[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5370]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             SAVE OUR WATER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, California is now in the fourth year of 
the worst drought on record. Hydrologists estimate it is the worst 
drought in 1,200 years. The Sierra snowpack today is just 5 percent of 
normal. One of our largest reservoirs, the New Melones Reservoir on the 
Stanislaus River, is at just 22 percent of its capacity, with the rainy 
season now officially over.
  Water rationing is in effect in many communities. Many Californians 
face $500 fines if they take too long in the shower or spill a gallon 
of water on their sidewalks. And yet in the last several weeks, the 
Bureau of Reclamation has released about 10 billion gallons of what 
precious little water remains behind the New Melones Dam in order to 
nudge a handful of steelhead trout toward the ocean. That is enough 
water to meet the annual residential needs of a human population of 
about 300,000 for the whole year.
  How many fish are affected? Well, biologists estimate that it will 
affect the offspring of about 29 steelhead trout on the Stanislaus 
River, a few hundred smolts, almost all of which will be eaten by 
predators long before they reach the ocean; and that assumes that they 
won't swim toward the ocean on their own, as they have been doing 
without our helpful assistance since time immemorial.
  Put in financial terms, with water selling for $700 per acre-foot, 
the cost of this ridiculous exercise is about $21 million. But the real 
cost will be felt in the fall if the rains don't return. At that point, 
these releases guarantee there will be no water left for human beings 
or for fish.
  All this occurs after a compromise without which Lake Tulloch, below 
New Melones, would have been drained below the water intake pipes that 
serve a population of nearly 10,000 human beings.
  When are we going to wake up to the lunacy of these current 
environmental laws and the ideological zealots who are administering 
them? Who in his right mind would dump enough water to meet the annual 
residential needs of a population of 300,000 human beings in order to 
nudge toward the ocean the offspring of maybe 29 steelhead trout--it 
could be as few as 6--in the worst drought in 12 centuries? Yet that is 
precisely the policy of this administration.
  President Obama has authority under the existing Endangered Species 
Act to convene a process to suspend these laws during the drought. 
Governor Brown also has the authority to request the President to act, 
yet despite repeated calls to do so, neither has responded. Ironically, 
before we built these dams, in a drought like this, there would be no 
rivers and there would be no fish.
  Nor is this waste limited to just one reservoir and one river. The 
Bureau of Reclamation is ordering pulse flows throughout the State, 
completely uncaring of the impact on the rapidly endangered species 
called homo sapiens.
  Mr. Speaker, 3 weeks ago I introduced H.R. 1668, the Save Our Water 
Act. It simply provides that during an extreme drought the requirements 
of massive environmental pulse flows are suspended. I want to urge 
speedy consideration and passage of this act, but I fear it will not 
come in time to prevent the exhaustion of our remaining water supply.
  I warned of this practice last year, and I appealed to State and 
Federal water managers to suspend these water releases during the 
drought. Sadly, I was unable to rally much public interest, I think in 
large part because few people actually believed that our water policy 
could possibly be so foolish.
  Well, they believe now. We are now reaching a crisis that can no 
longer be ignored, and Californians are now starting to realize that 
our environmental laws long ago passed from the realm of reason to the 
realm of ideological extremism.
  Droughts are nature's fault. Water shortages are our fault. We once 
built dams to store water from wet years so that we would have it in 
dry ones, but the same radical environmental laws that are squandering 
our existing water supply have also obstructed the construction of any 
major new storage since 1979, while the State's population has nearly 
doubled.
  Dr. Johnson once said that when a man is to be hanged in the morning, 
it concentrates his attention remarkably. Well, if any good comes out 
of this drought, it may be that the American people finally have 
awakened to the damage these laws have done and are ready to change 
them and change the zealots in government who are responsible for them.

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