Bill aims to spend billions to fix nation's aging dams

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: AP

BOSTON (AP) — Lawmakers in Congress on Friday introduced a bill that would pump tens of billions of dollars into fixing and upgrading the country’s dams.

Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, proposes to spend nearly $26 billion to make the repairs that would enhance safety and increase the power generation capacity of the country’s 90,000 dams. It also calls for removing any dams that have outlived their usefulness.

“We have the opportunity to build stronger, more resilient water infrastructure and hydropower systems in the United States, and the Twenty-First Century Dams Act advances an innovative plan to rehabilitate, retrofit, or remove U.S. dams to bolster clean energy production while taking steps to conserve our waterways for generations to come,” Kuster said in a statement.

The bill, which U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is expected to introduce in the Senate, comes amid concerns that thousands of dams are at increasing risk of failure, especially as climate change is leading to more frequent and intense storms. State and local officials have long acknowledged the problems but complain they lack the funds to properly inspect, repair and maintain their dams.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bill-aims-to-spend-billions-to-fix-nation-s-aging-dams/ar-AALXUSe?li=BBnbfcQ

[True Blue American]

1. Good news for all of us

Along with this news.

https://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2021/07/08/amtrak-new-trains-multi-powered-run-cleaner-amenities/stories/202107070127

[Moostache]

2. I think we need new language for necessary expenditures like these...

They get called "spending" and the connotation is that it is a choice or optional "program" and therefore inherently suspect or wasteful (from a certain mindset). There is nothing optional about repairing the crumbling infrastructure of the nation, period.

Rich MF'ers - who have disproportionally benefitted AND disproportionally skipped out on taxation for DECADES are on the hook for this. Their choice is to ante up NOW, and fix things before they completely fail, or keep dicking around and wait for more building collapses, bridge collapses or dam failures and THEN spend the repair cost AND the clean-up/search and recovery costs as well as insurance costs and so on...

This is not "spending" in the same way that everything else in D.C. gets labelled as "spending"...it is vital repairs and it is dangerous NOT to do it. The case is not one for creating jobs - although the proposed programs attached to the vital repairs will achieve some of that as well...the case is to make the necessary moves now to SAVE even greater expenditures down the line.

It is time that the wealthy - business owners or hedge fund managers or simple heirs and heiresses - own up to the truism that there really is no free lunch. Their "profits" and "assets" and "wealth" was artificially inflated by refusal to keep up the physical conditions of the national infrastructure through continual repairs and taxes to pay for them. Instead, they horded money, bought back stocks or "invested" on both sides of everything to ensure their gains at future expense.

Well, the bill has come due and those that took the most out, must now be forced to put the most in and cover the costs. It is either that, or let the golden goose die and crash the whole damn thing on their heads. If the choice is to continue stiffing the public and allow things to fail, then the rich best not be surprised when the national pastime becomes hunting them down for retribution instead of baseball.

[love_katz]

9. This deserves its own thread. Get thee to the Greatest Page.

[OneCrazyDiamond]

3. Dams can be pretty harmful.

https://www.worldanimalfoundation.com/advocate/wild-earth/params/post/1286190/destructive-dams

[burrowowl]

5. Yes, they can be very harmful.

[Martin68]

7. Absolutely. Dams prevent fish from returning to spawning upriver waters.

However, dams also play important roles in both flood prevention and in providing a source ow water during droughts. Some are essential, and others should be removed, depending on the particular situation.

[Griefbird]

4. I hope they install fish ladders.

Otherwise, spawning salmon and other anadromous fish can't get past them to spawn.

[Martin68]

6. The federal government, through the USDA's National Resources Conservation Service, has been

funding dam breach impact studies and dam repair and maintenance for at least a decade now. I worked for two different Virginia Soil and Water Conservation Districts, both responsibility for multiple impoundments, that have been funded for such projects. The same is true of local governments in Virginia. More money will be welcome to all owners responsible for impoundments, but I couldn't determine from the article if this money will be available to private landowners as well.

[Lars39]

8. Will this address private dams?

Or just state and federal dams?

[XanaDUer2]

10. happy beavers nt