[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 9 (Thursday, January 16, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H206-H213]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ADDRESSING CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Haridopolos). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 3, 2025, the gentleman from California (Mr.
LaMalfa) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
General Leave
Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, we see it every year, especially in the West. When fire
season hits, it can be very devastating. Some years were better than
others. In the northern part of the State that I represent and some of
my colleagues in surrounding States, we got hit pretty hard in the
forested areas, some of the grassland areas, et cetera.
As you know right now, southern California, the Los Angeles area, is
taking it really badly with the annual Santa Ana winds. It is an
extraordinary amount of wind and strength of the winds, driving the
fire to a point that hasn't been seen in at least 60 years in that
area. It is devastating towns and causing unmeasurable damage so far.
The fires are still raging. It is by the grace of God that maybe the
wind will stop. Maybe it will shift somewhat and give the firefighters
a better chance to get ahead of it. We know they are valiantly
fighting. As it is right now firefighters are coming from all over the
State and neighboring States as well, to weigh in on that with the
aircraft, the equipment, and the firefighters on the ground to make the
stand.
It is going to be extremely difficult until the winds die down. We
pray for rain to help them out as well. It is not unfamiliar for me in
my northern California district with several large fires in the last 6
years. We have had the Paradise, California, fire known as the Camp
fire, which burned many acres. Importantly, 90 percent of the town was
burned down, and 85 people lost their lives with that.
Other towns in my own district were consumed as well in later fires
in Greenville and Canyondam. In a little town called Doyle, it blew
right through part of that. It happens year after year.
It really boils down to: What are we doing for preparedness? What are
we doing to treat the lands and have the conditions that we need to be
more successful? You are not going to prevent fire completely. You are
going to have it. When one occurs, you need to be able to have a
fighting chance, and our firefighters have the ability to do that.
{time} 1145
Mr. Speaker, joining me today during this Special Order is my
colleague from Oregon (Mr. Bentz). We share that Oregon-California
border, and we frequently encounter many of the same issues on fire, on
forestry, on water and water issues
Mr. Speaker, to tell his story about what has been going on in
Oregon, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz).
Mr. BENTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to join
this Special Order today and discuss this horrid and tragic situation
in Southern California, truly a national emergency.
Note that I call this a national emergency. Why? Because soon
Congress will be sending hundreds of billions of dollars to California
to help clean up this mess and rebuild.
The most basic level of common sense demands that we not send
billions upon billions to California without first looking carefully at
the causes of this catastrophe, and when they are identified, making
sure these causes will be addressed and resolved.
The sad benefit that will come from understanding the cause of these
southern California fires and also of understanding why California's
fire protection systems failed isn't limited to California. Every State
is facing hotter and dryer conditions. Every State must do a far better
job adapting to these conditions. We need to look at what causes these
horrific fires, what they did wrong or what we do wrong in trying to
put them out, and then apply those lessons accordingly.
You might ask why these questions were not asked and answered in any
of the other fires that we have been suffering that were referred to by
Congressman LaMalfa a few minutes ago. We have certainly had enough up
in Oregon and northern California, but people in positions of authority
perhaps haven't been listening. Perhaps it is because those affected
didn't have the political clout or perhaps the actions that needed to
be taken such as cleaning up our forests are viewed as politically
incorrect.
There is little doubt that this time around those who have been hurt
in southern California are politically powerful, and they can do
something about this, and we want them to. That means doing something
about adapting to warmer, hotter, and dryer.
There is a separation, I guess, in how we approach our response to
changing climate. One approach is to invest billions, as California has
done, in mitigation, that is reducing CO2, and the other is
to recognize it is going to stay this way for a very long time.
It was said by members of the climate commission at Oregon State
University that if we stopped all CO2 production today, our
climate would not improve for between 30 and 40 years. During this
period of time, we are going to see a repeat of what we are seeing in
southern California unless we do something about it.
What is that something?
Well, the first thing to do is recognize that the money you put into
mitigation is not going to be available for
[[Page H207]]
adaptation. When I say, ``adaptation,'' I mean protecting people from
the kinds of events we are now seeing occur in southern California. We
absolutely have to do this. Wishing this away or blaming it on climate
change and shrugging ones' shoulders that this isn't happening will not
work.
California is raising literally billions, billions, of dollars
through clean fuel standards, cap-and-trade devices, and other things,
but they are not investing it in protecting their people. They are not.
I would hope that those who are watching Congressman LaMalfa and me
today would reach out to their Congress folks and say we want you to do
something. We want you to not just come in and help repair and clean
up, which we will do, but, also, we want you to try to stop the damage
that is being done to our forests. We actually want you to do
something.
There will be an opportunity, I think perhaps as early as next week,
to vote on Bruce Westerman's Fix Our Forests Act. It would go a long
way to making our forests look like this. Why wouldn't we be doing
this? What is happening now is certain folks are filing lawsuits to
stop us from going into the woods and cleaning them up so that they are
not destroyed by wildfire. We can do the same thing in places like
southern California by working on water delivery systems and by working
on storing more water and having better abilities to put out fires once
they start.
Even though this was a, I hope, rare event with these cataclysmically
driven winds, this will happen again. This happened in Oregon over and
over, it has happened in northern California over and over, and it is
time for us to do something about it.
The people who are listening today can do something about it. They
can get on the phone and call. They can call their Congressman or -
woman and say that we need your help.
