Senate OKs water projects including Fort Worth’s Trinity River Vision | McClatchy Washington Bureau

The Senate overwhelmingly approved by 95-3 a comprehensive $9 billion water projects bill Thursday that includes over $500 million for a flood control and economic development project that would create an urban lake in Fort Worth.

Both Texas Republicans, Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, voted for the bill.

The Water Resources Development Act would authorize 30 Army Corps of Engineers projects, ranging from flood control to port deepening to Texas coastal protection, as well as $280 million for infrastructure to replace the lead pipes of Flint, Michigan, that led to the drinking water crisis there.

The House of Representatives has a similar bill that has cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee but has only $5 billion in projects and does not include funding for Flint. The bills would have to be worked out in conference once the House votes on its version – which supporters hope could happen as soon as next week.

Time is short in the session, with only a few weeks left before a recess for the November elections and an expected lame-duck period afterward. Any legislation that is not approved by the end of this Congress in December has to restart in the next two-year legislative session, which begins in January.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., said on the Senate floor, “I am confident that the House will take up their WRDA bill so we can get this done this Congress.”

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said in a statement that he anticipated working out differences between the Senate and House bills. “We share the same goal of sending a WRDA bill to the president before the end of this Congress,” he said.

The Senate-passed bill does not distribute funding but authorizes the spending, a crucial step in the legislative process that gives a blueprint that the appropriating committees use when allocating annual spending.

It is an unusually strong bipartisan bill in an often fractious Congress, bringing together conservative Republican Inhofe and the panel’s ranking member, liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

The lawmakers themselves noted the rare alliance between ideological opposites as Inhofe and Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wished Boxer, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, well. “I hate to see the Inhofe/Boxer team come to an end,” said McConnell.

In a joint statement after the bill passed, Inhofe and Boxer said, “Once again Congress has voted with broad bipartisan support for another major infrastructure bill. Once law, WRDA 2016 will give authority for the Army Corps of Engineers to move forward on 30 projects that will help grow our economy, protect communities from flooding, increase our global competitiveness and restore our natural treasures.”

In the case of Fort Worth’s Trinity River Vision, the authorization has been over 10 years in the making and is a milestone for the supporters, including Cornyn and the project’s champion in the House, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, a former mayor of Fort Worth.

“It’s flood control so that’s important for safety,” Cornyn told Texas reporters Wednesday in a press call. “It’s important, not only for Fort Worth, but for the region.”

The Senate bill includes $520 million for the Fort Worth project – which is estimated to cost nearly $1 billion total – and the House bill has $526.5 million. The Senate version also requires the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works to certify that the Fort Worth project meets cost-benefit criteria. The project, which is under construction, so far has received $28 million in Army Corps funds – primarily from earmarks – and $23 million in federal highway funds for bridges.

It has already created excitement among local residents. “Trinity River Vision is huge for Fort Worth,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, who lives in Fort Worth and represents portions of the city “where the West begins” and Dallas in Congress. “We need a project like this,” he said in an interview. “This could be bigger than Austin’s Town Lake. We need an urban project like that. Millennials want to live in urban areas.”

But the federal role in local projects has its critics, such as the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, which opposed WRDA. In a letter to senators, President Ryan Alexander said the legislation lacked “prioritization systems to ensure precious taxpayer dollars are going to most important, critical and cost-effective water projects.”

The Senate bill authorizes a half-dozen projects for Texas, including widening the port of Corpus Christi and the Houston ship channel. Among the Texas provisions in one that Cornyn had introduced as a separate bill: the Coastal Texas Protection Act, which would speed up mitigation work by having the Army Corps of Engineers use pre-existing environmental studies. “Safeguarding the Gulf Coast from the next major hurricane should be a priority, not just to Texas, but a national priority,” he said.