[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 33 (Thursday, February 27, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H2005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
               CALIFORNIA WATER: IT'S THE STORAGE, STUPID

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago, President Obama visited the 
drought-stricken Central Valley of California. He announced his 
administration's response: he wants to spend another billion dollars to 
study climate change.
  Well, I think I can save him the trouble. The planet has been 
warming, on and off, since the last Ice Age, when glaciers covered much 
of North America. The climate has been changing since the planet 
formed, often much more abruptly than it has in recent millennia.
  Until the planet begins moving into its next ice age, we can 
reasonably expect it will continue to warm, on and off. That is going 
to mean less water that can be stored in snowpacks and, therefore, more 
dams will need to be constructed to store that water.
  There, I just saved a billion dollars. You are welcome.
  Everyone thinks that the Colorado River is the mother lode of all 
water in the Western United States, but the Colorado is a junior system 
to the mighty Sacramento River system.
  The difference is this: we store 70 million acre-feet of water on the 
Colorado and only 10 million acre-feet on the Sacramento. The rest is 
lost to the ocean.
  Droughts are nature's fault. They are beyond our control. Water 
shortages, on the other hand, are our fault.
  We have not built major water storage on the Sacramento system since 
1979 because of opposition from the environmental left and, most 
recently, from this administration. Indeed, we have had to fight back 
against its attempts to tear down perfectly good existing dams, 
including four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River.
  Even in years of plenty, this administration has insisted on 
diverting 200 billion gallons of water from Central Valley agriculture 
for the amusement of the delta smelt, devastating the economy, drying 
up a quarter million acres of fertile farmland, and throwing thousands 
of California families into unemployment.
  Because of opposition from the environmental left, we have been 
unable to even raise the spillway of the Exchequer Dam by a lousy 10 
feet in order to add 70,000 acre-feet of storage at Lake McClure.
  Because of radical environmental regulations, 800,000 acre-feet of 
desperately needed water--that is a 1-acre column of water, 150 miles 
deep--was drained from Shasta, Oroville, and Folsom Lakes last fall, 
knowing full well that we were heading into a potentially catastrophic 
drought.
  Now, Governor Brown proposes to spend $14 billion for cross-delta 
tunnels that will produce exactly zero additional storage and exactly 
zero additional hydroelectricity.
  Yet, for a fraction of that cost, roughly $6 billion, we could 
complete the Shasta Dam to its design elevation, which would mean 9 
million acre-feet of additional water storage, nearly doubling the 
storage capacity of the Sacramento River system.
  Everyone has seen the eerie pictures of Folsom Dam as its lake lay 
almost completely empty. For just a few billion dollars, we could 
complete the Auburn Dam, upriver of Folsom, that would hold enough 
water to fill and refill Folsom Lake nearly 2\1/2\ times.
  That is in addition to 800 megawatts of electricity for the region 
and 400-year flood protection for the Sacramento Delta. The billions we 
are currently spending on delta levee repairs is to protect against a 
200-year flood.
  Both projects have been stalled for decades because of environmental 
opposition. Enough is enough.
  Mr. Speaker, we are at a crossroads, and it is time to choose between 
two very different visions of water policy.
  One is the nihilistic vision of the environmental left, increasingly 
severe government-induced shortages, higher and higher electricity and 
water prices, massive taxpayer subsidies to politically well-connected 
and favored industries, and a permanently declining quality of life for 
our children, who will be required to stretch and ration every drop of 
water and every watt of electricity in their bleak and dimly lit homes.
  The other is a vision of abundance, a new era of clean, cheap, and 
abundant hydroelectricity, great new reservoirs to store water in wet 
years to assure abundance in dry ones, a future in which families can 
enjoy the prosperity that abundant water and electricity provide, and 
the quality of life that comes from that prosperity.
  It is a society whose children can look forward to a green lawn, a 
backyard garden, affordable air-conditioning in the summer and heating 
in the winter, brightly lit homes in cities, and abundant and 
affordable groceries from America's agricultural cornucopia.
  This is a time of choosing.

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