I thank Congressman LaMalfa again for taking the time today to bring
this issue to the attention of the American people. I think it is
incumbent upon the American people to step up, call their Congressman
and let's do something about it.
Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Bentz' perspective on that as a
neighbor, and our constituents year after year suffer some of these
same issues. You were showing that poster of our forested areas in the
north and in the forests in the west you have the opportunity to manage
those lands to be much more fire resilient.
Again, you are not going to completely prevent fire, but you can have
fire where it can be a lot more manageable or simpler to put out when
it is not raging so much.
You have here an example, on the right of this, of an unmanaged
forest. You see how crowded, how dense that is? That means you have
more trees, dense trees, and the trees are competing with the limited
water supply. They are then weaker; they are more prone to have insects
come and drill and kill the trees and just make it a tinderbox.
Over here, this is managed land. If you look at old photographs from
before we started putting all the fires out Smokey Bear style 100 years
ago, forested lands were a lot more--had a lot more open space in it,
meadow areas, and a lot more gaps between the trees because there was
more of a natural effect of natural fire going through and taking out a
lot of the lower brush, the pine needles and all that, and the big
trees with their thicker bark stand and go on.
You had lots of fire back then too, before man intervening, but there
was a balance of nature of that. We started with the Smokey Bear
program and put out all fires, which is good, but we stopped doing the
management in between that nature would do, thinning forests, removing
brush because up until the first few decades of the Smokey Bear program
and putting out the fires program we were still managing the forests.
We were utilizing those wood products. What nature might have burned
out we were taking out, and that is where our wood and paper products
were coming from.
In about the 1970s when the Endangered Species Act's efforts were
kicking in more so then it got a lot harder to get timber permits. It
got more difficult to do anything in the forests especially on Federal
lands where environmental organizations were trying to basically shut
them down and add more and more monuments, for example, or wilderness
areas that are basically no-touch zones.
Here is another example of a forested area. This part on the right is
an area that had burned out a long time ago on public land. Over here,
the fire affected this private land as the government's fire basically
spreads into everybody's land. What you see there is that the private
parties got back to cleaning up their land and planting it back. You
see those trees that are, oh, maybe 15 years old, I will guess, they
are coming back. That forest is coming back.
The Federal land that is not being managed is still the same as it
was. You see dead snags. You see brush coming in. You see this is going
to be a fire zone when all the brush burns the next time there is a
fire in that area.
Why is it our friends, our colleagues in southern California have to
be subjected to this because they also have management needs in their
adjacent areas, part of the moonscape you see in southern California
right here. Some of their challenges include--they are not so forested
in the areas closest to the cities. They have more of this. They have
more of the hilly areas with a lot of brush on it like that. They need
fuels reduction projects too in the more arid southern California.
Their forests are a little further east, a little higher up. They have
attempted fuels reduction projects, but the environmental movement
sometimes shuts them down.
Let me tell you about those a little bit. There is one that was under
way along the Angeles Crest Highway corridor, one that was completed
and did 1,800 acres. It took 2 years of analysis to approve the
decision to complete that where a simple environmental review would
have been done sooner and only affected a small amount of acreage.
A very noble project that would have helped would have been near the
Eaton fire in southern California, which would have been initiated in
August 2020. If you look at that project, it was clear--it isn't clear
if it was actually approved or implemented because the effect was that
there is very little brush clearing that got done there.
When you boil that down to what does that actually mean, it is that
if you don't clear the brush, if you are held up due to environmental
regulations and delayed permit periods, then you are going to be fire
prone. The Santa Ana winds are going to come each year no matter what.
In this case, they burned through that brush and came right up to the
edge of town. We have seen that in Altadena where in one case here we
have what is known as San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, and the
Eaton fire has burned through that. This monument was recently expanded
even more so. What happens with a national monument? As I mentioned a
moment ago, it becomes almost hands off, don't touch, don't manage. No
equipment can go out there and do fuel removals and very little other
can happen in national monument or wilderness areas.
In the designation, it did acknowledge the risk of wildfire and the
need to manage it. But what happens? Lawsuits, litigation, and the
hands-off approach happens; as a result, the fire that started in that
area is what fed into and consumed part of Altadena in southern
California.
Now we will talk about the Pacific Palisades, which is the first one
greatly affected as you have seen burning much of that community down.
They had a safety project there that maybe in and of itself would not
have been the complete be-all and end-all for helping them. You still
need the brush lands work to be done so that fire can't come rushing
through in areas so rapidly. In the Pacific Palisades, they had a pole
line that they were going to upgrade from wooden poles to steel poles
and also upgrade the equipment, harden the lines so they are much less
susceptible to fire or high winds. In which case, a lot of those winds
in my area of northern California if you got a wind warning, then they
shut down the power, a Public Safety Power Shutoff. It is like a Third
World country. We have to shut off the power because the wind blows. It
is a preemptive effort so that branches and things don't blow into the
power lines and cause fire like we have seen happen at least a couple
[[Page H208]]
times on big fires in northern California and other areas. When we
prevent this work, we put ourselves at greater risk.
In Pacific Palisades they had a pole line they wanted to change out,
as I said, with the harder system lines and steel poles, and they were
prevented from doing so.
