[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5340-5343]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about several things 
to do with infrastructure in the United States and in California. I am 
a happy new member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee 
here in the U.S. House, and I am very interested and dedicated to 
things we can do to improve all of our types of infrastructure that are 
so important for the economy, for the people, for movement of goods, 
and for the people's own convenience in doing what they need to do in 
their personal lives, their business lives, et cetera.
  So this is, indeed, a committee and issues that will affect all of 
our States and have a positive effect if we put good policy in place 
for all of our people. We have jurisdiction over quite a few areas. One 
of the important things we will be working on in the short term have to 
do with airports as well as reauthorization of the FAA, Federal 
Aviation Administration.
  Airports, obviously, are coming more and more into play with the 
amount of passenger traffic that we are seeing. The FAA projects that 
by the year 2029 we could see 1 billion passengers using our airports 
per year, and that is just not that many years away. So airports will 
need to continue to have more upgrading, runway extensions, maybe 
additional runways, the infrastructure in them, the process for getting 
people through TSA. These are all things that we will be looking at 
within our committee as well as some of our other committees we partner 
with here in the House, because passengers are using more and more air 
service, whether it is urban or the rural airports that are very 
important to areas like my district, the First District of Northern 
California. They have equal weight to those that are using them in 
where they live and where they need to get to.
  Obviously, a lot of discussion about infrastructure led by our 
President, Donald Trump, on highways being a key component of movement 
of goods and people and everything we need for our economy to be strong 
and the convenience for our people. Highways are breaking down. Bridges 
are breaking down.
  We just saw the other day, in Georgia here, a fire caused by storage 
of things underneath that bridge. They are on the fast track trying to 
get that redone on I-85.
  Now, was it a bridge that needed to be maintained?
  Not sure. But certainly that is a situation that shows how acute the 
problem is when you lose one structure like that, what it can do to 
traffic, an inconvenience for people and commerce in an area like that.
  So we have these problems all across the country with our bridges 
that are in dire need of repair. We need not have more accidents or 
more things that would endanger the public when they are not properly 
maintained or upgraded.
  Just try driving in the right lane of a lot of our freeways here and 
with the truck traffic on them who pay weight fees and many other 
excise taxes, other forms of fees and taxes to be part of the solution. 
We see much damage to them because of the backlog of work that needs to 
be done on highways, on freeways, that have this traffic, that have 
this high flow that is really part of what we would expect for our 
highways and these systems.
  But when we are not doing the work to maintain, when we are not 
putting the investment in there, when people pay their gas tax, when 
they pay the tax on diesel, when they pay their weight fees, when all 
those forms of compensation that are in place to help keep our highways 
and roads and bridges and all of our transportation structures up, when 
the money isn't getting there, then we have a real problem.
  Again, being from California, we see that some of our highways and 
road systems are in some of the worst shape in the whole country. Right 
now, as they contemplate raising taxes on people at the State level, a 
gas tax increase, a per-car tax increase to get your license plate 
sticker, people are going to be wondering where are we going to make 
ends meet on that, because probably at least the average cost to a 
family would be somewhere around $500 in new gas and new fees to 
register a vehicle and get their kids to school and go to work and 
things that they need to do.
  We need to be part of the solution on that. I don't think more taxes, 
more fees upon working people who are trying to make ends meet--you 
know, $500 out of a family's income is a pretty tough deal when we see 
that the jobs are not coming back as rapidly, especially in the State 
of California, that they need to for average working families, 
especially inland, that aren't part of the coast where most of the 
wealth seems to be centered in California.
  We see that the drive in California is still pushing forward on the 
high-speed rail project, one that was passed all the way back in 2008 
just under a $10 billion bond by the voters of California, and 
supplemented a few years later by ARA funding, stimulus funding from 
the Federal Government, about $3.5 billion.
  Well, at this point, here in 2017, they have hardly even done 
anything on the construction of the high-speed rail,

[[Page 5341]]

which is probably a blessing, because this a boondoggle of epic 
proportions. The original cost, as sold to the voters of the State of 
California, would be $33 billion to put a high-speed rail system from 
San Francisco to Los Angeles going through the Central Valley.
  Just a couple of years later, the true numbers started coming in on 
that, and they finally admitted that it was going to cost $98.5 billion 
was the estimate, this in the fall of 2011.
  So they scurried back, went to the drawing board once again and found 
a way to downsize the cost by using local transit, local projects in 
northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area and in southern 
California, trying to bring the cost down to then an estimated $68 
billion, which is still double of the original budget--the original 
cost that was sold to the voters in proposition 1A in 2008.
  Much of the funding was supposed to come from private concerns, 
private investors, because when you add it up, $10 billion from the 
State bond, $3 billion-plus of Federal money, you are only a little 
over $13 billion.
  And if they are projecting it is a $68 billion cost, where is the 
other $55 billion going to come from?
  Where are the private investors that have had nearly 9 years now to 
line up to be part of this profitable enterprise?
  They are staying away in droves.

