daily to mitigate noise. it's located 70 feet away from the residential buildings adjacent at the rear. the project meets all planning code requirements and surrounding uses. that concludes my presentation and i'm available for any questions you may have. >> thank you. project sponsor, it's opened up to you for 5 minutes. >> good afternoon. i'm serena calhoun, project architect for the project at 2323 mission. i'm here with the business owner. the patio has been in use for 23 years. one of the neighbors complained. that's why we're here today. i will give you an orientation and then ben will speak more specifically about the use. the two-story awning that you see is the project. this is a floorplan and you can see that i've illustrated there's a red line. that's the existing plan. structure in the rear extends out far to the rear yard. in our meetings with building and fire department staff, to provide a second exit from this space, need to make a larger rear yard so there is space at the back of the property

what is your mitigation on your noise. you said you had one. you are a beloved business, yes, absolutely, want to keep and retain these businesses, but we hear real people that i think are also telling the truth that they have issues. >> absolutely. thank you for the question. we've had 10 bars in san francisco that we've owned and operated and this is one of them. i have a long record of communicating with neighbors. we have neighbor issues at all 10 of the bars we've had. and i have been traditionally driven by complaints. so when a neighbor comes to us with a concern, we try to mitigate those. the building manager has come to us with a number of concerns. some of them are things outside of our control. there's a hot dog vendor on the corner. there's a point here. i've -- i'm very surprised to hear these neighbors. it's literally the first time we're hearing from them. we tried it have a community meeting. maybe it didn't work for everyone. we're open to that. we felt up to this point that we had actually been answering the neighbor complaint

in their dwelling mitigation tactics but it's not just mitigation tactics at the home, it's mitigation tactics that are low to know-cost tactics for schools, for businesses and homes and then offering that money up front. i'm all for offering money up front. >> right. >> it doesn't make sense to have it. >> low to no cost options to do the greatest good down the road. >> and do it up front. low to no cost. and i want to thank one of my constituents, charles goforth who spent a lot of time working on this. his area has flooded repeatedly over the years. it's a bowl in houston but they are devoted to the neighborhood, they're devoted to keeping a thriving, vibrant neighborhood. it's where a lot of the largest synagogues in the state of texas are located. if you're an orthodox, for example, you've got to live within walking distance of your synagogue because you can't drive a car on saturday so these folks, i'm telling you, there's no better -- i want to thank charles for these ideas because he's right. if you qualify today for mitigation money from the feds, there's only two options, buy

we have to mitigate the impact of rising sea levels. in fact is we have been speaking louisiana has lost the equivalent of two football fields of coastline. can you put that poster of our coastal loss up? that right there depicts coastal loss and flood risk to our communities. now what we could do and by the way developing off the coast of louisiana we don't get the 50% revenue share that other states get. for example new mexico. we don't. we get 35% up to 500 billion split before -- between two states. if we have that under our constitution we have to put it towards coastal restoration projects. the money doesn't start until 2017 so senator cantwell's observation is that she hasn't seen these projects occur and that is true because we have gotten two or $3 million which is helpful for panel -- planning and construction but we are having a comprehensive plan to begin to restore that coastline which by the way helps protect federal assets such as the strategic petroleum reserve and also mitigates the risk of the future hurricane would hi

priority is, emission mitigation. atinda: let's look closer emission mitigation, which is the central purpose of the paris climate agreement. it was designed to be a hybrid andeen binding plans voluntary action. it sets out goals and plans. they were devised by the countries themselves, and one breakthrough that made the agrereement possible was an agreement between the world's biggest co2 imagers, namely the u.s. and china. they decided together to sign up. now, donald trump says that was a mistake. here is president trump signing an executive order aimed at dismantling key elements of the obama administration's effort to combat climate change. >> together, we will create millions of good american jobs. also, so many energy jobs. and really, lead to unbelievable prosperity all throughout our country. >> and a lot of americans were upset that the u.s. pulled out of the paris climate agreeeemen. can the agreement survive without the united states? melinda: christopher, the u.s. has sent a delegation to bonn. can we be

