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Congress just passed a full FY20 budget following multiple Continuing Resolutions that extended FY19 funding levels through the fall. ASBPA was pleased to see some important increases to funding for coastal programs.
Here how some of the programs in the Energy & Water (Army Corps) appropriations that ASBPA cares about will be funded in FY20 ($ in thousands):
| Program | FY19 – Final | FY20 Final | |
| Shore Protection (Construction) | 55,000 | 50,165 | |
| Shore Protection (Investigations) | 2,000 | 4,000 | |
| Shore Protection (CAP Sec. 103) | 4,000 | 4,000 | |
| Beneficial Use Of Dredged Material Pilot Program | 0 | 7,500 | |
| Beneficial Uses Of Dredged Material (CAP Sec. 204) | 10,000 | 15,000 | |
| Planning Assistance To States | 9,000 | 9,000 | |
| Coastal Inlet Research Program | 7,975 | 10,975 | |
| Coastal Field Data Collection | 1,000 | 2,500 | |
| Coastal Ocean Data System (CODS) | 6,500 | 7,500 | |
| National Coastal Mapping Program | 13,000 | 7,500 | |
| Regional Sediment Management Program | 3,500 | 8,500 |
Beach projects mostly fall under “Shore Protection.” While construction funding has unfortunately dropped this year, that’s largely because of the enormous funding provided by recent disaster supplemental appropriations. Well over a billion dollars has been appropriated for shore protection via flood risk reduction projects in 2017, 2018 and 2019 disaster supplementals (following Hurricanes Matthew in 2016, Harvey, Irma, and Maria in 2017, and Florence and Michael in 2018).
ASBPA is particularly pleased to see on-going support for the “Coastal Inlet Research Program”, which is funding the interagency-academic collaborative U.S. Coastal Research Program, with the Senate Report stating: “Funding… is recommended for the Corps-led multi-university effort to identify engineering frameworks to address coastal resilience needs, to develop adaptive pathways that lead to coastal resilience, that measure the coastal forces that lead to infrastructure damage and erosion during extreme storm events, and to improve coupling of terrestrial and coastal models.”
We are also pleased to see the on-going support for the Beneficial Use of Dredged Material (BUDM) Pilot Program and Regional Sediment Management (RSM). Although less than we requested, Congress’ on-going commitment to the BUDM program demonstrates that they intend to see the pilot program through, and would like to see the Corps improve and increase its beneficial use of dredged material. We are also thrilled to see increases to CAP204 program’s highest level ever, and a nearly 150% increase to the RSM program.