welcome one and all. great to see our witnesses.

great to be here with senator johnson, and we'll call this hearing to order. i appreciate the effort of all of you to get here today. i'm glad we're having the hearing today, and not tomorrow. if we were having it tomorrow we might not be having a hearing. today's hearing, as you know, is focused on the costs of not being prepared for extreme weather events, and exploring the ways that our federal government can increase resiliency in our communities, and just to underbehind this, and save money. save money in the long haul. we have deficits coming down, they're still too much. down from $1.4 trillion, i think, four years ago, this year expected to be down to about $550 billion. only $550 billion. that's still way too much and we have to continue to look in every nook and cranny and figure out how do we save more money. that's the focus of today's hearing. but, i will try to take about five minutes for my opening statement and yield to senator johnson. i'm delighted that he's here,

and then we'll recognize our first panel of witnesses. each witness will have about five minutes to offer your statement to our committee. following your statements we're going to have a question and answer period. then a second panel of witnesses will come forward, and we look forward to hearing from you, as well. but, unfortunately, extreme weather appears to be the new norm. and events like superstorm sandy, which came to my shores and our shores in the mid-atlantic a year or so ago, seen recent wildfires in other parts of the country, dangerous tornadoes, destroyed droughts, it may well be the -- just the tip of the iceberg of what's to come. and even today the east coast is preparing for yet another snowstorm, while the west coast is experiencing a historic drought, and increased fire danger with no end in sight. i have a friend of mine who is from australia, and he tells me that they had the hottest weather in their history. so go figure.

it's just sort of a crazy world that we live in right now. for years i've been working with a number of my colleagues, our colleagues, to address the root causes and unfolding effects of what i believe is one of the biggest challenges of our generation, that's climate change. according to the u.s. global change research program extreme weather events have increased in frequency over the last 50 years or so and they're expected to become even more common, more intense, and more costly. but let me just make a point and underline this if i could. today's hearing is not intended to hash out climate science. that's not what we're trying to do. instead it's about trying to find common ground, as our country debates how to address our changing climate and the extreme weather i believe it's likely causing our witnesses will deliver to us a clear message, and that is put simply, the increase in frequency and intensity of those extreme weather events are costing our country a boatload of money. not just a cost that's measured in lives that are impacted but in economic and financial costs as well. for example the damage from a

storm still fresh in many of our minds, superstorm sandy, which impacted again my own state of delaware and many of our neighbors is estimated to have cost our economy $75 billion. think about that, $75 billion in financial damages and that's enough to run a number of departments of our federal government and have money left over. that's just one storm. we're also hearing reports about the devastating effects of california's severe drought and how it's impacting the wildfire season in that state and the cost to the west. not only are wildfires growing in frequency and severity but we're now seeing severe fires and wildfire conditions in winter and spring, well beyond the traditional wildfire seasons of summer and early fall. these fires are enormously expensive to fight, and recover from, and they pose serious threats to lives and property, damaging homes and businesses alike. according to a 2013 report by insurance company the nearly 40 wildfires last year in the united states cost our economy over a billion dollars. these economic damages can deliver devastating blow to many

local communities, to states, as well as to our own federal government. fema, federal emergency management agency alone has obligated i'm told over $80 billion in federal assistance for disasters declared in fiscal years 2004, through 2011. $80 billion. however, the cost to the federal government is not just limited to disaster relief. as an insurer, of both property and crops, the government faces additional significant fiscal exposure. for example, since the creation of national flood insurance program in 1968, through december 2013, fema's debt from insurance payments to that program have totalled approximately $24 billion. and even before superstorm sandy total debt from payments to the national flood insurance program was almost $18 billion. the cost of these weather events keep going up at a time when we're trying to bring our government spending down. that is one of the reasons why, for the first time, our gao, the

government accountability office, last year listed climate change as one of the biggest fiscal risks facing our country in its high risk list report. just to remind us all, every two years, beginning of everything congress, gao gives us a list. senator johnson heard me to say that before, we use that as our to-do list in this committee to figure out ways to save money and get better results for less money. we're thankful for that to-do list. in response to this historic announcement house oversight and government reform committee chairman darrell issa and this is a quote from darrell, the comptroller general has made it very clear that we've not prepared properly, that the federal government has a financial risk that we have not properly mitigated, said i think it's a wake-up call to us all. i couldn't agree more. gao's report is a call to action for both congress and the administration, warning us that our country must start thinking now about how to better prepare and adapt to a new climate reality.

today our witness from kwchlt ao will further detail these financial risks to our communities, to our taxpayers and hopefully offer some commonsense solutions that my colleagues and i can work with the administration to see implemented. fortunately, this administration along with a number of state and local governments are starting to focus their efforts on preparing for the very real threats posed by extreme weather events and climate change. last fall president obama issued an executive order on climate preparedness, that incentivizes investments in more robust roads and buildings that may be more expensive but can hold up to more intense storms. i commend the president's approach, and believe it is very timely as rebuilding efforts continue from superstorm sandy and other recent natural disasters. i look forward to hearing more about the president's efforts, efforts by states like delaware and a bunch of other states to do a better job protecting our communities, and our taxpayer dollars from these challenges. as we continue to debate how to

reduce our deficits i believe we can't afford to ignore the impacts these weather events are having on federal spending, a little extra planning combined with prudent, targeted investments can go a long way in saving both lives and taxpayer dollars. i believe this is a perfect example of that very wise maximum -- i used to hear from my grandmother all the time, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. thanks again to our witnesses for being here. we're eager to hear your testimony with that i'm going to turn over not to our ranking member senator mccain, but our ranking member acting ranking member senator johnson from wisconsin for any thoughts ron that you'd like to toss in. glad that you're here. >> thank you, mr. chairman. of course i'm mindful the reason i'm sitting in this chair is because dr. coburn is not here. he's in our thoughts and prayers. want to thank you, want to thank our witnesses, and looking forward to the testimony. when it comes to this issue, the questions i'm going to be looking to have answered is, first and foremost, since i've been here, been looking into this issue, we're really

declaring federal disaster declarations much more frequent basis now. is that because we really have, you know, a higher instance of the types of disasters that require that? or are we just too quick to declare those disasters? i'm afraid that if we have an overreliance on the federal government help, is that restraining the mitigation? the new word i'm hearing resilience in terms of, you know, how we prepare -- are we being pennywise and pound foolish by not spending the money up front to mitigate, and again, is it overreliance on federal help when these disasters hit, everybody's expecting the federal government to come in and pay for things, as opposed to actually mitigating these risks ahead of time. and so from my standpoint coming from the private sector i certainly understand that a private insurance market really is very -- provides very strong

discipline in terms of mitigating risk. you know, whether it's fire risk in a plant, basically insurers come in there, if you put in sprinkler heads every six feet apart versus every 24 feet apart, you're going to have -- you're going to be able to mitigate that risk and lower your insurance price. so i really haven't experienced that. the private sector insurance market is very good discipline to those risk mitigation efforts. and it goes -- those are the kind of questions i'm asking in terms of how can we, certainly utilize the federal government in the most efficient way because, you know, like you said, mr. chairman, we don't have the money to do all these things. so look forward to the testimony. >> thanks so much. joined by our fellow from little state, alaska, little state with a big population. a couple of great senators. mark would you like to say a word or two? >> you bet, small population but a state with a big punch but i would say in homer, alaska, i

think last week we had green grass. so, you know, it is -- things are definitely changing. first, mr. chairman, if i could just -- i'd like to read a statement for the record, and if that's okay, and i apologize, i won't be able to stay but i want to make sure this is fairly important issue, especially when you talk about extreme weather events and how to prepare for them. but first let me say, mr. chairman i want to thank you, and i appreciate you holding this hearing to examine what i consider the true cost of not being prepared for impacts in extreme weather. we're about to feel it. as i drove in today i drove across salt. because they're waiting for snow to fall, to melt it. in alaska that would be unheard of. but that's, you know, the way it works. now the weather conditions also change, i'm sure we'll have power outages and many other things. you know, we understand very extreme conditions in alaska, and normal winter day in barrow or fairbanks will get to below zero many times.

