 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We are glad to welcome you here today to this briefing entitled, Investing in U.S. Infrastructure for Maximum Dividends. We are holding this briefing in conjunction with our partners, the National Association of State Energy Officials, or NASIO, because we are working together to take a look at America's infrastructure, its needs, the business case for investing in long-term reliability and sustainability. And what does this mean for us as a nation? What does this mean for our local governments, for our states? Because as we all are acutely aware, infrastructure in its many, many forms is what keeps this country and our economy running. Also want to let you know that this briefing is the first in a series on Building Resilient and Secure Infrastructure. Other briefings that EESI is working on with NASIO will examine state and city local government initiatives. We'll be looking at building materials and methods, how we can do a better job in terms of that built infrastructure. We'll be looking at the role of national labs, their important R&D work, and at the whole role of federal R&D, and its role with regard to looking at infrastructure across the country. We'll also be taking a look at coastal resilience as well as national energy and climate security. So stay tuned for all of those and also make sure that you participate in our briefing on Monday. There are flyers outside with regard to that briefing where we are bringing in state energy officials to look at the whole issue of state energy emergency preparedness. So again, I am happy to welcome you to this briefing today to kick off our whole look at infrastructure. We have a terrific panel that you're going to be hearing from and the the impetus for this particular briefing is that there is every four years an important scorecard that is released that you're going to be hearing about from our first speaker. The American Society for Civil Engineers does a report card on America's infrastructure. That really takes the pulse looks at what is going on again in all of these important different pieces of our infrastructure. One of the things that I also find quite remarkable is that there are so many different pieces, so many different systems in terms of thinking about infrastructure in this country, and that each is important to the other and they're all terribly important in terms of our economy, in terms of how we function, how we protect ourselves, our cities, our estates, all of the things that make this country go. So our first speaker to talk about this important scorecard and what it can mean because the purpose behind this briefing too is in terms of looking not only what we know about the needs that are involved in looking at infrastructure, but also how do we go about making sound investments that are really going to maximize those dividends, those return on investments. So we're first going to hear from Tom Smith, who is the executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He has long been a member of the American Society for Civil Engineers. He's been there for over 25 years where he has been so important in terms of providing leadership, direction, and management and oversight across a broad spectrum of ASCE's programs. He has also, his leadership has been recognized in terms of awards that he has won for his work. He has been a member, he's currently serving as a member of the board of directors of the National Institute for Engineering Ethics. A very, very important role. And he has played important leadership positions in a number of other organizations. And it's important too to note that he, while he is dealing with all of these issues on a national infrastructure basis, he is also serving on the Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals, which also gets right back into very local infrastructure questions. Tom. Thank you, Carol. Good afternoon, everybody. And thanks for the invitation to be here with you. It's a pleasure to be here. To tell you a little bit about our report card for America's infrastructure. As Carol referenced, my name is Tom Smith, and I mentioned a couple of people in the room. I'm looking at John Cassana, who's a director on ASCE's board. Looks here in the DC metropolitan area, as well as Bill Kelly, who's also been an active committee member with our sustainability committee and education committee. In the back of the room, Brian Pallish and Carolyn Softman, who did a lot of work on this report card. Brian is the managing director in our DC office. Carol is a director in the DC office, very instrumental in making this report card come to fruition and have been for many, many years. In Brian's case, ASCE is a nonprofit 501C3. We were created back in 1852. We have about 152,000 members in 177 countries. Our objective is to advance the science and profession of engineering for the welfare of humanity. So that's what we do. We're primarily focused on technical issues. We publish 35 different technical journals, peer-reviewed journals. We publish standards, a lot of books, 50 books a year, all on mainly technical and professional issues to advance engineering, and specifically in our case, civil engineering. About 20 years ago in 1998, we issued our first report card on America's infrastructure. We felt like there's an obligation as the stewards of infrastructure, as the folks who are designing it, operating it, maintaining it, and inspecting it. We felt that it was an obligation for engineers, civil engineers, to evaluate our infrastructure and make sure that the public and policy makers knew what the state of our infrastructure was. So we have a very robust process that we go through. We have over 30 different experts that evaluate 16 categories of infrastructure, and we issue that report card every four years. So just in March, we issued the 2017 report card, which I'll talk about before that, it was 2013. We look at eight different criteria. We look at capacity, condition, funding, future need, operation and maintenance, public safety, resiliency, and innovation. So those are the criteria that we utilize when we're evaluating infrastructure, and we look at an enormous amount of data, a lot of it publicly available from government entities. We put about 30 people together, they evaluate, they go over this data, they look at it very objectively, and they give, they call balls and strikes. They just, they figure out what they think is the most appropriate grade using a grading system of A through F that we're all familiar with. So we've been doing that since 1998. Unfortunately, since we've been doing that, the cumulative grade has not gotten out of the Ds. So we are not making the progress that we need to as a country, and we certainly have a lot of work to be done on a very critical issue for our public health, safety and welfare. So these are the grades, these are the 2017 infrastructure grades. You can see the 16 categories ranging from aviation and bridges all the way up to transit and wastewater. Unfortunately, we saw three of these categories actually did decline from the 2013 report card. So you can see a decline there on parks and recreation, solid waste, and then transit. Six of the categories remained unchanged, and then seven of the categories increased in their grades. So we saw slight increases in the grades for seven categories. You can see their hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, ports, rail, schools, and wastewater. Where we saw an increase in the grades, we think that that was the result of strong leadership, thoughtful policymaking, and investment that garnered results. So we did see some increases when we had those three things happen. The highest grade you see there is rail. That's the only one in the B category, and B, by the way, is good. That means it's adequate for now. Obviously, ideally, we'd love to be exceptional, right? That means fit for the future. D is poor at risk. So that's how we define those different grades. C would be mediocre. The highest one, again, is rail. That's risen to a B from a C plus, so that's good. The private freight rail industry owns the majority of the nation's rail infrastructure. They've made significant investment in recent years, investing $27 billion in 2015 alone. So we really saw some results from private industry investment in the rail and freight rail area. I will say on the other hand that passenger rail has some pretty significant challenges. Increasingly congested corridors, meeting safety technology demands, replacing 100-year-old bridges, improving rail connections with other aspects of the freight network for a more efficient system. So anyone who's traveled on the eastern corridors, I frequently do, on passenger rail probably know exactly what I'm talking about here. That there are some challenges ahead for us on the passenger side in particular. Transit received the lowest grade. That's a D minus. That's a drop from a D in 2013. And as we talk about