Let's see the plant one here. As the work was being done, somebody
came along and claimed that they had an endangered species here. This
is a variety of vetch, milk vetch, and they claim it is unique only to
that area. It was somewhere around the area where they were changing
the poles, and they made them stop the project and put back whatever
vetch they may have been disturbing there in the process. That is the
one unique to that area supposedly.
Here is when it grows all over the place in northern California
either wild or as a crop. People use it for a cover crop to put
nitrogen back in the soil. It is really hard to tell the difference,
but it is something the environmental movement uses the slightest
difference to make that something, oh, my gosh, we have to stop this
because it is an endangered species. That is pretty dubious.
I can relate also a recent story when they are talking water storage
and water projects, the Tellico Dam, which you may have heard of in the
late 1960s, early 1970s that they were putting in place in Tennessee,
part of the Tennessee Valley Authority, that it was going to provide
massive benefits to the people of the area with hydroelectric power,
stored water for water use, flood control, recreation, all the good
things.
{time} 1200
Somebody from a university was out there poking around, and they
thought they found an endangered species that they dubbed the snail
darter. For several years, it was the battle over the snail darter.
Nobody could really prove anything.
Because the project was so important, after other efforts were
exhausted, a bill was run through Congress in 1979 to make it where the
Tellico Dam could be built. There was still ongoing litigation after
that, but it got to operate.
Finally, what we have learned many years later is that the TVA was
operating pretty well and that the biologists at that time somehow had
information to remove the snail darter from endangered to threatened
status in 1984. In 2022, it was removed from the endangered species
list.
Here is the kicker. Just this month, a study revealed that the snail
darter was not a distinct species. It wasn't a distinct species.
Look at these two different forms of the same plants. In this case,
it is a weed because it is not helping anything. It is a crop in some
areas with the vetch.
The snail darter was not a distinct species but actually an eastern
population of what is known as the stargazing darter.
This really raises concerns about how genuine the efforts of the
environmental left are, to make claims about species identification
being so narrowly specific to a particular area.
This is what we and the folks in the Pacific Palisades get to suffer
with on at least having that pole line able to be helpful and not
furthering the fire with a hardened, newer pole line.
So many things are California problems, we hear time and time again.
We have to ask what is going on with the leadership in our State.
I am sorry this has to be a problem for the other 49 States. What we
do sometimes has to flow over to others and costs taxpayers of the rest
of the country on these issues.
We hear a lot of talk here about conditions being placed on the aid
for southern California. There are not conditions for what is happening
right now. The firefighters are being sent. Every effort is being made
to put the needs of getting the fire out and helping the people who are
in immediate need to have the shelter and other things they need in
order to get through this timeline.
I guess what we are talking about, and what Mr. Bentz, our Speaker,
and others are talking about, is: What is the accountability, further
down the line, on the many billions they are going to be seeking in
order to rebuild?
It isn't unheard of to have conditions on other situations in the
rebuilding phase. This is the emergency phase. Nobody questions
immediate help for the emergency phase, and that is what is
disingenuous about this argument that is going on. Nothing is being
held back from getting through the emergency timeline here. We are
going to get the fire out, and we are going to get the people who are
displaced in at least a fairly comfortable situation until the slog
that goes through rebuilding happens.
We have lived it right up in Paradise, California. We are grateful
for much great help up there, but in Paradise, conditions had to be put
on rebuilding homes out of resilient materials. The power lines are
being undergrounded up there. There are trees that are being removed.
The dead trees and damaged trees are being removed. The landscape will
be different so that Paradise does not have the same issue in 40 years.
We will have resilient homes that will stand up to fire. We will have
the things in place that are going to make it resilient.
I think it is pretty fair to ask, if billions are going to be sent to
anybody after a hurricane or after a flood, what are you doing in the
flood zone about making sure you have strong levees or maybe not
actually building in a particular floodplain that is highly vulnerable,
and in these other zones?
It is reasonable to ask these questions. We are talking about 50
States' taxpayer dollars here.
``Oh, you are so insensitive to talk about costs and money,'' and
this and that. No. We are getting through the emergency. We are helping
people, and there will be help after, but it isn't unreasonable to say:
What does it take to put things back in a way that is going to be
stronger and more resilient going forward, especially when we are
talking about many, many billions?
As I have said, they have done that in the other areas where I have
been affected or my people have been affected. It is not unreasonable
to say you need to have harder and more resilient areas that are going
to be fire resistant. In this case, in southern California, we want
them to have these things.
Let's talk about the water supply for a moment. We found out that, as
we have heard time and again, the hydrants ran out of water. There are
several pieces to that story. There are some realities, too, such as
how much you can push through the fire hydrants for a fire that size.
Yes, that is a reality. What happened?
Let's back up from that a little bit. They did have a 117-million-
gallon reservoir that was empty. The Santa Ynez Reservoir had been
emptied for the purpose of repairs. I guess that is okay. We need to
repair things, but what is the timeline for that?
They emptied that 117-million-gallon reservoir last February. My
understanding of it is that they waited a couple of months to start to
put out a bid for the repairs that were needed on the cover of the
reservoir. They don't want foreign things to get in there because it is
a drinking water supply, as well. Then, they didn't really let out the
contract, it is my understanding, until November.
They lost 9 months fooling around in order to do something that is so
critically important. Water supply in southern California is a pretty
big deal, and it took that long.
I am not sure that any repairs have even been started yet, from the
photographs and such. Maybe they are doing some preliminaries. They say
it is supposed to be ready by February, so we will see.
