Norton to Announce Bill to Make D.C. Eligible for Federal Coastal Management Funds at 2016 DC Flood Summit, Tomorrow
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will give opening remarks at the 2016 DC Flood Summit, tomorrow, Thursday, September 8, 2016, at 9:00 a.m., at the Kellogg Conference Hotel at Gallaudet University (800 Florida Ave. NE). Norton will announce a new bill she will introduce next Tuesday to amend the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 to include the District of Columbia in the definition section of a coastal state, which would make D.C. eligible for federal coastal zone management funding. Norton chose next Tuesday to introduce the bill because she will be hosting a public Capitol Hill briefing on assessing flood risk in D.C. and the National Capital Region on that day, September, 13, 2016, at 2:00 p.m., in 2253 Rayburn House Office Building.
“The District is under threat from rising sea levels and has experienced major floods throughout its history,” Norton said. “We expect our work with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the 17th Street Levee to bear fruit, but it will only protect downtown and Southwest D.C. from flooding from the Potomac River. With climate change causing floods where they have never occurred, our city must be prepared to undertake flood mitigation projects, and federal funding is crucial to those efforts. In addition, this is one of the rare instances where the District has not been treated as a state for the purposes of federal funding and needs to be corrected.”