[Pages H234-H235]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         RECLAIMING OUR FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, on his first day in office, President Trump 
wasted no time in addressing California's water crisis by signing the 
memorandum titled ``Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical 
Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.'' We are very 
pleased with the President's strong actions on that and many fronts 
yesterday. We look forward to working with his administration on that.
  Now, it did say ``southern California.'' As a Representative of 
northern California, I was like, what are you doing, Doug? We want 
people to understand that, due to stories like this--this is Lake 
Shasta up in Shasta County, just north of Redding. It holds 4\1/2\ 
million acre-feet of water when full. It is part of the Federal project 
known as the CVP, the Central Valley Project, built in the 1930s.

                              {time}  1215

  We have an opportunity to raise it 18 feet, add 600,000 more--that is 
a different story for a different day right now--as well as the other 
projects we have around the State that hold a lot of water; Lake 
Oroville, right near my home, 3\1/2\ million acre-feet.
  The President wanting to have water that is already available, useful 
for other Californians, instead of being lost or not stored to begin 
with, I appreciate that directive. You know

[[Page H235]]

what, we have plenty of water in California that falls on the Sierras 
in rain and snowpack, if we would capture it.
  Instead, we have this situation year after year. This poster is a bit 
dated, but it is the same thing year after year. It shows how much 
water is being lost out through the Bay Delta. We have this massive 
flow, in this particular timeline, 7 million acre-feet came in. We are 
losing 6\1/2\ million acre-feet because we are just letting it go out.
  It is not helping the delta smelt you have heard about. The delta 
smelt, they can't find it anymore. They do trolls, and they can't find 
it. It is gone. Even with all the extra water that has been pushed out 
since 1992, it never did help the smelt. Maybe too much water actually 
drowns the fish or something. I don't know.
  We don't need to flush that much water through the delta even to keep 
saltwater intrusion from coming back up and affecting some of the 
Delta. We need to be trapping that water. We need to be saving that 
water for the San Luis Reservoir and for crops which would be helpful 
in the San Joaquin Valley.
  Also, when we talked about southern California--my colleague just 
talked about the horrendous fires down there. This is a reservoir right 
near the Pacific Palisades, which burned to the ground. This reservoir 
had that been full, would have had enough water to last several days 
instead of just a few hours that their hydrant system had.
  That is what it looks like full, more or less. That is what it looks 
like empty. It was empty. It had been empty for nearly a year. What 
kind of management or planning is that where they don't need to tell 
the fire department it wasn't full at the time?
  They are supposed to be doing some kind of repair on it. It probably 
could have been done in a couple of weeks. Instead, they are putting it 
out for bid and this or that. Probably, their local staff could have 
done it, they say. We lost that opportunity to trap water. Get this: It 
holds about 40 acre-feet. I just showed you how many hundreds of 
thousands of acre-feet go out through the delta. You could fill that up 
in minutes if you could somehow channel the delta into that. Yet, this 
is what you get.
  Instead, we would have the opportunity to have those reservoirs full, 
and have southern California have what it needs. Also, let's not forget 
the San Joaquin Valley, which President Trump knows a lot about. They 
grow these amazing crops. So many of them come from down there, as well 
as my part of northern California, to feed the United States and even 
the world.
  These products--when we show you these percentages here--these are 
percentages of crops that come from California that Americans use; not 
just Californians. If we don't grow them in California with all this 
abundant water we have, then where is this stuff going to come from? 
Where is this food going to come from? We are going to have to import 
it or do without it. We think, well maybe we don't have mandarins 
anymore, maybe we don't have avocados anymore. We will just eat 
something else. Why?
  We need to have these choices, and we have the ability to grow them 
because we have plenty of water when we trap it. Even in drought years, 
there is still enough water that comes down.
  With that, the management of water supply is also tied back to fire 
management. Unfortunately, what my colleague was talking about, the 
horrific fires in southern California, this is some of the brush that 
grows on the hills above those areas. It is a pretty arid climate down 
there. We know that.
  If we are smart about it, we can actually be removing this brush, and 
make it so that if fire does happen, it is just burning weeds at a slow 
pace instead of being driven by the Santa Ana winds at a high rate of 
speed, 80 miles an hour. You can't beat that. Firefighters can't beat 
that.
  They do their best efforts. They have got to try and at least make a 
line of defense at the city, but when it is flowing over the top of 
them like fire does and like happens in my district all the time, it is 
humanly not possible.
  This is how we stay ahead of it; removing this brush in the timber 
areas, like in my district where fire burned 1 million acres one time. 
We can be removing brush. We can be removing dead trees and small 
trees. We are still leaving the forest, but it is a thin forest. It is 
a managed forest.
  Instead of empty promises being made--empty-handed like Gavin Newsom 
time and time again saying: Oh, we are going to do something about the 
water. We are going to do something about the fuel in the forests. No, 
he isn't. He is dragging his feet on seeing the water supply built in 
California.
  He needs to be directing his people on the water commission, 
directing people on the water control board to make things happen to 
build these projects as expeditiously as possible instead of just 
trying to slow down the lawsuits. We need to do this to scale. We need 
to do this with speed. We are tired of the empty talk from the 
Governor.
  President Trump is leading the way on his first day, showing the path 
forward on helping our water supply, on helping our forests, helping 
the people in our State at home and our country to have what they need.
  No more empty promises. No more nonsense. Gavin Newsom needs to get 
out of the way. Let President Trump--instead of putting aside $50 
million in the legislature, which is what they are talking about to 
fight Trump, and they want to tie that to State aid for southern 
California for fires.
  Talk about conditions--we hear about conditions a lot around here. 
Oh, no, conditions. You are making conditions on the State legislature 
to tie $50 million to fight Trump with lawsuits for State aid.

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