On September 21st the President signed an FY2019 “Minibus” into law (HR 5895) covering three of the twelve appropriations areas – energy and water, MilCon/VA, and legislative branch.  The Energy and Water portion funds the activities of USACE’s Civil Works function.  The agreement would provide a total of $7 billion to USACE, $171.5 million more than in fiscal 2018 and $2.21 billion more than requested by the President in his FY2019 Budget.

Our thanks to our friends at Van Scoyoc Associates for this information. Major allocations for USACE are shown in the table below:

Other Highlights of the bill include the following:

• The Act allows for six new study starts in FY2019 – one for navigation, one for flood protection, one for environmental restoration, and three for any authorized purpose.
• The Act allows for five new construction starts – one for navigation, one for flood protection, one for environmental restoration, and two for any authorized purpose.
• There is a prohibition on USACE spending any funds on moving elements of USACE to other agencies.
• The Act clarifies that a new start designation is not needed to move from feasibility phase of a study to preconstruction engineering and design phase (PED).
• $25M is available for authorized reimbursements to non-federal partners
• The Act calls for full use of the Inland Waterway Trust Fund and more than 90% use of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund.
• The Act allocates $50M for use by Donor and Energy Ports…the full authorized amount.

For all the additional funds provided, USACE has 60 days to produce a Work Plan designating where the money will be allocated in the coming fiscal year, including specific projects and dollar amounts.  At the same time, USACE is preparing its portion of the President’s Budget for FY2020 that will be submitted to Congress in February of next year.

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