so let's look closer at that issue of emission mitigation which of course is the central purpose of the paris climate agreement it was designed to be a kind of a hybrid between binding plans and voluntary action it sets out goals and plans but they were devised by the countries themselves and one breakthrough that made that agreement possible was agreement between the world's biggest c o two emitters namely the u.s. and china they both decided together to sign up now donald trump says that was a mistake. here's president trump signing an executive order painted dismantling key elements of the obama administration's effort to combat climate change gather we will create millions of good american. also so many energy. and really lead to believable prosperity all throughout our country. and a lot of americans were upset that the u.s. pulled out of the paris climate agreement. can the agreement survive without the united states. christopher spring gate strangely enough the us has sent a delegation to boston can we be sure that its only function will be to resist because we've just seen t

officer for the state of california when i think of insurance i don't think about mitigation. >> so as part of public safety mission the c e a started to put aside mitigation loss fund 5 percent of invested income and when i joined the company 34 years ago we had $45 million to make a difference for moving and incentivizing and mitigation for california homeowners to structure engineering a unique opportunity to cervical homeowners to help them to mitigate the equivalent. >> whether an owner or renter i want to find more information about earthquake insurance where should i go. >> earthquake authority.com not only information about insurance but a calculated figures and as of january lots of deductible and 25 percent if a homeowner mitigate their hope up to 20 percent off their premium as an incentive for the work. >> what does mitigate the home mean. >> strengthen, renovate, retrofit through a home particularly older to earlier codes and you put in adding streamlining maybe collar bolts to tie to the foundation or to the wall so it is braced to earthquake can be very, very affordab

we have to do more predisaster mitigation. predisaster mitigation is the key to becoming more resilient. we have to asinsure state and local governments like texas and florida are the examples have their own life sustainable commodity capabilities and infederal government is not shouldering t the entire burden. we have to find ways to preprayer our citizens. insurance is the first line of defense and thosese who are insured will recover quickly. we have to insure that states and baseline level capabilities that states have their own baseline cape blths to handle individual assistance and public assistance when federal disaster declarations have not come to town, and we have to do a lot of work to fix the program. these are just some of the things we have to work on and a multitude of several more ideas i have. i'mst honored to be here and answer your questions today. thank you. >> thank you, mr. long. our nextar witness is robert salesses. mr. salesses is a deputy assistant secretary of defense for eshomeland defense integratn

sound walls can't mitigate the noise of people walking past. this change to active use is in pe perpetuity and there is no guarantees that any mitigating effects will work. i ask the board to take into consideration the 5 foot offset between lots permitting this deck -- before permitting this deck as it's designed while offering to put in privacy screens is good, the giant wall deck just outside my bedroom on the property line does reduce my property privacy and peace of use. common sense dictates that my home will be diminished forever. would you want to buy the house with the quiet master bedroom and the good view, or the house that has foot traffic noise along the wall and a large wall outside. mr. bentley thanked me for the 2015 letter, saying it allowed him to purchase the home for a lower price and even assigned this letter of $200,000. they stated ne the need for a second story door as an emergency exit and two not having to go through this family room. both these needs can be readily accomplished by using a different access point, perha

that goes back to the predisaster mitigation point. how do you plan to implement mitigation strategies when you have to get hit and you are not sure how much money you're going to come into based on the type of disaster? that is what i think we have to preplan, take it out of recovery and put it up front see you can do better visionary planning over the next couple years to truly mitigate your communities. senator peters: thank you. senator johnson: senator harris? senator harris: thank you for this hearing i appreciate the , administrator speaking of california. the hearing is not about wildfires, but i would like to urge that we do everything we can to, as you appreciate, we lost 42 lives in california, and the estimate is that we lost 8900 homes and structures. on that point, from fema, you are doing a great job, the army corps of engineers. i was there, i met with the families and you're absolutely right. it is devastating to those families in that community. in terms of fema, there is still a need and i will put this on , your rad

blm can mitigate as they go forward. it's the issue, i guess, i would say to counsel on both sides, is that you are changing the management status. so to think we're going to get the same -- just been changed and conflicted, then you're going get the same management status. that's why we have this letter from all the scientists. they say these caribou or bear want to cozy up to a pipeline, but that is just not true. so the issue is we have indigenous people that are there who do need the support of this food source and their migratory habits are at question here. i'm just amazed that people want to throw away such an unbelievable ecological jewel of our planet. i don't even just mean our nation, i mean our planet. the fact that our government has spent millions of dollars for decades studying the habit of caribou, that we have a treaty with canada to protect them, that their migratory habits have been so amazing, because how they distribute themselves to not deplete the food source is of scientific relevance. the notion

