President Trump Takes Action to Modernize America’s Water Resource Management and Infrastructure

whitehouse.gov ^ | October 27, 2020 | Council on Environmental Quality

[ransomnote]

To address America’s challenges, President Trump takes a common sense, straightforward approach.  Rather than following bureaucratic, outdated, and inefficient processes, President Trump takes action to drive decision making that achieves practical results. This includes changing the Federal Government’s approach to managing our Nation’s water resources.

Water supports our quality of life, public health, food production, energy supplies, and economy, as well as our diverse wildlife and plant species. The United States is blessed with abundant water resources like the Colorado River, which supplies water to more than 40 million people living in the United States and irrigates nearly 4.5 million acres, generating many billions of dollars a year in agricultural and economic benefits. However, decades of uncoordinated Federal actions have diminished the effectiveness of Federal water infrastructure facilities and programs to deliver needed water to communities across the United States. Since the beginning of his Administration, President Trump has refused to allow misguided policies to remain in effect and has sought to increase water reliability for families, farmers, and businesses.

This month, President Trump took action by signing an Executive Order on “Modernizing America’s Water Resource Management and Water Infrastructure.” With this Executive Order, President Trump is formally establishing a Water Subcabinet that will develop a national water strategy to improve management of our Nation’s water resources. This group of senior Federal agency officials will be dedicated to promoting efficient and effective coordination of our water supplies and systems while also eliminating duplication across the agencies.

As a businessman, President Trump recognizes that collaboration is crucial to efficient decision making. The executive order directs the Water Subcabinet to identify and provide recommendations to coordinate and consolidate the overlapping activities of hundreds of Federal interagency water-related task forces and working groups. By bringing key policymakers together and reducing duplication, President Trump is streamlining the Federal Government’s approach to solving problems and meeting the needs of our Nation.

Because coordination within the Federal Government is not enough, President Trump is also directing the Water Subcabinet to work with State, local, and tribal partners and rural communities on issues relating to water resource management. This will allow for an integrated approach to addressing major challenges such as the ongoing drought along the Colorado River Basin and irrigated agriculture in Arizona, restoration projects in the Everglades and Great Lakes region, and nutrient reduction strategies along the Mississippi River and in the Gulf of Mexico watershed.

President Trump is also directing the Water Subcabinet to develop research plans to improve forecasting methods to ensure that America remains a global leader in water-related science and technologies. This will lead to better monitoring, measuring, and predicting of water and weather patterns on both regional and national scales.

To provide clean and reliable water to America’s communities, our Nation needs a qualified workforce that can operate our drinking water and wastewater facilities, and major water infrastructure. In 2016, nearly 1.7 million workers were directly involved in designing, constructing, operating, and governing water infrastructure across the United States, and the need for water professionals is only growing. President Trump recognizes this is both a challenge and an opportunity for America’s workers. To strengthen and expand our Nation’s water workforce, the executive order directs the Water Subcabinet to identify opportunities to provide assistance and technical support to State, local, tribal, and territorial governments to recruit, train, and retain water professionals across the country.

Reliable and safe water supplies are essential for our communities, our economy, and our environment. Under the Trump Administration, the Water Subcabinet will continue to take steps to upgrade our infrastructure and improve management of America’s water resources, from the Colorado River Basin to the Florida Everglades, and from the Central Valley of California to the Great Lakes. President Trump’s decisive actions to protect and modernize our Nation’s water infrastructure will help ensure that our country can meet the needs of current and future generations of Americans.

[ckilmer]

imho there should also be a solution for the regular texas hurricane flooding.

Either overflow floodwater to the gulf of mexico or further inland —pump the water to south and west texas along oil and gas right of ways.

The could pump the water underground or make some big lakes in desert areas of texas.

[doc maverick]

Thank God that we have a President who wasn’t a politician.
He gets things done. He cares for his supporters and he LISTENS to them.
Basement Biden can buy a lot of things, but he can’t buy the kind of support President Trump has.
Trump is going to win.
No doubt about it!

[Eleutheria5]

G-d bless him. Dams and levies are in urgent need of repair. And hydroelectric is the only reliable form of “renewable” energy possible from earth. For solar power, you need to be in outer space. As for wind power, better to harness flatulence and bottle it.

[deport]

You have a wall of water several feet high coming at you. Also you have rainfall
inland of several inches that is trying to flow south to the gulf. A Wall hinders both
outflow and inflow

[Dr. Zzyzx]

Someone needs to push this harder IMHO. The Colorado is stretched WAY past it’s capacity. https://quintascott.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/tap-the-mississippi-to-relieve-the-parched-west-and-the-colorado-river/

[Sequoyah101]

Only irrigate with waste water. Then we can all be progesterone laced meth heads.

[Hootowl99]

Errr ummm no.... I appreciate the kind intentions but engineering realities constrain what is achievable and affordable.

The coastal plains of the Gulf of Mexico extend many miles inland. Closest to the coast are extensive estuaries that are vital to juvenile fish and shrimp habitat. In addition, these low areas are wintering grounds or a critical rest stop for millions of migrating birds.

The coastal plains extend far inland in many cases. They are flat, real flat. Another aspect is that they generally are already crisscrossed by a massive number of drainage ditches, canals and bayous. An exception is west of the Texas coastal bend because of low rainfall making it incompatible with most tilled agriculture thus is mainly useful for cattle and oil wells.

It’s kind of difficult for most folks that have not lived in the region to wrap around what it’s like to be hit with outrageous rainfall amounts from a tropical storm or hurricane. I’ve been through a number of 24-36 inch storm events. During one of these, a small town 15 miles from me had 48 inches of rain over 36 hours. Lotta water! We can protect compact areas with sea walls and pumps. We cannot protect huge areas this way. Houston is up the creek, too large for a sea wall so there is always the risk of the massive rainfall leading to massive flooding.

First thing to toss out of the options is massive area pumping to somewhere else. Way too expensive! Zoning lMHO is the best bet. Aggressive enforcement of construction restrictions in highest risk flood zones and such. I’ve seen this work either by zoning restrictions and high insurance cost or even no underwriting at all. Condemnation has been used and I mostly approve of it.

I’m going to quit rattling on here unless someone wants to kick in some more opinions and experiences to go down the rabbit hole. It’s a complicated subject and not a one size fits all situation.