[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 60 (Tuesday, April 5, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H4157-H4158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         CALIFORNIA WATER SHORTAGES HURT NATIONAL FOOD SUPPLIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, just a short time ago, the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Upton) gave a heartfelt speech about his time in 
Congress. I want to pass along my appreciation for him, especially his 
hard work in shepherding through the 21st Century Cures Act just a 
couple of terms ago.
  I appreciate that and his strong work in the Congress. God bless Mr. 
Fred Upton.
  Mr. Speaker, I get up here and speak a lot about the situation with 
food availability in this country, farming, the availability of food 
that comes from farming.
  Just recently, President Biden basically promised food shortages 
around the world and even have effects here in the United States, the 
land of abundance with the capability of growing much more than our own 
food supply. There is no reason the United States should be running 
short of food in any fashion for our own people or in our ability to 
help other people around the world with exports or the food programs 
that aid those that are in poor, dire situations in some other 
countries.
  Yet, indeed, my wife just told me a couple of days ago that she was 
in the market, and there was an entire freezer shelf that was empty in 
one of the large chains of grocery stores in northern California. How 
can this be? Why is it?
  I know we are coming out of COVID. That caused some problems, but the 
essential workers were in there pretty much the whole time making it 
happen, making beef available to our store shelves, everything else.
  The farmers probably never really left the fields. There is no reason 
we should be having shortages.
  I still hearken back to the story about 30-something years ago when 
Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia, came to this country. Along 
with President Bush at the time, he visited the Johnson Space Center in 
Houston. On the way out, they stopped at a grocery store there in 
Texas. Mr. Yeltsin just wanted to see that, I guess, and he was amazed 
by what was on the shelves of American stores, the bounty we have.
  I think it moved him to become emotional about it, and it also moved 
him to give up his role in the Communist Party in Russia and try to 
start reforming his country.
  Indeed, he was quoted as saying, If the Russian people could see what 
was on the shelves here, there would be a revolution. That is pretty 
amazing.
  So, what are we doing here in this country? The regulatory agencies 
and policies that come out of this administration and, of course, the 
State of California are basically running agriculture off the map. 
Taking the water away from farmers in California is a big example.
  Now, people around the country may be watching and wonder: ``Why does 
that affect me, man, a bunch of California problems? They are all 
messed up out there anyway.'' What is important, though, is that so 
many of these products we grow in California benefit the whole country. 
There are at least a dozen crops that 90 to 98 percent of them that 
Americans consume are grown in my home State.
  I went to this irrigation district meeting just recently in my 
district. A whole bunch of farmers were gathered with the district 
managers there, their board. Indeed, the district is doing everything 
it can to make a bad situation work just a little bit better. They are 
using innovative ideas.
  But the bottom line is, the water has been taken from them when you 
are talking Lake Shasta, Lake Oroville, the other projects we have in 
California, the State project, the Federal project.
  How has it been taken? Well, of course, we are going through somewhat 
of a drought situation, but a lot of it is a man-enhanced drought 
because so much water has been let out of our storage systems into the 
delta, ostensibly to help fish, ostensibly to help with water quality.
  One of the delta fish we are talking about is known as the delta 
smelt. It is gone. They go out and take what they call trawls, looking 
for this species. It isn't there anymore, so they have shifted much of 
the narrative away from the smelt now to water quality, salinity, such 
as that.
  We get that because some of the bay area intakes for city use are in 
the delta, and they need to not have saltwater coming into those. So, 
the freshwater coming down, basically, from the mountains washes that 
water away. They need some of that flow.

[[Page H4158]]

  According to statistics I have seen, because I can hardly get a 
straight answer, six times the flow has been pushed through there as 
what it would take to maintain that salinity--six times the flow.
  So much water is not being captured. California still has a lot of 
rain and snowpack that falls upon it that is not being captured.
  What are we down to? That water district I met with, those farmers 
are going to receive 7 percent of their flows, 0.4 acre-feet. If you 
had 100 acres, you would get to plant 7 acres. Can you imagine in any 
kind of business atmosphere where you get to operate 7 percent of it?
  We have to get this right. The Federal Government needs to come in 
and do its job, not just worship the Endangered Species Act.

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