[Pages H96-H97]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1215
                    SOLVING FIRE CRISIS IN THE WEST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, well, it is everywhere. You can't avoid it 
in the news, and it shouldn't be avoided. It is so horrible. The fires 
we have now in southern California are devastating so much there, so 
much value, so much loss, and up to 24 lives lost now. It is an 
incredibly unnecessary happening that has been raging in L.A. It 
happens every year with the Santa Ana winds.
  Up in the northern California area that I represent, we have had that 
devastation already many times: The town of Paradise, town of 
Greenville, town of Canyondam, and others were completely obliterated.
  Our Governor Gavin Newsom has been up there to see those fires, 
especially the Paradise one when President Trump came to Paradise and 
visited to see the devastation. At the time, President Trump asked him 
and others: What are you doing to clear the land in

[[Page H97]]

such a way that makes it less fire prone, to rake the forest floor?
  Then people made fun of that word, ``rake,'' which is actually a 
technical term for some of the equipment used in forestry to make sure 
areas can be a little more fire safe by thinning trees, removing brush, 
and removing dead material on that.
  The question is, as Governor Newsom goes out on site and waves his 
arms and tells us it is someone else's fault, then what has he learned 
in the last 6 years? More importantly, what has he applied since he had 
this photo op in Paradise as the new Governor of California? It looks 
like not much, not much action.
  Certain promises were made to be aggressive on land management in 
California and certain claims were made, but the actual numbers are 
one-fifth of the amount claimed that had been treated, the work that 
had been done in California.
  We have seen time after time more and more fires: the Camp fire in 
Paradise listed here, 85 lives lost, 90 percent of the homes; the Carr 
fire near Redding; the Zogg fire on the other side of Redding; the Park 
fire last year, 400,000 acres from Chico all the way up to Mount 
Lassen; the Dixie fire, 1 million acres. This is all northern 
California. Now southern California is getting international coverage, 
and rightfully so.
  What are we going to do? What is Newsom going to do? Well, he wants 
to blame it on climate change. Time and time again, we are hearing 
about climate change and we are hearing about carbon dioxide. Here is 
the same chart I show off and on on this floor: Carbon dioxide 
represents 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. It has barely changed. Look 
at the rest of the chart, what isn't CO<inf>2</inf>. They want to just 
make it a climate change story.
  What are we doing to make things more fire resilient in southern 
California?
  This is the Santa Ynez Reservoir just up the hill from Pacific 
Palisades. The portion on the right here is what it looks like more or 
less when it is full. Here is what it looks like presently. It is 
empty. It has been empty since last February. They have been fooling 
around for nearly a year supposedly repairing the cover over the thing. 
It holds 117 million gallons of water.
  They report to us that there are three one-million gallon tanks that 
ran out, the third one by 3 a.m. on the night of the fire above Pacific 
Palisades. What would another 117, approximately 40 times the storage 
of those three tanks, have been able to do for them had it been 
available, had the maintenance been done?
  Well, the Governor is going to start an investigation on it now, kind 
of like when he starts an investigation on high gas prices due to 
policies he does that drive up the cost of fuel, make fuel and the 
refineries not available, and quit drilling for fuel in California, 
which we have so much abundance of near that Bakersfield area, et 
cetera.
  What are we doing here? Why is this reservoir empty? Why has it been 
empty for nearly a year to make a little repair in the cover that may 
have been able to be done by reservoir staff? It is incompetence at all 
levels here.
  What do we have going on? Is there enough water supply? He says, 
well, we have plenty of water.
  Presently, this is Shasta Dam in northern California, and it is 
dumping water right now. It is dumping water out. It still has a 
million acre-feet of space left, but it is dumping water because they 
want to have room at the top to conserve for more weather. Okay. I 
guess I understand that.
  However, what are they doing with that water down below? Newsom's 
plans have stopped the delta pumps from running at full capacity to 
fill other water systems around the State, such as San Luis Reservoir, 
which is about 70 percent full right now and doesn't have a storage 
problem for flood, as well as making sure the aqueducts are filling all 
the other reservoirs such as the one we just looked at, Santa Ynez. 
They could fill that in a short amount of time. The amount of water 
that runs out wasted, running through the delta in an hour, would fill 
that Santa Ynez Reservoir. It would take a long time locally because 
they have to rely on either wells or coming from some other water 
source we haven't quite ascertained yet because it is hard to find 
information.
  Is Governor Newsom going to help or is he going to be a detriment and 
just go on camera and blame everybody else and blame the President? We 
need real work done to make fire conditions much safer in California 
and the West.

                          ____________________