Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, will the Senator from California yield for a question?

Mrs. BOXER. Of course I will.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, to the Senator from California, I thank her for being here in this discussion today about a very important public policy issue.

It is December and most people know that high jinks happen in December around here. People want to go home. People are doing last- minute deals.

I don't know if the Senator from California knows, but the whole deregulation of Enron and the energy markets--that whole thing was a December midnight rider kind of activity.

All of these things happen because they know that Members want to go home. They think it is the last deal and they can throw something in and everybody will go along with it and blame it on, oh, I didn't read the fine print.
There are a couple of things in here that I just wanted to ask the Senator from California about. I am going to talk later. I wanted to get over here and ask her because she is a knowledgeable person on this.
First, this rider that was placed in the WRDA bill--is that in the jurisdiction of your committee?

Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely not, my friend. As you know, it is in the jurisdiction of your committee. It has absolutely nothing to do with mine. I would say there are two pieces added that we have a little jurisdiction on, funding for desal, but that is already in the base WRDA bill. So I can honestly say to my friend that this is a horrible rider in and of itself. One of the other problems with it is it has gone through the wrong committee. That is right. It belongs in the jurisdiction of the committee which is yours and Senator Murkowski's.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from the San Francisco Chronicle that says, ``Stop Feinstein's water-bill rider.''

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. I would also like to ask the Senator from California if she is aware that in this legislation there is also language--and I am not sure this is in the jurisdiction of your committee either--giving the ability to have dams built in 17 States without initial overview by the U.S. Congress, without any other discussions. There would be blanket authority given to build dams in 17 States without the input of cities, counties, constituents, interest groups, river constituents, fishermen.

We have several projects we have been discussing in the Pacific Northwest that I have been involved with and have visited with many people to talk about. People go methodically through these issues and discuss them in a collaborative way because there are tradeoffs and every community has a different opinion. So the notion that we would forgo our own State's ability to raise questions here in the U.S. Senate about somebody building a dam in our State--why would any Member want to forgo their ability as a Member of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives to provide their input on a dam being built on a river in their State? Is the Senator aware of this provision?

Mrs. BOXER. Senator, I was just talking about it briefly, and I actually misstated it, so I am glad I was corrected. This rider, dropped at midnight, going on a bill that is a beautiful bill that I worked on for so long and that the Senator from Washington has worked on--and there are a lot of wonderful things in there. This rider went through the wrong committee. The issue you talk about, the ability of the President of the United States to, by himself, authorize dams in the Western States for the next 5 years anywhere in those States is unheard of, and it is in your committee's jurisdiction. It is in the jurisdiction of the Energy Committee. I hope Senator Murkowski is outraged as well.

The fact is, the Senator is absolutely right. We have a Senator and a Congressman getting together and saying that the Congress should be bypassed and have no say in where dams should be put, whether dams should be built at all, and it is in the jurisdiction of the Energy Committee. It is not in the jurisdiction of Environment and Public Works.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for that explanation.
I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record another San Francisco story from just yesterday where an attorney, Doug Obegi, basically says, to my colleague's point about the midnight darkness of this, that the densely technical text ``explicitly authorize[s] the Trump administration to violate the biological opinions under the Endangered Species Act.''

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. So in the dark of night--I think that is the part where the States are going to be told: You are just going to have to build a dam. That is it. We decided.
Then everybody calls us and says: Wait a minute, wait a minute, I don't want to dam the river or I want that stream to produce fish or I want that to flow downstream for people further downstream, not right here. All of that has basically now been given over to someone else.

I would also like to ask the Senator from California if she is aware of provisions of the bill, as people are referring to it, that jilt the taxpayers? I know there are a bunch of groups, Taxpayers for Common Sense and even the Heritage Foundation--all of these people are basically calling out the ridiculous spending aspect of this California provision.

I wonder if the Senator from California is aware that this basically authorizes prepayment on construction obligations that basically are going to take millions of dollars out of the U.S. Treasury. Just by passing this legislation, we would be taking money out of the Treasury, resulting in basically $1.2 billion in receipts that we would have, but giving us a loss of $807 million.

This is a provision in the bill that I think has had little discussion, and this sweetheart deal for people is going to rip off the taxpayers, in addition to all of this authorization that is in the legislation.
Is my colleague from California aware of this provision?

Mrs. BOXER. I wish to say to my friend that I was aware of the provision, but I did not know the details of what you just said. My staff confirms that you are absolutely right. Are you saying to me that water contractors will be relieved of certain payments and the Federal Government will be on the hook--Federal taxpayers? Is that what you were saying?

Ms. CANTWELL. What is happening here is that people who are under current contracts on water payments, they would be given a sweetheart deal in deduction of their interest, which would allow them to shortchange our Treasury on revenues we are expecting.

