[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 51 (Tuesday, April 30, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H1762-H1767]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       WATER SHORTAGE IN COLORADO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, this evening I want to talk about a number 
of different subjects, but primarily the subject is going to center 
around natural resources and water, especially water as it pertains to 
the West.
  As many of you know, my district is the third Congressional district 
in the State of Colorado. The State of Colorado is the highest place, 
when you take the average elevation, it is the highest place on the 
North American continent. And as a result of that elevation and the 
mountainous terrain and the arid region that Colorado is kind of the 
apex of, there are a lot of different issues that deal with the West 
that you do not find in the East.
  But before I do this, I want to talk a little about this weekend. I 
read tonight, maybe you will read it here in the next couple of days in 
the paper, but I read where a celebrity here in the United States, a 
celebrity who has been the beneficiary of the great things that this 
country offers, a celebrity who, to the best of my knowledge, has never 
had to pick up a weapon to defend their country, a celebrity who has 
made the comments that are about to be established from his yacht, his 
130-foot or 150-foot yacht.
  And as I understand these comments, and, again, this is being 
credited to him or it is in this interview, as I understand these 
comments from this celebrity, this celebrity is criticizing the Fox 
News station for being too patriotic, for being too patriotic. This 
celebrity has come out and said that the station had too much red, 
white and blue on their station, on their news network at September 11.
  Can you envision that? Did you ever think that anyone in this 
country, that our forefathers would ever think that a celebrity who is 
the beneficiary of all the fruits that this country has provided to 
him, would have the audacity to say that our country is too patriotic?
  I want to compare these short-sighted remarks, those selfish remarks, 
to what I experienced this weekend out in Colorado, and all of you 
have, I am sure, experienced the same things when you get out with the 
people that you represent.
  I was in Pueblo, Colorado. I started out the day by going to a group 
of a number of probably about 200 young people, I would guess anywhere 
from 13 years old to 19 years old. These kids, they were trying to tell 
them to stay off of drugs. It was amazing. Drugs, alcohol, and drive 
with your seatbelts on. It was a great assembly that was put together. 
But I was surprised and, frankly, I was very encouraged and felt very 
positive by talking to these kids, how many of these young people 
wanted as a career to go in and serve our country in the military, how 
strongly these kids felt about the United States of America. And from 
this assembly I went on to a couple of town meetings.
  Do you think in any of these town meetings I heard from constituents 
any indication at all that we should be less patriotic or our news 
networks are too patriotic? In fact, what you generally hear is just 
the opposite. How come they never tell the side of the greatest country 
in the history of the world? How come they always make us look like the 
bad guys? That is the kind of things you might hear.
  Then that afternoon I have to go and I listen and I have an 
opportunity to participate in awarding the Korean medal for a former 
veteran. This veteran had received five bronze stars and this veteran 
had his entire family, 70, maybe 80 people at their function where we 
have presented the medal. And I tell you something, you talk about 
pride in this country and you talk about feeling good about the future 
of this country, the gentleman to whom I presented the medal served in 
the Korean War. He was in his 70s, maybe in his early 80s, so he had 
three generations, he had great-grandchildren there. And the red, white 
and blue around that yard, I wish I could have grabbed that celebrity 
and brought him to this yard, back yard in Pueblo, Colorado, and shown 
him what people in America feel about patriotism.
  The United States of America has nothing to apologize about. What 
this celebrity ought to be doing is talking about what America has done 
for the rest of the world. There is no country in the history of the 
world, no country in the history of the world that has given away more 
in charity to the rest of the world, that has educated more people for 
the world, that offers better health care than anywhere else in the 
world, that has provided more tractors and more agricultural resources 
so that people can grow food and be more efficient on the growth of 
food than any other country in the world. There is no other country in 
the world that has offered more freedoms than the United States of 
America. None, zero, zip. No other country in the history of the world 
that has offered the freedoms that the United States of America has.

