Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRAVES of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Congressman Abraham for bringing this amendment up.

I strongly support resiliency efforts, making our communities more resilient and our ecosystem more resilient. In this case, we are taking a standard that is universally considered to be a 100-year standard and bumping it, in many cases, to a 500-year standard.

In the State of Louisiana, FEMA has gone through and tried to establish maps to determine a 100-year standard. We found areas where they are 6 feet off where they should be, yet we are going to try and go to a 500-year standard. I remind you, our Nation hasn't even been around that long.

Most concerning, Mr. Chairman, is when you combine this proposed executive order with the Waters of the U.S. proposal that clearly states that flood plains are within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, you suddenly grossly expand the Federal Government's jurisdiction over private property and prevent or obstruct or increase the cost of development on that private property.

Lastly, Mr. Chairman, I just want to state that in December of last year, Congress raised strong concern about this, about the huge implications of this and, therefore, they put a provision in law that required that input from stakeholders occur before this executive order be put forth, and that was ignored.

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