and in some cases, that would be extreme down in the lower 48, but not in alaska. alaska truly is on the front lines in the terms of changing climate, the effects of extreme weather, and existing challenges facing our communities and funding, including retreating sea ice, rapidly eroding shorelines, thawing permafrost, ocean acidification, this reality puts many communities at risk throughout our state. the army corps of engineers and the gao have both released reports identifying last ka villages imminently threatened by erosion. many of these villages have experienced incredible, extreme weather. 30-plus villages at risk of literally falling into the ocean or disappearing totally. flooding wiped out a village in alaska called galina. totally in what's amazing about it we read about a lot of issues in lower 48. we had a whole village wiped out by flooding. and no place to evacuate, the

closest place was 270 miles away. all had to be done by air in order to move these people out quickly and now they're trying to rebuild in a very short time, and the winter set in and it was also very difficult. and i know when people talk about climate change, they get nervous, is it the, you know they want to debate the science on it. i'm telling you climate change is occurring. my state is the example of it. of what the impacts are. and it is extreme. and we are seeing the impacts economically, and from all levels. our state has the longest coastline in the united states, while in both incredible beauty but also its economic value, also requests and has enormous vulnerabilities in the sense of the impacts it has alaska's unique position as an arctic state presents a variety of advantages to leverage the challenges to overcome this extreme issue. you know, i have to tell you, alaska is clearly on the front line with dealing with the issue of climate change. we have our own task force set up. we have been active in it.

we have focused on what we can do to mitigate the issues in these extreme changes in weather patterns that are impacting us on a day-to-day basis in alaska. let me say that, you know, as the president's climate action plan moves forward, and the state and local and tribal leaders task force on climate change preparedness begins to develop a recommendation i'm confident investing and mitigation is the right decision. we always spend the time, mr. chairman, always after the fact. picking up the pieces, and the costs are huge. you know, we had a hearing in alaska through subcommittee that i chair here with fema, and the corps, talking about what we can do before these situations. but when we know they're going to happen, we have 30-some villages on the list. we know they're going to fall into the ocean. we can do something now or we can wait until something bad happens, and we're going to call fema. and fema's going to be writing some checks. that's the worst approach in the sense of dealing with this issue. we can do this in a much better

way. i know, mr. chairman, you invited individual mike williams sr. who is an iditarod musher but also an incredible native leader who was going to be on the panel today but i know he could not attend and if i could just ask for the committee to insert his comments and his testimony into the record, if that's okay. >> without objection. >> let me just end and just say, mr. chairman, as the chair of the subcommittee on emergency management that deals with disaster relief, emergency preparedness, first responders, mitigation, and this committee, we've had several hearings on these issues and sat here with an insurance folks that talk about how they're adjusting their risk analysis, how they're making sure that they're now seeing more severe weather patterns and they're not here to, you know, they weren't here to debate the science, but they were here to debate was, risk is greater. patterns are changing. the more compacted, and they're much more severe, so therefore

the risk analysis goes in to play, and therefore rates go up. i know this as an owner of commercial property. i know my rates haven't been flat the last ten years because they're analyzing the risk. and i get that. but there is a risk that everyone is paying today for the lack of action in regards to mitigating these situations. so i think, and i want to again say to the chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. it's a hard issue to grapple with, because there are political views on climate change. but that's not the issue. the issue is, it is happening. we can argue over it all we want. but, in my state, we see it every single day. we have disaster after disaster. we have huge costs that are associated with it. and even though we're far away, 5,000 miles away, small villages, we literally there are buildings and houses are falling into the ocean. this is not a hypothetical situation or theory. it's real. so i really appreciate the work you're doing here. and i hope the committee

continues to talk about this. i know, and i agree, that we can't bear all the costs. that's just reality. but how we manage it from everything from our building codes all the way up to what we do here on the federal level is critical to understand how we're going to manage this so we don't have these costs borne by the private sector, individuals or the government. so i look forward to this and thank you very much. >> we're just glad that you could join us, senator johnson and me. thanks so much for coming for your comments. when -- along when senator begich was speaking i was reminded of all people senator mick enzi from wyoming, as my colleagues know, i oftentimes cite him, he may be later here today. he has his 80/20 rule that is one of his guiding principles in terms of how to get things done and the 80/20 rule is basically, we agree on 80% of the stuff. here in congress. we disagree maybe on 20%. let's just focus on the 80% that we agree on. and we'll set the other 20% aside until another day.

and today i think we're going to focus on the 80% that we can agree on. and to help try to path for just the congress but for our country. the one of the people who's not here yet will probably be here in a little bit is senator from arkansas mark pryor. they have a saying in arkansas, whenever you see a friend, and mark pryor said this to me about a million times, they'll say, hey, man, and your name is heymann. and i was just hoping mark would get here so he could introduce you. and say hey man. david heyman we're happy to see you assistant secretary for the department of homeland security. mr. heymann has the office for implementing policies, planning programs and strategies. caitlin durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the department of homeland security, and this role she leads the departments aefforts to strengthen the

public/private partnerships and coordinate programs to protect the nation's critical infrastructure, assess and mitigate risk, build resilience, and strengthen incident response, and recoveries. nice to see you again, welcome. and last but not least mark gaffigan. and mark is the managing director of the u.s. government accountability office's natural resources environmental team. the natural resources environmental team is responsible for gao's assessments of federal efforts to manage our nation's land and water resources, protect the environment, ensure food safety, manage agricultural programs, ensure a reliable and environmentally sound energy policy, meet our nation's science challenges, and address the u.s., and international nuclear security and cleanup. that's a lot. that's a lot to do for one person. each of you have about five minutes, five minutes to read your opening statement. if you run a little bit over that that's okay. go way over that we'll have to rein you in. your written statement will be included in the record, and with

that we're going to recognize mr. hayman, also known as hey, man. welcome. >> thank you. the quick aside, senator pryor has said that to me for now over 30 years. as i serve d as his vice president when he was a student government leader in my high school. his political career has skyrocketed because of my service to him. thank you chairman carper -- >> this story just kieps getting better. >> thank you chairman carper, senator johnson and distinguished members of the committee. my best wishes to senator coburn and his family. it's my pleasure to be here this morning to discuss the impact of extreme weather and what the department of homeland security is doing to improve the preparedness and resilience of our communities, and nation. this represents one of the most significant areas where we can all agree, i think, investment today will help us save billions in the future.

over the past decade, an unprecedented number of weather related disasters, hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, crop freezes and winter storms have hit the united states. leaving devastated communities and billions of dollars of damage in their wake. in 2011, we experienced 14 natural catastrophes exceeding a billion dollars in cost each. that's a record number. we had a record 98 presidentially declared disasters. in 2012 we faced hurricane sandy. the largest atlantic hurricane on record and the second costliest to the nation, damaging or destroying more than 300,000 homes in new york, 72,000 in new jersey, and costing billions in damage. according to the world's largest risk insurer, weather related catastrophes over the past three decades have hit north america much harder than the rest of the world. total economic losses in the united states totalled approximately $1.15 trillion over the last 30 years.