                              {time}  2145

  There is no other country in the history of the world that has stood 
up and put its young men and women, paying the ultimate sacrifice, at 
risk in other continents, to save those continents as we did in World 
War I, as we did in World War II, as we did to try in an attempt, a 
failed attempt, an attempt to stop communism from moving on to Vietnam, 
as we did in other places, as we are doing today.
  The United States of America is a great country. It is a strong 
country; but it is a strong country that demands upon every generation, 
including our generation, and probably especially on those of us who 
were elected to serve the people, to represent the people, to pass on 
to the next generation that sense of patriotism, that sense of 
obligation, to make sure that the greatness of this country continues 
to the generation that follows them, that responsibility to be good 
Americans, to care about your family, to care about the defense of your 
country.
  Bill Bennett wrote a book and says why do we fight. My colleagues 
will want to read that book. In fact, I think if I knew this celebrity 
would get the book I would buy a copy and send it to him. I was a 
little saddened by one of the people in our country, one of the people, 
this celebrity, the fruits he enjoys today would have been available to 
him probably anywhere else in the world, but in the country which gave 
it to him, he decides that maybe one of the news networks is too 
patriotic. Very short-sighted comment and a comment that I hope that 
individual at some point, at least in his own mind, retracts and begins 
to appreciate the sacrifice that a lot of people, generation after 
generation after generation in this country's history, the sacrifice 
that they have given so that people like him and other Americans can 
enjoy the fruits of our country.
  What is most exciting to me is all of the things that go right. My 
colleagues do not hear some of these celebrities talking about what is 
going right in this country. It seems to many a lot of time what comes 
out of Hollywood is criticism of the President. We hear the movie 
actors that say, well, we are going to leave the country if George W. 
Bush becomes our President, and by

[[Page H1763]]

