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Committee hears ANR request to push flood‑safety, river‑corridor and resilience deadlines in H.319
Summary
DEC and stakeholders told the House Natural Resources & Energy Committee that recent floods, staffing shortfalls and contracting timelines mean the agency needs more time to deliver river‑corridor maps, rulemaking and dam‑safety studies required under last year’s flood safety and climate legislation.
The House Natural Resources & Energy Committee on March 26 considered H.319 amendments that would move back multiple DEC implementation deadlines tied to the Flood Safety Act, dam emergency planning, and the Climate Superfund Act resilience strategy.
Why it matters: Rules, maps and permitting changes tied to river corridors and flood standards affect development, permitting timelines and local flood resilience planning across the state. DEC staff said the agency’s ability to complete the legislative tasks on the original schedule was strained by repeated flood events and workforce shortfalls.
DEC river program and dam‑safety witnesses told the committee that the Flood Safety Act requires a large set of mapping, outreach, rulemaking and reporting tasks. Rob Evans, who manages the Rivers program, said the program expected to need five to six years to complete the work because of hiring, training and contract procurement timelines; the agency has new positions but must recruit staff and execute contracts. Evans said the program received multiple federal disaster declarations in 14 months, which diverted staff to flood recovery work.
The bill moves several deadlines by roughly one year in many sections: river corridor base‑map work, an education and outreach report, rule deadlines for development standards in river corridors, and the effective date for flood hazard area standards. DEC counsel and staff said they requested the shifts to allow time to hire and train staff and to avoid overlapping rulemaking and public‑participation windows with active recovery work.
Dam safety testimony noted two items in H.319: a study committee on dam emergency operations (report moved from Aug. 15, 2025 to Aug. 15, 2026 in the bill) and a Green River Reservoir Dam and dike study whose deadline was shifted from Jan. 15, 2025 to Sept. 1, 2025. Ben Green, dam‑safety section chief, said the committee has held five of eight planned meetings and expects to complete the emergency‑operations report by the revised December deadline if the additional time is granted. He said the Green River study is on schedule to finish field work and deliver a final report by late summer, and that some elements of the consultant work will be shared in a public version with a separate sensitive version for federally regulated infrastructure.
On the Climate Superfund Act resilience strategy, ANR witnesses asked that the statute’s requirement to adopt the resilience implementation strategy by rule be removed so the agency can instead submit the finalized strategy to the General Assembly as a report by Sept. 15, 2025. ANR officials said the strategy is nearing completion, that the agency has already met public‑participation requirements, and that the strategy is designed to be a flexible, frequently updated implementation plan rather than a fixed rule.
Public‑interest witnesses and environmental advocates supported giving the agency the capacity to complete the work but urged the committee to minimize delays on mapping and permitting because of the continuing frequency of storms. Committee members flagged small drafting issues (for example, a date read as July 15 rather than July 1) and asked DEC to confirm exact effective dates and to return with clarifying language.
No formal committee vote on H.319 was recorded in the hearing transcript.