without a concerted effort, national resilience effort, the trend is likely to continue. the department of homeland security is responsible for providing the coordinated comprehensive federal response in the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other large-scale emergency while working with state and federal local tribal territorial and private sector partners so that we can ensure swift and effective recovery. offer the past several years we have made a significant shift in our thinking and in our practice of preparing for mitigating against and responding to disasters. and i can summarize that in one word. resilience. resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions, stand and respond to and rapidly recover from disruptions. in may of 2009 president obama took a significant step towards fasscilitating and institutionalizing national resilience when he merged the homeland security council and national security council into a single structure. and created a resilience

directorate with the national security council. this directorate managing resilience policy and operates alongside the counterterrorism director. this action established resilience as a homeland security pillar and priority, which was called out for the first time in the president's national security strategy. dhs affirmed this prioritization in his qhsr, quadrennial homeland security view in 2010, promoting insurance of resilience to disasters as one of the department's core missions, and responsibilities. but the question is, how do you create and foster resilience. establishing the concept of resilience is an essential first step but it is only one piece of pro-actively preparing for potential disasters and readily responding to a situation as it occurs. across the department, from fema, to mppd to science and technology, we work with a wide array of government, private and nonprofit faith-based

organizations to build and foster resilience. not as a concept, but as an applied reality. fema is leading implementation of the national preparedness system. my colleague here today will discuss our critical infrastructure, security and resilience programs, and in my office, the office of policy, we coordinate resilience initiatives and policy across the department and are working to create the framework that fosters resilience and gives a coherent baseline. i'd like to share one example of some of the important work that we've been doing. we're creating a program called resilience star based on the energy star concept which you probably are familiar with for appliances in your own home. in this case, it will help ensure that homes will be built to voluntarily standard, stronger standards that will incur far less damage by disasters, protecting lives, livelihoods and helping communities respond to and recover to disasters, much more quickly. ultimately, dhs aims to extend

the resilience star program beyond homes and facilities and into critical infrastructure. helping to recapitalize the built environment across america in the long-term. one home, one building, one bridge at a time. our investments in resilience will pay significant dividends for the country. it is efficient and it is cost effective. homeland security is simply not about government action rather it is also about collective strength of the entire country. it's a shared responsibility requires the participation of individuals, communities, the private sector, as well as state, local and the federal government to be truly effective. the department's ready.gov website serves as a resource for citizens and businesses and communities, so that they can stay informed and take appropriate prepared measures. this is as i said a shared responsibility. it requires that we all work together to marshal all the resources to withstand whatever threats and hazards we may face. it is truly the actions of each of us that in the end will ensure the safety and security

for all of us. i look forward to your questions. thank you. >> chairman, thank you very, very much. mrs. durkovich, please proceed. >> thank you, chairman carper, senator johnson, and distinguished members of the committee. i, too, extend my thoughts and prayers to senator coburn and his family. it is a pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the department's efforts to enhance the resilience of the nation's critical infrastructure to extreme weather. our daily life, economic vitality and national security depend on critical infrastructure. infrastructure provides essential services and functions, but it is easily taken for granted. often, it is only when an incident occurs in service is disrupted that attention is drawn to the importance of the infrastructure itself. threats to our critical infrastructure are wide ranging. including aging and failing components, cyber threats, acts of terrorism, and climate change and extreme weather. the consequences of these threats to the public and private sectors can be seen in the events over the last decade.

hurricanes katrina and sandy, the tornadoes in the midwest, wildfires, and flooding across the western states, the california drought, the extreme cold in the northwest, all demonstrate how weather can disrupt the availability of lifeline functions in other critical services. just as terrorist attacks threaten our communities, extreme weather disrupts the security of our nation. extreme weather strains our resources, diverts attention from counterterrorism efforts, serves as a threat multiplier that aggravates stressors both at home and abroad, and destabilizes the lifeline sectors on which we rely. higher temperatures and more intense storms can cause inefficient infrastructure operations and damage and disruptions that can result in cascading effects across our communities. hurricane sandy is a vivid example of the potentially devastating impacts extreme weather can have on critical infrastructure, and demonstrates how interdependencies between infrastructure systems can magnify impacts and delay

restoration. additionally, the increasing role of cyber and communication networks creates new vulnerabilities and opportunities for disruption. two years ago, high temperatures and high demand tripped a transformer and transmission line in yuma, arizona, starting a chain of events that shut down the san inevery nuclear power plant, disabilitying automaticing switching assistance leading to a large-scale power outage across the entire san diego distribution system. strides have been made to address vulnerabilities that lead to such outages but additional progress is needed to protect our interrelated systems. ed nation must take a long-term perspective in account for evolving threats and hazards including those caused by extreme weather that are linked to changes in climate. especially with regards to building resilience for critical infrastructure. built infrastructure has a ten-year design build phase in a life span of 50 years or more. and is expected to operate under

stressor conditions that sometimes we can't even imagine. as a result, it is a prudent investment to incorporate resilient into asset and system design, promote mitigation and built infrastructure and to empower owners and operators with decision making tools rather than to rebuild or redesign infrastructure after incidents occur. to achieve infrastructure resilience owners and operators must be able to minimize the disruption to essential services provided to our communities. regardless of the hazard or threat. and when a disruption occurs, ensure essential services and functions are brought back to full operations as quickly as possible. one year ago today, president obama issued presidential policy directive 21. critical infrastructure security and resilience an executive order 13636 improving critical infrastructure cyber security. ppd 21 directed dhs to develop an update to the national infrastructure protection plan, or the nip which was released in 2013.

the nip 2012 envisions a nation in which physical and cyber critical infrastructure remains secure and resilient. essential services and products continue to be delivered in the face of incidents, and communities and businesses adaptd to changing conditions and rapidly recover from poe tepgs disruptions. the office of infrastructure protection is leveraging our core capabilities, such as information sharing, capacity development, vulnerability assessments, and situational awareness to support owners and operators' efforts to strengthen resilience to extreme weather. as part of the hurricane sandy rebuilding task force, ip and other federal partners work to develop the infrastructure resilience guidelines which are sound investment principles to guide federal infrastructure investment as we modernize and adapt infrastructure. simple things, such as consistent application of comprehensive science-based data, and a regional cross jurisdictional focus or selecting projects. additionally, i co-chair the new infrastructure resilience work group with the department of energy under the white house

council on climate preparedness and resilience. through this working group, we are coordinating interagency efforts on climate preparedness and resilience for the nation's infrastructure. the working group is studying infrastructure's most vulnerable to climate impacts throughout the united states, and identifying risk based mitigation in adaptions -- adoption strategies. this will inform and aid the critical infrastructure community with planning and decision making regarding climate preparedness and resilience. ip also works with state and local partners through the regional resiliency assessment program to examine a particular industry, region or municipality's dependence on key lifeline sectors and to mitigate the hazards that could disrupt these complex ecosystems. this year we are partnering with the state of maine to produce the first climate change adaptation plan for the portland metropolitan area. in closing, by increasing the resilience of our critical infrastructure in our communities we are better prepared as a nation to the myriad of threats and hazards we face. leveraging the partnership

framework we have established over the past ten years, ip will continue to work with owners and operators of critical infrastructure to understand the impact of extreme weather, and to take steps to enhance resilience. thank you very much, and i look forward to answering your questions. mrs. durkovich, thank you so much for your time. stick around we'll have some questions. mr. gaffigan, very nice to see you. please proceed. >> senator carper good to see you again, senator johnson. thank you for inviting me here. let me also extend the best wishes to senator coburn and his family. i had the fortune to attend one of senator coburn's first hearings when he was on the hill and we told us afterwards he was going to do some oversight and i think he's followed through on that. so i'm very sorry he's not able to join us today. zbleez announced he's going to step down at the end of the year, and while he has some health he said that has nothing to do with those just a personal decision he and his family have made. but i have said to him, well, you're still on the payroll for

another, you know, 10 1/2 months, so i know you wanted to finish strong. and we're going to make sure that you do. and he's determined to. so plenty more oversight to come. >> yeah. great. i want to make three points. first there's a lot at stake. we've all talked about some of the numbers, in your opening statement, there are significant costs from extreme weather. but not only to the federal government, but also to the state, local, tribal governments, businesses, farmers, individuals, in short, everyone. second, there is uncertainty about the specific risks we might face from extreme weather, and how we can adapt to those changes, and manage those risks. complicating this uncertainty is that the risks faced and the appropriate adaptation is going to be particular to the situations and the locations of those facings risk. to borrow from the phrase all politics is local. all adaptation is local.

third thing, given the challenge going forward for everyone facing these risks, the challenge is to strive for the best, most updated information available to help inform specific preparation, resilience, adaptation, so that the investment and preparation and resilience is most effective. and as we've explained, funds are tight. so let me illustrate what's at stake and sort of challenges in four areas that are particular to the federal government. first, the federal government has a great deal at stake, as an insurer of property and crops. in 2012 the flood insurance program had property coverage of over $1.2 trillion, while crop insurance covered $120 billion in crops. that's a four-fold increase in the crop insurance program since 2003. however the flood insurance program has a debt $24 billion, as you pointed out. and the nation's crop insurance annual costs have more than doubled from $3.4 billion in 2001 to $7.6 billion in 2012.

