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Ms. Furse. [Presiding.] Thank you Mr. Lyons. Mike Houck with 

 the Urban Streams Council. Welcome to a fellow Portlander, Port- 

 land, Oregon. You can begin your testimony. 



STATEMENT OF MIKE HOUCK, URBAN STREAMS COUNCIL 



Mr. Houck. Thank you. I want to express my sincere apprecia- 

 tion for the opportunity to testify here today, on behalf of both the 

 Coalition to Restore Urban Waters (CRUW), and our own role, 

 Urban Streams Council, which is based in Vancouver — I want to 

 stress that that is the Vancouver-Oregon metropolitan region — by 

 the grassroots citizens organization which was established to focus 

 attention on the unique challenges and opportunities associated 

 with the restoration of degraded urban aquatic ecosystems and the 

 communities which surround them. 



And while I am very flattered by your opening comments, I 

 would point out, and you well know, there are dedicated individ- 

 uals in literally all the metropolitan regions which have cooperated 

 in bringing H.R. 4289 to where it is today. So thank you for your 

 compliment, but there are lots of other folks, some of whom are in 

 the room, who share that. 



I was asked to specifically address six issues associated with 

 H.R. 4289. The first is the status of the Nation's aquatic 

 ecosystems and actually I think I will, in the interest of saving 

 time, simply point out the obvious and that is everybody has made 

 that point already this morning that our Nation's waterways and 

 watersheds, both rural and urban, are in need of restoration. That 

 is beyond dispute. 



H.R. 4289 will provide one tool to address that need and it is a 

 piece of a larger puzzle. There are no silver bullets out there and 

 we view this as an important compliment, as other folks have 

 pointed out today, to the other measures that have been intro- 

 duced. 



I was also asked to give some examples of successful and unsuc- 

 cessful projects. H.R. 4289 is modeled as one of the most successful 

 urban waterway restoration programs in the United States. The 

 State of California's Department of Water Resources Urban Water- 

 way Restoration Program has had a successful track record over 

 the past ten years; and, actually, a former employee and CRUW 

 member, who has been intimately involved in developing that pro- 

 gram, is with us today. Ann Riley is in the audience, and I want 

 to submit for the record a description of that very successful pro- 

 gram after which the provisions in 4289 are modeled, and also an 

 article entitled, "Overcoming Federal Water Policies, the Wildcat- 

 San Pablo Creek Case." 



I have also included information from a publication by the Na- 

 tional Park Service, the Association of State Floodplain Wetland 

 Managers, which is a series of case studies, and I guess I would 

 just point out one example. Wildcat and San Pablo Creeks in Cali- 

 fornia, in the bay area, is a community-based example of a commu- 

 nity-based restoration program. 



What began as a single purpose, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 

 project, evolved through local citizen involvement into a multi-ob- 

 jective project, which incorporated restoration of the natural 

 stream channel, reduction of sedimentation, protection of endan- 