sustainability issues and the importance of climate change and the environment, certainly moving people efficiently and effectively, certainly transit is a critical element of that. And so to have a grade as a D minus in transit should be unacceptable to all of us, because that's part of the solution to some of the congestion problems that we see out here. And a lot of folks here in the room, I'm sure, can relate to that. I took the metro in this morning and everything went on time. Two years ago, we had our fly in and the entire metro was shut down that day when we were bringing all the civil engineers in here to talk about the importance of infrastructure. So it's helped to drive a point, but not the way we wanted to drive that point. So certainly transit in America is hitting higher, hitting ridership records, 10.7 billion trips in 2014, yet the symptoms of overdue maintenance and underinvestment have never been clearer. Despite increasing demand, the nation's transit systems have been chronically underfunded. We've got aging infrastructure and a $90 billion maintenance backlog. So this is an area that's certainly going to require more attention from all of us. Investment gap. So we've identified the problem here, and as we talk a little bit about solutions, I'll talk about what is it required to fix the problem. You can see here, in addition to grading our infrastructure, we've estimated the investment needed to maintain a state of good repair and earn a grade of a B. So remember those grading systems, the scores that I mentioned, B would be good or adequate for now. So in order to get there, this is the investment gap. We currently have total needs of about $4.5 trillion between 2016 and 2025 over that 10-year period. Now, there's already existing funding, estimated funding of $2.5 trillion. So that leaves a gap of $2 trillion over that 10-year period. Even though Congress in some states have recently made efforts to invest more in infrastructure, these efforts do not come anywhere close to what's needed. And we've simply failed to invest for too long, and now we're really struggling to catch up. Failing to close the infrastructure gap brings serious economic consequences. So one of the things we've looked at is what are the implications of failing to invest in our infrastructure if we fail to make these investments? We did an economic study, we called Failure to Act, and you can find that on our website, infrastructurereportcard.org has our report card as well as our failure to act studies. We had economists take a look at this, and according to our latest economic study, which we prepared in 2016, if we don't address the infrastructure investment gap, $3.9 trillion in U.S. GDP is lost by 2025, businesses will lose $7 trillion by 2025, and 2.5 million jobs will be lost by 2025. So on top of that, each American family is losing about $3,400 a year, about $9 a day is what we show. And so what we call that is the hidden tax. So there's a lot of discussion about whether we should have increased the gas tax and such, and we have to recognize that when we fail to invest in our infrastructure, there is a hidden tax that's being imposed on all of us. And we estimate it to be about $3,400 per family, per year, $9 a day. And how do you pay that? Well, it's the time we spend sitting in traffic, repairs to your car, added costs for goods and services because we're not moving freight as efficiently and effectively as we can. So talk to the trucking industry about that, the amount of time that they sit in congestion. We pay for that. All of us are paying for that. Every day, you know, that's the hidden tax that we continue to pay. If we invest in infrastructure, we can avoid that. And, you know, I sometimes when we release these reports, people say, well, you know, don't you have a conflict of interest? Aren't you invested in this as civil engineers? And I say every one of us has a conflict of interest because every one of us is dependent on infrastructure. And we all have to pay for it. We all have to invest in it, and we all have to speak out on it, including civil engineers. And we feel like this is our obligation since we're the experts in this topic. In fact, if civil engineers are not speaking out on this topic, I suspect everybody would say, well, where were the engineers who were supposed to be telling us about the problems with our infrastructure? Because we're the ones who are inspecting it and maintaining it, designing it, operating it. So it's very important to, I think, to, we really have to start listening to this because this should be totally unacceptable to all of us. I talk a lot about how in the Olympics, it would be totally unacceptable to any of us if we are not the number one country in the world. When it comes to gold medals and all medals. But our infrastructure is not even in the top ten from the World Economic Forum. So we, you know, should never accept that. But somehow we become more complacent when it comes to infrastructure. And I think we have to change our way of thinking. This is a significant gap, but it is solvable. So how do we solve these problems? Number one, investment, number two, leadership and planning. Number three, preparation for the future. Talk about both each of these briefly here. Number one, investment. You can see the things that we think are important solutions for investment. Increase long-term consistent investment. We think we need to increase investment from all levels of government and the private sector from two and a half to 3.5% of US gross domestic product by 2025. We think that's critical if we're going to solve this problem. We have to begin with the following steps. Put the trust back into the trust fund. That means using dedicated public funding sources on local, state and federal levels consistently and sufficiently funded from user-generated fees with infrastructure funds, trust funds never used to pay for or offset other parts of the budget. You know, we also, you always hear people talking about how we're going to fund infrastructure. And I say the question should be how are we going to fund everything else because this has got to be a priority for us. You can't run a business without having a phone system and an internet and all these infrastructure of which you run it. The United States is the same way. You've got to have the infrastructure in place to operate in a global economy. So we think it's important. We've got to put the trust back into these trust funds. We've got to fix the highway trust fund. We say by raising the federal motor fuel tax. It's been 18.4 cents since 1993. It hasn't increased. I think it's the longest time we've gone without increasing it in its history. It doesn't do what it did back in 1993. The dollars you spend in 1993 don't go as far as they do today. You've got more energy efficient cars as well. At some point we were also looking at things like vehicle miles traveled in different ways of assessing that. But for right now the most immediate near term clear solution is increasing the federal gas tax. It really needs to be done. It's a bit of a no brainer in many ways. You'll find its support from from certainly from business. Look at the Chamber of Commerce the trucking industry. Look at the AFL CIO. You're going to find it from big business and big labor. So we really have to address this problem. It provides jobs. It puts us as important for our global economy and then authorize programs to improve specific categories of deficient infrastructure while also making sure that the true cost of using maintaining and improving all infrastructure is accounted for leadership and planning. We need leaders from all levels of government business labor all investments we have to be spent wisely. We have an opportunity right now as we talk about that both candidates member in the back in the fall we're talking about infrastructure investment. It's a bipartisan issue. We get we sometimes get crosswise on how you actually fund it. But we talk about how to fund it. It's all of the above its public private partnerships its federal state and local investment all of the above. So it's also important to require all projects rated in five million dollars that receive federal funding using life cycle cost analysis. We focus too much on upfront costs. We need to look at the cost over the entire life cycle of infrastructure that's critical creating incentives for maintenance developing tools to prioritize projects streamlining the project permitting process. We've heard a lot about that. We've seen how to streamline we've we've streamlined the process number one I-35 bridge collapse. We got the thing built and permitted and everything else was done within a year I-85. We saw that with the fire recently six weeks. They're going to have that whole thing done. You know in the times of crisis we know how to react. We have to be now proactive before there's a crisis. We cannot just continue to react to crisis. We have to be more