[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 61 (Wednesday, April 6, 2022)]
[House]
[Page H4195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        FEDERAL AND STATE AGENCIES TAKING FARMERS' WATER SUPPLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I have been speaking a little bit lately 
about our supply chain issues and the effects of inflation on real 
Americans, real families, and talking a lot about food grown in this 
country and the effects of some of the decisions made by government on 
the ability to grow food, especially in my home State of California, 
which affects so much of the supply chain for fruits, vegetables, and 
nut products that the whole country, and even the world export market, 
enjoys and uses.
  What we are wrestling with right now are decisions made by Federal 
and State agencies on the effects of water supply in California and the 
ripple effect it has on so many products.
  For example, earlier this year, a decision was made to withdraw what 
is called a TUCP, a temporary urgency change petition, for the amount 
of water that would be flowing from our storage in California out 
through the delta and into the Pacific. This is geared toward how much 
water is going to be there for delta salinity and fish habitat 
situations in the delta and upstream, somewhat.
  There was an opportunity back in December and January to curtail some 
of the water flows that were coming out of limited storage we already 
have in the State of California, mainly Shasta Dam and Oroville Dam, 
this on the heels of a drought last year.
  Lake Oroville, for example, hit its lowest number ever. It didn't 
even make hydropower for the first time in 50 years because the lake 
was so low.
  So, decisions were made based on a pretty decent amount of rainfall 
in October and quite a bit of rain and snowpack in December to withdraw 
what was called the TUCP, the temporary urgency change petition, which 
would have the ability to let less water out through the delta and a 
little less for the salinity and fish habitat issues.
  By the way, the fish, one of the ones we are talking about, is called 
the delta smelt. They haven't found one, in what they call trawls 
looking for the fish, in 3 years. They are pretty much nonexistent. 
Yet, we are still allowing hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of 
precious water to go out through the bay to somehow try to mitigate 
that situation.
  They decided to withdraw the change petition, the TUCP, a decision 
made on January 21, to say we are going to go ahead and let the water 
flow at a higher level than is necessary. Water will be trickling out 
of our dams, out of our storage, at a rate much more than is needed for 
a perception of salinity or fish.
  At the time when we are looking at drought in California, low water 
supplies, and all the unrest we have in the world's food supply chain--
Hungary, for example, is not going to export grain this year. Russia 
and Ukraine had been world market participants in grain, especially 
Ukraine.
  Ukraine is a very, very rich country in wheat and many other ag 
products. Their farmers, right now, are out there trying to plant crops 
amidst all the bombs being dropped on them by Russia. God bless them. 
But farmers in this country are having bombs dropped on them by Federal 
and State agencies taking their water away.
  At a point where we could have curtailed a little bit of the water 
going out through the delta and kept it for ag use to grow rice, to 
grow almonds, to grow olives, to grow tomatoes, many things that we 
need, they decided on January 21, no, we are just going to let the 
water go out at the same rate.
  At that point, Lake Shasta was only at 35 percent of its capacity. 
Lake Oroville was only at 45 percent of its capacity. They thought, 
well, we are going to bank on the idea that more rain is going to come 
post-January 21 up until maybe April 1, when, historically, the 
rainfall tapers off.
  These lakes are both well under half full. They decided, no, we have 
plenty of water because we had a massive amount of rain and snow in 
December. I mean, they threw the baby out with the bathwater, so to 
speak, in making this decision because anybody could have seen that we 
needed to keep every drop in those lakes that is coming in there to 
build them up.
  Now, had they reached the flood stage where they have to allow a 
buffer of space in the dams to provide for flood control, which is 
approximately about 850 feet of elevation in Oroville and, I am going 
to guess, about 70, 75 percent of capacity--they are well below that. 
They thought, oh, we are going to have so much water coming in that we 
will meet these marks.
  Well, guess what? The rain did not come in the latter part of January 
or February or March, and now we are in the first few days of April.
  Here at this point, we are going to be short on food, short on water, 
and they are just now thinking about putting the TUCP in here in early 
April. It is very shortsighted and appalling.

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