we can try to mitigate some of the things about walls or this or that. but mother nature has the last word and we have seen that very clearly regarding flooding but also fires, everything else. we are going into us -- unprecedented, environmental hazards we have never seen before. i guess my suggestion concurs with the supervisor. i think we should do an assessment of which of the homes will always be in the flood zone. to say it is a five-year we don't get that. but we don't get -- well, houston also built like crazy. and that's what happens when you put concrete on everything. also the fact we don't even have a municipal code about the infrastructure. if people were to build on that property, we don't even have a code that addresses that which exacerbates the problem. should we be building on these areas where we know they flood and have a tendency to flood? should we be allowing people to be building on these areas knowing we can't -- you can try to control and mitigate the situation, but eventually it is out of our hands. so, i just think we should b

i would say to my colleagues from louisiana, the issue is not mitigation. the issue is a fundamental decision, which way forward this country goes in terms of energy andnd drilling for more oil is not the way i think it's a go. >> just to speak j to that, i don't know if the way you make a statement is to allow the washing away of a coastline, which, i'm speaking specifically to senator cantwell's amendment. the washing away of a coastline which will not only destroy federal assets but the most productivee fisheries in the lower 48, i emphasized the lower 48 as well as other natural resources, by the whale also point out in the amendment that we have, the men that we have has been endorsed by the environmental defense fund, i've got a whole list here, the coalition to restore coastal louisiana, the national wildlife federation, we are talking about preserving an ecosystem in terms of this particular amendment. the other thing i point out, senator franken and i have been talking about puerto ricol , the national bureau of economic resource points out that fo

appreciate all the efforts towards mitigation. i think you all can appreciate the tricky contractural straits he needs to navigate to deal with supplementation of subcontractors, so, and we are shoulder to shoulder to ensure that we get as much activity as soon as possible on the site, on the project site. i have seen a good uptick of electricians on evening and night shifts, encouraging to see, and again, you know, an uptick on concrete work and really focussing on cleaning up and buttoning up the perimeter of the site, and get the first bus running in december and then lean into the grand hall and the bus deck as well as keeping the roof park going, which is grading up very nicely. with that, i could take questions or actually, why don't i invite dennis, as he mentioned, you know, there's a number of elements that we are struggling with, both inside and outside of the project's limits and been a lot of discussion and a bit of controversy around the merge around exit street and the off ramp on to the bus deck from the bay bridge,

like better mapping, as well as mitigation. those who have lived through natural disasters know you can't stop the catastrophic force of mother nature. but you can prepare. i urge my colleagues, reject this ideological exercise and put people over politics. let us come together and pass real sustainable reform for a strong, affordable national flood insurance program. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from florida yields back. the gentleman from texas is recognized. mr. hensarling: mr. speaker, i'm very pleased to yield a minute and a half to the gentleman from new york, a member of the financial services committee, mr. zeldin. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from new york is recognized for a minute and a half. mr. zeldin: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise in strong support of this legislation, which contains critical reforms that protect access to affordable insurance, improves the way policyholders are treated when filing a claim, and places the national flood insurance program on

mitigate them to the best of our ability. will tell you without delving into areas i can't go that there are shortcomings in our defenses in any number of areas, whether flight safety which you would september 11 we would have gotten straight. new yber realm is a paradigm so we have to be vigilant and understand that bad are going to happen in a free society. we do everything we can to mitigate them. when it comes to the specific incidents say when it comes to texas shooting, there this whole conversation about the information on data bases approved for et guns. do you think there are improvements need there had? is not the first shooter who was banned from possessing firearms who them.sed you can always argue anyone who human life o take will break gun laws but we need laws enforced adequately. so there is a real dropping of the aeufrs and f.b.i. and processing entities. ironically in virginia i think one of two states that have the state background check on top of the federal background check. i arced against it and -- arce

this has not come easily and we are proud of what we have achieved in poverty mitigation. [applause] guy: you are listening to xi jinping at the apec summit. if you want to follow what the