proactive. Streamlining that process is important. And then private sector investment and public private partnerships certainly there's an opportunity with public private partnerships. We think that's part of the solution. We don't think that's the only solution by any stretch. But it is certainly part of the solution. We've done it very effectively in Virginia and other states so we should continue to look at that. And then also preparation for the future developing active community resiliency programs emergence technology shifting social and economic trends land use planning supporting research and development. Those are all critical. You're going to hear from John Stanton talking about sustainability. That's a huge part of the solution. ASU is one of the three organizations that created the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure because we knew that sustainability is so important. We can't just be relying on old infrastructure that our grandparents designed built. We have actually got to look forward. There's all kinds of new technologies. Autonomous vehicles things that we have to prepare for in the future. We've got to apply future thinking and not past thinking. So there's a real opportunity here in preparing for the future with our infrastructure. It requires investment. It requires changing the way we think about infrastructure. And then finally I've mentioned principles for infrastructure investment being substantial long term benefits designing building operating and maintaining infrastructure over the entire lifespan sustainable resiliency state local private investment. All of those things are critical if we're going to be successful in tackling this problem. These are significant problems but they truly are solvable and it just requires a true leadership. It requires a vision. It requires it be bold and courageous and tackle these problems. Eisenhower did this back in the 1950s with the Interstate Highway System put out a vision and it tackled the problem. It can be done but we have to prioritize this and recognize the severity of this problem for this country. Thanks for your time. I look forward to talking further with you. Thank you Tom for that really very, very clear and sobering look at what we are dealing with in terms of infrastructure. But as you also heard from Tom, it really could be an exciting step to take now to really embrace the kinds of changes and ideas that we are hearing about in different places and that you're going to hear more about today. So on that note, I want to now turn to our next speaker to John Stanton who is the CEO and President for the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. John's been working in this whole area for many years and prior to joining the Institute, he has worked in the private sector in senior positions where he was with Tesla Solar City also with the Solar Energy Industry Association and he also has been in the NGO community where he was with the Pew National Environmental Trust but John has also served in government at both the federal and the state level. So we are eager to hear what you have to say John. Hello everyone. Thank you Carol. So obviously as Tom just indicated, we have a lot of investment to do in infrastructure and ISIs angle on this is that we should make those investments more resilient, less energy intensive and less resource intensive. As Hurricane Sandy, Superstorm Sandy demonstrated with tremendous might, our current infrastructure is antiquated and it's not very climate resilient. So what I'm gonna talk to you about is a little bit about ISI, what we're currently doing and what we'd like to do in the future. So the Institute has a mission to advance a project planning tool called Envision. Envision is a rating system but it's also described as kind of thought process engineering to help people planning, designing and constructing infrastructure. Think about it differently in order to bring about more resilient outcomes. As Tom indicated, we were formed by the American Public Works Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Council of Engineering Companies and they were all working on simultaneous similar projects to figure out a way to motivate more sustainable project planning and design and construction. At the same time, Harvard University was working on this, all of those efforts merged together and the outcome was the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. So obviously Tom's talked about the importance of infrastructure from a variety of viewpoints. Bottom line is it's very closely tied to our gross domestic product, to state domestic product, individual and family earnings. And we have a lot of delayed investment. So since we're gonna hopefully make a concerted effort to catch up on that delayed investment, the question is how do we wanna build it and what should be some of the key points that guide us in making those investment decisions better. So, InVision applies to all civil infrastructure, it applies to all phases and it is designed to constantly evolve and not be a static system. We all have the benefit of seeing what the US Green Building Council did with the LEED standards, the energy efficient design for buildings. The distinction between LEED and InVision is LEED applies to any building designed for human habitation, vertical infrastructure. InVision applies to any building not designed for human habitation, power plants, sewage treatment plants, plus all horizontal infrastructure. So whether it's highways, transit systems, bridges, tunnels, that type of thing. So the idea here was to complement LEED with a more comprehensive system that would apply to every type of infrastructure out there. We have 60 credits and five categories. Basically, the end product of this effort to create a rating system was the identification of about 60 key decision points involved in any infrastructure project, where if you have those 60 key decision points done in a more sustainable manner, then you have a cascading trickle down effect and it impacts all elements of the planning, design, construction, and operation and maintenance of the project. And those are the 60 criteria that we use to evaluate the sustainable performance of infrastructure. They rotate around quality of life, leadership, resource allocation, natural world, climate and risk. And the software usage manual is about 200 pages long. And so what we do is we train people on how to use it, we provide credentialing and exams, and then we verify projects and give them a rating. There's five levels of achievement that one can assume or achieve. If you merely apply existing law and regulations then you comply with all of them. That's called conventional design. What we're trying to encourage people to do is to obviously meet all existing laws and regulations but then go beyond it. And the goal was to come up with a nomenclature, a common understanding of what a more sustainable outcome meant and a way to uniformly measure it across various sectors of infrastructure investment. So it's pretty simple, five levels of achievement. Typically what we find in the rating process is that superior and conserving are the most likely outcomes. Now this is just the genesis of our timeline, not tremendously interesting, but I would say that we now have about 6,000 envisioned sustainability professionals, members of the engineering community who have gotten trained on the tool and more and more we see the tool being used. For instance, Skanska's one of the leading construction companies, they use it on every project worldwide. The LaGuardia Airport up in New York is being rebuilt, Envision is the planning, construction and design tool for that project. The good news is it seems like sustainable planning and design is becoming ever more popular and that's the good news. The projects that we've rated are around the country. So today what we do is we do a design assessment and then we rate it. This fall, hopefully as early as late summer, we're gonna be putting out for notice and comment a new version of the design tool. Sorry about that. And what the new design tool will have is a preliminary assessment and then a post-construction assessment. So what we wanna be able to do is make sure that the project just wasn't planned and designed in keeping with sustainability principles. But as constructed, it actually adhered to that planning and design framework and accomplished the objectives that were laid out by the engineers that designed the project. And then the next phase of the tool development will be looking at design and construction and then design and deconstruction at the end of the life cycle of the project. In addition to that, so that new version of the tool will be out 2018. What we're also trying to do is currently when you rate an individual project, you kind of have islands of sustainability. These are singular projects. So for instance, down in Florida, they just completed something called the I-4 Corridor. It's a 