They had to draw on three 1-million-gallon water tanks to try to keep
the Pacific Palisades hydrant system going. If you had the ability to
have that 117-million-gallon source ready, that would have lasted a
heck of a lot longer than the few hours the hydrant system did, just
based on the 3 million gallons in the tanks there.
We want to talk water supply in California anyway. Gavin Newsom, the
Governor, is not helping much. Indeed, his legions of regulators are
stopping the water that needs to be stored in California and moved from
the places where it is plentiful to the places where it is needed more
so, such as the aqueduct system and storing water in the San Luis
Reservoir.
[[Page H209]]
There are two sets of pumps, a Federal set of pumps and a State set
of pumps. The one the State of California governs is running 15 percent
of capacity or so right now. Why isn't that running at full blast,
topping off San Luis Reservoir, which the San Joaquin Valley and
southern California can draw upon?
We have hundreds of thousands of acres of crops that have been idled
because there is not enough water. We have enough water. Even in more
drought-like years, the amount of water that runs out to the ocean is
incredible. It would blow your mind what we are not taking advantage
of.
This is a poster I had. It is a little bit older here, but it
illustrates the basic issue that is more or less true every year. The
amount of water that flows into the delta right here--this is the
middle of the timeline--is about 7 million acre-feet.
Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta combined, when they are full, hold 8
million acre-feet, and the amount here in this illustration shows about
6 million of it went flowing out to the Pacific Ocean.
People ought to be angry over this, that we are not capturing more of
that water and topping off here in the delta. The San Luis Reservoir
would be just down from the delta a little bit.
Two years ago, remember, we had an amazing amount of rain in
California in the Sierras, and we were able to top up everything.
Tulare Lake was re-created once again. It is an area in the San Joaquin
Valley that, in the past, had been kind of a lake. Because of farming
and such, they have been able to recapture that, some of the richest
land making some of the best crops in the world come from out there.
That is how much water, rain, and snow we had, and it topped off just
about all the dams and lakes everywhere.
Then, we had a similar amount in 2023, yet the San Luis Reservoir did
not get filled for the 2023-2024 season. It got barely over halfway
full because they couldn't run the pumps. Why? It was because of a fish
situation they had in the delta. The crazy thing is that the fish that
they are trying to save actually had come in in a heavier population
than normal, so in the process of pumping moving water, they trapped a
little higher number of fish than normal, too, because there were more
fish to begin with. So with that, they said you have already exceeded
the quota of fish you can take for this year.
They ratcheted the pumps down, and they weren't able to top off the
San Luis Reservoir or deliver water to the San Joaquin Valley or to the
aqueduct that would have helped maybe top off some more of the
reservoirs in southern California.
Santa Ynez Reservoir is one we have heard about, and I have spoken
about it a little bit. This is the picture of that. This is more or
less full. Over here is what it looks like empty. It kind of reminds
you of a stadium or a racetrack or something. When they have the
ability through the aqueduct to bring that water from somewhere else
and fill that up, the poster I just showed you, Mr. Speaker, the amount
of water flowing out to the Pacific would fill that in a matter of
minutes if you somehow harnessed all that and dropped it in there. It
would have to come down through aqueducts and other means, or they even
have wells, as I understand, that can fill that if they don't have the
upper lakes above that the ability to fill that.
What it boils down to is that our leaders in California, starting
with the Governor, have not been pushing in the direction that would
give us the water supply we need that would help everybody and help
with the crops.
Instead, as I mentioned, it comes down to fish in the delta. It comes
down to the delta smelt, which so many of you have probably heard of
around the country.
Why do you even know about that, Mr. Speaker? It is because, time and
time again, we talk about the water woes of California.
So many people in this country enjoy the crops that are grown in
California. You can see here, Mr. Speaker, walnuts, for example, just
about 100 percent of what Americans consume is grown in California, and
almonds, tomatoes, mandarins at about 96 percent, and avocados. We are
heavy in avocados, and probably in this area, we are talking not far
from the fires. Grapes, wine grapes, so much of it comes from our home
State. Americans enjoy these products, like olive oil and table olives.
If it is not grown in these areas, then where do you want it to be
grown? Where do you want it to come from?
A mismanaged water supply means it doesn't happen in California,
which means 90-something percent or above of all those crops coming
from there will have to come from a foreign country, if at all.
That means people's choices have changed. It means their diets have
changed. That is why California's water is important to everybody. That
is why the management of it is important. That is why the management of
these forested lands and grasslands are important. It is because these
have an effect, too. They have an effect on air quality.
When we had a huge fire in my district known as the Dixie fire a
couple of years ago, it ended up being a 1-million-acre forest fire and
consumed a couple of towns, which I mentioned to you, Mr. Speaker.
That smoke plume was big enough and dense enough that it was actually
able to rise up, come all across the country, and affect the East
Coast. People in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York were actually
told not to go outside or do exercises on those days for health
reasons.
Mr. Speaker, remember the fires from Canada about 1 year ago? They
affected people in the same way. The Canadian ones were not that far
from here. This one came all the way from California.
Our water supply would help L.A. and others to be able to have a
better chance of fighting fires by keeping all their reservoirs full.
Governor Newsom wanted to claim that all the reservoirs were full.
They sure aren't all full up north, are they? That is where the water
comes from, by and large.
