# What This Bill Does

This bill gives the federal government the authority to do emergency repairs and maintenance work on urban water canals that run through cities and could cause serious harm if they fail. Right now, the government has limited ability to jump in and fix these canals when problems develop. This bill expands those powers specifically for canals that pass through densely populated areas where a collapse or major failure could endanger lives and destroy property.

The bill defines an "urban canal of concern" as a water canal running through a city where the federal government determines that if it broke or failed, people would die and property would be destroyed nearby. Once a canal meets this definition, the government can authorize and pay for emergency maintenance and repair work without having to go through the normal lengthy approval processes. This is important because some of these canals are aging infrastructure that can't wait for standard bureaucratic timelines when they're at risk of catastrophic failure.

The practical effect is that cities with aging canal systems—particularly those that carry water through populated areas—will have better access to federal emergency repair funding. The bill also clarifies that if a local government or water district contributes money toward these repairs, that money counts as their share of the cost for other federal grants they might be seeking. This makes it easier for communities to participate in fixing these critical pieces of infrastructure without having to find additional funding sources. Essentially, the bill streamlines the process for keeping dangerous urban canals from failing in ways that could hurt people.

To amend the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 to authorize certain extraordinary operation and maintenance work for urban canals of concern.

Simpson, Michael K.

This bill amends the Bureau of Reclamation's authority to carry out emergency work to include certain urban canals of concern and amends certain cost-sharing provisions. Specifically, the bill reclassifies Reclamation's urban canals of concern as emergency extraordinary maintenance and operation work necessary to ensure the continued safe, dependable, and reliable delivery of project benefits. An urban canal of concern conveys water through a densely populated urban area and the canal's failure would result in the loss of life and property in the vicinity of the failure. As emergency work, Reclamation may provide federal funds to an urban canal of concern project on a non-reimbursable basis sufficient to cover 35% of the cost. The bill further specifies that reimbursable funds provided under this provision must be considered a nonfederal source of funds for purposes of federal grant cost-sharing requirements.