the way, none of them did leave the country. They changed their mind 
because they realized what they had here, and some of these people 
ought to take a little time and talk about what is going right in our 
country.
  When we look at what is going right as compared to what is going 
wrong, there is so much more that is right than wrong. Look at the 
young people and juniors and seniors and applicants to our academies, 
our military academies. These are some of the most qualified young 
people in the history of this country. Their capabilities, the tools 
that they have to learn, their focus is immense and I think is much 
greater than the previous generations.
  What we read in the media is they focus on the drug problems of this 
generation. They focus on the sex problems of this young generation; 
but what is beginning to happen, that young generation is showing that 
they do have the capabilities to carry on the responsibilities, to 
continue to make this country great. We are beginning to see a movement 
toward family. We are beginning to see more religious involvement with 
these young people. We are beginning to see absolutely much, much more 
learning in their preschool years as they come up.
  So there are a lot of things that are going right, and that is what 
made me feel good about the weekend. I spent the weekend seeing things 
that were going right, only to read this quote or these quotes that 
have been attributed to this celebrity, and I think that my colleagues 
may have seen it in today's papers or certainly will be in tomorrow's 
papers about what this person has said. I hope any of my colleagues 
that have admired this person somewhat discount that admiration when 
they take a look at the comments that this particular person made.
  That is enough for that. Let me move on to the subject that I really 
want to talk about this evening and that is water. As I mentioned 
earlier at the opening of my remarks, the western United States 
geographically, obviously, is different than the eastern half of the 
United States. There are a lot of things that differentiate the West 
from the East, and one of them is water.
  I want to show my colleagues a map. This map here will depict a 
number of things which we will go over here in just a minute. Let me 
tell my colleagues about the first thing the map is going to depict. 
That is the ownership of public lands versus public lands in the East. 
Remember that upon settlement of the United States, the population, 
when our country just got started, as we all know, the population was 
along the east coast and that as our country began to grow, in order to 
get people out into the land, we had to give them some kind of 
incentive.
  Back in those days, one could not just get a deed that says you own 
the land. They actually needed to possess the land; and as I said 
before, that is where the saying that possession is nine-tenths of the 
law comes from. So for our country to grow, we needed one incentive to 
get people to move off the comfort of the east coast into the new land 
that this country wanted to expand into, and we wanted to get 
possession of that property so that another country could not come and 
take that land from us so we could protect the land.
  In order to do that, the government made a very conscious decision, 
and that is, to give land away through what is called land grants. They 
had first made land grants actually in an attempt to bribe British 
soldiers to defect from the British troops to help us in the 
Revolutionary War, saying to these soldiers we are starting a new 
country and if you come with us we will give you land in our new 
country. That is how the Homestead Act in this country, actually what 
we would call the land grants, first came from.
  This worked pretty effectively. What they would do is they would send 
families west. They would give them, say, 160 acres; and 160 acres in 
most of the eastern United States was enough acreage for a family to 
survive upon, and let me point out here. My colleagues will note that 
on this map, most of the map east of, say, Denver, Colorado, here in 
this point, we come right down here, most of the white part of this map 
is land that is privately owned. That is because in almost all of these 
locations here where the white is and almost all of those locations, 
one can support a family off 160 acres. The land is very fertile.
  In fact, to give my colleagues an idea of the water, and we will go 
over this point again, but 73 percent of the water precipitation, 
surface water, stream water in this country is in this part of the 
country. So this is a very, very, very fertile land. Once we get west 
of Denver, Colorado, into this land with all the color that is where we 
get into the public lands, and that land is very, very dry, very arid, 
very dependent upon dams.
  What happened is the settlers began to come west. This idea of 
putting people out on the land was working pretty effectively, but then 
all of the sudden when they got to Denver and they hit the Rocky 
Mountains, word got back to Washington, they are not settling up there. 
They are going around it. They could not feed a family off 160 acres. 
They had to go out to the Imperial Valley in California to find that 
kind of fertile land.
  Washington knew that they needed to do something, something to claim 
that land for the country. What did we do? How do we figure out how to 
get people to occupy those lands so that the government knows our 
citizens are on it? So what they decided to do in that mountain country 
where 160 acres could not support a family is one of the ideas, well, 
let us go ahead and give them an equivalent amount of land, maybe let 
us give them like $3,000 acres maybe, that is the equivalent of what 
needs to match 160 acres in the fertile grounds of eastern Colorado or 
Nebraska or some of these other States.
  At the time, they had given a lot of land to railroads, and they were 
under a lot of political pressure not to give that land away. So they 
decided instead, in this west, in this arid part, they would allow the 
people to go ahead and use it. They would give them incentives to use 
it, but they would retain the title to the government and keep those as 
public lands, but they always had the concept that these public lands 
would envision multiple use, many uses.
  When I grew up and we went into a national forest or public lands, 
there was always a sign that hung there, for example, ``Welcome to the 
White River National Forest, Land of Many Uses.'' That is the concept 
upon which the West was really settled as far as land ownership goes.
  The reason I am telling my colleagues this or the reason why we are 
reviewing the public lands and private lands issue is because it has a 
lot to do with the water issues that we face out in the West that again 
differentiates us from the East. Remember my statistics and let me draw 
on this map for just a moment.
  If we drew a line approximately like this, 73 percent, 73 percent of 
the water, surface water in the country is in this portion of the 
United States. That is where 73 percent of it is. We have got about 13 
percent of the water in the Pacific Northwest. We have got 13 percent 
of the water there, and then the rest of it, the rest here for that 
many States, that is 14 percent of the water. Look at those numbers 
again. Seventy-three percent of the water on this part of the country, 
13 percent up here in this section, and 14 percent for all of these 
States down there.
  This is arid country. This is country where out here a lot of times 
the dispute is in the East on how to get rid of the excess water. Hey, 
do not drain it on my property. How are we going to drain it? Put it 
here; put it there. In the West, our primary issues are how do we 
conserve the water, how do we store the water, how do we use the water. 
And of course, in the West, as in many lands in the east, agricultural 
plays a very important part.
  Remember when we talked about water, there are a number of different 
things to keep in mind. First of all, 97 percent of the water in the 
world, 97 percent of it is salt water, and under today's technology, we 
really do not have an economical way to convert that to desalinate that 
water from ocean water to clear drinking water. So right off the bat we 
are dealing with 3 percent of the world's water. Three percent of the 
world's water, about 78 percent of that 3 percent, about 78 percent of 
that 3 percent, is tied up in the polar icecaps. So the actual amount 
of water that we have to deal with is really very, very small.
  In fact, if we wanted to use a percentage number, I will write it on 
the chart

