[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 39 (Wednesday, March 1, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H996-H1003]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          KLAMATH RIVER BASIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and 
submit extraneous material.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the time to stand before the 
House here this afternoon and talk about some issues that are not only 
important to my district in northern California to a couple of our key 
industries but really, they are important to all Americans because this 
is a life-sustaining topic we are talking about, and that is food, 
energy, and shelter.
  We had that in abundance in California when we were allowed to 
produce the things that cause those to happen.
  In my northern California district we have much agriculture. We have 
also an amazing natural water supply and the opportunities that come 
with that by harnessing that water supply for food for people, for 
agriculture, for hydroelectric power to make electricity and keep the 
lights on in places like this and all over America, and to mine the 
minerals that we need to produce all manner of things. These come from 
the natural resources we have in northern California, Minnesota, and 
all over this country.
  So we have been successful in developing them and making them real 
since the founding of this country.
  We have fallen on hard times more recently, though, with regulations 
that although may be well-founded and well-minded 50 years ago have 
been turned on their ear and work against good management of our 
forestlands, the extraction of minerals we need to sustain some of the 
ideals we have going forward for the future, for water supply, for 
agriculture, and for this country that has always known plenty.
  These days we are actually seeing at some points empty shelves in our 
grocery stores in the United States.
  It reminds me of a story about the time when former Russian President 
Boris Yeltsin was visiting this country with President Bush 41. They 
had gone to Houston, I believe, to the Space Center. They had left and 
were driving down the road. He saw a supermarket. He hadn't been in an 
American supermarket before. So he wanted to just pop in randomly with 
the President, the then-President of Russia, to see what it looked 
like.
  President Yeltsin was amazed by the products that we have on the 
shelves in American stores. Not only that, but

[[Page H997]]

that people were freely and casually purchasing them, not in a frenzy 
like oh, this is the day the food comes in and everybody has to rush in 
and stand in line and rush out before it is all gone. No. People were 
easily coming and going and taking what they needed. They were 
purchasing it at the register and walking out.
  There was all variety of the same kind. All of it was fresh and of 
high quality.
  That is what the United States has been able to bring itself to over 
all these years, and now that seems to be in peril.
  A key part of that in my home State of California is that water 
supply. So I will touch about upon that here in a little bit.
  We have in the northern California district that I represent and also 
on the Oregon side, which my colleague, Mr. Bentz, represents, above 
this line here in Oregon is the Klamath Basin, the Klamath River.
  Now, that is a natural lake that was formed at the beginning of the 
creation of this planet, but also it had been enhanced about 110 years 
ago through a Federal project. It yielded an additional 7 feet of 
elevation and approximately 400,000 new acre-feet of water supply that 
was intended when that Federal project was built to be agricultural 
water.
  So back in 1906 when they created it, it made possible 1,400 farms 
and 200,000 acres of prime ag land. Under Federal law under the 
Reclamation Act and State law, all the stored water--the newly created 
water is called stored water--in the Upper Klamath Lake which was above 
the natural level of the existing lake was the stored water.
  Again, there are 400,000 acre-feet of new water, but despite the 
clear law of the Federal Government, they have been taking advantage of 
the farmers year after year by mismanaging the lake and shifting that 
clear water right as adjudicated by Oregon courts to environmental 
purpose, to other purpose.
  The water would not exist had not that project been built and paid 
for over the years by the farmers in that basin.
  So what do we have, Madam Speaker?
  In 2022, the Federal Government even cut off water that could have 
gone to finish the crop year. They eliminated 50,000 acre-feet of legal 
and available water to farmers. The really maddening thing is that at 
the end of the season, there was a surplus of water in the lake above 
what was needed to sustain what is known as a biological opinion to 
sustain the fish needs in the lake as well as what had been sent down 
the river for salmon needs.
  There was extra water. We saw it ahead of time, yet they would not 
yield that additional water so we could finish the crop year on some of 
the needed crops that are planted up there. They plant all sorts of 
things up in that basin.
  One of them would be the potatoes that they grow up there. They 
needed just a couple more weeks of water supply that was available, and 
instead they were allowed to die off. A normal, healthy potato ended up 
being the size of my pinky and obviously unharvestable and unusable all 
because they wouldn't listen to the projections that there would have 
been extra water. No. They wanted to start their new water year of 2023 
in 2022 on the backs of a water supply that doesn't belong to the 
Federal Government. It is clearly for the farmers in the basin created 
after World War I and World War II for returning veterans to be able to 
set up shop and do that.

  The Federal Government made this choice. They did this during a time 
when prices of food were skyrocketing around the country. Consumers are 
seeing these prices going up and shelves becoming more bare more often 
than we should ever see in this country.
  So what else do we see?
  They are depriving the farms of water. Here is another view of the 
basin here. It is a little more close-up of the various sumps and 
wildlife areas and the farmed land there. It is kind of hard to see 
from this distance, but indeed it is comprehensive, and it is rather 
complicated. But smart people have made that work over the years.
  Indeed, when the farms thrive, also the refuges thrive. So negative 
effects have been such that when the farms don't get the water, the 
wildlife refuges in the area also lose access to the water that comes 
through that ag system and gets to them.
  In 2020, over 60,000 ducks died in the basin in that Klamath refuge 
due to avian botulism. I paid a visit up there to folks who were 
working voluntarily and through fish and wildlife to help try and 
bridge the gap from the water supply that wasn't there and recovering 
ducks. It is pretty terrible.
  Here we are fishing out dead ducks from the refuge.
  Down here on the bottom is one that we rescued that was really sick 
but that we took back to a center there where they were helping the 
ducks that were recoverable to recover and turn them back loose.
  The picture up here shows just how ugly it is.
  A thriving basin is a key part of the flyway all through the Western 
States, including from northern California on south. The flyway is so 
key toward having the type of diversity of wildlife that is enjoyed all 
through the Sacramento Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, and other areas 
of northern and southern California and Oregon for sportsmen and for 
everybody.
  It doesn't happen when this is the policy of the Federal Government 
to basically take the water away from farms and the refuges.
  As I mentioned, as affirmed by the courts in Oregon where the lake 
lies, also a portion of the basis is on my side which Mr. Bentz and I 
both represent, the stored water is, indeed, owned by the farmers 
solely for the use of the Klamath project.

