[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H843-H847]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          WATER QUALITY AND SUPPLY ISSUES IN THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Loudermilk). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the earlier discussion about 
one of America's most longstanding and most noted Justices. His passing 
is mourned by all of us.
  I do, however, today want to move to a different subject. I want to 
talk about, I think, one of the two most essential things that a human 
being needs to live. That is water and air. But today we are going to 
take the former of those two subjects and really talk about water.
  Two weeks ago I put this up for all to see. This is tap water from 
Flint, Michigan. There has been a lot of discussion over the last 
month, month and a half, almost 3 months now, about Flint, Michigan, 
about the water supply in Flint, Michigan, lead in the pipes, lead 
pipes, about the public health emergency that exists there, and about 
what we could and should do about dealing with Flint, Michigan.
  However, Flint, Michigan is not unique. This is how they get water in 
East Porterville. In the Central Valley of California, the San Joaquin 
Valley, just south of Fresno, California, the water supplies in the 
East Porterville area ran dry, in part, because of the drought, in 
part, because of inadequate water systems.
  So the residents of East Porterville were required to get water from 
a cattle water trough, pretty much like I have on my ranch, although, 
hopefully, this water is a whole lot cleaner. Porterville, California.
  Now we have two examples, one from the Midwest, another one from the 
Far West.
  Any other problems about water supply? Well, yes. There are other 
problems about water supply.
  This is a list of problems that we know exist in the United States--
or most recently existed:
  Flint, Michigan, we just saw that picture.
  Toledo, Ohio, you remember, had to shut down the water system because 
of problems from algae blooms.
  Sebring, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Brick Township, New Jersey; 
Washington, D.C., lead release.
  Wayne County, North Carolina; Greenville, North Carolina; Lakehurst 
Acres, Maine; Chicago, Illinois.
  I decided not to put them all up there because it would take the rest 
of the evening to list all the communities in America that have water 
issues. And certainly we do in California.
  I could put up another--well, maybe I will. Let me just put up a map 
of California. This is the largest population in the United States, 
approaching 40 million people.
  And far north, the Pacific Coast, San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles, 
down here, Santa Barbara, and way down here, San Diego, and somewhere 
over here, Arizona and Nevada, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the coastal 
range, and the great Central Valley of California, where a whole lot of 
America's food and food exports come from.
  Down here in the Tulare Lake Basin, there are well over 100 
communities who have contaminated water from nitrates and other harmful 
substances.
  So the issue of clean water, you know, shortage of water down here, 
and contaminated wells up and down--oh. The Salinas Valley. Monterey 
Bay and the great Salinas Valley, many, many of the wells in that area 
are also contaminated.
  So we have got a water quality problem really throughout the United 
States, and we certainly have one in California.
  We have another problem in California. Let me put this up, a little 
different map. The previous map, that one, nice and green. That is not 
California today.
  We may be and probably are in the fifth year of the great California 
drought. This is a picture of the California drought situation. The 
yellow is a little less than normal. The red, far less than normal. 
This brown is really the way California will be as soon as this summer 
comes on. And that is called exceptional drought.
  So the great Central Valley of California, the coastal range down 
into Los Angeles, even over to the east side of the Sierras, an 
exceptional drought. So the green California is really not so green.
  Today we are about halfway through the rainy season in California, 
and the

[[Page H844]]

