[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 35 (Thursday, March 3, 2016)]
[House]
[Page H1119]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  KLAMATH DAM REMOVAL SECRET MEETINGS

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, a government for, by, and of the people 
cannot hold its most basic deliberations in secret. I am not talking 
about matters of national security, but basic, everyday government 
deliberations.
  Yet the Department of the Interior, the State of California, and the 
State of Oregon are meeting with select groups in private in places 
like Portland, Sacramento, and even proposed San Francisco, to make 
public policy decisions affecting my district in the north end of 
California and south Oregon without public or legislative input. In 
order to be invited to join these meetings, individuals are required to 
sign confidentiality agreements and agree to a predetermined outcome.
  The issues involving the Klamath River water and possible removal of 
the hydroelectric dams are indeed of concern to the public. The 
decisions regarding whether these dams should be removed and what water 
and environmental policy should govern the region are fundamentally a 
public policy decision. The deliberations should be made in public and 
free for all to be involved, yet long-distance locations an hour or a 
full day's drive away don't make that possible, especially when they 
are held in secret.
  These secret meetings have been happening for years, and they are 
wrong. The agencies of the government are meeting in secret to create a 
501(c)(3) dam removal entity called the Klamath River Renewal 
Corporation. This new corporation will be the recipient of taxpayer and 
utility rate dollars.
  These meetings need to be held in public where the people can meet 
and hear what they are planning to do.

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