This effect we are talking about is important to all Americans,
especially if you want to keep the food products that you are used to
coming and if you want to have the air quality not affect the East
Coast from giant fires. It is also just the idea of why we would have
our fellow Americans suffering from this needlessly because of a lack
of leadership that is coming, in this case, from Sacramento, as they
kowtow much more to the environmental groups to keep their records at
100 percent rather than doing forest management and brush management,
which I showed you here, and kowtowing to where they found a variety of
vetch that is indistinguishable from the vetch that grows everywhere
else.
I face that in my home county, too. They are looking for things in
order to stop people from being able to build homes on the foothills.
They look for the species of the day to do that.
It is basically trying to distinguish different subspecies that they
are so infinitesimally able to distinguish that it really turns into a
game. We saw that with the snail darter, and we are finding it out with
more and more things.
{time} 1215
A fuels reduction project would be tremendously helpful. We need much
more green light. We need the Forest Service, which manages or has
under its purview 193 million acres nationwide.
When they came up with the plan about 3 or 4 years ago that said we
want to manage 20 million acres over 10 years, that is 2 million acres
a year, and 2 million is about 1 percent of their 193 million. That
means it would take 100 years to get over all the lands.
Well, the trees grow a lot faster than a 100-year cycle, especially
the small trees and the understory I was talking about that creates the
fire-prone areas. A dense forest is one that is going to be a
tinderbox, and we see it and experience it all the time.
It takes leadership on that, and it takes having the public
understand. When we talk about forest management, people are scared to
death by a handful of environmental groups: You guys are going to clear
cut everything from here to Oregon or wherever.
That is not the case. This isn't the 1880s, the bad days, when they
kind of came and plundered the West, seeking wealth, and all that.
We have rules. We have regulations. We have smart people that manage
these and want to take care of their assets. These are family
operations in
[[Page H210]]
many cases. They go on generation after generation. Yet, they are
having that taken away--farming, ranching, timbering, mining.
I will talk about mining for a moment.
California is trying to push these mandates instead of focusing on
the stuff people need, such as highways that flow and water being
stored.
Let's look at the dam there. We have an opportunity when we are
talking about water supply here. This is Shasta Dam in my district in
northern California. It is a Federal project. I think we have an
opportunity in this Trump administration coming up to resume some of
the work that President Trump led during his first term to talk about a
possible raise of Shasta Dam.
This dam was actually designed to be much taller when it was built
back in the late 1930s, and it would be pretty simple to add 18 more
feet to that. That is the plan that is being looked at. It is called a
quick and dirty 18 feet. There is nothing quick about any of this
process.
That would add 630,000 more acre-feet. Can you imagine that?
Mr. Speaker, that Santa Ynez reservoir poster I showed--instead of
gallons, you put it in acre-feet--holds about 40 acre-feet, okay? This
would add 630,000 more acre-feet to this dam that already holds 4.5
million acre-feet.
This is a key to the State water supply right here, Shasta and then
Lake Oroville, right in my backyard at home, which is another 3.5
million acre-feet. We wouldn't have that much if we didn't have the
vision to build those in the 1930s and 1960s under Democratic
leadership. President Roosevelt and Governor Pat Brown had the vision
for it. What is going on now?
Everything is all about going into a shell and living in a cave under
some environmental interpretation. Where is the leadership?
We also have the opportunity in the western part of my district to
build Sites Reservoir in Colusa County. It would hold about 1.5 million
acre-feet. Imagine 1.5 million more acre-feet, plus 600,000 more acre-
feet from Lake Shasta, 2.1 million acre-feet of water we are losing and
already have available to us. We are just losing it out to the Pacific.
The poster showed how much water is going out to the ocean that isn't
being used for human purposes. Do you know what? That water flowing to
the delta isn't even helping the delta. The delta smelt is basically
extinct, and they do what they call trawls. They look for it. They try
and capture and do counts on them.
We have put so much more water through there. Starting in 1992,
legislation here caused 800,000 acre-feet to be taken away from farming
and ranching at that point and push more through the delta. Those
numbers have completely gone up since then. The State water board is
contemplating even more being pushed out to the delta, freshwater being
turned into saltwater.
Some people say: Well, you can do desal. Desalination? Great. You
can. It works in some places, but it is really expensive. It consumes a
lot of power. It consumes an amazing amount of power, the electricity
to separate the salt from the water. Just a few minutes ago, if you
were upstream, you would have captured it while it was still
freshwater. You would have it available without that extreme expense.
Well, you can still desal in California anyway. You guys have a lot
of money and the know-how.
Well, a group called Poseidon tried for 20 years in southern
California, I think in Huntington Beach, one of the beach towns. They
fought and fought and fought to work through a process and to get
permits. Every time they would get something thrown at them, they would
try again and say: Okay, if we mitigate for this and we take care of
that, we can move forward with the project. Then they would come up
with something else.
After 20 years and many millions of dollars to build that desal
plant, ultimately the California Coastal Commission, yet another layer
of bureaucracy and people who say ``no'' to what you might want to do
on the coast, ruled against them, and that is it. They are out. There
will be no desal plant in southern California.
Somebody please tell me, what is the solution going to be to add more
water supply for California? Well, conservation. Conservation is great.
Use less when you can. People are using so much less that they don't
have yards anymore. They get yelled at if they wash their car. There
are golf courses shutting down.