current rain for the entire State is about 75 percent of normal. That 
is why you see this extreme drought occurring even as of February 18, 
2016.
  The Sierra snowpack is less than normal but is still a whole lot 
better than last year, when it was zero, as in no snow.
  So what are we going to do? Well, we need to do something. Otherwise, 
we are going to have a whole lot more pain in California.
  So what Senator Feinstein and I have been doing over the last several 
months is trying to develop a solution for the immediate drought, to 
make the most of the water that is available, while still protecting 
the endangered species, the great salmon runs of the Central Valley of 
California, and the coastal rivers, as well as the species that live in 
the delta of California.
  So we have been working, trying to put together a piece of 
legislation that would provide as much flexibility as possible, while 
still protecting the fish species and the flora and fauna of the State.
  We think we have done it. We think we do have a piece of legislation 
that will do that. We call that the operational portion of the 
legislation. Senator Feinstein has already introduced that legislation.
  I intend to do so in the very near future here in the House of 
Representatives so that we can have a statement from the House of 
Representatives about how we can solve the drought problem--well, not 
solve it--do the very best we can in an extreme circumstance to deliver 
as much water as possible to the farms and the cities of all of 
California, while also protecting the endangered species.
  Let me just put this up. This is the essence of the legislation. I am 
going to start here at the bottom and work towards the top. This is the 
short-term provision of the bill. I will go into this in more detail in 
a few moments.

  The bill also has what we call long-term infrastructure needs. Those 
long-term infrastructure needs are storage reservoirs, aquifers beneath 
the surface of the earth, where we have groundwater--or we used to have 
groundwater, surface storage.
  There are several new and expanded reservoir opportunities available 
in the State, some of them on the streams and rivers--and, of course, 
those will be controversial--and one or two that are off-stream, in the 
valleys and the mountains where there are no active rivers, those being 
somewhat less controversial.
  So there is surface storage. There is underground aquifer storage. 
That is this one right here. Authorized $600 million for water storage 
projects, both aquifer as well as surface storage.
  We also have this thing called conservation. Conservation is where 
you can get the most water. For every gallon of water that you 
conserve, that is a gallon of water that would be available for other 
purposes or to extend what little you have available. So conservation 
plays a major role.
  In this legislation, there is money for conservation. There is also 
money for this recycling. Now, much of the Midwest recycles water. In 
fact, the entire Mississippi River system is recycled water, water that 
is used upstream by some city, cleaned, put back in the river, reused 
again as it flows down the Mississippi River and its tributaries. 
California doesn't do much recycling.
  I don't have a map here of the--no, I don't.
  But if one were to take a look at the whole Pacific Coast of 
California and the United States and Alaska and Central America and 
South America--so from Alaska all the way south to Chile on the West 
Coast, the Pacific Coast, of the Western Hemisphere--you would find 
that the fifth biggest river in all of that vast stretch--the great 
rivers of Alaska and Canada, the Columbia River, the Sacramento River, 
the Colorado River down here, and the rivers of Central and South 
America--the fifth biggest happens to be right here, here, here, and 
here.