                              {time}  1245

  They have paid for it. They continue to pay for its ongoing upkeep 
and improvement even when they don't get the water delivered to them. 
Isn't that something?
  It is one thing to get a bill for the maintenance and upkeep if you 
are getting to use the supply, getting to use the asset. They don't 
even get to use the asset half the time now, but they still get the 
bill for it. It would not exist other than for that 7-foot enhancement 
that created the 400,000 acre-feet.
  In 2022, they were initially going to get zero water. They did find a 
way to increase it to 50,000 acre-feet after some late storms, which is 
12\1/2\ percent of the allocation of their water right. There was extra 
water, as I mentioned, in the lake to be used in the basin at the end 
of the year above an amount that the environmental biological opinion 
said had to be remaining in the lake. They chose not to give it up.
  In 2021, they were given 6 percent, or 33,000 acre-feet.
  In 2020, after some battling, they tried to pull the pin on them 
early in the spring after the farmers had planted. They did end up 
getting 140,000 acre-feet, which is about a third of their allocation.
  In 2019, which was an amazing water year in northern California and 
other areas, they still received 92 percent of their allocation. Pretty 
good by these standards, but it still wasn't 100 percent.
  Downstream of that, on the complex Klamath River situation, are also 
four hydroelectric dams that California, Oregon, environmental groups, 
and others have all been conspiring for a long time to have removed. 
Think about that for a minute.
  There is a big push in the whole country, especially in my home State 
of California, to convert everything to electricity for its energy 
source--automobiles. You are hearing the big controversy over stoves 
right now, kitchen stoves.
  In my home State and some cities, they are really pushing getting rid 
of those. Now, most of the people I know who have gas stoves in their 
houses really like them. It is really handy to regulate the 
temperature, the rate with which the heat comes up on what you are 
cooking. You can see the flame. There is a photograph of First Lady 
Jill Biden using one in her own kitchen in the White House, but they 
want to take this away. It is going to have to be replaced by 
electrical appliances, electric automobiles, electric yard tools such 
as leaf blowers and lawnmowers.
  I still chuckle at the idea that they are trying to ban gas 
generators in California. Think about that for a

[[Page H998]]

minute. A generator is something you use a lot of times in an emergency 
for a home or business. There are a lot of other purposes as well for 
them, but a lot of people use them in an emergency when the power goes 
out. If you don't have a gas- or diesel-powered generator, what are you 
supposed to go to when the power goes out if you need to turn it on? 
Many hospitals, rest homes, things like that will have a diesel-powered 
backup generator. They are now constantly under the gun by an air 
quality group, even though they rarely have to use it: This is not 
compliant. You have to replace it or get rid of it.
  When we keep banning fuel-sourced appliances like this and turn to 
more electrification, where are you going to get the electricity, 
especially in my home State of California in which the grid on any 
given hot day might be on the edge of shutting down?
  They have arrangements with the power companies that large 
manufacturers have pre-agreed agreements, I will say, that they should 
shut down when the grid gets tough on a really hot day when the 
electrical load that everybody is pulling is about to break the grid. 
If that happens, you will have people having to shut down their 
businesses, shut down manufacturing, shut down a cement plant, whatever 
it might be due to a prearrangement because we can't keep the power 
supply up where it needs to be.
  They don't really have replacements. That is expensive for jobs. It 
is expensive to stop your business. It is going to be expensive for the 
ratepayers to have to bear the brunt of that as well that use 
electricity other than those businesses. We want to convert everything 
to electricity, huh?
  I mean, we had a last-minute intervention in the California State 
Legislature to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant 
by an additional 5 years. They were slated to shut it down, two 
reactors, one in 2024, one in 2025. That plant alone is 9 percent of 
the power grid. How do you take a 9 percent chunk out of something that 
is already teetering on the edge of failing?
  There is a similar case up here on the Klamath River with the four 
hydroelectric dams. One is on the Oregon side in Mr. Bentz' district. 
The other three are on my side in California in Siskiyou County. They 
are hell-bent on getting them out. They think they have it done.
  We are here to say no because we need the power supply and many other 
aspects of those dams that are important for the area. Indeed, the 
local folks have had two different measures in the county on the Oregon 
side and in Siskiyou County on the California side by well over 70 
percent, an advisory vote saying to please keep the dams in place, that 
they are important. Siskiyou County voted 79 percent for that.
  This course of action, of course, was based on one single study that 
supposedly showed that the dams are contributing to high water 
temperatures and reduced flows, which are causing fish populations in 
the river to decline, especially the salmon. This is at the same time--
you have dams so deep water in them, right?--on Lake Shasta and others, 
Lake Almanor, I think soon Lake Oroville, they are requiring Lake 
Shasta to be kept deeper so the water stays colder longer into the year 
so they can release colder water for the fish in the fall and early 
winter. It is all about cold water by keeping the lake deep.
  If you take these dams out that have water stored behind them, you no 
longer have that deeper pool of water. They are trying to blame the 
dams with deeper pools of water for somehow raising the temperature. I 
mean, both sides of the mouth on these arguments here. This all came 
from a master's thesis by a government employee, not peer-reviewed. It 
contained no in-field research.