                              {time}  1900

  There are no guarantees of income which the State cannot do under 
proposition 1A which is illegal. There is no subsidizing of the high-
speed rail allowed under the proposition 1A bond. Yet it keeps going on 
and on. We have these infrastructure needs we have all over the 
country. I don't see any more money coming from Congress, not coming 
from the Federal level, to help boost this boondoggle in California. We 
will work hard to make sure that doesn't happen.
  Unfortunately, when they seek new funds for other things such as 
electrification of the rail in the bay area, they were seeking $647 
million of brand new money from a different pot federally to electrify 
the existing train route they have in the bay area that is run by 
diesel trains presently. So it is not like they don't have train 
service for commuting in the bay area, indeed, one of the richest areas 
of the country. They come to Congress here and ask for $647 million of 
new money maybe to electrify but mostly to help facilitate the high-
speed rail boondoggle as part of that.
  We need not be part of that. They can go to the funding they have 
already set aside within the bond or the $3.5 million that we don't 
seem to be able to capture back from the stimulus package. Go to those 
sources of money if you want to electrify the rail.
  That said, part of the problem with building the high-speed rail is 
people don't really want to cooperate. When the first segment was being 
contemplated, it was going to go from San Francisco halfway down into 
the valley or L.A. halfway up to the valley. One of the reasons they 
chose to start building in the valley was that was the cheapest area to 
build one, the most wide open. One of the quotes at the time from one 
of the spokesmen for the authority was they would find the least amount 
of resistance to build the rail in the valley because there are not 
that many people there compared to the cities.
  Well, there is plenty of resistance there, too, because, at this 
point, I don't know exact statistics, but they have less than half of 
the parcels even in their control that they would need to lay the route 
out through the valley because people are resisting. They don't want 
this thing coming through their neighborhoods, knocking out their 
farms, and cutting up their property in sections into little triangles 
and little bits that they can no longer farm or even transport their 
livestock or equipment to because it is going to be cut off by this 
rail that will be fenced on both sides because you have got a 220-mile-
per-hour train supposedly running through it. So there will be a lot of 
damage to the economy and the fabric of the Central Valley.
  The people in the urban areas aren't that excited about it either. In 
the high-value properties in the south bay area, they are not really 
excited about having this causeway 20 feet above their neighborhoods 
there. So they are talking, put this thing underground. So they are 
doing that part last. In the meantime, they are going to try and 
electrify the commuter train they have, which is a low-speed rail and 
doesn't fulfill the goals of a high-speed rail which is just required 
from San Francisco to Los Angeles. As well in southern California, they 
want to take over part of the system there to use that commuter rail as 
fulfilling part of the obligation to have a high-speed rail system that 
is electrified from one end to the other.
  Now, they haven't even really contemplated what it is going to cost 
as they talk about drilling a hole, drilling a bore, through the 
Tehachapis down there in southern California, to the tunes of billions 
and billions of dollars that isn't really comprehended in the cost of 
doing the system.
  So this is an issue, this is a dream, and this is a project that 
really needs to be scrapped. Where is the money going to come from? It 
is not coming from the Federal Government, and it is not coming from 
investors. The cap-and-trade dollars that they were counting on in the 
State of California from auctioning off CO2 allotments to 
large businesses, that has withered as well. They are not getting the 
billions they were hoping to get from auctioning off this new commodity 
created by government in California of CO2 allotments to 
large businesses that produce CO2.
  So the funding isn't available anywhere. Still they hold on to this 
dream of building this high-speed rail project that is at least $55 
billion, probably a lot more than $55 billion short of being completed.
  Do you know what? This isn't even a priority for most people. Are 
they going to be able to afford to ride that rail? Are they going to be 
able to afford to ride that train and afford the ticket? Because if it 
is not going to be a subsidized ticket, it is probably going to be 
close to $200 or $300, not the $80 that they projected 9 years ago.
  Then should that really be the priority? Now, California, until this 
year, we were blessed with so much rain and snow pack--there is an 
incredible amount of snow pack up on the mountains that I just flew 
over yesterday in my commute to Washington. We had suffered about 5 
years of drought previously to that. We didn't have the infrastructure 
in place to store water that we should have with a State of 40 million 
people that, in the good old days, we used to plan for with the Central 
Valley Project built in the thirties and forties, the State water 
project built in the fifties and sixties.
  Why have we been sitting all these decades since not really doing the 
things to stay forward and stay ahead of the curve on a population, on 
the needs of an economy of agriculture and municipalities of people? 
Instead, we are chasing these utter boondoggles like high-speed rail.
  Our water infrastructure still has a lot of needs. Our rivers, when 
we have the high flows, many of our levees are in danger of not holding 
up in really high flows. We see that issue on the Feather River on the 
south end of my district and the adjacent district to the south of 
there with the levee systems in Yuba County and Sutter County, which a 
lot of folks have worked really hard in recent years on, and they are 
trying to locally upgrade these levees and keep it going.
  This year, they had to spend a lot of dollars on upgrading the levees 
just to get through the season by laying gravel and mat down so that 
the boils that would be potentially coming through the levees wouldn't 
give out and have a blowout in those areas. What is going on with that? 
The money has been put aside, and the work is ready to go, but delays 
have cost the ability to get more miles of those levees done during the 
good weather last year so that we would ensure the safety of these 
areas, whether it is south Butte County, Yuba and Sutter Counties, and 
many other areas in the north State leading all the way down to 
Sacramento and the delta.
  We need to be getting that work done immediately. Why should we 
endanger our communities by not getting the