back in march of 2007, gao did a study and found that both of these programs' exposure to weather related losses had grown substantially and that fema and usda had done little to develop the information necessary to understand what those risks were. they've since developed a report, now those reports, usda released their report in 2009. the flood insurance program released their report in 2013. they recognize the potential risks, they recognize the uncertainty, but it's still unclear what actions these programs are going to take. in the future. and that will have a lot to say for the financial solvency of these programs going forward. but also in 2012 congress passed the bigger water flood insurance reform act which among many things required the use of information on coastal erosion areas, future change in sea levels, and intensity of hurricanes to update its flood maps. implementation of this will be key in making changes to that program.

second, the federal government is a significant provider of disaster aid. the number of federal disaster declarations increased from 65 in 2004 to a peak of 98 in 2011, and has been mentioned fema's provided over $80 billion during those years. after superstorm sandy, congress provided about $60 billion in budget authority for disaster assistance. the federal government could do a couple things. it could start by fully budgeting for these costs to address the fiscal exposure that is largely outside of the budget process, and fema could also develop an updated formula. the formula hasn't been updated since 1986, to determine the capacity of jurisdictions to respond to those disasters. third the federal government is the owner and operator of significant infrastructure, dod alone has over half a million buildings, facilities, throughout the world, including some in vulnerable coastal areas. in addition, the federal government manages about 30% of the nation's lands.

forests, wildlife, these natural resources face threats from extreme weather. dod has recognized the risks to its facilities and to trying to assess the potential impacts and consider what adaptation may be necessary at facilities in many different environments. regarding federal lands, federal resource agencies are also trying to incorporate climate related information at the local level to decide what to do best. fourth, the federal government is both an investment partner in public infrastructure, and a potential provider of technical assistance. the federal government invests billions annually in public infrastructure projects. for example cbo estimates that total public spending on transportation and water infrastructure is about $300 billion annually with about 25% of that coming from the federal government. and the rest from state and local governments. our work has found incorporating considerations about climate into the planning of this infrastructure that may be in place for 50 to 100 years can help avoid the need for assistance in the future, if the

infrastructure -- so the infrastructure can withstand extreme weather. however, responsibility for planning and priorityizing these projects is primarily at the state and local level. and they may not have the information or expertise they need to incorporate climate considerations into their site-specific local projects. thus the federal government is in a position to be a provider of technical assistance, helping state and local officials identify and use the best available information that is specific to their circumstances, while also enhancing access to experts who can help translate that information down at the local level. that concludes my opening statement. i welcome your questions, thank you. >> thanks so much, mark. and for the work that -- anybody here on your team? anybody from the audience from gao? >> gentleman right behind me, yes. and there's plenty more back in the building. >> on behalf of dr. coburn and myself how much we value the work that you do, and appreciate the opportunity to partner with you. >> thank you, sir. >> i want to first talk a little

bit more, talk a little bit more about the flood insurance program. dr. johnson -- well senator johnson and i both -- dr. coburn -- voted against the flood insurance corrections bill that passed the senate not very long ago just earlier this month. late last month. and i go back in time to 1990 i was a house member on the banking committee and believe it or not i think with a guy named tom ridge, who was the raking republican on the subcommittee that i chaired then and one of our focuses of the national flood insurance program because we were concerned that the program was under water and all these years later, well, it still. and the kind of changes we're seeing in weather it's getting to be more under water. and we adopted some changes to the legislation, in the last year or two, the -- and the costs as they come to bear on

people who live in areas that are prone to flooding, are in some cases very steep, there's concerns about the flood mapping and so forth, that people were not in areas where they used to have flooding, now they do. and so the question is, what do we do, if anything, in response to those conditions, those changing conditions? and to try to be humane but also to realize that it's a lot of money at stake here. and this is -- we've got to -- i think doing nothing is not an option. i -- so the house -- the senate's passed a bill it's over in the house and we're not sure what if anything the house is going to do but i my guess is that there will be an opportunity here to find a principled compromise. that actually makes progress toward reducing this unfunded liability, and is not cruel or heartless with respect to people whose homes, businesses, are at risk. the i know how closely you've been following what the senate

has done in the state of play but if any of you, mr. gaffigan, if any of you have any advice for us as to how to proceed and what might be some of the elements of the principle compromise i'd welcome hearing those, and my guess is that we're going to have the opportunity later this year to work more closely with you, to say, and with the administration, the administration, president's not crazy about this bill, but the senate has passed as you know, there's an opportunity for, for the administration to weigh in and be part of the solution. any thoughts you have with us on that? >> just very quickly and again the flood insurance is not necessarily in my portfolio. i have a lot of things, but not that one. but i will say that, you know, i think it's a tradeoff between the affordability of the program and the individuals who have to pay the premiums. i mean at the end of the day, someone has got to pay for this and it's a question of the balance between the taxpayer, and the individual businesses, homeowners, those who own the flood insurance. i think some of the things talked about in building in

consideration of what the risks are going forward. trying to build in some resiliency going forward in that program would help minimize the risk so that we're not we're not having to pay the higher premiums, because we don't anticipate the higher risk down the road. i think that's where the area of compromise is probably best sought. >> okay. mrs. durkovich, mr. heyman anything you want to make sure on that before we go to another question? if you have something you want to say, go ahead. i don't think your mike is on. >> sorry. fema has actually been working with both house and senate on this, this is obviously a concern that we hear about, and i know that there are possibly going to be amendments down the road. right now our authority is only to complete a study on affordability. we have no authority-no authority to address the affordability of flood insurance. but we are happy to work with you to help try to think this through. >> all right, thanks. i'm going to come back to mark

gaffigan, this deals with prioritizing risks, and i think in your testimony you may have mentioned three or four areas where the government could limit its fiscal exposure when it comes to climate change, and to extreme weather events. and within those three or four areas, which stands out to you for the maybe the biggest fiscal concern? >> -- >> let me just add to that as kind of a p.s.? are there high risk areas that cannot be addressed by the executive -- maybe higher priority for my colleagues and me here in the congress? >> well you mentioned the flood insurance program. that is one in terms of fiscal risk and i think it's hard to pick one that's more significant than the others and i just touched upon four areas. there are a lot of other potential impacts that the federal government. we think the disaster assistance program, the aid program, $60 billion for one storm is the amount that congress authorized

for superstorm sandy. that stands out. right now, as an owner of infrastructure, the agencies are trying to assess what's at risk. dod has some serious concerns, they have at least 30 major facilities that are in coastal areas vulnerable to flood. they have to have dry docks making sure those do not expose so i think it's hard to pick a most important out of all those. >> all right. a question for mr. heyman or ms. durkovich or both but and mr. gaffigan's testimony he mentioned as i recall that infrastructure decision makers haven't necessarily incorporated potential climate change impacts in planning for roads, in planning for bridges, in planning for waste management systems, because they face challenges identifying and obtaining available climate change information best suited for locations and for their

projects. could one or both of you take a minute or two and just talk a little bit about how your agency is addressing this concern, in particular, we'd like to hear how your agency is coordinating with other agencies to make sure that local planners have the best data possible, especially related to superstorm sandy, rebuilding efforts. >> thank you very much for that question. in our unique role within the office of infrastructure protection, we both have the ability to convene and coordinate with owners and operators, but with other members of the federal interagency. let me speak to the latter point first. and two topics related to that. first is i was in front of you a few months ago talking about federal fasscility security and happen to chair a group called the interagency security committee that works with 53

different departments and agencies to set standards related to federal building safety and security. climate change is an issue that this interagency security committee is addressing, and is working to incorporate it into its design basis threat scenarios, which are over three dozen scenarios that federal buildings think about when incorporating protective and mitigation measures to again ensure that the safety and security of those facilities. so this is a group of physical security officers who are looking at how we address climate change when it comes to the over 300,000 federal facilities that are in the area. we are dependent, though, as a federal interagency on other lifeline sectors. and in -- in the office of infrastructure protection, we have the ability to convene our