  A former EPA science integrity officer, actually during the Obama 
era, a man named Paul Houser, was tasked with reviewing all of these 
efforts for the Klamath dam possible removal. His conclusion--again, 
the EPA science integrity officer--said it would be the worst of all 
outcomes to remove these hydroelectric dams--worst outcome for a lot of 
reasons, including environmental.
  The three hydroelectric dams are the biggest taxpayers in the county 
on the Siskiyou County, California, side. Removing them will cause a 
huge hole in the budget of an already struggling county, which has had 
its timber business decimated, the mining business decimated. These 
large landholders, these large assets, are pretty fairly lucrative for 
the county.
  When you couple that with already expensive energy in California, and 
probably in a lot of the country, this doesn't make any sense because 
this is, you know, green renewable power. When the rain falls behind a 
dam, that is renewable. It doesn't require a fuel source. That is the 
fuel source. Yet, of course, in my crazy State, it is not recognized as 
renewable if the size of the power plant is above 30 megawatts. It 
doesn't mean anything.
  We all hear about, well, we need green power. I guess that can only 
mean windmills and solar panels. Try to get a permit. One environmental 
group says, ``Hey, we want these solar panels. They are the greatest 
thing,'' or the windmills. The other groups, maybe rightly so, say, 
``Well, if we are going to cover a thousand acres with solar panels, we 
can't stand by and allow that to happen.'' It might affect the desert 
tortoise. We know the windmills chop up birds, sometimes falcons, 
sometimes endangered hawks, even eagles, stuff people care about.
  In addition, they are not really very reliable sources of power. 
Indeed, some days in California, because of an anomaly where there 
might be too much power coming off those grids due to the way the load 
is managed, they will find themselves having to pay people to take that 
power because they can't just easily shut it off. It is strange, 
strange thinking.
  I am appalled that this is where we have allowed ourselves in 
California to be forced into by the ideal of green power.
  What does that mean? Everything else becomes a peaker plant. Peaker 
plants got talked about a lot 20, 25 years ago in California when we 
had other energy crises. A peaker plant was supposed to help supplement 
what the grid might not be fulfilling normally. Indeed, the peaker 
plants are going to become the hydroelectric plants and the natural gas 
plants because they want to go so far and wide with solar and wind that 
you know you can't count on them at night or when the wind isn't 
blowing, or, funny enough, if the wind is blowing too fast, they have 
to shut the windmills down.
  Our electrical situation in the State is already in peril. Removing 
these hydroelectric dams means about 70,000 homes' worth of power goes 
off the grid and a whole host of other things. It will destroy the 
current ecosystem habitat, including some endangered species' spawning 
grounds, by releasing 20 million cubic yards of toxic, some of it 
possibly toxic, material--indeed, silt. These dams have a lot of silt 
behind them that has accumulated over the years. They don't really have 
an explanation for what is going to happen with it or how it is going 
to be disposed of. They are just going to release it into the river.
  If you ever hear anybody talk about turbidity from a slight action 
going on in the river, you have to get a permit to do the slightest 
thing in the river, whether it is a gravel plant or doing something to 
clean up the river, having to move some material because of flooding, 
because of silt, and other situations. It takes months and months or 
years to get a permit just to move a little bit of material out. They 
say this is okay that we are going to unleash 20 million cubic yards 
down the Klamath River. The turbidity makes it hard for spawning. It is 
hypocrisy.
  One of the other effects will be lowering the water table underneath 
the ground or near the dams. They have helped to build up the water 
table. The underground water table will be negatively affected by their 
removal.
  It will remove flood control capability that is important for the 
communities nearby. The dams are a good way to absorb that water 
supply. If too much should happen to come from a heavy rainfall, they 
provide flexibility.
  They remove the ability to control the river and have a flush flow if 
you need it in order to move some material or should it be for a fish 
need or other things downriver. That flexibility is taken away by 
removal of the dams.
  Of course, as I mentioned, it takes hydroelectric power capacity away

[[Page H999]]

from the users of the power and those that benefit from the income from 
it, including the County of Siskiyou.
  It will possibly cost the taxpayers of California, who, in a water 
bond, put forward $250 million for the tearing down of dams. This is a 
water bond that builds water supply, builds water storage, but had that 
provision in there: $250 million of California taxpayer money to help 
tear down the dams. The ratepayers from the utility, mostly on the 
Oregon side, also had to front $200 million through a surcharge on 
their electricity, for a total of about $450 million raised.
  Magically, when they were putting forth the proposal to FERC on what 
it will cost to remove the dams, it came in at just under $450 million. 
Well, they have already wasted about $40 million, maybe up to $50 
million, talking about it, so they are down to an amount of somewhere 
around $400 million left of that fund.
  When they remove a dam, they find a lot of things that they didn't 
count on, including much more silt. Up in Washington, I think it was, 
they found triple the amount of silt that they had expected. Instead of 
20 million, it could be 60 million cubic yards of silt polluting the 
river for how long? Who knows how long it will take. The one in 
Washington, I think, was only about 12 or 13 miles from where the dam 
is to the sea, where you would have to push the silt. On the Klamath, 
it is somewhere 120 to 150 miles, depending on the meander of the silt 
going all through that. The life cycle of the salmon is 3 years. Will 
there be enough salmon to make it back through this turbid water over 
that 3-year period to actually have the species that all the fuss is 
over?
  This removal will diminish the value of Siskiyou County property 
owners by about $1.5 billion, thereby lowering the tax rolls to the 
county. The electrical rates will have to go up, and the power supply 
will be even more uncertain.
  Now, speaking about Mr. Houser a moment ago and the study he made on 
removing the dams being the worst option, for putting out that truth, 
he was fired by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at the time.