We don't really have to resort to Third World ways of doing that
either because we have so much supply that comes, even in the lighter
years, from the other areas if we just save it, distribute it, and
wisely use it. We can still do the environmental things we need to do.
The delta doesn't need nearly the amount of water flowing through it
to flush the salt. They don't want the salt to intrude too far up and
get into other areas where people draw water or it might affect fish.
Even the effluent is something we need to work on, too. A lot of the
cities around the delta have sewer treatment systems that sometimes
don't keep up. They are not treating it down to really clean water and
sometimes there is an emergency, it overflows, and it goes untreated
straight into the delta. Good water from other areas has to go flush
through there and clean that up.
Why? Why do we have to do it this way? Is it to keep some people's
environmental scorecard at 100 percent because they don't want more
development; they don't want cutting trees; they don't want building
water supply; and they don't want us to add lanes to the highway?
Instead, we get things like high-speed rail. They are still pushing
high-speed rail in California, a project that was initially passed
narrowly on the ballot to use $9 billion of taxpayer bond money to help
develop what would be a $33 billion rail project to make a fast train
from SF to L.A.
Within a year, they raised that number to $42 billion. I remember
because I was there in the legislature. Then, 2 years after that, they
said it is not going to be $33 billion, and it is not going to be $42
billion. It is going to be $98.5 billion. This is 2011 numbers.
The number is now somewhere around $130 billion. They have spent
maybe $15 billion or $20 billion or somewhere in there. Now they are
seeking more Federal money, about $6 billion to $8 billion more
Federal, of your 50-State taxpayer money, in this boondoggle.
It was supposed to be completed in 2020. They only have a few bridges
built and no track laid. They are building it in the central part of
the State from a place called Merced to an almond orchard, somewhere
around Bakersfield. I think it is near Wasco or Shafter. Can you
imagine the ridership between those two areas? It is ridiculous.
Yet, people say: Well, we should just give a blank check to
California. Not when they make decisions like this. We want to ensure
that, if California is going to be moving forward on that, that they
are going to do much more.
This is a picture of Gavin Newsom at Paradise, where I was with he
and President Trump just a few days after the fire in Paradise. Trump
warned him then: Look, man, you have to get out and do the management
of the forest. You have to get this stuff off the forest floor.
He said raking it. Then they made fun of him for saying raking.
Well, there are actually tools called rakes that they use in forestry
to move this material.
Here you have Trump saying: What the heck? Pointing the way here.
You have Newsom, empty-handed, saying: Well, I don't know, man. We
have got to try.
It is 6 years later, and he has done very little to help California
to be more fire safe. A fire a couple of years after that in a
different part of Butte County ended up being called the north
complex--because several fires burned together, and they call that a
complex.
We had grant money waiting to go to help local folks do a thinning
and planning around some of the little communities there and make those
areas a little more fire safe and make fire spread slower.
What happened? After 1\1/2\ years' worth of fooling around, fighting
permits, the fire broke out anyway and burned the whole place down, and
the grant money didn't get used. This is what goes on.
Governor Newsom is not doing much to help these water projects move
along with any kind of speed. He feigned it a little bit on the Sites
one year saying: Well, we are going to
[[Page H211]]
make the lawsuits end--end the lawsuits faster on it.
I guess we should be thankful, but he is not directing this
commission, his water boards, to do much to really, really help,
whether that is in the north on our water storage or in the south on
the infrastructure there.
Actually, he was blaming the locals on the conditions, whether it was
Santa Ynez reservoir or the hydrants. He said: Oh, that is a local
thing. That is a local thing.
Yet, he wants to come down there and start talking about the vision
for a new L.A., L.A. 2.0, or Los Angeles 2028. They are going to have
the Olympics there in 2028, I think.
He is already giddy about how they are going to change L.A. into
something else. Is this going to become a new planned community of 15-
minute cities and people having limitations on how they are going to
live there? Is that what you want?
It seems to be where they are going because he is actually giddy
about it. You should see the recordings. He was doing a little dance
and stuff like, yeah, we have got a new plan for this. We are going to
bring everybody.
It is appalling. People are angry. They are angry at this leadership.
How they can have a situation where that Santa Ynez reservoir was
empty and the L.A. Fire Department wasn't even aware of that and didn't
know they would not have that kind of water supply for a period of time
that they maybe would have counted on? The dots aren't connecting here.
Since the State regulates so much of this, then what is the State
doing to ensure, since they have a lot of fires in L.A. and have the
Santa Anna winds every year, that they are doing everything they can to
make sure it is not vulnerable?
Are we doing everything we can to help streamline permits to build up
the infrastructure even more? They aren't. They throw more out. They
find more species every day, every week, to throw up a roadblock. The
leadership there happily seems to acquiesce to that.
When we talk about what we are going to do, there absolutely has to
be accountability for it.
I am grateful for the amount of emergency help that has helped so
many Californians in fire-prone situations in other areas, and it isn't
their fault.
The U.S. Forest Service has a lot to be questioned about on how they
manage lands because their Forest Service lands are adjacent to many of
these towns. Indeed, the towns grew up as logging towns, and they used
to be able to go out to those areas and manage and use those and cut
trees for the Nation's wood and paper product supply needs.
That all started shutting down in the 1970s due to the spotted owl
and whatever other species du jour they can come up with to do that, or
water quality issues. Oh, my gosh, they are going to affect the water
quality.