22-mile road. That was an Envision project. And we have tremendous success with individual projects. What we now wanna do is take it to a wider portfolio level. So at their request of New York and Los Angeles, so Los Angeles, both at the county city level and the LA Department of Public Works, they use Envision as their project management tool on every project. In New York City, the Department of Design and Construction and Environmental Protection uses on every project in the borough of Manhattan. Or the borough of New York, I should say. City of New York, all five boroughs. So what they are seeking is a portfolio-wide approach. So we get away from islands of sustainability and we come up with a assessment tool that we would rate all of their infrastructure. So earlier I had a slide that indicated that there's these varying performance levels of infrastructure. The idea would be that we would come up with an approach in both these cities, whereby if they designed every project to meet certain minimum sustainability criteria, they would be entitled to a certain Envision score. And what this approach of evolving the tool from one-off projects to a suite of portfolio assets or portfolio-wide, what it would allow for is a comparison of the projects across the city. So for instance, in the 2018 project cycle, you could be doing six or seven large infrastructure projects in New York. You'd be able to rate them to see how they compared against each other. Finally, in addition to the aggregated city-wide performance data, what we'd be able to do is compare, let's say, a sustainable infrastructure investment in a sewage treatment plant in New York versus one in California, or a highway in Florida versus a highway in Massachusetts. So the idea is to get beyond the single projects and then rate the infrastructure on a portfolio basis and then be able to make comparison and contrast with respect to cost efficiency, construction timelines and the various different metrics which drive outcomes. So at any rate, so that's it. The bottom line is we think that if we're gonna spend a lot of money on infrastructure, then we shouldn't just construct the project properly, we should construct the right project, which means from our perspective, a climate resilient asset, which can weather things like Superstorm Sandy over the next 50 years, if that's the projected life cycle for the asset. So obviously we have a lot of investing and a lot of work to do, and from our perspective, it should be done, so these are more resilient, less energy intensive and more resource intelligent. So thank you. Thanks so much, John. We will now turn to our third panelist, who is Mary Anna Silva, who is an associate for infrastructure planning and finance with Nathan Associates, Inc. And in her whole role as an infrastructure finance expert for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and the UN Economic Commission for Europe, she has provided technical advisory services with regard to looking at infrastructure procurement processes for governments throughout Asia, America, and Europe. And she has done a lot of work looking at a variety of financial approaches and has developed a lot of experience through this in terms of the role of public-private partnerships as a component of looking at ways to deal with sustainable infrastructure. Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. Well, you didn't finish your slides. So it's very clear now, based on the previous presentations, that there's a financing cost link to the under-investment of resilient infrastructure, and it's no surprise that that cost is very high in the US. Due to the efficiency in their current water system, there's an estimate of 240 water main breaks per year, causing severe property damages. There's the lack of resiliency in electricity grid causes, in average, between 18 to 28 power outage losses. And as Tom mentioned, there's actually a real problem in our mass transit system that causes an average individual like us to spend 5.5 hours on traffic, which actually amounts to 100 billion cost in fuel and lost time. And finally, because of poor condition of roads and ports, US businesses have to pay, on average, 27 billion extra on fry cost. So no wonder the American society gives a degrade on our infrastructure. The reality is that these years of under-investment really call us an emergency action to think how we actually are preparing, financing, procuring, and maintaining those infrastructure public assets. And as a result of this deficiency, the current administration released their Emergency Act, Emergency and National Security Projects, which is around 137 billion dollars, and it covers a range of electricity, transport, water systems, oil and gas ports, a mix of everything. It's really a distribution in different states and under different investment all over the US. And there's a heated debate right now of whether the public sector should leverage private capital to finance this need. And the honest answer is yes, there's 137 billion just to finance all that need, is not even enough to do a down payment. We have heard that it has been quantified the infrastructure gap around five trillion dollars, so two trillion are missing. 120 billion doesn't even give us a down payment for that. So instead of talking about whether we need it or not, we need to pass, pass, and we need to think of the how. How would they actually leverage private capital that is not only about the financing, but about achieving those technology benefits, those efficiency gates, those innovation that brings the private sector to the actual operation of any public service. And for that, let's just think about any infrastructure asset. It's either financed through traditional public procurement or leveraging private sector. It could be through PPPs, it could be to leveraging capital markets, as in the US is very common issuing municipal bonds. The reality is that every single infrastructure investment requires either user revenues or tax revenues for their operation or both. So this entire debate about infrastructure financing has concentrated on how do we finance the infrastructure construction phase, the CAPEX. But it should be more about how we actually maintain this asset about during the entire life cycle, financing versus funding. And constructing an electricity generation company or a water treatment plan is not gonna leverage, it's not gonna yield the higher value to society. It's actually the operation. Once the project starts operating and delivering a service, that service being energy, transportation, education, water or healthcare, it's actually during the lifetime of that project that is gonna deliver the highest value to society. So in order to do that, we have to start preparing a very bankable pipeline of resealing infrastructure projects. And when I mean resilient, I mean resilient to changes in weather climate change patterns, resilient to cybersecurity attacks, it's a reality, and resilient to government budgetary changes. The biggest infrastructure bottleneck that we're experiencing now is that most of the infrastructure projects are linked to spending tied to annual budgets. And it's because that asset per se has not a clear revenue stream that can service its operation. So that has to be trickled down under the entire development cycle. So the good news about all this is that sustainable infrastructure really allows for that thinking about how can the sustainable and energy and water efficiency gains represent clear higher revenue streams for the operation, less electricity to pay, less water to consume, it actually trickles down to higher savings. If you are able to avoid any collateral damage because you actually prevent an impact on an asset linked to climate change, that is actually a savings. The savings can be quantified and it has been quantified. The challenge is that how we actually make the entire development purpose fit for purpose in a way that actually benefits the prioritization of resilient infrastructure. And for that, we need to think about the process that we have in place right now. We start with the planning and identification pluses. Are actually right now, are we thinking when we are procuring a road or planning a road or designing everything where the sea level, the rice level would be, for example, in Miami when we're constructing a road? Are we thinking about where all the changes in climate pattern will affect the infrastructure that we are planning right now? Are we prioritizing those projects that will actually leverage the higher yields to society? There's some cost-benefit analysis that has been done here, but are we actually factoring all these externalities? When we prepare projects, when we decide this is a private procurement, is it a PPP, are we actually considering all the benefits that the private sector can bring instead of just the finance? And more importantly, and here is where I actually have to stress the most, are we preparing