                              {time}  1300

  I guess they didn't really want the truth out there. They just wanted 
one paper that they had hinged all this on since that time. The 20 
million cubic yards--which might be triple of that, who knows--it is 
about the equivalent of one dump truck of material every minute of 
every day for 6 years being dumped in the river.
  Now, imagine the fine if you accidentally put a little bit of silt in 
the river or a stream, like under Waters of the United States, for 
example, which we will talk about here in a minute. Imagine how you 
would be fined otherwise as a private party doing that.
  The salmon hatcheries downstream will be destroyed as part of the 
removal. The salmon hatcheries that we are talking about are 
responsible for more smolts being raised than actually what the river 
has ever made.
  There is a ridge under one of the dams, a natural ridge that was 
there that is much higher than the river level that no fish would have 
ever gotten over to begin with. They don't want to talk about that 
because they believe the fish were getting all the way up the 
additional 60, 70, 80 miles to Klamath Lake. Bad information.
  Now they are trying to somehow cover over that in the dam destruction 
that they can maybe get rid of that ridge and have it act like it would 
have been a fish passage from the beginning of time. So it would do a 
lot to hurt the economy of the county, local agriculture, the flood 
control, many things up in that area.
  There would be uncertainty when the river system would ever return to 
normal. It would result in, at the mouth of the river, at the ocean, 
underwater contamination at the Humboldt County estuary, which means 
basically loss of seabed life with all that material now being released 
with who knows what is in it.
  This removal would even cause a violation of the Wild and Scenic 
Rivers Act. Siskiyou County's governance over water would be lost.
  What are they going to do to replace the salmon with the hatchery 
gone?
  The actual hatchery is down below the lowest dam.
  Of course, there is the loss of recreation, land value, the lake 
time, use on those lakes, again, tax revenue to the county.
  And the replacement water, where are the farmers and ranchers going 
to get that replacement water due to the lower groundwater status?
  So there is not a whole lot of good that comes from tearing down 
these dams that were there for a good economic purpose and actually do 
have ecological pluses, as well.
  So moving farther south from the Klamath Basin, our water supply in 
California has been enhanced in the last century by some very forward-
thinking projects. The State Water Project in the 1950s and 1960s and 
the Federal water, known as the Central Valley Projects, in the 1930s 
and 1940s.
  Joining me here is my colleague from central California, Mr.  John 
Duarte, who is a farmer down there, as well as a nursery operator of 
many of the nursery crops that we use to grow many tree crops, vines, 
et cetera. So the importance of the water supply to agriculture and to 
the people of California from these projects is incredible.
  Madam Speaker, I recognize my colleague, Mr. Duarte, to offer 
whatever comments he would like to on the water supply and on how he 
has been treated by government in his agricultural operations down in 
his direction in the Central Valley, as well as the portion in my 
district in Tehama County.
  Indeed, we have a mass amount of excellent and very valuable crops 
that are grown in California. Some of them Mr. Duarte is responsible 
for helping other farmers to have and even grows himself. I happen to 
be a farmer in my real life, too. So we see the value of what is grown 
in California and that is imperiled by government action.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Duarte).
  Mr. DUARTE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I couldn't agree with the gentleman more. California's 
Central Valley, whether it be the Sacramento Valley where Doug serves 
and represents or the South San Joaquin Valley where I serve and 
represent is really where America finds its greatest abundance of its 
salad bowl, its fruit bowl, almonds, plant protein--walnuts, 
pistachios. California leads the world in production of all of these 
crops and it really centers right in the Central Valley.
  Many of these water resources, whether north of Sacramento or south 
of Sacramento, share the same assets, the same infrastructure.
  So after several years of devastating droughts in California that 
have really hurt farm families and communities up and down our 
district--through acts of nature greatly, but also through 
mismanagement of our water resources and lack of infrastructure in 
California--it has really cut the abundance that delivers nutrition and 
affordability to so many American working families who are suffering 
from high inflation, both the energy costs, the food costs--and in 
California particularly--their housing costs, because we are simply not 
responding to the needs of our people as we need to.
  So in the last couple of days after a very, very wet season and 
immense hope on the part of our farmers that relief is on the way and 
they would get water allocations, many farmers--and Doug is in my 
district--received a letter from the Bureau of Reclamation.
  The Bureau of Reclamation, in spite of historic rainfall, snowpack, 
and flooding throughout California, is warning irrigation districts, 
farmers and ranchers, that they may not get the water and should be 
prepared for reduced allocations and flow restrictions, which would 
threaten our food security.
  Now these farmers are making plans today to plant rice, to plant 
tomatoes, to plant cotton, to plant vegetable crops. They are making 
decisions today as to whether they will invest more input into their 
almond production, their walnut production, their pistachio production 
based on what they think the market will bear for their crops when it 
is ready to harvest and sell, as well as what water they will have to 
see those crops through the growing year with.

