The Trump administration’s top water officials will appear before Senate appropriators this week, as federal forecasts for both drought and hurricanes show increasingly dire conditions on the horizon this year.
Also, lawmakers on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries are set to take a broader look at the federal government’s role in Western water management at a hearing entitled, “The Federal Reclamation Program’s Next Century.”
The White House budget would slash Reclamation funding by nearly 22 percent and Army Corps funding by 36 percent — levels that are already drawing opposition from House lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have long lowballed their requests for the water resources agencies in favor of priorities elsewhere in the federal budget, knowing that lawmakers are likely to plus up funding for the popular agencies.