attractive projects for the finance industry? The capital is not the problem anymore. There's an enormous interest from Wall Street to actually finance this infrastructure gap. The problem is that there's not enough ready, bankable projects out there to actually be capitalized. Finance, as I mentioned before, is not sentimental. It goes where the good deals are, so we have to think about that. And for that, let us just stop one moment and put us ourselves in the shoes of an investor. Either you're a private investor or operator of debt holder, what you care about is the return of investment, although just debt service coverage ratio. You don't really are going to be thinking about is that project low-carbon, resilient, inclusive, energy efficiency, water resource efficiency? It has to be factor all these externalities into the parametric investment analysis that the finance industry does. So just out of curiosity, who here works in finance so used to work in finance? So if I approach you and I tell you there's a great opportunity about an energy PPA and the state of Miami, you're not gonna ask me, okay, how many people are you gonna service? How much you're gonna change lives? No, you're gonna ask me, okay, what is the net present value of the investment? What is the IRR? And automatically leads into a very systematic procedure of way that the finance industry evaluates projects. What is the discount rate that you're gonna use, linked to the risk linked to that state? Ultimately, will that project add value to my portfolio? I have a fiduciary duty towards my investors to create value in monetary terms. So is that project gonna benefit me in that? So the problem and the real conundrum about pushing the resilient infrastructure agenda is there's a mismatch between capacitive interest between policy makers and financiers. We wanna leverage private capital to solve this infrastructure gap but are we actually preparing bankable projects and bankable on their financiers perspective? And the answer is not yet, not yet. So the last stage about infrastructure lifecycle that I really wanna stress the importance right now is the construction and monitoring. Why is this important? The more projects we actually have solid track records of resiliency that have achieved savings linked to energy efficiency, linked to avoided cost to a catastrophe, et cetera, the more we can actually create benchmarks and the more we can use this flagship as say this works, then the easier will be to convince everyone that this is the way forward. So just as a last thing, there are a lot of financial instruments out there. A lot of green bonds, social impact bonds, blue bonds when the finance green asset backed securities, they have work and they're working all over the world. But the ultimate message that I wanna give you is that if the project doesn't hold on its own, you can do as much viability gap on as much as structure, finance and innovation, it won't work. It really have to be planned sustainably and bankable since the beginning. And the way the governments that are actually leading the space are thinking about green finance at the same time that they're thinking about their procurement process and their policy and regulation. Because take the example of the Netherlands, they wanna convert the entire country using smart grids, meaning that grids that they just bounce back immediately after a power outage, because they see that they've done enormous savings to get out there. They just went there and say, okay, we're gonna start procuring smart grids in the next five years. So you private sector, if you don't have the technology yet, you have the time to invest and et cetera, I'm gonna give you a little bit of support financial for your technology research. And then now they're procuring it and it works. It just need to give the time to the private sector to adjust to where the government is thinking about in the future. Same can be applied for every single technology need that we need to make our infrastructure more resilient. And of course, the policy and regulation, if you have tax breaks for renewable energy or energy resiliency, of course that helps. So when we start thinking about these three areas and starts trickle down into our project development cycle, is when we're gonna have resilient cities all over the US. So I just wanna finish with a good example. So I don't leave you in a gloomy scenario. One thing that we're doing very good here in the US is the Property Access Clean Energy Pace Financing, which really puts these three sectors that I just mentioned into practice and walks a talk. What it's using is innovation. They're issuing bonds to city or local governments to capitalize itself and using that capital to pay up from money for property owners for renewable energy or energy efficiency or energy resilience. And the innovation here is that the property owner doesn't have to pay back as a traditional loan. The way that it works is that thanks to that retrofit, the value on the property increases, so they have to pay more tax. I mean, it's only fair, they got a retrofit. But the thing is that even though they have to pay more tax is less than the actual benefits and savings that they're getting to be energy efficient. So it's a win situation for the environment. That's just the countries where Nathan, we are advising all of these issues that I mentioned and we will be very happy to help any of you that if you have any questions. Thank you. Thanks so much, Mariana. We are now going to turn to Jeremy Marcus who is the Deputy Chief of Staff and the Legislative Director for Congressman Matt Cartwright who is a Democratic member from Pennsylvania. And it's important that Jeremy speak briefly to you because this is an example of, again, a policymaker who is introducing, once again, legislation, reintroducing it in this Congress called the Prepare Act. And Jeremy will talk about that, but it's an opportunity recognizing the need for federal, state, local governments to do more to coordinate, to collaborate in terms of planning that gets us to greater sustainability and really reducing risk and better emergency planning given all of the kind of extreme events that we have been having. Jeremy. Thank you very much. So I wanted to talk about something that hopefully you all can do as a takeaway as an action coming out of this. Those on the Hill, we'd love to have your support as a co-sponsor and those from outside organizations. We'd love you to join the almost six organizations that have already endorsed the Prepare Act. So I think most of you probably know about the high-risk report. GAO comes out once a Congress, the high-risk report, looking at where are the fiscal exposure that federal government faces? Where, what things could go wrong that would cost the government a lot and where are we not adequately thinking through these problems? So for the first time in 2013, the GAO put preparedness for extreme weather events on their high-risk report and it's been on the report ever since. They're actually the good news is there has been some improvements in this area but we're not nearly there yet. So working with the GAO after the high-risk report, my boss and now along with a lead of Congressman Leonard Lance put together the Prepare Act. The Prepare Act does three really simple things. The first thing it does is build off of what is now put together in 2014 is an interagency council looking at how the government is preparing for extreme weather events. The council comprises many different agencies but what this bill would does is, A, it would codify that interagency council and B, it would give it a little more power and elevated stature because we think that it's really important that this federal government is looking government-wide about how we're responding to extreme weather events. The second thing it would do is make sure the individual agencies are adequately preparing to respond to events based on their own individual missions. Now it's currently required that these agencies put out plans to adapt to extreme weather events. I'll say some agencies are doing a really good job putting a lot of thought into this, preparing really thorough reports. Some agencies are really not paying attention to this. Maybe agencies that don't see this as core to their mission but they're missing the big picture that extreme weather events are gonna impact every agency and producing a one or two page paper that kind of regurgitates the same thing every year is not gonna cut it. So what this bill would do is codify these reports and make them accountable, both the interagency council and to Congress so we can do something if agencies aren't thinking through these problems. The third bucket of the Prepare Act is looking at state and regional actors. We talked to a lot of mayors, a lot of people on the ground that said that there were a lot of resources, there were a lot of agencies that had field offices, they weren't talking to