[[Page H1764]]

here, but how much of the world's water rivers contains, it looks like 
this, .001 percent. That is what small amount of water is contained in 
the rivers in the world, and the rivers are our life blood. In fact, in 
the Colorado State capital, in their rotunda written on there, they 
have something to the effect that I think it was Hornsberry that wrote, 
that says in this land life is written in water, and many people have 
said water runs almost as thick as blood out there in this dry region.
  Let me talk about real quickly how water is used. One of the things 
that amazed me as I got into water, remember, water is a very boring 
subject. Most people do not care much about water until they turn on 
the faucet and there is no water coming out of the faucet and they 
flush the toilet and no water comes into the bowl or they go out to 
recreate or fish and the stream's dried up. There are a lot of 
different uses of water.
  I started studying water about 20 years ago; and to this day, to this 
day, the most amazing thing about water to me is the quantity of water 
that is necessary to do things in our everyday life, and I am going to 
go over a few of those things with my colleagues right now.
  Take a look. Water usage, here is a fun chart. Direct uses of water 
daily, this is what the average person uses in a day drinking and 
cooking, 2 gallons. Flushing the toilet, 5 to 7 gallons per flush, 
although we have newer toilets, more advanced toilets that can now do 
it with 3 gallons. Washing machine, 20 gallons per load. Dishwasher, 25 
per loads. Just to take a shower, 7 to 9 gallons per minute.
  Remember that using water is not like using gasoline. Water is a 
renewable resource. On gasoline, once it is used, it is gone; but with 
water they have often said one person's waste is another person's 
water, and there is a lot to be said there. Water recirculates. It has 
got an entire lifecyle of its own so that when we use water for these 
daily needs, it does not mean that we have wasted the water, but we 
still have to conserve that water. We have got to be careful that we do 
not go to excess.
  Take a look at what it requires to grow food, and I will give some 
acreage, some interesting statistics on acreage; but if we look over 
here to my left, look at this. Growing food for a loaf of bread, it 
takes 150 gallons of water from the time someone starts to prepare the 
field to grow the wheat, they grow the wheat and the other ingredients 
to mill the flour and things like that. By the time that loaf of bred 
is produced, they have used 150 gallons of water. An egg, one egg, not 
a dozen eggs, one egg, 120 gallons of water.

                             {time}  2200 A

   quart of milk, 223 gallons of water. To have one quart of milk. One 
pound of oranges, 47 gallons. One pound of potatoes, 23 gallons.
  On average, and my colleagues probably did not know this, it takes 
more than 1,000 gallons of water to produce three meals a day for one 
person. More than 1,000 gallons of water a day to give us three 
balanced meals per day. Pretty interesting.
  What happens to 50 glasses of water? Forty-four glasses are used for 
agriculture, three glasses are used by industry, two glasses are used 
by cities, and a half a glass is used in the countryside. So, 
obviously, of those 50 glasses, if we had 50 glasses of water that 
represented the usage in our country, 44 of those glasses of water go 
to agriculture.
  Why so much water for agriculture? Again, some pretty interesting 
statistics. To grow an acre of corn we can expect off that acre that we 
will have 4,000 gallons of water a day evaporate off that acre. It 
takes 135,000 gallons to grow one ton of alfalfa. A hundred thirty-five 
thousand gallons. As I said, it takes 1,400 gallons of water to produce 
the meal of a quarter pound hamburger, an order of fries, and a soft 
drink. So if my colleagues go down to the local McDonald's restaurant 
and buy a hamburger, a soft drink and fries, 1,400 gallons of water 
were necessary for the complete process to get that food to the table.
  Forty-eight thousand gallons are needed to produce the typical 
American Thanksgiving dinner for eight people. Imagine that. When we go 
to Thanksgiving dinner, eight people sit down to have dinner, 48,000 
gallons of water were utilized to bring all of the tidings of 
Thanksgiving to that table. It is immense the use of water that we 
have.
  That is why water is such a critical subject for us. It is boring, 
but if I had my way about it, I would make it a mandatory course in 
every classroom in every school in America. I would make it required so 
that all Americans have a better understanding of just how critical 
that resource is and has become.
  It takes 39,000 gallons of water to produce a domestic automobile, 
1,800 gallons of water just to produce the cotton in a pair of jeans, 
and 400 gallons of water just to produce enough cotton for one shirt. 
So the shirt I am wearing right here, which is 100 percent cotton, took 
400 gallons of water to get that shirt to where I can wear it. It is 
amazing. It is incredible.
  What is happening now, this year, of course, is that we have a 
drought. And as I mentioned earlier, the drought has hit different 
parts of the country very hard. Here in the east last weekend we had 
some good rains. I think we got up to 2 inches in this particular area. 
But in the west we face a drought conditions that, in many cases, we 
have not seen in 100 years. And the reason we say 100 years is that 
that is the first time records were kept. So I wanted to visit just a 
little about what that impact is and why it is so critical for those of 
us that live in the arid States to store our water, to have that 
capability.
  Remember, in a State like Colorado, and my district is the high 
mountains of Colorado, in an average year we have all the water we 
could possibly use for about a 60-to-90-day-period of time. When is 
that period of time? That period of time, on a typical year, is what is 
called the spring runoff, when the snow melts off those high peaks and 
we have that runoff. Sometimes, in fact, it floods, and we have 
terrible floods. But the dams have helped us control those floods.
  When that 60-to-90 day period of time is over, what do we do for 
water then? Again, the dams come back in. In the west, we need to have 
those dams because we cannot count on water continuously year-round. 
Unfortunately, these water resources have not been evenly allocated 
across this great country of ours, so the dams play more and more of an 
important role, for not only human consumption, but for electrical 
generation.
  Take a look at this chart. This reflects the primary use of dams. I 
think this is pretty interesting. The primary purpose or benefit of 
dams in the United States. And by the way, there is about 70,000 to 
80,000 dams in the United States. Now, when we think of dams we think 
of Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, or smaller dams, like the Shoshoni Dam 
in the Glenwood Canyon, or different ones like that. But the first 
dams, for example, that we know of in the United States were actually 
the Anasazi Indians down in the southwestern part of Colorado, the Four 
Corners area. And there is evidence there that when they came and they 
learned how to dam up the water, because the water was again in such an 
arid area, it is thought that one of two things drove the Anasazi 
Indians into extinction, or at least out of that area.
  One of them was the lack of water or, two, dealing with the enemy. 
They had enemies out there, and somehow the enemies were able to get 
into the cliff dwellings. But we think primarily it was water.

