[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 12189-12190]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    CALIFORNIA WATER SUPPLY SHORTAGE

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. JIM COSTA

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, September 9, 2016

  Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the following:

[[Page 12190]]



                           Absolutely Nothing

                   (By Cannon Michael, Sept. 8, 2016)

       California's water supply shortage is a microcosm of what's 
     wrong in U.S. politics. The San Joaquin Valley in Central 
     California is the most productive agricultural area in the 
     world and is the envy of many countries that rely on imported 
     food supplies because their climate or soil is not suitable 
     to sustain farming. But California's water supply to this 
     region has been critically curtailed by the government's 
     inability to manage water resources.
       That breakdown caused President Obama to visit the Central 
     Valley in 2014 and sit down with farmers to hear about water 
     supply problems. Several members of his administration, 
     including the Secretary of Interior and recently the 
     Secretary of Commerce, have personally visited the area and 
     listened to local business and community leaders talk about 
     their concern for the future of the region. Former Speaker 
     John Boehner and numerous members of Congress, including 
     Senate Energy Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, have 
     toured the ravaged area and committed to work with their 
     colleagues to assist Central Valley communities. Republican 
     members of Congress, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy 
     and Rep. David Valadao, as well as their Democratic 
     colleagues, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Jim Costa, have 
     introduced legislation to try to fix the problem.
       Remarkably, the highest leadership in the country has 
     focused on the water supply problem and a bipartisan group of 
     legislators has been working on legislative solutions. They 
     all claim that the status quo is unacceptable. And what has 
     happened?
       Nothing.
       Absolutely nothing.
       This is why so many people are frustrated with politics as 
     usual and are demanding that things change. We have an 
     identified problem--a water delivery system that has been 
     completely overrun and strangled by a regulatory process run 
     amok. We have a water delivery system that was brilliantly 
     designed and constructed decades ago to withstand five 
     consecutive years of extreme drought, but when the state is 
     blessed with rainfall and snowpack, as we were this year, the 
     system still can't even provide water to communities. As a 
     result, a key part of the U.S. food supply is in jeopardy and 
     millions of Californians are seeing an important part of 
     their state in decline.
       Many people outside of California often ask why this is 
     happening to such a productive area of the country? 
     Unfortunately, there is no acceptable answer. The current 
     policies restricting water deliveries are intended to protect 
     endangered species, but those policies have failed miserably. 
     Despite the massive redistribution of water from people, 
     schools, communities and farms in a misguided attempt to save 
     a fish, the fish populations have actually declined. After 
     three very dry years, California had a wet winter in early 
     2016 but rather than using the water to re-supply reservoirs 
     and communities, the government sent over 200 billion gallons 
     of water into the ocean. The result? Dead fish, depleted 
     reservoirs, and dying communities. Nobody wins.
       This is not a recent problem; the water system has been 
     failing for more than 20 years. Part of the problem is that 
     progress on a solution is being held hostage by federal 
     agencies that are serving narrow interests and creating legal 
     issues that prohibit any progress toward achieving 
     comprehensive solutions. The agencies' water management 
     policies might be defensible if the policies were working and 
     providing some beneficial result. But farmland continues to 
     die out, jobs have been lost, fish populations are at greater 
     risk, land subsidence and other environmental consequences 
     are continuing, and poverty rates are rising in the impacted 
     communities. The result, agencies hide behind the law and the 
     Administration and Congress have been unable to agree on a 
     solution that will reverse this horrible decline.
       To be fair, there are efforts from both sides of the aisle 
     working to solve the problem. S. 1894 or S. 2533 (Feinstein) 
     and HR 2898 (Valadao) are proposing to modify current 
     policies and rein in federal agencies. These are not radical 
     proposals, but are measured policy changes designed to 
     improve all the outcomes--increased water supply for 
     communities, better water management, and increased funding 
     for environmental programs. This is what government is 
     supposed to do--find solutions that are compatible with a 
     variety of interests.
       With the critical period for California water supply system 
     to be replenished arriving in less than six months, Congress 
     has very little time to act on legislation. For farmers and 
     farmworkers, planning and financial decisions about crops and 
     food production and hiring start long before planting season 
     begins in February. There is no more time to waste.
       Absolutely nothing is no longer acceptable. Congress needs 
     to pass legislation that solves this decades-long problem. If 
     they do not, absolutely nothing is what they should expect 
     from us in return.

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