  Today, they are getting very, very disturbing mixed messages from the 
Bureau of Reclamation. So we should

[[Page H1000]]

review what some of the facts are that the Bureau of Reclamation needs 
to look at while warning these farmers that even in this water-abundant 
year they may not get their allocations.
  The current capacity and water outlook at Shasta--Shasta Reservoir is 
a big reservoir in California. It has 6 million acre-feet of storage 
capacity. Currently it is at 2.7 million acre-feet with inflows of over 
14,000 acre-feet a day coming in.
  The Shasta Reservoir has more than 1 million acre-feet in storage 
this year as it did at this time last year.
  The current snowpack in California--now, we are all waiting for the 
snowpack to come down and fill the reservoir, but we can model how the 
reservoir will fill based on the snowpack this year.
  This year's snowpack accounts for one-third of California's water 
supply. The second snow survey from the Department of Water Resources 
was conducted on February 1. So we are waiting with anticipation with 
what the March 1 SAR snowpack report will bring, but we know from the 
precipitation events over the last month it is going to be 
substantially higher.
  Nonetheless, the snowpack as of February 1 of this year was 205 
percent of average up to that date. It contained over 33.7 inches of 
water or 205 percent, the average of water content, of what we normally 
have up to that date.
  We know the daily snow center report of February 28 per the 
California Department of Water Resources shows the snow water 
equivalent at each of the reporting stations feeding into the 
Sacramento River, which supplies Lake Shasta, all of these stations are 
over 100 percent of normal snow water content.
  Throughout California in the same report, there are 131 stations with 
all but four reporting a snow water equivalent percentage higher than 
100 percent of normal.
  At Mount Shasta, which feeds the Central Valley Project's largest 
reservoir, Shasta Lake, the 2023 snowfall is 202 percent higher this 
far into the winter with 97 inches of snowfall recorded. And as of 
February 27 of this year, just yesterday, Mount Shasta had received 
approximately 60 inches of snow in the past 3 days. That is 5 feet on 
top of the snowpack they already had.
  Yet, California farmers' food producers, the champions of abundance, 
are being told to keep their powder dry, not to expect full water 
deliveries this year.
  Now, apparently we still don't have enough water infrastructure in 
California, even with Shasta filling up, even with the snowpack set 
there to completely fill and top up our reservoirs throughout the 
State, even after the State failed to pump the delta and get the 
floodwaters taken out of the Central Valley, out of the delta and into 
storage south of the delta earlier this year, we are still going to be 
topped up and farmers cannot expect full allocations of their water 
this year.
  We need to be building dams. We need to be building reservoirs. We 
don't need to be tearing them down. And what Congressman LaMalfa has 
presented here today is an absolute insult to every working family in 
America who is having trouble affording the nutrition on their dinner 
plate that they could better afford just a few short years ago.
  This is going to be the first generation in American history--my 
prediction--where we will see the diverse nutrition of produce and 
protein taken off the American working family's dinner plate and 
reverting American families to more starch-based diets that go in the 
opposite direction of what every health nutritionist tells us we need 
to be doing with American food plans.
  So abundance is affordability. We need a pro-human attitude towards 
our energy policies, towards our water policies, and towards our food 
policies here in America.
  I hope that the bureaucrats at the Bureau of Reclamation will listen 
to Congressman LaMalfa today and heed his warning, because the American 
working family cannot take any more of this inflationary abuse of our 
Natural Resources.
  Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) 
for yielding. I am glad to be here today.
  Mr. LaMALFA. I am certainly glad you could join us. You made it as a 
Member of Congress because you have a great story to tell as a 
Representative and as a farmer, also.
  So we do have amazing abundant water in Northern California this year 
where so much of it emanates and ends up taking care of our part of the 
State and other parts of the State, as well.
  Shasta and Oroville--Oroville, I believe will fill this year. It 
didn't look like that maybe a little while back, but it holds 3.5 
million acre-feet of capacity. It has a good chance of filling.
  Lake Shasta is a little lagging behind that. With the snowpack we are 
looking at, it could top off. It holds 4.5 million. It, combined with 
the proposed Sites Reservoir project downriver, would get us that 6-
million number.
  But we have to build Sites Reservoir. It has been looked at for many, 
many years. It has been planned. The voters of California passed a 
bond.
  Remember the one I talked about a while ago that is going to use $250 
million to tear out dams?
  Well, it also puts forth a good amount of money to add to water 
storage.
  So the Sites Reservoir has been able to corral around $950 million of 
that $4 billion or $5 billion bond. The rest is going to other 
projects, it looks like.
  So we need to get this done. We need Governor Newsom, who expressed 
his support for it, to get his bureaucrats to move on that and get the 
permits approved so we can start. If we had it this year, we would have 
had that dam nearly full at Sites Reservoir with all the amazing water 
that we have had. So it is an issue of planning ahead, like those 
before us used to do when they built the Central Valley Project, 
largely Mount Shasta, and the State Water Project, Oroville, and 
others. Folsom Lake near Sacramento, it should fill up pretty rapidly 
this year with the snowpack.

  So we are doing pretty good. I have to give credit where it is due. 
Thank you to the BOR for some of the settlement contractors, 
particularly in my area, that did get 100 percent allocation. So they 
did right on that, based on how things were looking with the supply, 
but that is a narrow group.
  When Mr. Duarte talks about others that traditionally have grown 100 
percent of their acres in normal-ish years, they have seen their 
permanent new normal is going to be 35 percent on a good year, perhaps. 
That isn't right. If we plan ahead and build the storage we need, which 
we know we can, we have done it, and the plans are out there to do 
that.
  And when the delta pumps that he spoke about weren't run at max 
capacity to help fill another reservoir, known as the San Luis 
Reservoir, towards the west side of the central part of the valley, 
that facility holds 2 million acre-feet. Right now I think it is at 
about 75 percent full.
  It wasn't looking so good a while back until we had Mother Nature 
bless us with so much. But see, they weren't running the pumps as hard 
as they could. They have other biological opinions that say, Well, you 
can't do this. You can't do that.
  You have so much water in there, I don't know see how it is going to 
negatively affect the fish except if somebody is waving a document 
saying, No, you can't do that.
  So we have to flush so much water through the delta that we could be 
capturing and not hurting a thing by running those two sets of pumps, 
one Federal and one State, and topping off the San Luis Reservoir.
  Now, my neighbors might say: Well, Doug, what do you care about San 
Luis Reservoir for? It is way down past us. It can't possibly help us.
  Well, the more we enhance the supply of the whole State, the better 
off we all are.
  I want my neighbors down there to do well. I want my neighbors on the 
west side of the valley that got zero water, the west side of the 
Sacramento Valley, basically many, many acres had zero.
  Some of the districts I mentioned had up to 18 percent, which in some 
cases wasn't even usable to them. So we saw dry fields like we had 
never seen.