[[Page 5342]]

work we know we need to get done, the funding has been more or less put 
aside for, yet needless delay and bureaucratic red tape have caused 
delays in endangered places like that? Or like Hamilton City up in my 
area that I share in western Butte County and Glenn County.
  This is the type of infrastructure that produces jobs--but even more 
importantly, after the jobs are done, the safety to a community, the 
ability to invest there, to build homes there, and to have that 200-
year flood protection on the levees that is necessary to be insurable 
and, again, ensure the public safety. So this is part of the water 
infrastructure we desperately need in California and many of our other 
States, too, as well.
  So serving on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, we 
could advance these. We can have this debate. We can have this 
discussion and hold accountable the agencies that are supposed to be 
getting it done and not looking for more ways to delay it with 
paperwork sitting on the desk for projects that could be going out this 
year that might be delayed yet another year.
  Coming back to dams, that is one of our most important components in 
flood control because we can control the water as it comes down from 
the higher elevations and have that ability to store water at the level 
we decide to let it out of the dam instead of whatever might be coming 
in uncontrolled with the high flows you can sometimes get from a 
massive amount of rain like we saw in the Sierras this year and the 
snow pack that is still sitting up there.
  Lake Oroville, which many people have heard about across the country 
in recent weeks, is right in my district, right in my backyard. It has 
been a great project. It is a jewel of the State water project in 
California, built primarily in the sixties. Well, there was a big 
problem with the spillway. It gave way in early February, and so they 
had to assess what was going on with that and temporarily shut it down, 
in case of so much--an amazing amount of rain coming in during some of 
those same days actually caused the lake to top out and some of the 
water to start coming over the emergency spillway, which became another 
issue requiring an evacuation because erosion happening underneath that 
emergency spillway structure was unpredictable. Nobody knew what would 
happen as the dirt field below that eroded.
  Why is it still a dirt field? That will be an interesting thing for 
us to hear about in hearings that are going to be going on at the State 
level as well as at the Federal level here. Why was it allowed to stay 
that way? A dirt field. The erosion nearly came up. Who knows what the 
effect might have been on that emergency spillway structure. Thankfully 
nothing happened. The dam structure is sound, the emergency spillway 
structure is sound. The main spillway needs much work, and a Herculean 
effort since then has cleared the river channel so the river can 
properly flow from the power plant, which is an important regulator of 
State level, the water that can run through that power plant. So a 
really good effort was done to do that after this emergency has 
occurred.
  The evacuation really worried deeply many people in the north State. 
180,000 people were evacuated. It was the right call by our Butte 
County sheriff to do so because of the unpredictability of that 
situation. So Sheriff Honea deserves much kudos for making the correct 
call on that and making people safe, keeping people safe.
  But, nonetheless, we have this infrastructure issue we need to come 
back to and is being contemplated right now with a plan to replace the 
spillway. Can it be done in 1 year? It doesn't look like it. But 
measures will be taken to upgrade that and make it work. It can be a 
long-term structure that will be durable for many decades. That is what 
we need. We need that predictability so the lake can be regulated and 
water stored properly in a fashion that provides for flood control 
during the high rain season and high snow pack season, as well as 
storing water for those drought years that we hopefully didn't let too 
much water get away from. We still have an obligation to meet water 
contracts and grow agricultural products and meet the needs for 
municipalities as well as all the environmental needs that are being 
demanded these days as well.
  So we need to rebuild our spillway at Lake Oroville soon. That 
project will soon be underway. In the meantime, we still have a massive 
snow pack up there that has to be modeled and watched and carefully 
contemplated as to what the releases from the lake will be in the 
interim until the point where they can know what the predictability is 
of the amount of snow, the amount of rain, and the amount of water that 
can come down from the Sierras and affect the river system all the way 
down basically to where it meets up near Sacramento.
  We need to have that predictability for people to be secure in their 
homes, at the same time finding that balance of storing the water that 
is needed to make a State run because we never know what the next 
drought year will be. Will it be next year? Or will we get a massive 
amount of rain this coming year? So we need to find that balance to 
make sure that we are keeping those communities safe, modeling very 
carefully what is up on the slopes still in snow pack and storing water 
for California's long-term needs this coming year and following years.
  So with the repairs to Oroville that will soon be underway, I think 
people can be confident that that system will be sound. The dam is 
sound, the emergency spillway is sound, and the repairs that will be 
going underneath the base of that should make--if it is ever needed--
which the goal is to never use the emergency spillway, but, should it 
be needed, it would be a sound piece of that infrastructure. And with a 
new spillway that will be built at Oroville within 1 to 2 years, that 
will be sound as well. People need to have that confidence.
  I was speaking with people around the Oroville area, several of the 
businesses there that are concerned that having to move in an 
evacuation obviously is a horrendous expense, but also it is a concern 
for those others that they do business with, maybe outside of the area, 
that they can continue to supply the things that they produce for the 
contracts they would have. Indeed, that was expressed to me at a 
meeting a few weeks ago that maybe they are vendors for others in other 
parts of the State or the country that if they have the perception they 
can't rely upon them to keep producing those components that go into 
other assemblies, then they may not do business with them anymore.
  We need to ensure those folks that Oroville is going to stay, is in 
business to stay, and that those manufacturers can count on those 
components to be produced and made available to them because we will 
keep working to make sure that that infrastructure is sound with the 
water storage and the levee flood control system that we have. In just 
a few short weeks, we will see that, with the snow pack properly 
accounted for and that flood season past us, in the rebuilding of that 
infrastructure, then we can assure everyone that Oroville is strongly 
here to stay and here for business.

