In March of this year, City staff outlined a three prong approach to advancing the Rio de Flag Flood Control Project.  If you recall, prong 1 was to obtain federal funding in the FY13 United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) “work plan.”  The second prong was to achieve “self administration” to enable the City to manage the project itself under USACE rules.  The third prong was to sever ties with the Corps and build the project to FEMA standards and fund it 100% with City dollars.
 
Last week, staff received information from our Federal lobbyist, Bob Holmes.  He noted that there is no additional funding for the Rio de Flag in the FY13 “work plan.”  This is disappointing although not entirely unexpected.  The contractor who constructed the original Clay Avenue Detention Basin project returned in April to resume repairs.  This was good news.  As such, the Corps did not see as much risk of having to fund the repairs directly with federal dollars and, therefore, allocated no new funding for the Rio project.
 
This leads us to our second prong—“self administration.”  As you may recall, we were originally told that self-administration required approval by Congress (via inclusion in a WRDA bill).  As such, we pursued this in our March Federal Lobbying Trip.  Congressional staff informed us that this was not the case and that the Corps could make this designation.  Furthermore, being named in a WRDA bill would likely be considered an earmark and those are currently prohibited.  Since then, we have been asking the L.A. District to pursue this and to provide us information on self administration.  This has been received with mix responses.  On some occasions the Corps has been supportive, on other occasions not supportive, but in concrete terms, we have received no specific information on how to achieve this designation.  What we have learned is that the L.A. District believes self administration only applies to the local contribution.  Based upon our contacts with Harris County, Texas, a local entity who has done self administration, we do not believe this to be the case.
 
Related to self administration, there is a process called accelerated funding.  This simply allows the local entity to advance its portion of the project to the Corps and for them to continue work on the project under their rules and regulations.  The advantage to this is that the project does not go on “inactive status.”  That can be a significant hurdle to overcome when pursuing federal funding through the President’s budget.
 
Lastly, we learned of a pilot project in the current WRDA bill making its way through Congress.  This pilot project will allow for twelve local agencies across the country to administer the projects themselves and it authorizes $25 million to get those projects moving.  Obviously, there will be a lot of competition to be one of these projects, but it is something we have talked with our delegation about on several occasions and they have all expressed support for pursuing that selection. 
 
Given these updates, staff is requesting Council consider moving forward on the third prong.  This tactic would designate approximately $200,000 to $250,000 from the City’s Rio de Flag account to fund an appraisal study regarding constructing to FEMA standards.  This would provide a cost estimate as well as conceptual level designs.  Such information would enable us to compare this path versus continuing with the Corps.
 
The purpose of this Work Session Agenda item is to discuss moving forward with this option.  The contract for professional services would come back to Council for approval once we have completed a selection process to hire the most qualified engineering team.