                              {time}  2015

  The fifth biggest rivers are the sanitation plants of California that 
take water from up and down the entire area and from the Colorado all 
the way from the Rockies, use it, clean it to a higher standard than 
the day it arrives in the great cities of California, clean it to a 
higher standard, and then they dump it in the ocean. This is utter 
foolishness.
  So in the Garamendi-Feinstein legislation, we have $200 million for 
water recycling so that we can recycle that water, reuse it, and make 
use of water that is already available.
  We know, for example, that in Los Angeles there are approximately 1 
million acre-feet of water that is not now being used. In fact, it is 
being dumped into the ocean. With this recycling program, 1 million 
acre-feet of new water can be available in southern California.
  And, by the way, for those of you who are not familiar with 
California, we are talking about the Los Angeles basin here.
  So the recycling in this basin can deliver 1 million acre-feet of 
water over the next decade or so, and that water can be put back into 
the great aquifers of southern California and even down into the San 
Diego area. These aquifers are now largely contaminated with various 
contaminants, but they can be cleaned and the water recycled, put back 
in the aquifers, taken out, cleaned, and round and round it goes.
  One million acre-feet: What does that mean to northern California, to 
Colorado, our friends in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada? It means that 
that is a million acre-feet that Los Angeles, the great basin down 
here, does not need to take from the Sacramento River in northern 
California or from the Colorado River, taking pressure off those 
rivers. And as you saw from the drought map, those rivers are in severe 
trouble. So that is kind of a strategy that we put in place.
  Now, we are not geniuses--well, maybe--no. We are not geniuses. But 
what we do know is that the State of California has already figured 
this out.
  So what our legislation does is to tie directly to, mirror, augment, 
and push forward what California did in the 2014 election, which is to 
pass proposition 1, an almost $7 billion proposition for the 
development of water supplies for California.
  So, look at this: Water conservation, storm water recapturing, 
increase local and regional supplies, $810 million. Our legislation 
would fit right in there with conservation and these other programs.
  Safe drinking water. Remember talking about Porterville and water 
troughs for cattle from which the kids were taking water? Here you have 
the Safe Drinking Water Program. And guess what. It is in the 
Feinstein-Garamendi legislation.
  Yes. There it is, money to help small communities through the Bureau 
of Reclamation expanding their WaterSMART and other programs so that we 
can mirror, augment, supplement, and advance what California already 
wants to do when proposition 1 goes into effect.
  Let's see. Water recycling. Didn't I just talk about that? Yes, I 
did. So in the legislation that Senator Feinstein has already 
introduced and what I will soon introduce here, we will be once again 
working with the water recycling. Not as much money, but still a major 
Federal effort to work with the State to maximize the water recycling.
  This is also not on this list, but also desalinization, which happens 
to work for some parts of California as well as other parts of the 
United States.
  I talked about groundwater. Yes. Our legislation mirrors the 
groundwater program that is in proposition 1, adds some additional 
money, and directs the Federal Government to work directly with the 
State on advancing the groundwater issues.
  Now, for those of you that have been following the drought in 
California over the last several years--actually, the last several 
decades--California has been excessively using its groundwater so much 
so that, in parts of the great Central Valley of California--maybe I 
will put that map back up here--in the great Central Valley of 
California, particularly in this part of the Central Valley and the 
Fresno area and south, we have seen a significant fall in the surface 
of the Earth.
  It is literally sinking as a result of the groundwater being pumped 
out. In many places, you can go down through this area and you will see 
wells that are way, way above the ground and the ground is down here 
maybe 10, 20 feet. You have seen subsidence in the area.
  So the over-drafting in this area and some in the Sacramento Valley 
as well as in the Salinas Valley is a serious problem.
  Part of what we want to do, mirroring what the State has already 
decided to do with proposition 1, is to

[[Page H845]]

have the Federal Government work with the State on addressing the 
aquifers in this region to find ways to recharge the aquifers. There 
are many different ways that that can be done.
  Some of it is simply pumping the water back into the ground rather 
than pumping it out. In other areas, the geology in various parts, 
particularly along the coastal mountains as well as along the Sierra 
Nevada mountains, there are gravel channels, old river channels that 
have historically recharged the groundwater basins in parts--actually, 
along most of the Central Valley.
  So it has to be done. This is what we are trying to do with this 
legislation: Desalination research, which I discussed earlier, $100 
million; water storage, $600 million; water recycling, $200 million; 
and $55 million for specific protections for the fish and wildlife 
species.
  There is a whole series of projects that would fit into that. Once 
again, all of this infrastructure work is designed to coordinate 
specifically with what the State of California is doing with their 
multibillion-dollar proposition 1.
  This isn't in effect yet, but this money is now working its way 
through the various environmental studies and various levels of 
government so that very soon these projects will be underway.
  If we are able to pass the legislation that we want to introduce, we 
are going to see the Federal Government working very, very closely with 
the State government in addressing the California problem.