We already know how to do that. We don't cut trees near the creeks
anymore. We don't do much near the creeks and the rivers. We stay away.
They know how to do that prescription. It still takes forever to get a
permit to do any of these things.
As the State moves toward more mandates on electric cars, on electric
stoves, and electric trains and trucks--thankfully, a mandate got
pushed off a little bit on trains and trucks because I don't know how
people were going to get their supplies and get provisions if nobody
can ship it in because of vehicles that don't even exist at the level
of emissions that they are talking about.
Just let attrition do its job. Let everybody replace the trucks with
new trucks over time, and maybe even us farmers could buy the ones that
are only 10 years old that are still nice, running trucks when we only
use a few thousand miles a year. No, we don't even get exemptions for
that.
It is one thing after another to try and do business, to try to be a
farmer, to be a rancher, to be a miner, or anything in the State of
California and so much of the West.
I hope this place doesn't emulate some of the regulations that
California has coming along, like one called the PRO Act, which means
you basically have to be in a union in order to work. You can't be a
self-employed contractor.
These are the things that come from California that they are trying
to push here. Thankfully, we are going to have a change in direction
here in leadership coming from the White House.
If we are going to be more successful, we have to consider the
Endangered Species Act working the way it was intended, the way
Congress passed it back in the early 1970s.
I don't think the weapon that has turned into would have even passed
in Congress because nobody would have wanted to have been responsible
for what you see now, with people being sued to death if they have a
stocked pond on their land. Somehow that can be interpreted as you have
now changed the waterways and you have changed the ability for a
species to be there, like the raise of Shasta Dam.
They are going to find a species there to keep it from being raised.
It is an existing dam which already had plans on the books to make it
taller to begin with, except the war came along, and they kind of put
off raising it more. They will find a species to try and stop it from
being raised a mere 18 feet and adding 600,000 acre-feet.
Endangered Species Act will be used to try and stop the type of
timber management that is needed so badly in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains and every other area.
One of the counties that I have part of the forest in that is known
as the Mendocino National Forest on the western part of my district and
flows into the coastal area, 97 percent of that national forest has
burned over about a 20-year or 25-year period.
What a stellar track record. Yes, 97 percent of this particular
forest that we are supposed to manage has burned over this period of
time. That is worse than an F grade. It is astounding that the citizens
are putting up with this.
{time} 1230
What I see happening in southern California is they are pushing back
on the leadership that has gotten us into this situation. We are going
to be there for them. We are going to be there right now as we are, as
the firefighters--not me, not us, but we are making sure that things
are going to be provided so they can get through this immediate
emergency, get the fire out, get people stabilized, and then go forward
in the rebuild process.
There is nothing wrong with asking for accountability on how we keep
out of the situation in the rebuild, as they did in Paradise, as they
do just about everywhere else to improve so we don't subject the next
generations to the same danger.
Why would you do that? So you don't have cockamamie ideas like
Governor Newsom and others have on re-envisioning L.A. and all that.
What does that mean? Does that mean people are going to have choices?
Does it mean they are going to have freedoms? Is there going to be some
mandate there on how they are forced to live and how they are supposed
to stay in tight communities, things like that?
I do have a degree of anger over this as well because I have been
watching it long enough as a legislator, as a private citizen, and
watching this happen to my neighbors, watching this happen to the
taxpayers of the U.S., but of California. So many people are leaving
the State that were in business or have a retirement. They are not
going to stay and pay for this anymore. They are angry, too.
Leadership is important. Competence is important. Having the fire
systems ready at the go, and if it isn't ready enough, if it isn't big
enough, then we talk about: Well, how do we make them better? How do we
make them bigger. How do we have more capacity for the hydrants? How do
we have more water waiting for us? How is the fire department not
allowed to know that the people running Santa Ynez Reservoir have had
it empty for nearly a year and that they might draw upon that?
Mr. Speaker, three million gallons in three tanks versus 117 million
just up the hill. That would have stretched a few hours' worth of
firefighting ability to several days out of that 117 million if it had
been there and available.
Being able to fill that 117-million-gallon reservoir over and over
again with the aqueduct, with the water that could come from the
north--no. Instead, it is running out to the ocean. No. We can't build
the reservoirs we need to add to the water supply that
[[Page H212]]
everybody needs, people need, SoCal needs. The crops in San Joaquin
Valley that I showed you are so important to people all across the
whole country. There are people in my neighborhood that need it.
Again, there is plenty of water. There is plenty of know-how. The
loggers, the timber people, so many of them are unemployed and have the
know-how that could be managing the forest in a way that is
ecologically sound and correct. They are not allowed to do it.
Do you know we have to fight every year for something called SRS, the
Secure Rural Schools fund that costs taxpayers? I am blessed that there
is not pushback on that. We used to have a timber industry that the
receipts from the timber we would cut would go for these local--the
money stayed locally, the timber receipts, at least a portion, for
counties to pay for schools and roads. That is why it is called the
Secure Rural Schools. It pays for the county roads, at least in part,
and the local schools.
With the spotted owl and the environmental movement taking the ESA
and weaponizing it in the early seventies, late seventies, and the
eighties, those timber industries died off. The number of mills we used
to have in California--which are an important partner in all this. We
need to have those wood mills, so if we finally do get around to
logging this product and what people need that we will have the
infrastructure to actually do something with it.