  Look at the primary purpose or benefit of U.S. dams. Recreation, 32 
percent; irrigation, 10 percent; public water supply, 19 percent; flood 
control, 14 percent; hydroelectricity, 2 percent; and stock and farm 
ponds, 17 percent.
  Now, you will see some national organizations that oppose dams. They 
oppose a dam no matter how justified it is. No matter how well planned 
it is, no matter what kind of protections have been placed for the 
environment and to the benefit of the environment, no matter what is 
done, there are large well-financed organizations that oppose dams 
regardless of the merits. But they do not understand, or maybe they do 
understand and it is a way of restricting the life-style that we have 
in the west, but it is so critical to look closely and get an idea of 
what happens to us out in Colorado, for example, after that 90 days or 
so when the spring

[[Page H1765]]

runoff trickles down to small streams and our mighty Colorado is 
reduced dramatically in size, and what we have to do for water to get 
through the rest of the year.
  And it is not just drinking water. Take a look at now the dependency 
we have on hydroelectricity. That is the cleanest way to produce power 
of any power that we know, outside of nuclear. And even cleaner than 
the nuclear, because with nuclear we still have a waste material, as 
many of my colleagues know with our debate on Yucca Mountain in Nevada 
and so on. Water is truly the cleanest way to generate our electricity. 
The difficulty is we do not have enough rivers or enough dams to 
produce hydroelectricity in such a way that it could become our primary 
generation of electricity in this country. But where we can utilize it 
we should utilize it.
  And a natural benefit of a dam, when you back up water, you also 
provide recreation opportunities. In the western United States, the 
greatest recreational facility, I think, from a water perspective, is 
Lake Powell. The Colorado River, which is about 1,500 miles long, has 
several major dams on it, and one of those lakes that has been backed 
up as a result of Glen Canyon is Lake Powell. Lake Powell actually has 
more shoreline than the entire Pacific West Coast. Recreation is 
critical. For those who talk about family recreation and the importance 
for us to bring families back together, recreation on a lake like Lake 
Powell is an important factor out there in the west.
  Flood control. We have had some horrendous floods. Again, 
unfortunately, the laws of nature do not allow the river, like the 
Colorado, to run at a steady flow 12 months of the year. Sometimes it 
runs with horrendous bursts. In fact, if any of my colleagues ever have 
an opportunity and are near Gunnison or Montrose, Colorado, take the 
time to go see the Black Canyon National Park. It is a beautiful, 
beautiful national park. And when you get to the visitor's center at 
the Black Canyon National Park you will see rocks the size of this 
table over here to my right, the size of this table and probably twice 
as high. That is a sample of the rocks that are thrown through that 
river. That is how powerful that river is going through that canyon. 
That rumbling down of those rocks sounds like a tornado going on down 
there in the spring runoff.
  We have to be able to control floods. And take a look, while on the 
way to the Black Canyon National Park and, hopefully, you will go 
through a beautiful town called Grand Junction, Colorado. Grand 
Junction used to be desert. Desert still remains on the other side of 
it. But take a look at what irrigation did for that community. Grand 
junction, Colorado, is probably the clearest example in the country of 
what happens when you have water and what happens when you do not have 
water.
  The dividing point there is the interstate highway. As you go down 
the interstate in Grand Junction, when you look to the north, or if you 
are headed westbound, when you look to the right it is arid desert 
land. It is beautiful in its own way, but there are no people living 
out there. There is not much wildlife out there. In fact, there is not 
much life. There are no trees or plants out there. It is dry dirt. On 
the left-hand side, which is the south side, left hand as you are going 