  Now, who cares about California? If you care about food, your fresh 
veggies, you had better care about California. Over here in the Salinas 
Valley where lettuce comes from? Drought problems.
  In the Central Valley, let's see. You name the crop, everything from 
rice to walnuts--oh, wine grapes are very, very important if you like 
your wine. In the central coast down here, the same thing.
  So what we are trying to do with the legislation is to provide a 
long-term fix to California so that we can increase the supply of 
water, increase the storage during the wet years, put the storage in 
reservoirs and in the aquifers so that, when the dry years come, then 
we will do it.
  There was a fellow by the name of Steinbeck. He wrote a book, ``East 
of Eden.'' In that book, he talked about the California droughts.
  This is not a new situation, although 5 years and 4 years is 
definitely new. Usually, the droughts would be 1 or 2 years. But now we 
are looking at quite possibly a 5-year drought.
  Steinbeck said this. It is not the exact quote, although I wish I had 
it. It was like this:

       In the dry years, they worried about where their water 
     would come from. Then the wet years would come and they 
     forgot about the dry years.

  That has been the story of California for too many--too many--
decades. Certainly Steinbeck saw that in the early part of the 20th 
century.
  We are now in the 21st century and we cannot--we cannot--relive that 
old adage that Steinbeck wrote about.
  So we need to build for the future. We need to be able to address 
this in the immediate as best we can and put in place the water 
systems.
  I am going to describe those water systems to you just very briefly. 
Here in the north we have the great Shasta Reservoir up here on the 
Upper Sacramento River.
  It could be raised. It could be increased. There are some 
environmental and certainly some cost issues associated with raising 
Shasta. That is one of the proposals of possibilities in our 
legislation.
  The other one sits right about in here off stream. The Sacramento 
River flows down through the middle of the valley here, but off-stream 
over here in my district actually is a potential reservoir that has 
been talked about for maybe 50 years now called Sites Reservoir.
  It stores about 1.8 million acre-feet of water. It could deliver 
annually 500,000 acre-feet of water. That is a lot of water. That is 1 
foot of water across 5,000 acres. Did I say 5,000? It is 500,000 acres. 
So that is the Sites Reservoir over here.
  That reservoir also does something really unique. Since it is off-
river, it will take the water flowing down the Sacramento River during 
the heavy storms, put that water into the reservoir, and then, when 
summer comes or the drought comes, that water can be released back into 
the Sacramento River, providing water quality issues here in the Delta 
of California--and I will come to that in just a few moments--creating 
flexibility on the great reservoirs--Shasta, the Yuba system, the 
Folsom Reservoir here in Sacramento, and the big California reservoir 
in Oroville--allowing the operations of those reservoirs to be modified 
in such a way that they are able to store water rather than releasing 
it down the river for fish and wildlife.
  It would then be able to release water from Sites Reservoir and keep 
that water back in these reservoirs. A major problem in Sacramento is 
that the Folsom Reservoir is at low tide. I will have tomorrow 
representatives from the east Sacramento area in my office, all of them 
saying: Oh, my goodness. We don't have enough water in Folsom Reservoir 
for our cities of Rancho Cordova, Roseville, and the like, east of 
Sacramento.
  So Sites Reservoir could provide more water in the Sacramento region 
by keeping that water in the Folsom Reservoir.
  Let's talk a little bit about the delta. I guess I had better finish 
the other reservoirs. Down here in the Fresno area on the San Joaquin 
River we have the big Friant Reservoir on the San Joaquin.
  There is a bit of a problem with Friant. It managed to dry up the San 
Joaquin River, creating a big, big problem for the salmon. They don't 
do very well in dry rivers.
  So there is an effort underway to try to restore some of the salmon 
on the rivers in the San Joaquin Valley, the Stanislaus, the Merced, 
and the other rivers as you move down towards the San Joaquin.
  There would be a new reservoir that is proposed here at Temperance 
Flat. Is it possible? Yes. Is it environmentally controversial? Oh, 
yeah. No doubt about that. And it is expensive.

