[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 113 (Tuesday, July 9, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H4482-H4483]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PROTECTING OUR RESOURCES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I want to emphasize how important the 
situation is in California right now across the board with our 
resources: our water supply, our timber, our mining, and our 
agriculture.
  Right now, of course, you are probably reading a lot of headlines 
about the fire situation, how much of our forests and open lands are in 
big trouble, and you are going to hear that side of the aisle talking 
all day long about climate change.
  I throw back at them, if the climate is changing, what are we 
actually doing as people on the ground about it besides figuring out 
who we are going to tax or whose car we are going to take away or whose 
gas stove we are going to take away?
  What are we doing, practically, about making our forests more 
fireproof or firesafe?
  What are we doing about our water supply to make sure that there is 
more water stored so that people, agriculture, and, yes, even the 
environment can use it?
  What are we doing to ensure we have a stronger electrical grid?
  What is it we have happening? We see they want to tear out part of 
the electrical grid in the form of hydroelectric dams in northern 
California as well as up in Oregon and Washington, et cetera. It is 
just one after another.
  Hydroelectric dams provide CO2-free electricity, if you 
want to worry about the CO2. Now, CO2 only makes 
up 0.04 percent of our atmosphere, but they are using it as a weapon in 
order to force us to change our lifestyles.

                              {time}  1015

  Let's store more water so we have it for agriculture, so we have it 
for hydroelectric power, and so we have it for all manner of things 
that we need water for, for human use and environmental use. Let's move 
the ball on that.
  In my own district, we have a project called the Sites Reservoir that 
has been talked about for 50 years. It seems to be coming close to 
fruition of actually getting started to be built, but there are still 
roadblocks that could be thrown up. There could still be weaponized 
lawsuits to try and stop the building of the Sites Reservoir, which 
would be 1\1/2\ million more acre-feet of storage for California, as 
well as its positive flood control benefits when you are pulling the 
water out of a flooded river system into that reservoir. Why can't we 
think ahead a little more about these issues with our infrastructure?

[[Page H4483]]

  Agriculture in California is one of the most important components of 
our food supply for this whole country that you can imagine. We have so 
much that we grow in California, from the Sacramento Valley to the San 
Joaquin Valley, that many of those crops, 90 to 99 percent of them, are 
grown in California.
  If we don't grow it there, we are going to have to import it, or we 
have to do without. If we have to import it, it means it is going to be 
a higher cost, it is going to be lesser quality, or it will not be a 
reliable, constant source if they want to play trade games against us 
with it as well.
  Why don't we produce it in California? We have the water supply. 
Hundreds of thousands, millions of acre-feet, even, escape to the sea 
each year because we are not storing it. We are not trapping it. We are 
not putting it into groundwater recharge, which would be extremely 
helpful for the San Joaquin Valley, especially where the ground has 
actually subsided. It is sinking somewhat.
  We pull a lot of water out of the ground in order to do agricultural 
activity, but that said, agriculture also means groundwater recharge. 
If we are flooding those fields and irrigating those fields, it 
percolates back down in there.
  Instead, they take more water away from the farmers, and they want to 
replace it with what they call solar farms, which is an insult. Why 
would you call that a farm?
  Indeed, we are finding more and more that these massive solar arrays, 
as well as windmills, can actually change the climate in the area where 
they are. Think of the concentration. Think of the heat sink. We see 
that in urban areas, the urban heat sinks from so much pavement, so 
much concrete, and so many buildings. It raises the temperature.
  If you want to talk about temperature once again, what are you going 
to do to the San Joaquin Valley where the idea is to take more and more 
ag land out and put so-called solar farms in?
  We need to have our State be much more productive in keeping 
agriculture going, keeping the jobs going, and having a domestic food 
supply that is reliable.
  With that comes infrastructure, building more water supply, and not 
tearing out our hydroelectric dams but actually preserving them and 
adding more to our electrical grid.
  We have the Diablo Canyon Power Plant that has been in place for 40-
plus years. It was almost going to be decommissioned here this year or 
next year with the two different reactors. They bought 5 more years. We 
need 40 more years for that plant, and we need more plants like that.
  We have small nuclear plants that we can build more and more of 
around the country to keep our electric grid stable. Right now, when 
you see the temperatures in California, and a lot of the West, perhaps, 
over 100 degrees, 105, 108, even some other areas that are higher than 
that, it is going to be really tough on our electrical grid because we 
don't seem to have the foresight to produce electricity.
  All these things work together for affordability and for families to 
sustain their homes and run the air conditioner and have a stable food 
supply that is halfway reasonable in cost.
  It is a domestic food supply and one that brings jobs to our backyard 
and the water supply that we all need. We need all of the above on 
this.

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