16 sectors and partners both on the government side, but also in the private sector side to talk about what they are doing to raise awareness, to look at best practices, to identify best practices, practices to understand where the gaps are and to look at the comparative advantage that the federal government has and to think through what are some of the capabilities that we can bring to bear to help this effort. and then just to speak briefly to the work that we're doing with the infrastructure resilience working group. this is, again, a unique opportunity to look across the federal interagency and look at the programs that are available to state and local communities, to the owner/operator community and to, again, understand what's working, where the gaps are, where we need to remove those barriers so that we can enable planning, that we can bring consistent, comprehensive data

to our partners so they can begin to incorporate it into our planning. a lot going on on this front that i think we can continue to harness. >> i yield to senator johnson. do you want to add anything to that? >> sure. thank you. as part of the national preparedness plan, we work very closely with states and communities to assess their -- help them assess their -- the threats and hazards and risks that they face. this is called the thyra, threat, hazard identification risk assessment. every state is required to do this. fema has a policy of making the best available data available so that is to say whatever is -- so the top line scientific data that's available, fema tries to facilitate to the best of their ability. two years ago there were only 15 states that had climate action

plans. today there's 36 that have climate action plans. they're incorporating the best data and their risk assessment to develop an action plan to better prepare their communities. >> thanks. thanks so much. senator johnson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm a big fan of a fellow named bjorn lombard. he issues his report, i think it was called the copenhagen project. i believe he's talked about climate change. he's talked about where we should spend our dollars. my first set of questions go toward prioritization. how do we do that? are we doing it effectively? can we be killing two birds with one stone? i'll start with you, ms. durkovich. you talked about cyber security, which brings to mind power grids, which brings to mind the attack at the metcalf

transmission station in i believe san jose, california. there are a number of things that could affect our infrastructure. you know, obviously natural disasters, weather disasters as well as, you know, manmade terrorist attacks as well. are we trying to combine these and take a look at that from the standpoint of prioritization of trying to mitigate problems? >> our role within the office of infrastructure protection is to help owners and operators understand the range of threats and hazards they face and as they look across their enterprise to manage risk, to provide them with information, with tools, with best practices so they can be both efficient and effective in application of how they go about managing this. part of the reason that we have

moved to a more all hazards focus within the department of homeland security and across the homeland security enterprise is that we find as you work to adapt preventive measures and mitigatetive measures to a range of threats and hazards, they are applicable not only to just one particular hazard but to many hazards. and so we worked very closely with the owner and operator community to think through this. let me touch briefly, for example, on the substation issue. so as we think about security but also incorporate climate change and extreme weather into that conversation, as owners and operators are looking to invest in upgrades and to modernize that infrastructure, as they make improvements related to security, we can also have conversations with them about whether these assets and these facilities are in flood prone areas, are in areas that are

suggesti susceptible to sea rise so as they start to make the multi-million dollar investments, we're thinking about them in parallel and integrative fashion and ensuring that the money that is invested in these enhancements and these mitigation measures is used effectively. but, again, our role is really to help them understand the range of threats and risks and to consider measures and options that allow an efficient and effective application of resources. >> mr. heyman, in terms of prioritization, are there lists being prepared? i mean, we talk about it, we talk about prioritization, but is there any product that's actually ever produced? >> there is. so the -- if you -- the national preparedness system has about five parts to it. one is to identify the risks that are available. two is to get a sense of where

the gaps are looking at communities based upon what capabilities are required for preparedness, then to do the resources assessment and ultimately resourcing followed by training and exercising and you do that cycle again. at the end of that exercise there is a list of capabilities that are prioritized for communities for states. those states then apply for grants to fema based upon those -- that gap analysis, and that becomes the basis for the next year's preparedness planning and evaluation and so that's a regular cycle that's done. we had the national preparedness report is an annual report and it was last released, it was last year. let me just talk a little bit about prioritization as a concept because i think that

everyone has said that mitigation is critically important, and i think that's right. there was a study done a few years ago by the multi-hazard mitigation council which said $1 worth of mitigation up front led you back to $4 back in terms of return on your investment and similarly, the louisiana state university hurricane center evaluated what kind of benefit mitigation would have done in katrina and they came back with a figure of $8 billion would have been saved. how do we do that? one way of doing that, because the federal government doesn't own and operate -- it doesn't own the residential housing or businesses out there is to try to incentivize and encourage raising standards as it pertains to the built environment, and the program i mentioned, which

we're piloting in the residential environment this year, provides a basis for trying to look at how we can do that on a broader scale across the infrastructure so that people are motivated and incentivized either through self-preservation because their house will be the one standing or through other incentives, mortgage reductions or perhaps premium reductions in insurance. so we're looking at that and i think it's something this nation should take a serious look at. >> you're using the word i wanted to get to next, which is incentivize. where are those incentives best? where does it best come from? where do they best come from, private insurance market where you have basically a million different decisions being made or from some centralized entity like the federal government trying to do a one-size-fits-all approach? >> there's a number of different

actors in this world. you know, when you go to buy a house, there are the builders. they're going to build it to code plus standards. how do you get them engaged in that? as we're going ahead with the pilot, what we're seeing is a lot of builders are interested in this because they see a market advantage and so there as a benefit to being labeled, for example, resilient star. there are the insurance industry who is interested in this because it saves them a whole lot of money on the back end with possible claims for damage if you're looking at the life cycle of a house every 40 years and residential owners may see a benefit -- let me just stop. wouldn't the insurance industry have a vested interest to develop these standards and if they develop themselves in the private sector wouldn't it be more effective than a government-run solution? >> so insurers have looked at

this. in fact, we are partnering with the insurance industry to develop this pilot project. i think for various reasons, because there's so many fractions insurance markets, a number of different state players, i think one of the benefits the federal government can bring is a national perspective which is not something any individual insurance company can do. >> can i just ask one more question? because i have a great deal of concern. if the federal government is the 800 pound gorilla and everybody in the private sector is looking to the federal government to bail them out, is that a real disincentive to do the resilien resiliency, do the mitigation efforts? if we have a big fwlolood, a bi hurricane, the fed will come in

there and cover our losses and then some. to what extent are we witnessing that throughout the country? >> you're not unfortunately witnessing that in many places. you have communities that are devastated, people have packed up their bags and left. you're losing your tax base and your ability to attract individuals to come to your community and the federal government can't help when people move their feet. this is one of the issues where local governments, urban communities will probably take a good look at it. there are resilient communities, people may want to be there because in the long run they're safe, more secure and frankly the funds you would have to repay can be paid to other priorities and public safety and education. >> that's the point, isn't it, we need to raise the price for individuals that are building in very risky environments?

correct? we don't want to incentive advise people to build in areas that are going to flood. >> that's why it's important to have the best available data, so people are cognizant of the area they're building, moving to. fema has tried to get that as a basis for getting data out and when we work with communities to do their threat and hazard identification risk assessment, that's all -- with your eyes wide open looking at what the risks are and asking if there's a way we can partner together to reduce those risks. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i wish we had time for another round of questions. i just learned that a series of votes starts at 11:30. i want to make sure we have ample time to hear from our second panel. i just want to follow up on what senator johnson was saying. we've had some demonstrations on star programs, energy star that

we're aware of, and let's just make sure that we use those as laboratories of democracy. we can lobby work that may be just as important as some that were attempted and didn't work out. like senator johnson, how do we get people to use the belhavior that we're modeling. they talk about the role of government and the role of private sector. and he used to use the analogy and say the role of government is to steer the boat. t the role of everybody else is to row the boat. there's a good role for both and hopefully we can find the good balance. i just want to say to each of you, thanks for the work you do. thanks for the folks who work with you and to say especially

with flood insurance we'll work with you to try to find a useful compromise. my father would say if you looked at it from above, you would look at it and use some common sense. hopefully we'll do that. so with that, you're excused and we thank you for joining us and we look forward to some questions. there will be follow-up questions. we hope you'll respond to those in a prompt way. thank you so much. thank you.

collin o'mara, all the way from i want to say san jose, california. did you used to live in san jose? we stole him. we stole him from san jose at the tender age of i think 29 or 30 to come all the way to the national association of environmental control. if i had half the energy of this guy, i would be president and vice president. he's an amazing guy. very proud of the work that you do. thank you for joining us today. our second witness is from a bigger state than ours, new hampshire, and kelly ayotte can't with be us. dr. paul, is it kirshen? dr. kirshen, research professor at the university of new hampshire. what is your mascot there? >> wildcats. >> wildcats, yes.

we've had some rough football saturdays against the wildcats and the blue hens. we're all the happy to welcome you here. i understand your research focuses on engineering and management as well as climate change, vulnerability assessment, adaptation, planning. it's a mouth full but we're happy you could join us. thanks so much for coming. lindene patton, my mother was a patton, chief climate product officer for zurich international group. in this role ms. patton, i'm told, is responsible for policy and risk management related to climate change. remember my staff said you might have a member of your family here or two? is that true? would you put down your mic? introduce your family. they'll stand up. >> my daughters, amelia and zoe. >> amelia, would you raise your hand? >> hi, amelia. zoey, would you raise your hand? who's in the middle? >> a friend of hers, sharon. >> all right, sharon. nice to come.