each other, they weren't listening, they weren't taking lessons learned and integrating them back to other parts of the country and that what we needed is more regional coordination. So what the Prepare Act does is comes up, make sure we have regional coordination plans amongst all the federal assets that are in communities and make sure best practices are brought up and shared amongst different regions. So this bill is three simple things, it's no cost, it's not plugging the $2 trillion deficit but it's gonna make a real difference in actually making sure the government's ready for these disasters. Now we have, as I mentioned, almost 60 organizations supporting this, we have some nonprofits that look at this issue but we also have a lot of private sector folks and in talking to these groups that helped us develop this text, these are things that they are doing in their business practice day to day. They are frustrated and confused why the government cannot take the simple actions they are doing about looking forward and not just looking historically about what is coming down the pike. Everyone from the Re-Insurance Association of America to the Camp Association are all supporting this bill. The National Tax Parity Union last Congress had it number two on their list of the 10 no-brainers for Congress. So we really wanna make a big push this year to advance this, it's bipartisan and again, it's no cost. So we have some fact sheets here but we love it. If you're from a Hill office and you're a Boston co-sponsor, we'd love to have them on and if you're from an outside organization and wanna work with us on this bill and to help it make it reality, that would be great too. We're planning on introducing it in the next few months. So thank you very much. Thanks so much, Jeremy, because it really is another piece of a very important response to all of the things that we've been hearing about from our whole panel today. So let's open it up for your questions and comments and if you could identify yourself, please, okay? Hi, I have a question for you on the panel. It might be more specific to Tommy if you could have some idea how we would finance this, I mean, you may have addressed that and you did mention the Eisenhower administration tremendous progress that was made during this era. But what was the motivation at that time? Did it have anything to do with coming out of World War II and so was there more unity behind it and would it take another war in order for us to win that battle in order to foster motivation to put the resources behind this? Yeah, you know, with Eisenhower, I know I think the military preparedness had a big part, you know, making sure that we had a preparedness as a country following World War II, but also, you know, obviously it had an impact on our economy and looking at the different ways of funding it. I know that they looked at that time at tolls versus the gas tax and they utilized the gas tax for a significant portion of that. So, I mean, I guess I've always said when it comes to infrastructure, ultimately people who use it are gonna have to pay for it. All of us are gonna have to pay for it one way or the other, whether it's taxes, tolls, you know, there's a lot of different possibilities and as I mentioned earlier though, as far as we believe that it's gonna require federal, state and local government investment and private industry. So we really think it's all of the above when it comes to those options and the gas tax that hasn't been increased since 1993 and it's lost, you know, a very significant percentage of its buying power since then, it seems like a clear solution to do that to increase, and ASC recommends it. We, in fact, I think our policy we recommend a 25 cent increase in the gas tax. I suspect most folks don't have any idea what their tax is right now on gas but it is something that I think is important. We, you know, if we're gonna continue to maintain the infrastructure that we have. And again, we also, as I said, it's not just maintaining it the way we used to do it, it's maintaining it for the future with more innovative, sustainable, resilient technologies. Arianna may have something on that too. I don't know if... Okay, okay. Okay, go ahead. Mother Vicharia, we have thought we, but question for Tom, I saw in your slide you had research and development of new materials and processes to give some examples of the kinds of things that you feel would be resilient and less energy-intensive for future infrastructure. Yeah, the question is about, you know, research and development, and of course, there's a significant need for investment in research. And I think the federal government has an important role to play there through, you know, NIST and NSF and EPA, Department of Energy, a lot of different research programs. But this morning, I was looking on our Collaborate Forum at the discussions taking place and they were talking about piezoelectric transducers to provide energy looking, you know, in roadways using sort of mechanized energy such that, and there where you have trucks that have a bigger impact on maintenance actually would provide more energy. So there's just a lot of different sustainability solutions, non-corrosive materials, embedded sensors in bridges, that are things that were utilized after I-35 collapse. So with 50, 60, 75, 100-year-old infrastructure, you don't have any of that. And so I think this investment in research is critical. The private sector is doing a lot of it, obviously, but I think there's a fair amount that the federal government also needs to facilitate and can. There you go. No, I just wanted to add something that I don't think we mentioned any of those, but one of the biggest barriers that people see is like the extra cost of these new technologies might cost. But if you actually evaluate the asset across the entire life cycle, it's actually cheaper because there's a lot of efficiency gains. So there's something to be said about that. Absolutely. And I think you made the point earlier, Tom, about how important it was to look at everything on a life cycle investment basis. And I think you're all saying that. And one of the things that I often think about are all of the comments that we hear about infrastructure in other countries that appears to be so much more robust, updated than what we are seeing here and how important that is. And I think, Mariana, you've looked at a lot of those. And I would think, and please tell us in terms of the kinds of best practices, technologies that have been developed with regard to a lot of those infrastructure projects, whether they are new bridges, buildings, airports, et cetera, and are those coming to the US? Absolutely, yes. I don't wanna open another parenthesis, but what you're mentioning as well is an opportunity but as well a risk. We're seeing as well in the energy sector that the high development of new technologies is causing like a little bit of noise of how you're gonna finance these things. A lot of financiers jump into this new era of clean technologies. And they are, for example, this clean technology issue at Bonn. They are financiers financing this Bonn, but then six months later there's a new technology and then you're stranded. So there's a lot of as well innovation on the financing side that needs to happen to help investors not to be scared about new technology developments that is developing very quickly. I heard this phrase from the head of Ban Ki-moon, from the head of the World Bank saying that sustainability is the biggest transition that we're gonna experience is as strong as the industrial revolution but as fast as the digital one. So we have to face those challenges. So fasten your seatbelts, right? Okay, let's go here first and then. I'm Jimmy Zubat from the Senate side. I have two questions, one for Mariana and the other one for Jeremy. Well, anyone can take us in our favor, but in regards to budgeting, for example, the federal government generally made no budget for maintenance in the future for any project. Do you think it's time that we can start budgeting for maintenance because that's the reason why we're so behind the infrastructure right now. And the question for Jeremy is the Senate, well, Congress in general has been trying to form the infrastructure bank and it has always, hasn't taken a leg in any way. So the thing is it will be appropriate right now with President Trump trying to invest a trillion dollars in infrastructure. So it's a good time to start talking about the infrastructure bank or not. So the answer to the first questions about the maintenance issue, I think in something that is not being done right now, since you're converting the idea into a project and doing the project preparation, you have to think about what your revenue stream from that asset is gonna be. Not all projects lend themselves to actually charge revenue streams from the users, but it doesn't mean that someone at the end of the day will pay for it. Is it through availability