  But, nonetheless, our legislation would authorize a continuation of 
the studies to see if it is worth doing. So that would be the 
Temperance Flat.
  Over here on the hills to the east of Oakland there is another 
storage reservoir off-stream, and that one is called Los Vaqueros. Los 
Vaqueros is a reservoir that is controlled by the Contra Costa Water 
District.
  They now have agreements with other water districts in the bay area 
to increase the size of that reservoir to store more water at that 
area. Again, that is off-stream.
  It would take the high winter flows and put that water in storage 
off-stream as with Sites Reservoir to the north of it, all very, very 
important.
  So these are the essential projects that would be long term for 
California. Again, they would be the surface storage reservoirs, two 
off-stream and three potentially on-stream.
  They would be recharging the aquifers and the various infrastructure 
needed to do that, recycling in the great cities of Los Angeles, San 
Diego, and in the bay area to recycle water and, also, dealing with the 
contamination that occurs in many of the cities in the Central Valley, 
the San Joaquin Valley particularly, a little bit up here in the 
Sacramento Valley, and a lot of problems in the Salinas Valley in this 
area.
  So those are the essential elements of the long term--I forgot 
conservation and desalination. So those are the long-term projects that 
are both in proposition 1 of the California water bond of 2014 and, 
also, in our legislation.
  The second piece of the legislation deals with the operation of the 
two great water projects. These are the largest water projects in the 
world, although China is building one that might actually be bigger.
  But, as of today, the largest water projects in the world are in 
California. What they basically do--maybe I will back up here a bit. It 
would be great if my colleagues here really had a sense of what is 
happening.
  The basic water projects of California take the water from the 
Sacramento Valley, the Sacramento River, Mount Shasta up here, and the 
Trinity River, bring that water in through the Shasta Reservoir, hold 
the water there, and then send the water down the Sacramento River to 
the delta.

[[Page H846]]

  