                              {time}  1915

  We have the operations of the lake. Indeed, there are a lot of things 
to balance with this infrastructure: recreation, electricity 
generation, agricultural and municipal as well as environmental waters. 
These are all things that have to be balanced. But, indeed, balance 
needs to be brought to it so that no one side is pushing too far the 
other so that we don't meet all these goals that are needed.
  Energy is an important component of that as well. Generating that 
with hydroelectric power helps meet a reliable baseline load for 
electricity generated in California. It is much more reliable than 
solar or wind power. Why hydropower isn't seen as an even more 
important component of the renewal energy portfolio is kind of silly 
and arbitrary to me, but it is, indeed, very, very valuable.
  As we wind through all the different needs we have for infrastructure 
in this country--some of these examples in my

[[Page 5343]]

own backyard--they are also needed elsewhere. Folks in all parts of the 
country have needs for a strong infrastructure, whether you are riding 
the train from New York to Washington, D.C., which I have a couple of 
times--that is a very important part of that infrastructure for those 
folks. We need to support them as well and make sure it is as modern 
and as safe as it can be. It affects everybody, the highway system that 
goes from the East Coast to the West Coast or North to South. It is a 
positive for all of us.
  We need to stay ahead of the curve. President Trump has a very 
ambitious plan for rebuilding and adding to our infrastructure. It 
isn't all just about ribbon cuttings on new infrastructure. It is, 
indeed, the less glamorous that is a very important part of rebuilding 
what we have: upgrading our bridges, repaving those lanes, adding 
additional lanes to our freeways. That helps make it more convenient 
for all of us, better for commerce, better for safety.
  With so much consternation in Washington, D.C., about what we are 
doing, these are some of the positives that we can point to in moving 
forward on infrastructure that everybody can use. It will be positive 
for the jobs in construction while it is being built and, longer term, 
for the type of commerce that will make the United States a place to 
locate factories once again and have that manufacturing and that 
predictability of energy sources, water sources, safety of the 
infrastructure, and the ability to move these goods down our freeways 
to our ports, wherever they need to go.
  With that, I will be looking forward to what we can do in California 
to have better infrastructure that is something people can actually 
use, actually access, and certainly afford without being hit with more 
taxes, more gas tax, more vehicle fees, and more ideas for taxes that 
may come from the Federal Government.
  I don't see that happening here, but the people pay enough. As it is, 
it is already difficult enough for middle-income families to make ends 
meet if they have dreams of buying a home, paying off college debt, or 
sending their own kids to college a little later and maybe even, once 
in a while, going on a vacation that they would like to save up for. 
People need to have these choices. We are here at the Federal level to 
help be part of facilitating their ability to have those choices.
  Mr. Speaker, I encourage all the folks in northern California to hang 
in there. We are going to get through this season here. To the people 
of Oroville, we will make sure our systems are very sound. I think 
already, with steps that are taken, we will weather this difficult 
winter with a sound dam and infrastructure that will be able to have 
predictability and the assurance that, when you go to sleep at night, 
these systems are going to be serving us well and providing for our 
safety. I think we are well onto that track already.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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