payments coming from the government or user fees on et cetera? But that has to be very clear to actually you determine that fee that is gonna help you to maintain that asset. So it's not only about setting aside a budget every year with no real target of how much that is gonna cost. It's about pre-feasibility analysis and financial analysis of that asset to actually do a proper planning. I was in answer number two, infrastructure bank. Oh, yeah, just on the first point. The issue of operation and maintenance of existing infrastructure is underappreciated. What I would say is the most resource intelligent, least energy efficient, most carbon smart outcome is to operate and maintain existing infrastructure more intelligently. And while everyone gets excited about the new infrastructure projects, and they are very exciting, and infrastructure does have to be replaced at the end of its lifespan, I think that the problem with the federal budgeting where they actually don't budget for operation and maintenance really highlights one more aspect of this culture of chronic underinvestment in infrastructure. If I could just add onto that, the ASC has been very focused on this very issue that you're referencing on operation and maintenance and life cycle. One of our three strategic initiatives we call a grand challenge, which is reducing the life cycle cost of infrastructure. And because we're looking at it differently, not just these upfront costs as we've had a tendency to do for so long and truly evaluating operation maintenance costs when you're looking at the life cycle. Because so much of the cost of infrastructure is in the operation and maintenance and we lose track of that. And so we've, in the solutions that we propose there, we talk about requiring all projects greater than $5 million receiving federal funding using life cycle cost analysis. Because we think that that is so important and it really has to come with a vision at the top level. We've done some studies on that and you find that on this issue of life cycle cost analysis, a lot of folks are doing it differently. And in fact, we're looking at, should we have some even more clear guidelines or even a standard, something along those lines to really give some better guidance on that because we're not doing this as well as we need to and we should. So I'll just talk about the infrastructure break. And it's something that on a personal note and my boss has supported. And I think it's great. I think it gives some additional tools and some flexibility to finance some projects that might have more difficulty in traditional systems. My only caution, and I do think it should be part of this infrastructure conversation we're having. My only caution about that is I think that oftentimes when people look at innovative infrastructure, innovative financing for infrastructure, they sometimes equate actual real federal dollars for the ability to leverage private dollars. And it's not a one for one. I mean, when you provide some tiffia and you provide the ability to borrow, it's not the same as directly funding these projects because that money has to be paid back from somewhere. And I think a lot of times people use this in order to claim that they've done more than they actually have. And I'm worried that if we would talk about one trillion, if a lot of that is just front-loading a lot of investment through financing that we don't have the plans to know how to pay back in the long-term, then that's gonna have an empty long-term promise. So I think that the infrastructure bank should be fully a part of what we talk about, but we should just be honest about how much actual additional infrastructure investment that's gonna bring versus the status quo and not exaggerate the impact. Just on that point, I would just give you an example. There was a lot of discussion about underinvestment in new energy assets. And Congress decided to pass an investment tax credit for renewable energy. The total cost according to the Committee on Joint Taxation was 1.1 billion. And over the next eight years it leveraged about three and a half, $4 billion annually in investments in new energy infrastructure. So there's a lot of different ways to induce investment. An infrastructure bank is one, but also smart use of tax credits and other mechanisms such as that through the tax committees can also leverage a lot of really good investment. Okay, here first in the... This is a question inspired by something Tom that you said. One of the things you mentioned was streamlining product permitting procedures. Tom, I was wondering specifically on that, what sort of hurdles do companies in their daily response space and which one do you suggest they're going to pay for that? I guess I'm not sure where I would start. No, I mean, this is a tricky thing because at the same time you don't want to lose the protections on the environment, sustainability, historical, our heritage. So it's a balance. I mean, it is a complex issue. And in fact, I would throw tort reform in there too. This is one of the issues that drags increases costs and adds delays. It's not just the regulatory process. And Frank, we're going to the regulatory process and Fairfax is because I'm involved on the BZA, they think I can move permits faster to get a new tenant in our building and it's taking just weeks and weeks and weeks. How do we change that? I'm not sure I can give you the answer than making sure that we do it like we do when there's a crisis. Every time there's a crisis, we find a way to move it fast while also making sure we're protecting the environment. We become much more efficient and much more effective. So we've got to figure out ways to do that. Again, we've got to make sure we're not putting in jeopardy the environment, but I think there are significant ways of reducing regulatory process time and also tort reform. Civil engineers get dragged through, I can't tell you how many lawsuits where there's anything that happens, you just bring anyone who had any fingerprint whatsoever with a project gets brought into that case. There's a lot of different things that can be done to streamline that certificate of merit, pro-grant statutes, like some states have utilized. So there's different things that can be done there which we think are part of the process. There have been discussion drafts circulated around this town for 500 projects, NGA, Trump transition team. They're in the works now, they're moving forward now. The infrastructure plan for Trump's administration is emerging now. So beyond the policy issues you've discussed, are any of the programs and projects that you discussed would be in what's emerging as the 500 infrastructure programs that the Trump administration is going to advance? It's happening. So from the point of view of a demonstration project for some of the concepts you outlined today, are any of those in the 500 programs, I should say, infrastructure projects that are being flowed right now because they're out there? So rather than talking ethereal, can we talk practical? To anyone? I mean, it's happening, so you guys hit it. So the target audience for the Envision project planning tool is infrastructure owners. Typically infrastructure owners in this country are state and local government. Federal government owns about 4% of the infrastructure but it's fairly small outside of the military construction context. And because it's state and local government that owns the infrastructure, they're the ones that decide on whether or not a project planning and design tool like Envision is gonna be used on the project. What I would say is whether it's Kansas City, whether it's the New Jersey, New York Port Authority, the City of New York, the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, the High Speed Rail in California, Caltrans uses the Envision tool on all of its projects. So the short answer is if the funding goes to one of the infrastructure owners that currently sees value in methodically thinking through how you engineer more sustainable outcomes than the answer would be yes, but it would be jurisdiction specific. So if you have one of those 500 projects in let's say the County of Los Angeles, then yes, it would be, you know, the project would be managed using the Envision tool. So are you hoping for the 500 projects so far that are being floated, that are gonna be put in to what will become a Trump administration infrastructure program to be determined? Are you collectively aware of projects that you're working on that are gonna be included in that? Well, that's gonna get you the visibility and kind of move it beyond where you are now and to your ability to say yes, that we are now part of. Right, my short answer and then we can open it up is that the Trump proposal I don't think is going anywhere because it's just too generous with respect to tax credits and I'm a big fan of tax credits, but what I think is realistic given the current complexion of the key committees is from a