                              {time}  2030

  From the delta, that water is picked up in canals--two of them, one 
operated by the Federal Government, the other one operated by the State 
of California--and brings that water--the Federal Government--down into 
the San Joaquin Valley, where it provides hundreds of thousands of 
acres of irrigated agricultural production.
  The other part of that project is here on the San Joaquin. That takes 
water down the east side of the valley, all the way to Kern County, 
down here in the Bakersfield area, and north up into the Madera County 
area here. That is called the Friant-Kern system. That is the Federal 
water project.
  The State water project, like the Federal, takes the water out of the 
delta here and brings it down in the canal, all the way down here, 
providing water to Kern County, and then pumps that water 2,000 feet 
over the Tehachapi Mountains through tunnels and canals into southern 
California. It flows down through the western part of the Mohave Desert 
down here, and then flows into the Los Angeles area, and also into the 
Palm Springs area all the way over here. That is the California water 
project.
  Some of that water flowing into the Metropolitan Water District is 
then available for the cities and water districts of southern 
California, all the way down to San Diego and into the Coachella Valley 
over here in the Palm Springs area. It is one huge water project, all 
of it dependent on the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western 
Hemisphere. There is no other estuary anywhere from Chile to Alaska as 
large and as important to the aquatic species and birds as the great 
delta of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system.
  Unlike many deltas, this is an inland delta. This is the beginning of 
San Francisco Bay here. It goes on out. The Golden Gate Bridge and San 
Francisco are just further to the west.
  Once again, the water flows southward down the Sacramento River, past 
the city of Sacramento, and flows down through the delta, picked up by 
the great pumps here at Tracy into the canals, and down the canals to 
the San Joaquin Valley and on to southern California.
  Here is the problem: the pumping has significantly altered the 
ecology of the delta and, when coupled with the drought, has created a 
situation that has led to a very serious potential of the extinction of 
species in the delta, particularly the delta smelt. Because of the 
alteration of the Sacramento River system's normal flow, the salmon, 
which would normally migrate up the Sacramento River all the way to 
Mount Shasta and beyond or down the San Joaquin River system to Fresno, 
that migration pattern has been seriously altered.
  In normal years, the management of the river is such that the salmon 
are able to get along, not as well as they once did when it was said 
you could walk across the river on the back of salmon--you can't do 
that today for sure--but, nonetheless, in a normal year these river 
systems, excluding the Lower San Joaquin, are able to produce a 
significant salmon run.
  In the delta, the delta smelt have been under great pressure since 
the pumps were put in. The smelt is a little, tiny fish, but it happens 
to be like the foundation fish--all the bigger fish eat it. And it is 
also what we call the canary in the coal mine. If you remember what 
that is all about, you use canaries in a coal mine. When the canary 
keels over, you have got a serious problem because you are the next to 
keel over--bad air.
  Well, here these delta smelt are considered to be the canary in the 
water. When they are in deep trouble--and they are today--the question 
arises: Is the entire ecosystem of the delta going to collapse? We 
think not. But California is severely stressed. California is still in 
drought. Today, the rainfall in California is 75 percent of normal. 
That is for the entire State. For the Sacramento region, February is 22 
percent of normal, and I think we are rapidly approaching the end of 
February.
  What that means for the delta is extraordinary stress--extraordinary 
stress--and a monumental California water fight. My great-grandfather 
came to California in the 1860s to mine for gold. During that time, 
there was a fellow out there by the name of Mark Twain, who was writing 
about the gold rush and other things that were going on in California.
  He said a couple of things that are really interesting. About San 
Francisco, he said that the coldest winter he ever spent was summer in 
San Francisco. I think he was referring to the fog. He also said that 
in California in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, he said: ``Whiskey is for 
drinking; water is for fighting over.''
  So it has been. During the Gold Rush period, it was all about water. 
You couldn't mine for gold unless you had water, and people fought over 
water. They built incredible systems to get their hands on the water 
that came out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
  Today, it is the same. We still fight about water. What Senator 
Feinstein and I are trying to do is to reduce the friction, reduce the 
fighting that has been going on for the last decade, or last 5 years, 
about water as it flows through the delta.
  My San Joaquin Valley colleagues, Democrat and Republican, have put 
forth two pieces of legislation that they believe would solve the water 
problem for them. What they have managed to do with that legislation is 
to basically wipe out the environmental protection for the species--
salmon, smelt, and other species in the delta--and simply say: Turn the 
pumps on. We need the water. We have got the votes. We are going to get 
the water.
  Those two pieces of legislation have not become law, and they never 
should become law, because if they did, the largest estuary on the West 
Coast of the Western Hemisphere would be in serious jeopardy.
  What we propose is to work within the environmental laws and the 
biological opinions that have been put forth by the Federal and State 
fish and wildlife agencies and the National Marine Fisheries Service--
the National Marine Fisheries Service concerned about the salmon; the 
fish and wildlife agencies concerned about the endemic species of the 
delta--to work within those biological opinions which are designed to 
protect those species and say the flexibility that is allowed under the 
Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the biological 
opinions are sufficient to allow for the maximum amount of pumping to 
the south from the delta consistent with the protection of the species.

  In order to accomplish that, we need to use science. The biological 
opinions are based on about 13- to 15-year-old science. What we are 
saying in our legislation is ramp up the science.
  Senator Feinstein was able to deliver $100 million to California fish 
agencies to put in place realtime monitoring. She was not able to write 
how that could occur, so in the legislation we would direct the 
agencies to conduct real-time monitoring, daily monitoring. As the 
winter flows--and there have been winter flows thus far this year, not 
enough, but they are there. As those winter flows enter the delta from 
the north and the south, the fish agencies study where are the smelt, 
where are the salmon coming down the Sacramento River, and also from 
the San Joaquin River.
  If they are near the delta pumps, reduce the pumping, or don't pump 
at all, depending where those fish are. If they are not, if they have 
moved away from the pumps and there is water in the system, then turn 
the pumps on. Pretty simple: if the fish are endangered, reduce the 
pumping; if the fish are not endangered, then increase the pumping.
  That is essentially what our legislation would accomplish. There are 
other elements to it, for example, putting in fish screens at the Delta 
Cross Channel on the Georgiana Slough, and also to improve the levee 
system within the delta.
  We will see. We will see what happens here. We have a choice as 
Members of Congress and men and women that are supposed to solve 
problems. We can go the way of my San Joaquin Valley colleagues and 
simply push aside, negate, the environmental laws that provide for the 
protection of the salmon, the great fishing industry of California, the 
salmon runs up and down the coast.
  By the way, the salmon that come out of the Sacramento River provide 
salmon all the way to the Columbia River in Oregon. So it is not just 
about San Francisco Bay. It is about the salmon and the fishing 
industry for much of the West Coast, also south through Monterey Bay.

