[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 25, 2023)]
[House]
[Page H315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1700
                       LET'S PREPARE FOR DISASTER

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, recently, my home State of California has 
suffered from a series of devastating storms on the flood side of the 
equation. We received at least 11 inches of rainfall and were hit by 
extreme flooding as a result.
  Now, in California, unlike any other places, we have a simultaneous 
flood emergency and drought emergency; only in modern California. Many 
people were forced to evacuate. Twenty people lost their lives.
  The damage was extensive, but the real disaster is that we already 
know how to reduce the fallout from flood events. If we built more 
water storage, such as Sites Reservoir, raising Shasta Dam, et cetera, 
we could store more of this rainfall that would not become floodwater, 
rather than also allowing it to flush out to the ocean where we will 
need that water in a regular drought period for agriculture, et cetera.
  Storing water from these storms also allows us to weather our 
periodic droughts, such as in San Luis Reservoir. If we could run the 
pumps hard enough, we could be filling that facility.
  So, again, that removes water from a flood zone and puts it into a 
good place where we can use the water.
  We get fatalities from these disasters; they flood out roads; they do 
destructive damage to infrastructure.
  We need better evacuation routes for people. We need to think ahead 
and plan for storage and for flood infrastructure, instead of letting 
climate change and environmental issues stop it.

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