>> and our aupere, gosha. >> you've heard me say with the first group, about five minutes or so if you will and then we'll ask some questions. delighted you're here and happy to be here along with senator jackson. colin, will you please proceed. >> thank you, senator johnson. our thoughts go out to senator coburn. thank you for holding this hearing today. your timing is good and it's an important topic to delaware. senator carp spent a lot of time in helicopters. in delaware we spent a lot of time evaluating it. i'd like to talk about delaware's approach and i would like to offer common sense solutions that should be part of the conversation going forward about shifting the focus to

preparedness and resilience and a little less on the money on the back end. in delaware our approach has been fairly simple. start with the science and economics, and make sure you have good science and economics and know your vulnerabilities and know the tradeoffs. it's easy in a political environment to move towards the things that has the most attention but not the most economic imperative. we've looked at flood plains, sea level rise and i have a report that i'll introduce with the chairman's consent. we've looked at 75 different infrastructures and the vulnerability and then we took the data and made infrastructure impacts. we have that data drive our decision making in having the policy and it has the type of list that senator johnson is asking about, to make sure that the money is going in places that will make the sense. we had tony pratt who's behind me who is our administrator of

shoreline and coastal protection, and looking at the bay regions and looking at the economics and who gets the benefit? most of the benefit is the private owners and not the broader population which suggests that the private owner should play rather than the broader community. we'd like to see the economic contribution to the coast and if i can out the economic benefits of having those protections. having that knowledge is important because it allows us to invest strategically. healthy dunes, healthy wetlands, the coast. they turn out very well after the storms. we see time and time again communities that aren't as prepared don't do nearly as well. we're taking a lot of steps to build resiliency into going forward. modernizing stormwater. we want to stop the bleeding and make sure new development is resilient. now that we have this kind of data that we're not exacerbating the problems and costs.

because of all of this the governor was invited to be on the president's climate task force with a focus on the natural structure and resources projects that we're doing across the state whether it's in wilmington or elsewhere, we are piloting projects that we believe are good. one, resiliency needs to be built into every single federal investment. we don't need a new bureaucracy. we are spending billions every year. if we build resiliency into the projects, then we're okay. you don't want to throw good money after bad. the second is we need to invest more in protection. we're spending $5 billion in the army corps line. that's 50 years worth of investments compared to what they normally get for their protection line.

it's about 100, 100 million. we're spending 5 million a year. it's become easier to pay for it after the fact as opposed to investing in it. we need to break the disaster, rebuild, it's so easy to rebuild to the old infrastructure standards. you can get money quickly as opposed to rebuilding to a new resiliency standard. there isn't a lot of conversation about this. great recommendations coming out of georgetown, but we need to make sure rebuild to a higher standard. we also need to prioritize comprehensive projects. right now as we talked about with the border contacts, you can have the army corps that's taking a bunch of sediment out of the water way, but it's

cheaper to put it in a landfill than it is the beach next door. the army corps will choose the lowest cost option. they won't put it on the beach, they'll move it somewhere else. we need to combine those. we could be saving tens of billions of dollars a year. we need to have the nfip regulations which haven't been updated since 1989. we've focused on the money side. the cost of the insurance becomes cheaper if the standards are higher. we need to prioritize the natural infrastructure. they work exceptionally well. they shouldn't be the exception or the pilot project enmore. they need to be the default. we need to reward communities that are prepared. right now delaware is paying a

lot of development money and we don't receive a lot after the disasters. it's completely crazy. we need to make sure that there are incentives and priority given to states that have made their own investments and are doing the hard work to hold themselves accountable and not relying on the federal government as senator johnson said. very two last points. we need to ensure that public expenditures can receive public benefit and really prioritizing things for a broader benefit to all people and we need a much greater community on hazardous sites. we have super fund sites. when those wash out, it's massive. we've been focusing on these more. there's not nearly as much attention. fema will help you acquire a parcel.

if it's contaminated, fema won't touch it for liability. these are things we can change. the senator is looking at these because i think our experience in delaware shows if you do prepare an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. >> thank you so much. you got a lot in in 6:50, didn't he? >> i apologize for going over. i always talk quick. >> that's all right. i was watching the body language of the co-panelists. dr. kirshen is nodding his head up and down. we'll find out now. dr. kirshen, thanks so much. >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. chairman, senator johnson, for giving me the opportunity to talk before this committee. i do agree very enthusiastically with everything that senator o'mara is proposing.

we have long-term economic consequences on a northern city being impacted by first of all extreme amounts of precipitation and secretary of all coastal flooding from large coastal storm surges. here i'm going to talk about the long-term costs of not being prepared for these present and future events and compare them to the benefits being prepared. because of the changing climate, the climate change impacts have always been part of my analyses. also want to point out that the case studies to new england are relevant to the rest of the united states and the world. the first study i wanted to talk about is the impact on the eastern coast of massachusetts, stretching from north of boston through almost cape cod. it's an area of large cities like boston but also suburbs. when you look at the total damages of surge flooding from storms to residential,

commercial, industrial buildings over the next 100 years serving moderate scenarios -- if i were looking at the damages and look at where it would be reduced, evaporation would be taking place. adaptation is measured by damages avoided and measure the costs by cost of adaptation. we found better cost ratios. what that means, for example, benefit-cost ratio is six to one. every dollar invested in adaptation reduces long-term damages six times. these are, again, showing the true benefits of preparing for these present and future events. the second case study was the hansen seabrook falls area of new hampshire. coastal area of new hampshire with many second homes. typically on the barrier

beaches. here we look at the cost of protecting privately owned buildings, in other words, homes and commercial facilities, and also key public assets, sewage treatment facilities, schools, from present and future coastal storms by developing adaptation plans protected 20-50 under low and high rise scenarios of approximately one to two feet. we found very large benefit cost ratio ratios ranging from 11 to 16 for public assets. the stormwater in the winter hill section ofsommerville, massachusetts. this is located north of cambridge and boston on the mystic river. this is served by a combined sewer system. presently the storm system -- the sewer system only has the

capacity to handle all the wastewater and a small amount of the stormwater whmpt a larger storm occurs, only one inch of rainfall, some of the extra combined sewage is treated at the regional wastewater treatment plant but most of the combined waste is combined to the mystic river and is floating in the streets as raw, untreated sewage. this will be increased by 10 to 30% higher rainfall in 2030. so again we did a benefit-costa analysis, the cost of adaptation to handle more waist with the benefits avoided by adaptation. we found benefit cost ratios 4-1. showing the advantages of dealing with these problems now rather than later. so to summarize. so i've talked about my recent

research to the cost of damages. the costs are underestimated. i did not include such items as human death and injury, damage to the ecosystems, incorrect costs such as lost employment and community displacement and disruption. but even with those costs not included and looking -- we found that we were looking at many scenarios of climate change and sea level rise, a dacht tags paid off in terms of damage avoided. no adaptation, no action, in all cases was the worst thing to do. to keep benefit cost ratios high would indicate that these actions are useful even if we didn't have climate change, so-called no regret actions. so i want to say a couple more comments. first of all, one of the first steps we can take to control these threats from climate change, control our emission of

greenhouse gases. that will make a big difference whether we have a three feet rise or six feet or 10% increase in extreme rainfall or 30%, but because we cannot reverse climate change, we cannot stop climate change. it will continue for centuries. we have to adapt, be prepared and like everyone else here, i really support we ought to take planning now to start dealing with these threats, otherwise we're going to be suffering large, human, social and environmental consequences. thank you for your time. >> thank you for coming all the way from new hampshire to be with us today. tell those wildcats we said hello. ms. patton, your whole statement will be made part of the record. please proceed. >> thank you very much. >> make sure your mic's on. >> i think so. chairman carper, ranking member johnson. i'm lindene patton. chief financial officer for