[[Page H847]]

  Can we wipe out the environmental laws and simply turn the pumps on? 
Yes, if that legislation were to pass that has been offered by my 
colleagues from the San Joaquin Valley. Or we can work within the 
environmental laws, achieving maximum flexibility, understanding the 
science: Where are the salmon or the salmonoids? Those are the salmon 
that have hatched and are coming back down the river, little, tiny 
salmon. Where are they? Are they coming down the river and getting 
sucked to the pumps, or are they coming down the river and heading out 
to the bay? We don't know today. We are not doing real-time monitoring.
  If we did real-time monitoring, we would know where they are. We 
would know where the delta smelt are and other species, and we could 
adjust the pumping to protect the species and to take advantage of the 
high flows that occur during the normal winters and also this year, 
even though it is well below normal.
  I have confidence. I have confidence in the wisdom of the 
Californians who decided that they would pass a water bond to put in 
place long-range solutions for California--recycling, conservation, 
storage systems, underground aquifers--and to develop safe drinking 
water. I have confidence in the wisdom of California because they voted 
by over 60 percent for this project.
  I have confidence in the Congress. I have confidence in the Senate. 
Senator Feinstein has come up with a good bill. I had the honor to work 
with her on that bill, and I will soon introduce that bill here in the 
House.
  I have confidence that we have the wisdom and we have the 
understanding of the systems of California water to maximize over time 
the water potential of California. And in the near term, in the near 
term when California, this great State that we would like to see as 
green, when California is faced with this, I have got confidence that 
we are wise enough and we are smart enough politically to maneuver 
ourselves into a situation where we can address the current drought to 
the maximum extent possible, delivering water to the San Joaquin Valley 
and on into southern California without harming the fish, without 
destroying the salmon of California and the fishing, the multibillion-
dollar fishing industry that goes with it, and without jeopardizing the 
largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere.
  That is our challenge. This is what we are going to try to 
accomplish. Senator Feinstein's bill has been introduced. That version 
will be introduced over here in the next several days as we develop a 
better understanding among my colleagues of what we are trying to 
accomplish here.

                              {time}  2045

  I have confidence that the representatives of the southern California 
area will see the wisdom of putting aside what Mark Twain said we 
always do in California: Fighting over water and getting about drinking 
more whiskey. Probably a pretty good idea.
  I think we are going to get southern California support for this. I 
think the San Joaquin Valley folks will look at this and say: Well, we 
can continue fighting as we have for the last 5 years with no progress, 
none, nada, zero.
  Let's see if we can figure out how to do this in a way that protects 
the species, the salmon, the other fish, that protects the largest 
estuary on the west coast of the western hemisphere, and that provides 
the maximum amount of water that is available to California, which, by 
the way, has an economy that is ranked seventh in the world. So water 
is really important.
  I know we can do better. I know that this Nation doesn't have to have 
this kind of water in Flint, Michigan. I know that this Nation doesn't 
have to have children in the Central Valley of California getting their 
water out of a cattle water trough.
  I know that this Nation doesn't have to destroy the largest estuary 
and all of the fish, all of the salmon, and all of the industry that 
goes with that in its quest for water and that what little is available 
can be shared and maximized.
  That is what we are going to try to do with the Feinstein-Garamendi 
legislation. I know we can do it. I know we have to do it. I know, at 
the end of the day, we are not going to destroy. We are going to build, 
we are going to create, and we are going to solve the problem.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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