sustainability standpoint, I think something modest is possible like Tiger grants or typically about 10% of a federal infrastructure budget. So what you could say is if you are seeking a merit-based investment decision through the Tiger grants process and you use Envision or a similar sustainability tool, you score a little bit higher on your criteria for eligibility. But my sense is obviously we would like to see something more aggressive than that, but that's something that you would like to think is possible in the context of an infrastructure bill if it came together. Tom or Jeremy, did you want to add? Okay. Okay, question over here, did you have? How much leverage do you think the federal money can produce if the feds put in 20% to the state and locals to pick up the rest or, I mean, what is that percentage you guys have looked at? I couldn't tell you the percentage. I'm looking back in the back of the room because then there'd be some input back there. Do we have anything on that, Brian, that actually looked at percentages for investment if you have a federal investment? What's, yeah. It was dependent on the program. We historically in surface transportation, it's been 45% of the capital program, but you have other areas that you've got wastewater and drinking water, it's considerably less. It's been dependent on the 16 category. I'm not exactly the same answer. It's going to leverage more of a private sector because this is very clear revenue stream and profits out of it. If it's water, it's a little bit more social and private sector gets a little bit more scary about any risk related to that. So in other countries, if it's energy, it can be, if you have a spectrum, it could be an asset that is fully privatized or managed by the country. It depends of a program. And I would just add that when you look at whether it's a transportation bill in basically any, you know, that there are all sorts of programs that have different cost shares with regard to what the feds put in and what state and local agencies are required to put in as their part of the match and however it is that they get them. And one of the things that I think has been very interesting in terms of this last year or election cycle was in terms of how many ballot measures there were at the state and local level with regard to infrastructure and that people voted for them overwhelmingly and most of those went forward because people saw the need for infrastructure investments and whatever those measures were, whether it was an increase in a particular tax or in terms of voting in new bonds, it was dedicated to those kinds of projects so people knew specifically what exactly that they were buying and people supported it, including a number of states increased their state gasoline taxes because the need for infrastructure investment was so acute in their state and local jurisdictions. Yeah, I'll mention on that following up on Carol's comment. I think there are over, I want to say over 400 ballot measures in the 2016 election and about 70% of those passed. And then in the last five years or so, we've got, I think over about half the states have increased their gas tax. So, and if you look at those states, I think there's maybe 90% of the incumbents got reelected. So, states are recognizing the need to do this, they are investing and that's certainly helping to make a difference. And they're doing it without ramifications politically. So, maybe at the federal level, there's a lesson to be learned there. Any other questions or, okay, over here? I'm just wondering when you talk about, Could you wait just a second for the mic? There you go. When you talk about infrastructure life cycle, do you consider like re-purchasing or multi-use types of infrastructure that under-considerations? Yes, in fact, the Envision Rating Tool specifically talks about that. Yeah. So, take transportation as an example. Obviously intermodal transportation and the notion of it has been around for a long time. But even if you look at Dulles Airport where they're finally extending the silver line and that's been probably in the works for 25 years, they're just now making that an intermodal facility. We can take a train to the plane. And so, obviously, there should be a big premium put on that. Highway construction is very popular, but I think there's a consensus view that you just can't build the roads bigger and bigger. It encourages more people to drive. And that one of the best ways to relieve congestion is to provide alternatives to people through different types of intermodal transportation. So you would like to think that there's a big premium being placed on retrofitting existing assets to make them more intermodal in the transportation context. And Dulles Airport would be a good example of that. And I think actually some of the ballot measures from last year are also good examples of that. So you might want to take a look at some of those. Okay, right over here. I think I have a question of clarification for Marianne Silva. And we spoke about three areas of, say, influence on need for resilience planning. And one is the weather-related, weather pattern changes that are climate-related. And second was the cyber security issues and then budgetary crisis. Could you elaborate just a little bit on those last two because I'm trying to understand, are we talking about just a threat to society in terms of the cyber area in particular or just a sort of a terror threat in general? Or also, are you talking about government budget crisis? Absolutely. Very briefly, of course, you have climate change. The second one is cyber security that actually is a priority of the current administration as well. We are in conversation, for example, with the very briefly the Department of Defense who is starting to think about how some of their missions would be powered by off-grid power plants because in case there's any attack to the system, to the electricity grid, they could still operate. They want to make sure that whatever happens under any circumstance that they can still operate immediately, that they're de-linked to that. The last one is US doesn't really use, correct me if I'm wrong, multi-year framework, meaning that the operation part of the asset is not budgeted but as well a lot of decisions on infrastructure are highly political and it moves with political wins instead of just creating a framework that whatever needs that they are in the country, in the state or whatever is needed, it's going to function independently of whoever is going to be in administration. That's what I meant. Oh, pleasure to meet you. Any last comments or questions? OK, go ahead. So you talked about the balance between sustainability and profitability. Any questions where the economic benefits is something without the way of the sustainability, like a Harvard evening, which could cause coastal resiliency issues for the barrier islands? How do you pan out the cost of that so that the people on the islands don't have to pay for, say, something that might not really help them, that much and more not specific to those people who are in the mine? So I guess my question is how would you spread out the costs and benefits of that to better groups? I would just note that if your port, because of the draft on the ships, is becoming outdated and it can no longer accommodate state-of-the-art vessels, that port's going to pretty quickly die. And so is the tax base. So obviously, there's always balancing with dredging activities and so on. But you would like to think that there's a maintained or increased tax base that allows for additional collateral complementary investments in, let's say, barrier islands or something in order to safeguard them against any possible adverse consequences associated with expanding the tax base. And I would just add, when we talk about the definition of sustainability, it's we define it as we say that the three components, economic, environmental, and social. So you're really looking at all three of those when you're evaluating a solution. So the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure is evaluating all three. So they're evaluating all those factors when they're figuring out whether a project really the criteria under an envision. Thank you. Great. Well, thank you all for your participation in today's briefing. I encourage you to continue to watch our briefing series as it develops. And I hope that you will join us again on Monday as we look at our next one dealing with states and energy emergency preparedness. And I want to say thank you very, very much to this wonderful panel. There were lots of questions that were raised that I think we should probably go back to as we look at how we try to move solutions forward. And we would welcome your input if you have suggestions for other issues that you think that would be great for us to look at or questions that you would like us to pursue. Please let us know. And please join me in thanking this wonderful panel. Thank you.