zurich. we provide coverage for customers in the 170 countries. we've been serving customers in the united states since 1912. we have over 8,000 employees nationwide. i would like to thank you for holding this timely hearing and i am pleased to share with the committee an insurance industry's perspective and the economic importance of investing today and improving resilience. zurich observes that the u.s. is increasingly reliant on disaster recovery funds and it's under invested in resilience. disasters have increased to over 1,000 per annum. it's risen to $400 per household. that is more than a four fold increase over the past 30 years. in other words, the resilience gap is large and growing. how large? in cummings

projected that unfunded response costs for weather-related disasters would grow to more than 1 trillion u.s. dollars and might be as much as 5 point poip 7 trillion u.s. dollars. taxpayers are bearing the burden of this. without decisive risk reduction actions, economically unsustainable, accruing unbudgeted disaster costs can be expected to continue on an upward trajectory. insurance provides risk assessment, risk management and price stabilization. a study by the bank of national resilience says they're less

likely to suffer from macro economic disasters. one of the many crystal differences is that disaster recovery funds typically are delivered more slowly than insurance payments resulting in slower recovery and even longer term negative economic impacts but assuring resilience to negative weather events requires being there before, during and after the weather event. should resilience be prioritized? absolutely. it provides greater protection to the public in the face of increasing extreme weather events, reduces human suffering and creates jobs and builds more resilience to housing and infrastructure. cure zurich understands that and acts accordingly. we are very proud of our efforts. hear are but a few examples.

zurich has had the world economic forum, the business couldn't knew the at this institute, the institute for building and home safety. over the years we have worked with progressive customers like marriott and verizon to demonstrate by design and implement stations that are cost beneficial. zurich has committed to buy 1 million u.s. green bonds to focus on resilience at a scale that really matters. what action might the government take in the short term, medium term and long term to close this resilience gap? develop a national priority plan for resilience investment. promote increased government and private bonds. he educate the society and promote and enforce stronger building codes.

two actions might include use the language over this to improve as a template. federal governments invest annually in water, pork, highway, transit and af reation infrastructure. they might include commercial applications and most importantly higher community resilience ratings. how much should be budgeted? it might be logical to take a portion of the predictable budget things. funding resilience is the wiser investme investment. funding resilience provides a 4 to 1 return on your investment. our co-panelists have talked about something

in conclusion, zurich believes we have an opportunity to improve the resilience of our nation's homes, businesses and infrastructure. we believe we can save annually while providing citizens a great deal. we look forward to working with the committee in any way we can help. >> great. great testimony. thank you very much for that. i'm going to slip out of the room and take a phone call. john is going to read off the questions for this panel. i'll be right back. thanks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ms. patton, i'd like to begin with you. you mentioned a growing resilience gap. how much of that gap, especially the growth of it, would you contribute to the fact that we tend to build in readvice beingy areas in this country? >> i'm not in a position to identify the percentage but it's

significant. we have a history and there's a lot of data and research that we have a migration to coasts and locations that have limited water supplies. under all of those circumstances you put more assets in harm's way so the suggestion is that at least that's a portion of the driver that the climate is changing. there a knows question. >> when society is subsidizing that, that increases that type of danger? >> there is research which i've cited which does demonstrate that. in fact, if there is an interference and a subsidy was basically providing information to an individual that moving to this location is cheap and if there is a disaster, it will be

paid for. >> we have that interference? >> we do. >> what would cause that interference? >> there are a multitude of things. some is funding and some is appearance. there are programs that come in and provide subsidies. there are also circumstances where there are perceptions and there was a study done by a federal task force after sandy looking into what people understood about their insurance. people didn't understand what was insured or not insured. their understanding was that federal disaster funds would be dlifrd kind of like insurance. >> they were correct, weren't they. >> the reality is the priorities for federal disaster floodings is to get critical areas up and running. they are not a 100% substitute

and i have cited research in my testimony that cites that and demp mon straits that demographics have the same. you can have longer term macro economic impacts. >> it does -- as necessary as federal help is in those circumstances, it creates more hazard, doesn't it? >> it is very clear that in under circumstances the federal government must respond under disaster. it's a political imperative, a social imperative. >> but. >> there are ways to structure programs in terms of prioritizing, spreading information. there are some risk base price

signals that may be add justed. there are other suggestions that exist in terms of prioritizing infrom strurk tur development. >> to you think people billion 1 million, $2 million right on the beach if they had to pay the full cost of their risk on thir insurance? >> i don't think i'm in a position to know that. >> you come from the insurance business. is it a fantasy to think that overtime we could prioritize the flood insurance program? >> i would have to think about that. let the market work. >> that is not happening right now at the national flood insurance program. >> there is a team. >> which is suspended. >> which are designed to allow

that. >> again, that's not a good thing in terms of reduction of that moral hazard. >> the position is -- >> and you're really creating incentive for risk management and risk mitigation and resiliency creation, correct? >> absolutely. i couldn't agree with you more. it's very important that the risk-based price signal and the insurance functionality be permitted to make sure that risks can be assessed. they want to be informed what the actual functional cost is and they need to make co gent decisions on before they invest, how much they invest. >> we're talking about private individuals, previous property. that's who they purchased insurance for -- whether you're talking about local, state, or federal government and in general the federal government is primarily a self insurer.

>> does that reduce -- does that reduce their incentive to mitigate risk in your opinion? >> it's their money. if they were not self-insurance, would that help mitigate risk? >> the only thing i can point you to is that there is a long-standing comptroller general's opinion which dates back to the 1700s which indicates that the federal government is supposed to be a self--insurer by rule and there are policy reasons for that but the functionality of private insurance, you're exactly correct, is to send a risk base signal to encourage people to control the costs over time. >> the insurance industry has a unique capacity to try that discipline. either of you two gentlemen want to comment on that line of questioning? >> i think i would just add that

the problem that we're seeing are people are libertarians until they need help. we are trying to figure out ways in delaware, in one of the counties, where they don't have some of the more protective policies in place not to have state government be the back stop because they're knocking private insurance and they're coming to us and saying, you have the strange issues and erosion issue. they're trying to find out whether it's a local issue or national. >> okay. dr. kirshen? >> i'm not an expert on insurance. i know if water rights go up, people start to conserve. i think it's very important we send the rights for climate change as well. i also want to say that i think, you know, the engineering and the science community and the social science community, we know how to do adaptations. it will give us the opportunity to work with stakeholders. >> again, thank you all for your testimony.

thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i just asked my staff to double check to see if when we pass the omnibus appropriation bill if there's a one year stay on the effective implementation of the flood insurance changes to the laws. that was waters legislation. my understanding is there's a one year stay but i think it expires at the end of this fiscal year. there's a great opportunity for us to take some of what you said here today and to work with the administration who is not wild about flood insurance and especially on this committee and see if we can't make sure that we're properly aligning the incentives to incentive advise folks to do what they need to do so it doesn't all fall on taxpayers. tony pratt, collin o'mara referenced my name. tony, thank you so much for all of the good you do for the people of our state and the

example that i think you help set for folks in other states as well. you said something, ms. patton, in your testimony. i think you mentioned some action that congress could take. i'm just so conducive to the testimony? >> right now there is a significant disconnect, it's not just for that but other appropriation bills where the design standard cannot keep up with the risk.