                              {time}  1315

  So we saw dry fields like we have never seen; never seen. That ruins 
the

[[Page H1001]]

economies of small towns. It ruins the habitat for the flyways, I 
mentioned, coming out of the Klamath. There is no downside for having 
more water supply.
  I just saw recently where the City of Oakland has approved 25,000 new 
homes, okay. Well, California does have a housing crisis; we need 
homes, but where is that water supply going to come from?
  We will need approximately 12,500 acre-feet per year to sustain that 
amount of homes, if my numbers are right. Where is that going to come 
from? Magic?
  They are going to have to take it from somewhere. We need to build 
the supply so we can continue to build the housing we need in the 
State.
  John, we have both experienced this in different parts of the State. 
We both see that what we are growing here is, indeed, valuable.
  These crops that we are talking about here, the country relies on 
them. Many of these crops, 100 percent, 90 percent, 99 percent come 
from California.
  If we don't have this water, then United States citizens don't have 
this food. It will have to be imported, or they will have to do 
without.
  They will have to eat something else. Well, there isn't always 
something else if we are not planning for that.
  So it isn't just about California and just a few farmers; it is about 
everybody.
  Tell them about what you had to deal with on just trying to keep your 
operation going on a wheat field or an orchard or what have you.
  Mr. DUARTE. So it is interesting at times to understand some of the 
investigations and things that we need to write new laws for, or we 
claim we need to write new laws because one politician does this or his 
son does that.
  We can't possibly need new laws to prosecute some of this corruption. 
I was prosecuted for planting wheat in a wheat field during a global 
food crisis.
  My family purchased a property up in Tehama County, in Congressman 
LaMalfa's district and planted wheat where wheat had been grown many 
times before.
  The Army Corps of Engineers thought we were doing something 
different. The field agent drove by and gave it a windshield test and 
said, hey, you are deep ripping.
  You are not cultivating 4 to 7 inches deep; you are cultivating 3 to 
5 feet deep. No, we are not. Come out and look at it.
  Wouldn't come out, wouldn't look at it, wouldn't take our invitation. 
Next February, he files a cease and desist order and tells us we can't 
harvest our crop of wheat.
  We asked for a hearing. The Army Corps of Engineers didn't have time 
to give us a hearing; barely had time to drive by and look at what they 
thought they saw out the windshield.
  The Pacific Legal Foundation, a pro bono civil rights law firm for 
many, many property owners and clients around America, representing the 
Sackett and the current WOTUS cases at the Supreme Court, took up our 
case as a due process Fifth Amendment case. They can't tell you you 
can't farm your land without giving you a hearing.
  Well, once that case started to progress forward, the Army Corps of 
Engineers went to the Department of Justice, and my family and I were 
prosecuted for planting wheat in a wheat field by the Department of 
Environment and Water of the Department of Justice under the Obama 
administration.
  We ended up never getting a trial. We were found guilty by an Obama-
appointed judge in summary judgment. Without a single day in court, we 
were found to have violated the Clean Water Act because our tillage 
implement lifted soil several inches and moved it laterally several 
inches while nearing a wetland; a wetland vernal pool that had been 
farmed many times before with the same farming systems we employed.
  So America's food system is not only at risk because of water 
scarcity politics here in California or overregulation.
  America's food system is at risk because we have regulatory agencies 
waiting with bated breath to prosecute any American farmer that stands 
up for their property rights, their right to farm, their right to 
produce food for American families.
  It is a huge risk. Farmers all over America are making decisions to 
avoid these entanglements, avoid a fight, not farm, unless prices are 
incredibly high because it is just not worth it.
  Add in the risk of water supply, add in the risk of inadequate 
infrastructure, add in the risk of arbitrary bureaucrats making 
decisions right up until the last minute that affect our ability to 
plan our farming even for the next year, and our food supply in America 
is in peril.
  It is absolutely unquestionably in peril, and we see it reflected in 
every grocery store across America today. The food inflation is 
crushing working families in America.
  Abundance is affordability. Until we become an abundant society and 
we understand the farmers, the energy producers to be the champions of 
abundance, and the regulators, the NGOs that would stop abundance any 
way they can to be the lords of scarcity, American working families are 
going to pay the cost at the gas pump.
  They are going to pay the cost on their heating bill. They are going 
to pay the cost at the grocery store. They are going to suffer the 
housing inflation we have seen in California.
  In California, a working family is spending 30 percent of their 
income on food and 33 percent of their income on housing.
  There is nothing left for the other expenses they have in their 
lives, and this is all due to regulatory overload.
  We are overburdened by regulations, we are overburdened by 
restrictions on what we do, and the American working family is paying 
for it every day.

