mentioned supervisor cowen andrew and wanting mr. gomez will be speaking and other folks from the building committee and there are two community members who were invited to speak after dozens and will be coming next week to serve the final vote as general council i led the council on the mexican museum for the long term lease to be moved to the full board the combined 99 year lease is extremely well-thought-out and we worked on it for over a year part of the negotiations included folks in the room as well as others for the mexican museum think outside the box on behalf of team i want to thank the team who represented the city starting with john updyke

mr. gomez talked about access to the municipal bond market. for small communities this is not an option at all. 53,000-some community water systems in this country. perhaps 4% of them have the ability to access the municipal bond market. so what they are left with is the two primary federal financing programs being the drinking water srf and usda rural developments. rural and environmental programs. it's really critical that those programs continue to be supported in a robust manner. we work a lot with rural development and their water environments program. they are the primary lender in rural communities. they have some 18,000-plus loans out with small water systems. and as you probably know there's virtually no default on these loans. we take these matters very seriously in repaying the loans that are made to small communities. one of the things r.d. has going for them is they have field staff never state. theft ability to work directly with the communities. the communities know their local f

mr. gomezalked about access to the municipal bond market. for small communities this is not an option at all. 53,000-some community water systems in this country. perhaps 4% of them have the ability to access the municipal bond market. so what they are left with is the two primary federal financing programs being the drinking water srf and usda rural developments. rural and environmental programs. it's really critical that those programs continue to be supported in a robust manner. we work a lot with rural development and their water environments program. they are the primary lender in rural communities. they have some 18,000-plus loans out with small water systems. and as you probably know there's virtually no default on these loans. we take these matters very seriously in repaying the loans that are made to small communities. one of the things r.d. has going for them is they have field staff never state. theft ability to work directly with the communities. the communities know their local fol

you a couple of upgrades on the mexican museum as mentioned supervisor cowen andrew and wanting mr. gomez will be speaking and other folks from the building committee and there are two community members who were invited to speak after dozens and will be coming next week to serve the final vote as general council i led the council on the mexican museum for the long term lease to be moved to the full board the combined 99 year lease is extremely well-thought-out and we worked on it for over a year part of the negotiations included folks in the room as well as others for the mexican museum think outside the box on behalf of team i want to thank the team who represented the city starting with john updyke who just spoke and tom and rebecca from the arts commission and tiffany and chris 10 from the accessory our agency and to very capable and distinguished council who is now general council for the museum thank you to each and every and everyone and particular to john who was supportive every step of the way and thank you to the museum partners shawn and mark and also christine moore together t

mr. gomez. think it's important because one of the things is, we've been hearing, there's a short and of dollars out there that we have especially when you're talking about a rural area. could you discuss the relationship between the e.p.a. and usda programs and whether they are, you know there are overlaps out there and what about the efficiencies or synergies that could occur if we were really looking at these programs to make sure we didn't have duplication out there or anything like that. >> sure. thank you, so we have looked at those two programs in particular and also at the other agencies that have programs that help rural communities. with respect to the usda rural utilities service and the e.p.a. drinking water s.r.f., they are -- they do have some similar programs. we did not find any areas where they were duplicating effort, meaning that they were funding the same project for the same purpose. projects can get funding from both programs. but they're usually focusing on different areas

mr. alfredo gomez. welcome, sir you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. good morning, everyone. i'm pleased to be here today to address the infrastructure needs. >> if you could pull that a little closer, there is a button in the middle, hit that button when it is time to speak and pull that mic closer. >> i'm pleased to be here today to address the infrastructure needs facing needs across the nation particularly for drinking water systems. the u.s. faces costly upgrades. the projects and communities with populations of 10,000 and fewer is estimated to be more than $190 billion in coming decades. my statement today summarizes our reports on rural water infrastructure. i will focus on two main areas. first, rural agencies funding for drinking water and waste water infrastructure and issues affecting rural community's abilities to maintain funding for this type of infrastructure. first federal agencies administer program that's can provide funding and technical assistant to rural communities to help them build drinking water and waste water systems. the epa

mr. paul gomez. tell us what happened over there. >> we received a call a man had entered the water and the witnesses did not see him come back out. we dispatched water rescue units out. we were able to determine where the entry was made and put our personnel in the water rescue suits to protect them from the cold water. they entered in about 15 feet and locate the victim pulled the victim out, hand him off to the ems crews who performed cpr and transported him to the hospital. >> reporter: we had chopper 4 up above shooting what's going on here on the ground. i must say you had mentioned off camera that someone could be in the water for at least an hour and still survive. >> yes. there have been documented case where is people have been in cold water situations and have drowned and have been revived successfully after being in that condition for a long period of time. so our procedure is that we rescue that person from the water, we continue to perform cpr as we revive the body temperature back to a

mr. gomez. >> well, generally, what g.a.o. always recommends is that you target federal funds to those communities. so if these are the communities that's one of the areas we could target. >> okay. i guess we're running out of time. again, mr. chairman, thank you very much for bringing this out. i hope we continue to -- this is for small cities. the big cities have their own issues, but they have the resources and the critical mass to be able to take care of it. our small towns are 400, 500 people. we're struggling. we'd better find it. thank you very much. >> the chair recognizes the gentleman from ohio mr. johnson for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i represent appalachia, ohio and i don't have to tell you folks, probably, how rural that is. i hear the horror stories, many of which you've just heard. i could cite similar cases that my colleague from west virginia, mr. mckinley, did. mr. selman, long before i was elected to congress i served 26 years in the air force and i was station