33 U.S.C. § 426g — Storm and hurricane restoration and impact minimization program

(a) Construction of small shore and beach restoration and protection projects. The Secretary may build small shore and beach restoration and protection projects that Congress has not specifically authorized, as long as they otherwise comply with section 426e and the Secretary decides building them is advisable. Section 426e's local-cooperation requirement still applies. Each such project must be complete on its own and cannot commit the United States to any further improvement to make it work — except that periodic beach nourishment is still allowed, following section 426e and the usual procedure for projects authorized after a survey report. (b) National shoreline erosion control development and demonstration program. As part of the program in subsection (a), the Secretary must run a national demonstration program to develop and test shoreline erosion-control methods. The program must include: projects that plan, design, build, and monitor prototype engineered and natural (vegetative) erosion-control devices; monitoring of those prototypes; detailed engineering and environmental reports on each project's results; and transferring the resulting technology to private landowners, state and local governments, nonprofit schools, and nongovernmental organizations. No demonstration project may start until the Secretary finds it feasible. As much as practical, each project must emphasize: developing and testing innovative technologies; efficient, lower-lifecycle-cost designs; new design and planning tools that improve performance and lower costs; natural designs using vegetation or temporary structures that avoid permanently altering the shoreline; avoiding harm to nearby shorefront communities; in residential or commercial areas, designs that don't hurt the area's appearance; the potential for long-term protection; and recommendations drawn from an earlier program under the Shoreline Erosion Control Demonstration Act of 1974, including attention to the subgrade, proper filtration, durable components, solid connections between units, and other relevant information. Each project may be built at a privately owned site with substantial public access, or a publicly owned site on open coast or in tidal waters. The Secretary must set criteria for choosing sites, considering the variety of climates and geography, how many people depend on the beach for recreation or property protection, the erosion rate, significant natural resources or sensitive habitats, and significant threatened historic sites. The Secretary must run the demonstration program together with the Secretary of Agriculture (especially on vegetative erosion control), other federal, state, and local agencies, private organizations, the Coastal Engineering Research Center, and university research facilities. After finishing and evaluating a demonstration project, the Secretary may either fold it into an existing federally authorized shore-protection project's partnership agreement, with future cost-sharing set by that larger project's purposes, or transfer the completed project to a non-federal interest or another federal agency. The Secretary may make agreements to share the costs of building, running, maintaining, and monitoring a demonstration project; to share the costs of removing a project the Secretary finds harmful to property, infrastructure, or safety; or to set ownership of a completed project that will not become part of a Corps of Engineers project. By December 31, 2008, and every three years after that, the Secretary must report to the same two congressional committees on the program's activities, accomplishments, and any recommendations. (c) Authorization of appropriations. The Secretary may spend, from money appropriated for civil works, no more than $62,500,000 in any fiscal year to pay the federal share of small shore and beach restoration and protection projects under this section. For each project, the total amount spent must be enough to cover the federal share (including periodic nourishment under section 426e), as the Secretary determines, but cannot exceed $15,000,000.