[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 20, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H1244-H1245]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          CALIFORNIA NEEDS TO STORE EVERY DROP OF WATER WE CAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I have spoken often here about California's 
water situation and how that directly relates to agriculture and why 
California agriculture is important to the whole country. There are 
many, many crops California grows. Between 90 and 100 percent of them 
come from California that U.S. consumers use and enjoy. If they are not 
grown in California, they are going to have to come from some other 
country because they are not really found in other parts of this 
country.
  Do we want to be an importer of even more things that we depend on? 
We are already dependent enough on China and others for 90 percent of 
our pharmaceuticals. We are becoming more and more dependent on foreign 
energy, foreign oil, and gas. Why? Why are we doing this?
  I will narrow it back down to the water situation. Last year, we had 
near-record rainfall and snowpack. It hadn't been better in many 
decades, and we were blessed by that. This year is a pretty good water 
and snowpack year as well, but at the same time that that is happening, 
they are releasing water out to the ocean and telling certain water 
districts in the San Joaquin Valley you are only going to get 15 
percent of your allocation.

  Imagine having any kind of business where you only get 15 percent of 
your inputs to operate at the same time when there is plenty of water.
  Now, in northern California where my district is, we have Lake Shasta 
and Lake Oroville. Today is March 20. We are getting to the end of the 
winter precipitation season, and they are still dumping water over the 
spillways at these facilities at a time when Lake Shasta still has 
600,000 acre-feet of space. Lake Oroville has 500,000 acre-feet of 
space.
  For those that don't know, an acre-foot is enough to sustain about 
two households for a year or about three acres of crops. That is a lot 
of water that is being lost, I think, due to shortsightedness on 
planning what the flood season would look like. Indeed, in many cases, 
they are still using 50-year-old manuals to dictate how they should 
manage the lake for flood control.
  I get that. We need to have that aspect. You save the top percentage 
of the lake for unplanned water influxes due to a heavy rain or a 
massive snowmelt. However, as we get closer and closer to this April 1 
deadline or we get to the spring season, they still have wide gaps of 
available space for water on top of Shasta and Oroville and other 
reservoirs around the State.
  Do we really expect we are going to get this massive influx of rain 
and snow that is going to top those off? Time and again, they over dump 
and under plan and, therefore, these lake levels are not topped off at 
100 percent.
  That to me should be the goal every year; flood control and, 
obviously, have the water for the uses that we want up and down the 
State. However, if you are not topping off every lake at 100 percent at 
one point in the offseason, then you leave water on the table.
  They say that we got within 5 percent. That ain't bad, right? Well, 5 
percent of a combined 8 million acre-feet on just those two lakes I 
mentioned is 400,000 acre-feet. That is enough to do one heck of a lot 
of crops that are being left on the table, especially when you are 
telling people down in the valley you are only going to get 15 percent 
of what used to be your normal allocation.
  Why is it that the government cannot plan with our assets, with our 
resources better than that? Why are we using 50-year-old manuals to 
tell people they might have to be curtailed?
  They are actually moving forward with this, 42 gallons per day per 
person in your households. They are not just ripping agriculture; it is 
going to be a dictation to people in their households in the urban 
areas.
  I am really greatly concerned that not enough people are paying 
attention to this because if urban users, in-town users find out you 
only get 42 gallons per day--and it is surprising how many gallons per 
person is used when you do bathing and laundry, yes, you can wash your 
car, and yes, you can have a yard; they are trying to dictate you can't 
have those things either--all because we are not managing the water 
supply. We are not short of water. We are just short of imagination on 
how to properly manage it, and, yes, store more.
  We have opportunities to build Sites Reservoir, which has been 
hanging out there for decades. Fortunately, we were able to get another 
$200 million for planning and moving the ball forward on building Sites 
Reservoir, which should hold 1\1/2\ million acre-feet.
  If we had that reservoir already, even in dry years, we would be 
saving water. We would probably have over a million

[[Page H1245]]

acre-feet in it right now this year--a million acre-feet that could be 
useable for something--environmental water, ag water, urban water.
  People aren't used to being cut down to 42 gallons per person in a 
household. They are used to a number more like, maybe, 100 a day. 
Imagine what that is going to be like when folks are trying to do their 
normal business, and because we can't plan in government, we can't 
manage our supply. We can't manage to store more, so we just are going 
to make everybody conserve. There is nothing wrong with conservation, 
but you can't conserve what you don't have.
  We have to count on record rainfall. We have to count on 125 percent 
every year and we can't do that every year. We have to plan, and we can 
plan. We don't have to be shortsighted.

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