Washington state water utility officials spoke Friday of the threats posed by the elimination of federal funding eliminated for a regional dam project, including potential housing moratoriums and risks to flood-prone areas.
The virtual press briefing was hosted by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. Officials on the call included Heather Pennington, water superintendent for Tacoma Public Utilities, and Thomas Keown, general manager of the Covington Water District in south King County.
Murray said that funds to improve Howard A. Hanson Dam for a fish-passage project were among cuts to Army Corps of Engineers’ projects, according to the Corps’ work plans released Thursday.
The dam facility was set to receive $500 million this year in funding Murray secured in the fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill she wrote as chair and passed through committee in August 2024, as well as in House Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 bill.
“President Trump’s Army Corps construction plan utterly tramples all the careful, painstaking negotiations we did in Congress to reach a bipartisan understanding about what projects need funding, and replaces it with his own partisan vision,” she said Friday.
Murray explained how the funding process unraveled, saying initial passage by both House and Senate for the project ultimately “had to go to a continuing resolution for funding for the rest of the year” because the bill was not finished in time.
That point was underscored in March by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, (R-South Dakota), who said at that time, “To be clear, Republicans aren’t thrilled about another (continuing resolution), but it is our best option to make sure that last year’s failure by Democrats doesn’t interfere with this year’s appropriations process.”
Murray on Friday noted that wasn’t the usual form of a continuing resolution and that it took away budgetary discretion from Congress.
“Previous to this, the continuing resolutions listed those projects that were bipartisan, sent by the Corps of Engineers,” she continued. “The past month or so ago, all of that language was taken out,” and the CR passed in March gave discretion to the Trump administration to prioritize projects in determining funding allocations.
“That is a first, and the impact is serious,” Murray added.
The continuing resolution cut Corps of Engineers’ civil works construction nationwide by $1.4 billion (44 percent), according to congressional figures.
Democrats in both the U.S. House and Senate on Friday in separate news releases contended more money was shifted to Republican-dominated states. Murray’s office in a release said the budget split worked out to be “overall, 64-33 percent red to blue split.”
Contract awarded last fall
The Howard A. Hanson Dam Additional Water Storage Fish Passage Facility Project contract was awarded to Flatiron-Aecon Joint Venture in October.
The earthen dam is on the Green River, 35 miles southeast of Seattle, and the work is to aid Chinook salmon “to access substantially more spawning and rearing area – 221 square miles of undeveloped watershed,” according to the contract announcement last fall.
The Green River municipal watershed is Tacoma Water’s primary water supply.
According to the contract announcement, “Tacoma Public Utilities has already completed an upstream fish passage facility that is ready for operation. Once USACE’s downstream facility is operational, the two facilities will restore the biological connection of the upper watershed (45% of total area) to the lower watershed via salmon migration.”
The fate of that contract is now unclear.
“We are in conversations right now with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with respect to the project and the contract that is underway,” said Pennington of TPU. “I can’t answer the question about what specifically is going to happen with respect to the contract. I do know that there is hope to continue work in the near term.
“But what isn’t currently funded and now won’t be funded with this is unclear” she added, “but we’re very concerned about what is going to be able to be completed and and what the pause and impact will be if we don’t secure additional funding.”
Water supply issues
She noted that the project was multi-faceted, not just dealing with fish passage, but also flood-risk management and water-supply storage.
Pennington said that while the immediate Tacoma service area didn’t face the same housing moratorium concerns as areas such as Covington, “we have been advocating for the additional water-storage projects since the dam was constructed,” in the early 1960s.
“This project received widespread regional support and would have been one of the most significant investments into ensuring water reliability for 1 million people in western Washington,” she added.
Keown of the Covington Water District said that without the improvements, his area would eventually face water-shortage issues.
The district serves the city of Covington as well as portions of Maple Valley, Black Diamond and unincorporated King County, and has approximately 20,000 customer accounts, according to Keown.
He explained that his area faced a “water-supply deficit” 25 years ago, which led to a moratorium on new housing.
“The district researched all of our options and ultimately decided to make an additional investment of $64 million into the regional water-supply system, which Tacoma Water is the lead,” he said.
The effort at the time, he noted, included the completion of the additional water-storage project.
“Without the key part of this project, the district may not have enough summertime supply to meet our current and future customer needs, starting as early as the mid-2030s.”
“For the district, we actually felt like we’ve bought a four-bedroom house, and then the builder is telling us we can only occupy two bedrooms,” he added.
With its location in south King County, he noted, “Our bottom line floor of growth will be 10% over the next 10 years. We already use 100% of our portion, our share of the water in the summertime.
“We could experience up to 20% growth over the next 10 years,” he added, which could potentially force another new housing moratorium.”
What’s next
Murray said for now the loss is “a critical blow,” noting Trump “is using unilateral authority, which was unfortunately given to him by the Republican CR that just passed, to take that money away.”
She said that she would work in the next bipartisan budget process “to get the money back in.”
“We’re also going to have to remind all of our colleagues here that when we give a president this much authority and take it away from Congress, this is what happens,” she added.
But for now, as things stand with the defunding, “it is dust.”
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