Instead, since those receipts are gone and since that economy is
gone, my constituents, my county supervisors, and other locals have to
come here hat in hand to D.C., can you be sure the Secure Rural Schools
fund stays in the next appropriation bill or whichever mechanism we are
working on at that time. Would you put that in there for us?
Geri Byrne, a good friend, is heading up the Rural Counties of
California. She has been an important partner on that, and I would hate
to have to look her in the eye and say: We will try. We think we can
get it done. We will probably get it done.
Will we get it done in time? We have to get it done before March,
otherwise the counties are going to be upside down on that fund that
they need to get through that year.
Wouldn't we rather have the receipts come from the forest? Wouldn't
you rather have people doing the work, to produce the timber and wood
products and paper products that you need from America and not have to
have these good folks come hat in hand and beg for another taxpayer
fund? I know what side I am on.
We are held up by leaders, whether it is at my State level or some
back here in D.C. in these agencies that are just completely thinking
about something else. The urgency to get things done, the urgency to
get permits done, they don't seem to care how long it takes to get a
permit done. There are people out there waiting, people waiting to do
whatever the construction project is, whatever the clearance project
is.
It makes you wonder.
That is why I am excited about this DOGE group that Elon Musk and Mr.
Ramaswamy are working on to say what parts of government are working
and what parts aren't. Where do we fund? Where do we not fund?
Because taxpayers have every right to ask those questions as well. We
are talking about this situation here, taxpayers have a right to know:
Are they going to do better next time? Yet, the mantra seems to be
like, oh, you are placing conditions. Conditions is the dirty word of
the week on this. It is all rehearsed. It is all coming out on the same
memo.
Let's think of another word. Guardrails. Is that good enough? Put
guardrails on it. It doesn't matter the euphemism. You need to be sure
that Federal taxpayers are going to see at the end of the day the wise
use of that so we are not back here in 40 years doing the same thing
over again.
That is so hard-hearted and cold. No, it is not. We are going to help
those folks. I am grateful for the help we have had in the north. I
know the folks in southern California, once they get their feet under
them, will be too. I think they want the freedom to be able to
reestablish themselves in little towns like Altadena. A lot of nice,
regular folks there. This isn't the rich elite. These are more regular
folks. They just want a chance to maybe get back to how they were, and
I hope we can help them do that. I hope we can somehow get them back to
where they were. Maybe it will be with more resilient homes next time
made out of different materials. That is good.
We also need to help them with the brush clearing on the mountains
above there that are being stopped by regulations or the funding
getting pulled back by Newsom. Mr. Speaker, $100 million, I think, got
pulled back and part of that would have been the brush clearing that is
so badly needed, which creates a buffer when the Santa Ana winds blow
fire toward you. If you don't have that brush there, you have got a
much greater chance of stopping the fire before it hits the houses
there.
So the people in Altadena would like to have that help, I am sure.
They would like to have people that are accountable to bring the
leadership that is needed to have that readiness.
We assume, as citizens, that things are ready. We assume our police
force is ready, the fire department is ready, the infrastructure is
ready, the water is being stored. I guess we assume that because we
assume we have smart people in those positions that are thinking ahead.
We are doing our day-to-day jobs in this Republic. We are not a
democracy; we are a Republic. We elect these people that are supposed
to be thinking about that stuff.
Certainly, I come down here and rant about this on the floor and
whenever I can in committee, and others always want to talk about
something else, like the mass inflow of illegal immigrants that cost
California so much money.
California is spending money on a whole lot of things. I mentioned
the high-speed rail. We are spending money on a whole lot of things
that aren't helping its citizens and, indeed, helping someone else--
some that are here illegally, giving benefits that are outrageous.
Well, why should the Federal taxpayer basically help subsidize that?
California, during the COVID era, drew about $20 billion from the
Federal Government to help supplement unemployment benefits and after a
period of time when it was clear, they weren't going to pay it back.
California, instead of paying it back, has now decided to sack
employers by doubling the unemployment insurance amount they have to
contribute as part of the pay package for their employees. It went from
0.6 to 1.2, I believe. That is going to cost the employers. Ultimately,
it is going to cost the employees themselves, because there is less
ability to give raises. All of that is because California blew the $20
billion on something else instead of the maintenance obligation of
paying it back to the Federal Government on that unemployment fund.
Is this good? Is this an accountable record that people say: Oh,
yeah, just give them money willy-nilly. Not a chance. Not a chance.
So we can demand accountability and not be bad people for it. We are
looking for solutions that are long-term and we will help those folks.
Our hearts are with you in southern California because I know at the
end of this, instead of the rhetoric you are hearing that might be
getting you wound up, you would like accountability as well.
You are already angry at some of the folks down there. You are angry
at some of the folks in Sacramento that are putting--you are probably
angry that the Democrat-controlled legislature is putting, as a
requirement, as a condition for some of the State aid that should be
going to southern California, the $50-million package of lawsuit money
they want to use to fight Trump. That is tied together in a package
right now in the State legislature.
So they are pointing at us for talking about accountability. We don't
even have a package put together quite yet as we still have to assess
all the damages postfire. We are doing everything we can to help during
the fire with what people need, but postfire, you then have to assess
that. That takes a little bit of time, and we need accountability.
I hope people demand accountability to the people that put them in
this place to begin with in California and at the local level.
We are with you on this. We are with you on that accountability. We
will be there to help the right way.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
[[Page H213]]
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