Army civil‑works chief outlines 'building infrastructure, not paperwork' plan and flags $45B in unspent funds
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Summary
Assistant Secretary Adam Tell told the Senate EPW Committee the Corps will pursue a 27‑part 'building infrastructure, not paperwork' initiative to speed project delivery, noting $45 billion in previously appropriated funds that remain unexecuted and promising more implementation guidance for prior WRDAs.
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Tell told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the Army Corps of Engineers will pursue a suite of reforms intended to accelerate delivery of water‑resource projects.
"Building infrastructure, not paperwork," Tell said, describing about 27 initiatives aimed at simplifying permitting, sharpening design standards and improving contracting. He said the plan responds to what members of the committee told the Corps they need to deliver projects faster and at lower cost.
Tell said Congress has appropriated roughly $45,000,000,000 for Corps programs that had not been executed and that about $15,000,000,000 of that amount was appropriated more than six years ago. "That funding is stranded," he said, and attributed the delays to a variety of causes including rising costs, sponsor disagreements and incomplete engineering.
Lt. Gen. William H. Graham Jr., the Corps' chief of engineers, said the Corps' current on‑schedule delivery rate is 86.2 percent, an improvement from prior reporting, and endorsed the initiative as a way to empower district engineers "to manage risk, not avoid it."
Committee members pressed for specifics about outstanding WRDA implementation work. Tell said most WRDA provisions took effect immediately or are implemented; a subset requires additional rulemaking or appropriations. He told the panel that, "Of the 552 provisions included in the last three WRDAs, we are developing additional guidance for 19 of the provisions to ensure they're consistently implemented."
The hearing also focused on concrete operational reforms that Corps leaders said should reduce delay: harmonizing district practices, strengthening project delivery teams, accelerating design maturity for subprojects to a 35 percent engineering level so features can be authorized and funded independently, and modernizing procurement for dredging and other national capabilities.
Tell and Graham committed to continuing frequent staff‑to‑staff engagement with senators' offices and to provide outstanding reports and answers for the record that remain in administrative review. Tell said the Corps is also investing in technology and geospatial tools intended to make jurisdictional and permitting decisions more consistent and more transparent to the public.
The committee set deadlines for written questions and responses; senators signaled broad support for faster delivery while reserving judgment pending further detail and documentation from the Corps.