California Water Legislation

Floor Speech

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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express the urgency to get California water legislation passed sooner rather than later. After 4 consecutive dry years, drought conditions have become even more devastating. If you look at the NASA photos that have depicted, from outer space, the drought conditions, you see over 1 million acres that have laid fallow this year.

Many of us are fearful that if we receive the El Nino rains and snows that are predicted in the next 4 months, California will still not have the ability to move that water through the delta, where it is desperately needed, to other parts of the State; and many of our farm communities will continue to end up with another year of a zero--zero-- water allocation, which would make the third year in a row. This would be devastating. It is both unacceptable, and it is avoidable.

Mr. Speaker, we in California can all retreat to our political corners and point fingers to lay blame, but that will not deliver an additional drop of water that is desperately needed, nor will it address the real harm done to the very people whose lives have been impacted and whose jobs have been lost.

The fact is we have to work together, and I will continue to work with multiple parties involved in the negotiations to try to bridge the gap and to get California water legislation passed. It is time to fix our broken water system, and it is long overdue.

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