is something else recovery there are prioritized but in terms of mitigation you know it's a question of making our community safe and so we're people who live in this more question of hydrology you know we need to look at. but critics say that approach focuses on scientific technicalities and ignores the reality that some communities have been historically neglected. because the judge is saying there's no equity lands then those of us who are out here in the public are saying that must be an equity lens because we cannot reproduce the any quality we cannot allow money to follow money and money power when it comes to. the investments that have only made in flood protection that would be not only in morrow on ethical but we think would be illegal. harvey was the third major flood to houston in as many years but it was far more destructive than the ones before it . as the city tries to recover there's fear that the worst is yet to come knowing that another storm will come and another storm will come and the intensity of the strong seem to be getting getting a greater we have to change c

after the hurricane questions were raised about what if anything officials could have done to mitigate the flooding in some of the hardest hit areas . in houston people look to the harris county flood control district which is one of the agencies tasked with reduce the flood risk for the larger metropolitan area . since harvey it's been focused on recovery clearing debris making repairs and preparing for the next door. while we were in town the agency which is headed by a judge at image held a press conference for those residents who experienced the flooding two dozen fifteen. a flood in two thousand and sixteen and now flooding two dozen seventeen are you doing enough for those residents no that's our hope or. should the county prioritize efforts to help communities who have a hard time recovering from a party like it's i think recovering is one thing mitigation is something else recovery they are privatized but in terms of mitigation you know it's a question of making our community safe and so we're people who live just more question of hydrology you know so we need to look at. but c

this mitigated the effects. as d.o.e. undertakes a modernization program of its existing systems, this committee and others have requested that we undertake an evaluation of the spr, its size, composition, location of reserves, and options for improving its effectiveness. we will report our findings in the next few months. thank you. this concludes my oral remarks. i'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you all. at this point, we'll move to questions from the dais. mr. alexander, you said in your testimony that you -- the corps oversees -- is overseeing the work that's done by prepa. in puerto rico. i'd like to ask the question. how has that gone? because we've -- this subcommittee has tried to contact prepa both by e-mail and phone. they're not answering. there is no heartbeat. that we're getting back. so, how has that oversight gone? >> sir, perhaps i misstated. we have a task force, again, general officer, senior executive led that's overseeing our mission to restore the grid as assigned by fema.

she's also pushed for passage of separate healthcare legislation, which would aim to sort of mitigate some of the damage that may occur if they repeal the individual mandate from the 2010 healthcare law, which is part of the senate tax plan. so she's one of the votes that republican leaders are trying to shore up. there's a few others we don't know exactly where senator john mccain stands on the proposal. he's been somewhat quiet. there's a few on the fence to watch. host: for senator mccain being so quiet at this point, is there anything to take away from that? guest: hard to know. in the past, he has voted against republican tax plans, and just recently he's been advocating for more regular process, and he seems to have indicated that he's happier with the way that this tax process has gone compared to the healthcare repeal effort earlier this year. so it's hard to know exactly where he stands right now, but we'll find out soon. host: what about the individual mandate? this was a matter of discussion leading up to this point. where do we stand on that as far as this proposal is conc

this mitigated the economic effect of the hurricane cost refinery and oil production shutdown. as they take the existing systems come of this committee and others have requested they undertake an evaluation of the spr. this concludes my remarks and i will be happy to answer any questions that you may have. the subcommittee tried to contact by e-mail and phone but are not answering. so perhaps i misstated we have a task force for the senior executives that have been overseeing our mission to restore as assigned by. we are working in coordination and collaboration so that we can have well defined focus areas of operation so we are not working in each other's area and we ensure that there are no gaps. they were able to award three major contracts, one for the temporary power generation and the power plants. we have an additional load on the area as was several days ago. the other two contracts on the line repair transmission distribution line repair. a larger contract $240 million contract have been on the ground today and are conducting assessments and starting to have the crew a

we do not invest in predisaster mitigation. we will save $4 in disaster relief for each dollar we invest upfront to protect property, to protect lives. now, i am prepared to support the underlying bill. it's not perfect. there are changes that i would make, and i understand some of the challenges that people are going to suggest in terms of the impact on some lower-income citizens. i sympathize with that, but this answer is not to continue to keep people in harm's way. the answer is not to rebuild people right back where they're going to be putting their property and their families at risk. it's not to continue to resist reform because it's hard because ultimately that adds to the price tag. it adds to the dislocation, and the federal government is going to -- the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. ms. slaughter: i yield to the gentleman another minute. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for one minute. ms. slaughter: or two. all right. mr. blumenauer: you're busy and you have things to do.