  So thank you, Congressman LaMalfa. Thank you for being a champion of 
abundance. Back in 2015, 2016, and 2017, we were having our battles.
  Thank you for being here today. You are a friend of not only the 
farmer; you are a friend of the American working family and 
affordability and nutrition across the country.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Duarte, I appreciate you bringing this sad story 
forward; indeed, being regulated for practices that are normal 
practices that are supposed to be exempt under the Clean Water Act, 
which was formed in the early 1970s, that were reinterpreted under the 
Obama administration.
  They decided to reinterpret, and now it is a wider scope. We are 
having this battle right now in the Committee on Transportation and 
Infrastructure, this conversation where we are going to do a 
Congressional Review Act on the overreach of the regulation of waters 
of the United States, WOTUS. It is going to be in the Supreme Court 
soon.
  So it is important we get back to a level of regulation that is 
reasonable. Nobody wants to skirt reasonable environmental laws, 
reasonable usage of water, all of the above. We all get that.
  But the bureaucracy, as John was saying, is just waiting to pounce 
upon you and level huge fines at people.
  He is not the only one in Tehama County that has faced this. I had 
one grower--this is some years ago--that had a clover field that he 
wanted to relevel.
  They showed up there and said, oh, you can't do this. They took at 
least 3 years, 3 crop years he didn't get to use his land, while the 
bureaucracy pontificated whether he was doing something right or wrong.
  I mean, he is owed compensation for that. And others, for planting an 
orchard, changing their ground from one type of orchard to another.
  That is somehow now a new regulatable situation that is not meant--
Congress would not have had the guts to pass a Clean Water Act that did 
not have agriculture exemptions as it was written.
  If they had not had those exemptions, there would have been a whole 
bunch ridden out of here on a rail had they been that abusive of farm 
policy and agriculture and the food supply.
  Yet, they are getting away with it by a stroke of the pen by a 
bureaucracy, and it changes with administration.
  President Trump, he saw they were wrong on this, and they were able 
to put through a modified policy on waters in the United States that 
actually was working and was reasonable, and Biden pushed it right out.
  So this is what we face now; his agencies are pushing this. Waters of 
the United States: It means every drop of water that falls from the sky 
is under the jurisdiction of the United States.

[[Page H1002]]

  Whether it is a puddle here--he talked about vernal pools that might 
hold some water here for a little while; that is going to become water 
of the United States.
  There used to be a term known as navigable waterways, navigable 
rivers. Well, if you can't run a boat up and down it, it is probably 
not really navigable.
  But they have expounded upon this definition so far and so wide that 
it works for the bureaucracy to be able to attack growers, to attack 
landowners, fine them, seize things from them.
  So the American people should be outraged by this because farmers are 
just trying to provide. Madam Speaker, 99 percent of them are doing 
things correctly.
  Yeah, you have your outliers that try and do things on the edge, but 
they are caught up with pretty soon, whether it is peer pressure or the 
reasonable regulations that should kick in.
  They are trying to provide good things for the American people. They 
are made to feel like criminals. They are made to feel like why should 
I even bother?
  So back in the 1970s, it was kind of popular to say after the oil 
embargoes, if you like imported oil, you will love imported food.
  Do we want to really rely on some of our same overseas partners for 
our food supply? Can you imagine trying to--Russia has grown a lot of 
wheat in the past. Do you want to buy Russian wheat?
  Ukraine, which is a good partner--it is part of the difficulty of 
wrestling with that situation. Ukraine is a major exporter of many 
agricultural crops and fertilizer.
  Heck, somebody I know had a breathing apparatus that was only made in 
Ukraine. They had to wait a long time to get parts for it.
  So do we want to be reliant on foreign sources for everything, China 
for pharmaceuticals? Well, we shouldn't put our food supply in that 
situation either.
  We are on the road to do that due to lack of foresight, due to lack 
of water storage. We could be building Sites Reservoir, 1\1/2\ million 
acre-feet.
  We need to keep chugging water into the San Luis Reservoir, which 
holds 2 million acre-feet. We could raise Shasta Dam 18 feet, which 
would yield 630,000 more acre-feet.
  This is a representation of the water that was wasted during this 
winter, being allowed to run out the delta.
  This is a snapshot in time here. You have got the upper delta running 
out into the ocean here; 6 million acre-feet during that snapshot in 
time. What are we doing here? We are not helping ourselves.
  The economy is in a tough way, as Mr. Duarte mentioned. The costs for 
struggling families, for their housing costs and their food costs, 
almost envelops everything else.
  So where is the compassion for the American people on this? We seem 
to be focused on a lot of other things. There are environmental issues 
that are brought up but show me where it actually is going to help the 
fish in the Klamath River. It isn't.
  A lot of these other environmental issues, it doesn't really--since 
1992, we have flushed hundreds of millions of acre-feet out to the 
ocean through the delta.