we saw this frankly in delare at the union river bridge where we built a beautiful new bridge, $150 million but we weren't successful with working with the army corps and protection with the cost sharing. we're happy to pay our share of a system to protect that asset. so making sure the block grants are the life blood of many municipalities in terms of delivering projects. and having that especially with the cost share having more accountability can save a lot of money in the long run. >> thank you. dr. kitchs kirshen? >> i'm not going to say much because i'm not an expert. >> it never stops us from weighing in. >> my observations working with communities, there are many

institutional barriers from adaptations and we have to address them. this is an example of some of them. >> thanks. this will be a next question for i think secretary o'mara and dr. kirshen. mitigation can, as we know, be very cost effective in reducing lives lost and damages caused by natural disasters. we've had a lot of success with mitigation in delaware in part because of the fellas that are sitting here in front of us today. i think we've done it with a relatively small investment saving our state a lot of money and i would just ask a question if we could, dr. kirshen, and secretary o'mara. based, dr. kirshen, on your research, how beneficial is extreme weather mitigation, especially long-term plan when it comes to saving money? >> well, i think as i said earlier, we're getting extraordinary cost benefit ratios. if you look at the benefits of adaptation versus doing nothing,

benefit cost ratios of 4 up to 30 in some cases. so it's extremely beneficial to do this. and i think communities realize this. when i'm working with quite a few local communities in massachusetts and new hampshire on adaptation. they do get it because they're in charge of infrastructure and they are looking for nech how to do this. we're giving them the data and they need people to help them interpret the data and also think about how to use the data in planning for climate change. the problem with climate change is the uncertainty. we're not exactly sure what the future climate is. we know how to deal with uncertainties with scenario analysis and other analytical technique. i think we have to provide support from the communities to do planning. it's relatively cheap compared to the huge cost if we don't do good planning, thank you. >> secretary o'mara just to

follow up on that based on your experiences, what needs to be done to encourage and support state and really local governments, too, to support individuals and businesses to adopt mitigation measures such as adopting -- adapting, adopting updated building codes to better address the threats of extreme weather? >> i think there's kind of two pieces to the equation. one deals with what senator johnson was racing about the economics. making sure that the economics in action are very, very clear to folks and also kind of toughening up a little bit and making sure that if people don't take those actions, government does not come in and bail them out which is obviously the easier political outcome. if we're able to do those things, you'll see behavior change quickly. money will drive a lot of these investments. i do think there are significant opportunities for the federal government to incent people whether that's earlier consideration whether it's

competitive grants or having a slightly higher percentage for either percentage allocations for match or other types of federal systems, where if you've done the hard work it will saif the federal government money. we don't have claims that met the fema threshold after sandy. rehobath was intact. we didn't receive any from hud because our systems were successful. we should be rewarded or incentive advised in some way and the other states should be penalized. i think aligning those incentives is some work that this committee could lead on and find incentives and drive great incentives. >> ms. patton, if i could, a question for you. with the insurance companies having a long history of risk management when it comes to extreme weather events, are there ways to create more public/private partnerships to help share the knowledge between federal and state and local

governments? >> i believe that there are, and i think it's very important to continue those and to take those exemplars that you have, which are ongoing, and expand them. as i mentioned earlier in my testimony, i'm very excited about the resilient star pilot at dhs. it provides a framework -- >> so am i. let the record show, so am i. >> it provides a framework in which we can actually and we are collaborating in a public/private partnership. we are at the beginning of this pilot but i can see it very easily extended to the commercial and infrastructure context. when that happens and you can actually create a resilient community, the -- it would enable other private sector opportunities. other types of incentives may present themselves if you have a resilient community, it may be obvious that it might be a really good place to invest. it might be obvious that the risks where loans are placed under those circumstances are

reduced. it's not just about insurance, it's about the long-term functionality and economic resilience of that community to be able to survive and thrive even before, during and after extreme weather events. that is just one example. i think that to the extent that some of the other recommendations of the panel can be followed through in terms of providing opportunities with infrastructure investment and matching funds, that will provide other opportunities for private sector to inject themselves into the process. >> one final question. i'm going to ask you to make real brief answers. the votes have gun. it's begun. >> we're trying to reduce our deficit to 550 billion, but as a result son of my colleagues have been critical because they cost the federal government money,

such as beach replenishment for coastal communities but other things as well. what are the counter arguments to those who say taking the steps needed to build resilience are really too costly and, therefore, should not be taken? if you have any parting advice on us, how can we better plan for extreme weather events and reduce financial risks to our government? we have to wrap it up fairly briefly. secretary o'mara, would you close us out with that? >> i think we'll let the economics speak for themselves. if we can say an extra dollar will save you $5 or $10 on the fema budget, that's a compelling argument. i'll take a five to one return any day. the same thing can be said for any other type of infrastructure investment today. there is a huge opportunity right now because we do have data that we could collect fairly easily in communities that were well prepared before sandy and the ones not well prepared. we should be collecting that data as we speak to make sure we know the costs to the federal government for communities that

weren't prepared. you have two communities, one with healthy dunes, one without healthy dunes. they got more money. we should quantify that. >> thanks. very briefly dr. kirshen? >> i agree with secretary o'mara, but, again, that said, an ounce of cure is worth a pound of -- ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. >> you've got it. >> i think that's the solution. >> thank you. ms. patton? >> i would also agree that economics do speak for themselves. i think it is not just about the expense, it's about the potential interruption to the grows domestic product for the regions and about the potential for communities to no longer exist or be severely interrupted for not just weeks but years. it has both direct economic value but it also has social value in the short term and long

term. >> let me conclude, first of all, thank you. thank you all. you've got a lot going on in your lives. grateful that you took some time to spend some time this morning with us. the only thing going back to what i said as we begin this hearing, mike enzy, senator from wyoming, one of my favorite colleagues, everybody loves him. 80-20 rule. how do you get a lot done, focus on the 80% we agree, set aside the 20%. there's a lot we agree on. this is a fairly controversial hearing. senator johnson came and stayed and he stayed a lot longer than he anticipated staying because he thought it was worthwhile. there's a great deal we can agree on and work on. so i just thank you for helping us to find that 80%, find the middle, and we are going to have some more questions. a couple more questions that folks will ask of you.

some senators who were not here will submit questions. i think you have about 15 days to do that. if you receive any of those questions, if you could respond promptly we'd be most grateful. with that, this hearing is adjourned. thank you so much. >> steve wozniak discusses the origins of the company. at 12:30 p.m.gin eastern. jane little highlights how the media covers religion, including the pope, issues of same-sex marriage, and al qaeda's use of social media. you can watch her remarks beginning at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span.

>> i believe the creationists should educate the kids out there. we are teaching them the right way to think. historical sciences based upon the bible, but i am challenging them to be up front about the disc -- the difference. >> there are pyramid is older than that. there are human populations that are far older than that with traditions i go back farther than that. it is not reasonable that everything changed for thousand

years ago. why everything i mean the species, the surface of the earth, the stars in the sky and the relationship of all the other living things on the earth to humans. evolution versus creationism. the debate is on wednesday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. next on c-span, q and a with lee ellis. followed by washington journal, live with today's headlines. ginsburg and elena kagan, later. a discussion about the three branches of u.s. government and the future of democracy.

>> this week on q&a, lee ellis discusses his five and a half years in north vietnam as a prisoner of war. >> lee ellis, go back to november 7, 1967, at 4:00. what happened? >> i was in my 53rd combat mission in vietnam. that day, we rolled in and were working with a group that had called us in and said that they needed some bombs on gunners. we rolled into do that and there were two of us on the f-4 phantom. the bombs came off the airplane at 4000 or 5000 feet.

unusually, the airplane burst into several pieces. we were tumbling, end over end. there was smoke in the cockpit and i could not communicate with my partner. i knew i had to get out and i was well trained. i was about to eject over enemy territory that we had to bombing for a couple of years. there was no other choice and i pulled a handle. everything worked automatically and perfectly. it blew the canopy and blew me 50 feet in the air. it separated the seats from me, which automatically pulled the d-ring. it was less than 2.5 seconds from when i pulled the handle. there was a lot of shooting going on at the ground and they were shooting at our wing man with a nest of guns. there was a good number of militia down there that were

protecting a strategic target. a lot of shooting going on. the wonderful training that i had in the air force and the military, they do a great job of training, i was unfazed by the fact that i was in enemy territory and i had bullets going by my parachute. what was on my mind was even ding capture.- eva there was a river to the south, and i thought that if i could get to the river, i have a life raft and i'm only 1.5 miles from the gulf of top can. in. onk i can make it there and the navy can pick me up. unfortunately, i did not have enough altitude to slip my parachute. the old parachutes did not slip very well. that is what i did and it took them a couple of minutes to capture me. i made a radio call and f