west, the south side is the result of irrigation. There are orchards; 
wine orchards, apple orchards, and lots of wildlife.
  Obviously, that is where the people live. It is because we had the 
ability to store water and to release that water year-round so that 
side of the highway can stay green. Year-round, that portion of land 
can support wildlife, human habitation and, frankly, I think increase 
and improve the areas of the environment that we think are important, 
gold medal fishing, for example, and a lot of other things.
  Water is such a critical resource for us. Again, I urge my colleagues 
here in the east, during times when we have decisions to make about the 
west, please understand we are not trying to make a battle or make a 
geographical difference with the country. We do want Members to come to 
the realization, or at least understand that our needs in the west are 
dramatically different when it comes to some of these natural 
resources, whether we are talking about private lands or public lands, 
or whether we are taking about lots of water, like here in the east, 
where 73 percent of the Nation's surface water exists. Out there, in 
the center of the west, we have 14 percent.
  So when we talk about our water storage facilities, listen to us, 
support us. There is a move out there to take down Lake Powell. Many of 
in this room have never been to Lake Powell. If you want to do your 
family a favor, if you want to have a great trip, one of those kind of 
vacations that your family will remember for many, many, many years 
into the future, go to Lake Powell. Take a look at that dam there, how 
much electricity that generates, and take a look at the flood control. 
As a Congressman, they will give you a tour. They give general tours, 
but tell them you really want to know about this project.
  I urge my colleagues from the east to take a trip and go out there, 
and have one of your days set aside simply to learn about the project. 
So that when the radical fanatics come to these Chambers and try to get 
you to sign on to a resolution to tear down the dam at Lake Powell, you 
will have a very clear and immediate understanding of the ramifications 
that that has to the western half of your country, the kind of 
ramifications it has not only for hydroelectricity but for flood 
control, for water storage, for recreation, for farms. Remember that 
when you hear somebody approach you and say we need to take down dams.
  One of my biggest problems with the Clinton administration was the 
Clinton administration was always trying to show that they were the 
environmental administration, so they made some pretty brash statements 
and they made some pretty illogical decisions, like the Grand Escalante 
Staircase, without any input from State officials; with proclamations 
that we need to start taking down dams, not building dams. It was 
almost as if that administration had an anti-human bias built into 
their policy. Well, fortunately, that has been moderated and a common 
sense approach will allow people in the east to understand the special 
circumstances of those of us who live in the west.
  Let me mention something else. I want to show the drought conditions 
that we are currently experiencing. This is a color-coded map. Here are 
the codes: Abnormal dry, which means just an off year; drought moderate 
is the light brown; the dark brown is drought severe, and the red is 
drought extreme.
  If you look to the left of the poster, here is the State of Colorado. 
This actually is the Colorado River right here, going down like this. 
The Colorado River runs about 1,500 miles. Only a small part of it is 
in Colorado. The Colorado provides 75 percent of the water that goes 
into it. Maybe 200 miles of the Colorado River is in Colorado, of the 
1,500 miles total. It goes down through Utah, Arizona, and actually 
ends up in Mexico.
  But my point here is to look at the drought conditions that we face. 
Now, we face some of these similar conditions on the East Coast, but 
out here in the west, where we start out with very arid conditions, 
look how much of it is in a moderate drought. All the light brown. But 
look what is in severe extreme drought. Look how much of that portion 
down here.

