WRDA veto threat alarms Louisiana legislators

New Orleans CityBusiness, Aug 1, 2007

President Bush will veto a $20 billion water projects bill unless lawmakers remove the billions added for new plants and new costs shifted onto the federal government, the White House said Wednesday.

The veto threat brought immediate clamor from Louisiana's congressional delagation.

"I am stunned by the president's WRDA veto threat," said Sen. David Vitter, R-Metairie. "And I have one basic response - I will enthusiastically work to override his veto.

"Almost two years ago, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, and the federal levees buckled under the intense storm surge. This WRDA bill contains critical authorizations that update, improve, and streamline bureaucratic stonewalls within the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers. It also provides true 100-year protection levels that the greater New Orleans area was supposed to have prior to these levee failures that the president says he's committed to.

"Considering the well-publicized criticism of the way the administration handled this disaster, I'm stunned. I'm afraid the promise the president made to the nation in Jackson Square comes across as hollow today," said Vitter.

Democrat Charlie Melancon, Napoleonville, , made the criticism bipartisan.

"I am extremely disappointed the President has indicated he would deny the people of south Louisiana critical levee and coastal restoration projects with his threat to veto WRDA," Melancon said. "By saying 'no' to the almost $2 billion in coastal restoration projects this bill authorizes, the President is ignoring all of the people of south Louisiana, and the vital role they play supplying this country with energy, seafood, and other resources.

"For too long, Louisianians have been asked to wait patiently while the federal government hemmed and hawed over passing WRDA. Building levees, restoring our coastal wetlands, and closing MRGO are not projects that we can afford to put on the back burner while people in Washington debate year after year whether to get involved."

The veto threat came as the House prepared to take up the bill, loaded with $5 billion in new drinking water and wastewater treatment plants proposed by Senate and House negotiators.

"Indeed, it seems a $14 billion Senate bill went into a conference with the House's $15 billion bill and somehow a bill emerged costing approximately $20 billion," complained Rob Portman, the White House budget director, and John Paul Woodley, Jr., the Army's assistant secretary of civil works.

Because the bill's authorization now "significantly exceeds the cost of either the House or Senate bill and contains other unacceptable provisions ... the president will veto the bill," they wrote to four Senate and House members whose committees oversaw the legislation.

Congress must not increase the Army Corps' already huge backlog of $38 billion in authorized projects by adding new ones for wastewater, drinking water, sewer overflows, waterfront development, transportation and abandoned mines - all of which are "outside of and inappropriate for the mission" of the Army Corps, Portman and Woodley wrote.

Nor should it approve a bill, they wrote, that would adopt new cost-sharing language for projects "that would shift potentially billions of dollars of cost" from local governments onto federal taxpayers.

The Senate also plans to act on the bill this week and get it to the president's desk before Congress begins a one-month August vacation.

Not since President Reagan has an administration threatened to veto a water projects bill, said Stephen Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group tracking the bill's pet projects, or "earmarks" that many consider to be pork- barrel spending.

It is that sort of criticism that has made it difficult for Congress to pass the Water Resources Development Act, which hasn't been renewed since 2000. When Congress passed the original act in 1986, lawmakers envisioned it would be renewed every two years.

The bill's main purpose is to authorize projects by the Army Corps, the Pentagon's construction arm, that improve navigation, reduce the threat of flood and storm damage and restore environmental damage. Its language also is intended to ensure that the Army Corps' water projects are based in economics and science.

This year's bill includes some $3.5 billion for Katrina-damaged Louisiana, plus more than $2 billion for projects in California and $2 billion for Florida, mostly for restoring the Everglades. Another $1.95 billion is included for seven new locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers and $1.7 billion for repairing the region's ecology.

In May, the Senate approved its version on a 91-4 vote. The House passed a similar bill in April on a 394-25 vote. Even if a final bill becomes law, the money must be appropriated later.