Green Transportation Infrastructure: Challenges to Access and Implementation

Opening Statement By Chairman David Wu

I want to welcome everyone to this morning’s hearing on Green Transportation Infrastructure: Challenges to Access and Implementation. The Committee has heard a lot of testimony over the last five months on high tech ways to mitigate climate change. Today I want to hear about simpler methods for protecting our lakes, rivers and oceans. I’ve invited today’s witnesses because they each a unique perspective in the field of green transportation infrastructure. Now this is a term that is not necessarily well known outside of environmental circles. Simply put, green transportation infrastructure is the use of materials and methods for construction of roads, highways, and parking lots that minimize environmental impact. Today we will hear about the materials and technologies that specifically contribute to the minimization of non-point source water pollution.

Runoff is a major contributor to water pollution, especially from roads and parking lots which concentrate oil, gasoline, heavy metals, and other pollutants which then flow unimpeded into our nation’s water. For example, a one-acre parking lot produces 16 times the runoff of a one-acre meadow. In recent years, local governments, companies, and private citizens have been working to develop simple yet innovative solutions that integrate control of non-point source water pollution into the existing infrastructure. The results: a common sense, low cost, low maintenance system that reduces pollution, prevents flooding, protects ecosystems, and maintains a more natural hydrological environment.

On paper, these technologies look like no-brainers. So why don’t we see them used more often? While there are technological issues and research that needs to be carried out to prove their effectiveness, the biggest impediments are state and federal regulations. Clean water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency on a regional basis, and some regional administrators, including in my home district of Portland, are not familiar with the benefits of using green infrastructure for filtering runoff. Because they have discretion to approve or disapprove technologies, some of these administrators tend to rely on standard operating procedures and steer clear of innovative solutions. We’ll hear this afternoon from Assistant Administrator Ben Grumbles of the EPA’s Office of Water, who is taking the lead at his agency to educate the EPA regional administrators across the country about green infrastructure technologies. I hope to be able to work with Assistant Administrator Grumbles to promote the implementation of green transportation infrastructure projects across the country.

We also need to see better coordination among the federal agencies working on the R&D and regulatory aspects of green transportation infrastructure. Technology development must not happen in a vacuum. The DOT, EPA, universities, and other stakeholders must work together to make sure that technology fits into the current regulatory structure. Likewise, regulators must be flexible enough to evaluate technology according to its performance. In addition, the federal government should take the lead in training the private sector to insist on the use of green technologies for all new developments.

Thank you again to our witnesses for testifying today. Our challenge today is not the development of new technologies. It’s to get people to start using the technologies we’ve got. I hope at the end of this hearing that we’ve learned a lot about technologies for controlling non-point source water pollution that can be integrated into transportation infrastructure. I hope we also gain a better understanding of how to facilitate implementation of these technologies in the public and private sectors to better protect our nation’s precious water.

If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening statements, your statements will be added to the record.

I’m pleased to introduce our expert panel of witnesses, who each play a key role in helping get green transportation infrastructure projects up and running across the country. Our first witness is Ms. Gloria Shepard, who is the Associate Administrator for Planning, Environment, and Realty at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). Next we have Mr. Ben Grumbles, who in addition to being the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water at the Environmental Protection Agency, is an alumni of the Science and Technology Committee staff. Welcome back.

I also have a special welcome for our next two witnesses, who both come from my home district in Oregon. City Commissioner Sam Adams was elected to the Portland City Council in 2005. He oversees the Office of Transportation and the Bureau of Environmental Services. He has taken the lead in developing a citywide greenstreets policy, which requires greenstreet development for all newly constructed or reconstructed roadways. He has also directed the Bureau of Environmental Services to development a Green City Strategy, which aims to manage all the city's stormwater in a sustainable manner. We’ll hear more about these initiatives in Commissioner Adams testimony.

Mr. Dan Huffman is the managing director for national resources for the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, and also comes from Portland. I’m delighted that one again, the First District of Oregon has been a leader in environmental innovations.

Our final witness is Mr. Hal Kassoff, who is a senior vice president at Parsons Brinkerhoff, a leading construction firm.

I will now turn things over to our witnesses. As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited to five minutes each, after which the Members of the Committee will have five minutes each to ask questions.

Witnesses

Panel

3 - Mr. Sam Adams
Commissioner of Public Utilities City of Portland City of Portland
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1 - Ms. Gloria Shepherd
Associate Administrator for Planning, Environment, and Realty Federal Highway Administration Federal Highway Administration
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4 - Mr. Dan Huffman
Managing Director, National Resources National Ready Mixed Concrete Association National Ready Mixed Concrete Association
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2 - Mr. Benjamin Grumbles
Assistant Administrator Office of Water Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water Environmental Protection Agency
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5 - Mr. Hal Kassoff
Senior Vice President Parsons Brinckerhoff Parsons Brinckerhoff
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