion, the plans for the 10 initial projects that Congress has been asked to authorize are only conceptual and do not even begin to meet the standards that this Congress has set for project authorizations.

There are some who will say that the Administration is only responding to what Congress requested back in 1996 when it called for a Comprehensive Plan by July 1,1999. However, the clear words of the 1996 Act call for a feasibility report.

Feasibility studies have not been completed on any portion of the comprehensive plan, and yet the Administration is seeking a $1.1 billion authorization based on a "conceptual" plan that does not contain any meaningful level of detail regarding costs, benefits, environmental analysis, design, engineering or real estate.

To authorize projects without this information would be a radical departure from the past oversight of the Corps' program by this Committee, and would make it very difficult to enforce historic standards of this Committee for authorization of Corps projects in this, and future, Water Resources Development Acts.

This does not mean we cannot act on the Everglades Comprehensive Plan.

I think we can and should act to advance the critical national issue of Everglades restoration. We can certainly endorse the Comprehensive Plan as a framework and guide for future action. We can authorize pilot projects to obtain the information we need to move forward.

I am sure that under Chairman Smith's leadership, we can agree on some process that will advance the authorization of the initial projects while assuring that Congress has an opportunity to review and approve feasibility-level reports on these projects before they are implemented.

Mr. Chairman, in addition to my service on the Environment and Public Works Committee, I also serve on the Government Affairs Committee where we are concerned about issues of Government efficiency, effectiveness and coordinated activity. I can't leave the topic of the Everglades restoration without this one observation.

Homestead Air Force base is located only 8 miles from Everglades National Park, one and one half miles from Biscayne Bay and just north of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The Air Force is seeking to transfer property at the Homestead Air Force Base in accordance with the recommendations of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

The Air Force has prepared a draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that presents as the proposed action, the reuse of the airbase as a regional commercial airport.

I am very concerned that the noise, air quality impacts, water quality impacts and developmental pressure of commercial airport operations may not be compatible with the adjacent National Parks and Sanctuary.

I believe it would be irresponsible for the Federal government to approve an investment of billions of taxpayer dollars in restoration of the south Florida ecosystem, while at the same time, approving a reuse plan for Homestead Air Force base that is incompatible with such restoration objectives.

I urge the Administration to pursue consistent objectives in South Florida's restoration and assure that the actions of the Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration are coordinated with the Federal, state, tribal and local agencies, and groups making up the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force.

Finally, I would like to touch on the Everglades restoration in the context of the total, nationwide program of the Corps of Engineers.

We cannot talk about the Everglades restoration in a vacuum. Currently the Corps of Engineers has a project backlog totaling about $30 billion needed to design and construct over 400 active authorized projects.

These are not old outdated projects but projects that have been recently funded, which are economically justified and supported by a non- Federal sponsor. This backlog includes $1.5 billion worth of work within the State of Florida. The State of Florida work represents about 5 percent of the backlog.

The President's 2001 budget includes a construction funding request for the State of Florida of about $176 million - more than 10 percent of the nationwide construction account. This is before consideration of construction funding for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, which will require construction appropriations of $200 million a year during the peak years of construction.

Mr. Chairman, I do not mean to single out the State of Florida, but rather, to emphasize that with construction appropriations for the Corps of Engineers averaging about $1.6 billion a year in the 1990's there is not enough money to accomplish all of the proposed work in the State of Florida and address the water resources needs of the rest of the Nation.

Unless the Corps' construction appropriations is substantially increased to meet these needs, the State of Florida in particular and the Nation in general are going to have to make some very painful decisions on priorities. I believe this is a very critical issue for this committee as we consider the Water Resources Development Act and I plan to explore it further in a Subcommittee hearing on May 16th.

So, once again, I appreciate you calling this hearing this morning, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to what I believe will be a lively discussion on some very topical issues.