Water Project Construction Backlog. A Serious Problem with No Easy Solution

摘要

The Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation started fiscal year 1982 with 934 authorized water projects needing about $60 billion to complete construction. For fiscal year 1982, the Congress provided construction funds for 289 of these projects, but did not fund the remaining 645 projects needing about $24.5 billion to complete. About $21.9 billion had already been spent on the 289 funded projects. Another $35.5 billion--including an estimate for future inflation of corps projects--is needed to complete them. The backlog has grown in actual dollars because funding has not been sufficient to offset inflation and other cost increases. No easy answers exist for eliminating the construction backlog. However, this report discusses several alternatives which taken either singly or in combination could lessen it.