                              {time}  2215

  Look at what this is. This is a tough situation this year. Do you 
know how we are going to get through it? Do you know how we got through 
the semi-dryness last year? Because generations before us had the 
foresight to build major storage projects so when we ran out of water 
or did not have enough snow in the high peaks, we would have enough 
water to give us a crutch to get through to the next snow season. That 
is exactly why we will survive the drought in Colorado, even though it 
is severe, a drought that we have not seen since 1977 is the last time 
I recall. It appears that this one is going to be much more severe.
  But we will be able to, we will be crippled, but we will be able to 
get through it because we have water storage. We have the capability to 
draw down on reservoirs. It is like your bank account. You always want 
to have a surplus in your bank account so if you have an emergency you 
can draw down on your savings. That is what these storage projects 
allow us.

[[Page H1766]]

  But what has happened in the last few years through a huge public 
relations effort, they have been very successful in giving a negative 
connotation to the world dams and water storage projects. We in the 
West find ourselves constantly trying to explain, look, it is not a 
nasty word. It is a word that is necessitated by our lifestyles out in 
the West. It is necessitated by our needs for the environment. It is 
necessitated for our electricity. It is necessitated for flood control. 
These water storage projects are very, very important for us.
  Now, what else happens when we face drought conditions? Fire. This 
year looks to be, if the conditions stay the same as they have up 
through this last week, this year could be the worst fire year since we 
kept records in this country. I want to say through the hard efforts of 
people like Gale Norton at the Department of the Interior, and Ann 
Veneman over at the Department of Agriculture, the head of the parks, 
these teams have come together and we have created a National Fire 
Council.
  Last year through a lot of efforts, both Republican and Democrat, we 
put together the resources necessary to upgrade our firefighting 
capabilities in this country. We hired an additional 5,000 firemen. We 
picked up thousands of pieces of new equipment. In the last several 
months, we have disbursed those equipment and resources throughout the 
country so when we have a fire, as we had in Bailey up in Park County, 
Colorado, last weekend, we were within a very short period of time able 
to devote substantial resources to fighting that fire.
  We have made dramatic improvements. Not only do we have a dry year, 
but we have had years and years and years of policies on the public 
lands, remember earlier my comments when we talked about the public 
lands, we have had years and years of policies of not allowing those 
forests to be cleaned. In essence, ignoring some of those forests. We 
now have lots of wastes on the floor of the forest. I call it 
gunpowder. What you see on my left, that will not be an uncommon sight 
in the mountains. We are going to see some of our biggest fires in 
Florida and in the East.
  I think this year we have the team together. We never know what we 
are going to face, but based on past history, we think that with a 
little luck and a little blessing and the good Lord, we are going to be 
able to fight these fires successfully, but it is going to be a 
challenge.
  Again, the importance of water storage. When we get out to some of 
these fires, one of the most important things to have is access to 
water. What does every fire truck in the West carry with them? They 
carry tarps. Why? A simple reason. As soon as they get to the scene of 
a fire, they create a dam. Think about it. Out in the rural areas, and 
I used to be a volunteer fireman, one of the first things that we 
learned was how to use a tarp. Firefighters put it in the stream and 
very quickly build up a dam so we have a water reservoir that we could 
pull the water out of to fight the fire. Again, another use of dams, 
another use of water storage that a lot of us do not think about in our 
day-to-day lives.

