U.S. Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are commending the House of Representatives’ passage of the Disaster Resiliency Planning Act, which now moves to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
The measure, which garnered Senate approval in June, requires federal agencies to take disaster resilience into consideration when investing in and managing federal property and assets.
“The federal government – the nation’s largest property owner – must work to limit financial damages to public buildings after extreme weather events,” said Peters, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “By ensuring that agencies are investing in resilient infrastructure that can stand up to increasingly extreme natural disasters, this legislation will protect our federal property assets and save taxpayer dollars.”
Scott said with the bill on its way to becoming law, federal assets that include hospitals and critical infrastructure will be safer when disaster inevitably strikes.
“We are resilient because we prepare, and I am proud that our bipartisan and common sense approach to disaster mitigation efforts passed the House and heads to the president’s desk,” he said.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President for Policy Marty Durbin said the business community has long supported building smart, modern, resilient infrastructure.
“We commend Chairman Peters and Sen. Scott for their leadership in ensuring that federal agencies must consider resilience and effectively manage assets, just like the private sector,” Durbin said. “The bipartisan Disaster Resiliency & Planning Act is common sense, good public policy.”