A House of Representatives vote on the “Water Resources Reform and Development Act” (WRRDA), originally scheduled for this week, has been delayed as Congress struggles to resolve the federal government shutdown. The bill, which cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last month, would authorize water resource and port construction projects carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The postponement of the House WRRDA vote also carries implications for the “Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act” (WIFIA), an AMWA-backed proposal that would help water and wastewater utilities finance major water infrastructure projects. A pilot WIFIA program was included in the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) legislation approved by the Senate earlier this year, and lawmakers were expected to hammer out a final WRDA bill this fall after the House acted on its proposal. But now these next steps, as well as a decision on the fate of WIFIA, are on hold.
Reports from Capitol Hill quote congressional aides as saying the House and Senate will not consider any major legislation unrelated to the shutdown until the government is back in business.
Impacts of the shutdown on non-essential federal programs are being more widely felt as departments and agencies scale back or halt operations. Some activities, such as the provision of water and energy services (e.g. dam operations) under the Bureau of Reclamation, continue as normal. However, work at most other agencies involved with the water sector, including EPA, has been put on hold. All work on drinking water regulatory development is at a standstill, and the National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) meetings scheduled for this Wednesday and Thursday have been cancelled. It is anticipated that all other informational calls, meetings and webinars at EPA and other federal agencies will be cancelled until the government is reopened.
Many FEMA employees have returned to work, despite the shutdown, in order to provide disaster response support related to Tropical Storm Karen. This is in addition to the 86 percent of Department of Homeland Security employees and contractors who have remained on duty to maintain counterterrorism watches or intelligence gathering or dissemination, as well as criminal law enforcement, passenger processing and cargo inspection, and the protective functions of the Secret Service. Among the federal security activities that have been suspended is development of the critical infrastructure cybersecurity program required by White House Executive Order 13636.
Federal agency websites notified visitors of the shutdown in different ways. At EPA, a banner atop most web pages says that websites will not be updated until after the shutdown. A similar notice is on the Department of Interior's website as well as a link to the agency's "contingency shutdown plans" at www.doi.gov/shutdown. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), all pages went dark, with traffic diverted togovernmentshutdown.noaa.gov, except for critical weather and hurricane information atweather.gov.