  The Delta smelt is almost nonexistent now. They can't find it. When 
they do trawls for it, they cannot find it.
  So it is almost like more water has actually harmed that fish. They 
have other predatory fish that are nonnative that are eating up all the 
salmon smelts there.
  We don't do the right things about it. We do the wrong things. It 
penalizes good, honest, working people that are only trying to provide 
good things for the American people.
  So, John, we have to keep telling the story because a lot of folks 
are just not quite understanding. They don't have time. They are too 
busy in their lives.
  So for those that are viewing this today, I hope you will take this 
to heart and have your representatives do things that are going to help 
our food supply in this country and help farmers, help people that 
generate electricity.
  On these environmental issues, you only seem to hear one side of it. 
No, those dams are not bad. Dams are actually created for a good 
purpose.
  They don't yield the fish passage that is sometimes advertised. There 
are other remedies for that, but they are not allowed to come to the 
forefront. Can we build fish ladders around the dam?
  Heck, in some cases, they are trucking fish from here to there 
because of drought situations. So why don't we have alternatives to 
these ideas?
  This gets into a very important topic in my area too: forestry. We 
have overgrown forests that instead of a healthy 50 to 70 adult trees 
per acre, they will have 500, 600, even 1,000 trees per acre.
  So what does that mean? Well, fire danger, big time. In my district, 
there is fire after fire. Last year in 2022, we kind of dodged a lot of 
bullets there.
  In 2021, we had a million-acre fire. I have got the poster of it 
here. You have seen it before. Anyway, it is devastating toward the 
landscape, toward the habitat, and also affects the water supply 
because all this ash and silt washes into the water system and pollutes 
it.
  It makes hydroelectric plants sometimes unusable because there is so 
much stuff that came down from the mountainside into the rivers, into 
the lakes.
  We are not managing our forests properly. There is a Federal nexus to 
that; the U.S. Forest Service. The pace and scale at which they are 
doing things is way too slow to keep up with the amount of board feet 
that they are growing every year.
  So how does that affect water? It affects not only water quality but 
water supply because the forest is sucking all the water in to have too 
many trees per acre.
  What, you want to cut all the trees, Mr. LaMalfa? That is what I hear 
sometimes when I talk to the urban reporters on it.
  No, we are not cutting all the trees. We are thinning. We are 
managing. We are having the amount of trees per acre at a ratio that is 
sustainable, that is healthy, and we are not doing that.
  The trees are out there growing right now. There are manyfold more 
board feet of trees that are being added to the supply every year than 
we are even coming close to harvesting, so that shows we are going 
backward on that.
  That shows we are going backward on that.

                              {time}  1330

  The pace and scale with which we manage our Federal lands and allow 
the permitting on private lands to not cut every tree from here to 
Oregon, but to manage them--that is the first thing the environmental 
groups yell. ``Oh, you guys are going to clear-cut everything. You are 
going to devastate the landscape.''
  Do you think what is happening now is good? A million-acre fire--
several of my towns don't exist anymore in northern California. Many 
have heard of Paradise. Maybe you have seen some of those videos where 
95 percent of that town burned down, and 85 people lost their lives. 
Many barely escaped. The town of Greenville in my district, 75 percent 
gone, and an adjacent town, Canyondam, was completely gone in minutes.
  There is more up on the Klamath River even. Fire after fire because 
our forests are not managed, because the Federal Government can't get 
out of its own way to aggressively do what needs to be done.
  We are way behind, so it affects air quality. The air plume, the 
smoke that went up in the plume from the Dixie fire in my district, 
came and settled over the East Coast because there was so much smoke. 
It affected air quality, I believe, here in Washington, all the way up 
to New York. People were advised not to go out and do athletic things 
because of air quality from a fire in my district.
  I am sorry. We didn't want it to happen, but there it was, year after 
year, fire after fire. So, we need folks to be on our side on this 
thing. No, we don't want to wipe out the forest or cut down the owl or 
any of that stuff. The owls actually like a little room to fly between 
not overcrowded trees.
  It will help our water supply. It will help the health of the forest. 
It will help not spend billions and billions on fire suppression every 
year once we are behind, endangering people's lives trying to put the 
fire out and flying the air tankers and all that fuel being expended 
trying to do that.

[[Page H1003]]

  Let's talk CO2. I have a CO2 poster over there 
as well. When we are talking CO2, which everybody is scared 
to death of around here as being the major pollutant, more 
CO2 is released in those fires than a year's worth of cars 
driving in L.A., okay?
  This climate change, which is half the time what they are talking 
about on the other side of the aisle in order to scare people to death, 
CO2 represents only 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. The U.S. 
is a country leading the way on actually lowering the number anyway.
  We are going to export our jobs and export our industry to countries 
that are doing nothing about it. China laughs at us as they build 
another coal-fired power plant every week, every 2 weeks, whatever it 
is. There are those that say, ``Hey, you guys in America, you are not 
keeping up with the Paris accords,'' and they keep cranking out more 
and more. It makes us look like a bunch of fools.
  This climate change religion they are pushing is going to be really 
expensive. Watch out for these corporations that are pushing what is 
called an ESG policy. We acted on that this week here legislatively 
because it is going to make Americans uncompetitive in the areas of 
energy and everything else.
  This is pie-in-the-sky stuff they are pushing here. It is actually 
very harmful to America, which is always the innovator of the cleanest, 
best way of doing things. We are always seeking to improve. We got the 
best-running car and truck engines, yet it is never enough for the 
regulators, including in my home State where 70,000 currently used 
trucks, up until January 1, now have to be sold or scrapped or 
something else, and therefore, people don't get the stuff delivered to 
the stores or to their homes that they normally would. It is going to 
be more expensive.
  I heard somebody talk about the PRO Act here a minute ago. In 
California, that was a bill that makes everybody have to be part of a 
workforce or union instead of an independent contractor.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Duarte) 
to talk about regulations in California.
  Mr. DUARTE. Madam Speaker, the other side of affordability is 
opportunity, and families can't make ends meet unless they have 
affordable food, affordable energy, affordable housing. They can't do 
the best they can do without opportunity.
  Until America decides to take practical steps to power our grid, we 
are not going to have the industrial growth, the worker productivity, 
the opportunity that American families deserve.
  I think Congressman LaMalfa makes a very clear case that other 
countries are happy to take those jobs, happy to provide their citizens 
with opportunities that American citizens won't have.
  As we look at our global food system that is based in California and 
throughout many States, a global food system will ship food to whoever 
can afford it best. In the emerging middle and upper classes in India 
and China, where they are running a carbon economy, where they are 
creating jobs, where their grid stays lit 24/7 and has plenty of room 
for industrial growth, is where we are seeing opportunity in work and 
jobs, and it is where Americans are going to see their dinner flow to.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, we want the American people to pay 
attention because this affects them. It isn't just for us to stand here 
and speak.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________