  Let me show Members the inferno. These are the kinds of things that 
we are going to face this summer. That is a blow up, meaning the wind 
and heat. All of the conditions are perfect for what is called a blow 
up. That kind of inferno, unfortunately, will occur. To a large extent 
we cannot help it. We cannot have more rain. That is up to the good 
Lord. We cannot control where lightning strikes; that is up to the good 
Lord.
  But in the management of our forests and in the management of our 
firefighting resources and in the allocation of our land management 
resources, a lot of these fires can be impacted or alleviated with 
proper land management. Again in the East, you deal with it differently 
because you do not have the public lands. In the West, we have lots of 
public pressure, a lot of times from people in the East who have never 
experienced life in the West, who are not acquainted with what it is 
like to be completely surrounded by public lands.
  In my district, I have about 120 communities. These are small towns 
with the exception of two which are fairly large. All but one of them 
are completely surrounded. In other words, 119 are completely 
surrounded by public lands. And the rules and regulations that we deal 
with with public lands restrict the amount of freedom. In a lot of 
cases, it is very justified. But as in most cases where the government 
gets involved, you will find on some occasions they go overboard. 
Sometimes they go overboard, for example, by not allowing people to 
clean up the forests. This is a contributing cause to this kind of 
inferno.
  Let me talk just a few more minutes about the importance of water in 
the West, about the importance of water storage in the West. I have 
made several key points to Members, and I want to summarize them. Keep 
in mind that 97 percent of the water in the world is in the oceans. It 
is salt water. We do not have an economic way to convert that water to 
drinking water that is affordable on any kind of mass scale. Of the 
remaining 3 percent, clear water, nonsalt water, 78 percent of that 
water is tied up in the polar ice caps. So we have a very small amount 
of water that is either not tied up in the ice caps or not salt water 
for our usage. Conservation is a critical element for us.
  As our country continues to grow in population, obviously we need to 
practice more and more conservation. But remember that conservation and 
water is much trickier than, say, conservation of fuel or electricity. 
I will give Members an idea. When somebody comes in and says we want 
you to line your irrigation ditches, in other words put in concrete, 
and we can prevent seepage so you lose less water. The difficulty is 
that your seepage in your ditch may very well be providing the water 
for the spring 3 or 4 miles away.
  Mr. Speaker, our generation does not have the capability to radar 
underneath the ground very effectively. We can pick up things above the 
ground, but what future generations will have the capability to do is 
they will have the capability to look underneath the ground, and at 
some point they will be able to figure out the logistics of those 
millions of miles of water streams underneath the Earth's surface. Then 
water management will make a lot more sense. Then conservation will be 
able to be done with much more precise science; but today, conservation 
is important.

  But the key of my comments to Members this evening is not only to 
ask, as I have done on a number of occasions from this very podium, to 
ask for your indulgence when we talk about land issues in the West, 
because of the fact that the public lands really for the most part are 
in the West, they are not in the East, so I ask cooperation from my 
colleagues from the East, try and take a few moments, really you have 
the responsibility to take a few moments and understand the issues that 
we deal with because we have public lands. We have to deal with the 
government every minute of our lives out there when your community is 
surrounded by public lands. Our communities are completely, not 
partially, and this is not an exaggeration, our communities are 
completely dependent upon the Federal lands.
  When we talk about water, out in my district, the water in my 
district either comes across, stores or ponds or originates on public 
lands. It is a big, big issue for us. The concept of multiple use is 
critical for our life-style. All of our highways, whether it is a radio 
antenna, whether it is our power lines, our fishing, our farming, our 
environmental protection, we deal with the government in every phase of 
that. Many in the East do not have to deal with any phase of that, at 
least as it pertains to the issue of public and private lands. You own 
the lands. We do not in the West. It is the same thing. There is the 
same kind of differential that begins to emerge when we talk about 
building water storage facilities on public lands, when we talk about 
the importance of water storage in the West.
  Remember my earlier statistic, 73 percent of the water in this 
country is east of the Mississippi. Seventy-three percent of the 
surface water is east of the Mississippi. The western mountain region, 
that western area which is huge, which is about half of the United 
States, not quite but almost half of the United States in land mass, we 
have 14 percent of the water. Fourteen percent of the water, and almost 
half the land mass of the United States. So water

[[Page H1767]]

storage is so, so critical for us out there.
  Finally, keep in mind what water storage, what it does. It provides 
flood control. It provides hydroelectricity. It provides recreation. 
And probably as important as anything that I have just mentioned, 
probably more important than anything that I have just mentioned, it 
allows us to save water and build up a reservoir so when we face the 
kind of drought conditions that we are facing today in the West, we 
have the capability to draw from that reservoir, at least from a 
limited period of time to try and get us through until the next snow 
season.
  Colleagues, I appreciate your time this evening. I appreciate the 
fact that I am allowed, and have this great privilege in this country 
to come to this House well and try to work with my colleagues in the 
East, Republican or Democrat, to tell you how important it is that you 
understand the geographical differences, the water differences between 
the eastern United States and the western United States.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this time, and look forward to Members' 
cooperation on these issues in the future.

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