That is a big discussion and if everybody wants to take that kind of money out of the Treasury and basically give a sweetheart deal to people, then we should have that discussion. We should have that discussion and understand that this is what we are doing, bless that, and hear from our appropriators that this is a worthy thing to do for some reason. I can't imagine what that reason would be, given that we are shortchanged here, and every day we are talking about how to make ends meet with so little revenue. So I don't know why we would give a bunch of contractors this ability to cost the Treasury so much money by giving them a sweetheart deal. I will enter something into the Record about this. As someone said, it would really cause very substantial headaches for Treasury, OMB, and various agencies.

Again, I think, in the event of somebody thinking it is December and people want to go home for the Christmas holidays, people aren't going to read the details of this legislation. I hope our colleagues will read this detail because I don't think we can afford to cost the Treasury this much money.

Mr. President, I also ask my colleague from California: I assume you have had a lot of discussion with our House colleagues about their earmark rules. I think one of the reasons the WRDA bill is something people support is that it is a list of projects that have been approved by various agencies and organizations.

Mrs. BOXER. That is right.

Ms. CANTWELL. Has this project been approved by any of those agencies or organizations?

Mrs. BOXER. Well, not only is it this whole notion of moving water from one interest. I would call the salmon fishery a critical interest--not only in my State. That is why I hate that it is called the California drought. It impacts not only California's fishing industry, but it impacts Washington's and Oregon's. This is why--save one--all of our Senators on the west coast are strongly opposed to this. Don't call it California water.

But the fact of the matter is that this has not been looked at in any way. Whether it is the money, whether it is what it does to the fishery, no one has really looked. There hasn't even been a hearing about this specific bill. I know your committee has looked at a lot of ways to help with the drought.

I compliment my friend from Washington, Senator Cantwell, and Senator Murkowski. You have come up with real ways to work with every stakeholder and not continue these absurd water wars where we take money away from a fishing industry--that is a noble, historic fishing industry and tens of thousands of fishermen who support their families--and giving it over to big agribusiness. That is not the way you want to approach the drought, I say to the Senator. It is not the way I want to approach the drought.

I would never be party to picking a winner and a loser. That is not our job. Our job is A, to make sure there are ways through technology to get more water to the State that needs it--mostly California at this point--and for all of us to work together to preserve that salmon fishery. The salmon doesn't know when it is in California, when it is in Washington, when it is in Oregon. Let's be clear. We need to protect it.

I am just so grateful to you for being on this floor today because your reasons for being here, first and foremost, are that you are protecting jobs in your State. Second, you are protecting the environment in your State. Third, you are protecting the rights of the States, the tribes, and the municipalities to have something to say over this. You are protecting the Endangered Species Act, which--as I pointed out before you came--was signed by President Richard Nixon, for God's sake. This is not a partisan thing. These are God's creatures. I will quickly show you this and then take another question. I showed the bald eagle and several other species. If there had been shenanigans like this, Senator Cantwell--oh, well, we are not going to listen to the science; we are just going to do what we want to do--we wouldn't have the bald eagle. We wouldn't have these creatures I showed.

Senator, the fact is that what you are fighting for is not only your State, not only for jobs, but you are fighting for the larger point-- that in the dead of night, you don't do a sneak attack on one of the landmark laws that you and I so strongly support.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I wish to ask the Senator from California--because there is another element she is alluding to--about how to resolve water issues. While my understanding is your committee is very involved in basically the Federal Government programs that help communities around our country deal with water infrastructure and clean water, the larger issues of how a community settles these disputes about water on Federal land has really been the jurisdiction of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
But my understanding is that this bill is also trying to weigh in on disputes as it relates to the larger Colorado basin. I know my colleague from Arizona is very concerned because his views weren't heard. I know this is a big fight as a result of the language that is in here on the southern part of our country, where there is also a water dispute, and various States are debating this.

I remember when our former colleague Tom Daschle was here, and there was a whole big fight on a river issue that the Upper Midwest was concerned about. If my understanding is correct, basically what we are trying to do in this legislation is, instead of having the collaborative discussion among these various States to work together to resolve it, they are basically saying: No, no, no, we can just put an earmark rider in and instead make all the decisions for everybody and choose winners and losers. So it is not just a Pacific Northwest issue--of San Francisco, Oregon, and Washington--but also relates to challenges we have on the Colorado River and challenges in the southeast part of our country.

Basically, it sets up a discussion in the future of why would you ever regionally get together to discuss anything if you could just jam it through in the legislation by, basically--as our colleague Elizabeth Warren said--putting a little cherry on top and getting people to say: Oh, this must really be good. Then the consequences of this are that the thorny, thorny issues of water collaboration aren't going to be about the current rules of the road or collaboration. It is going to be about earmarks and riders that Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Heritage Foundation, and all of these people object to as the worst of the worst of Congress.

Mrs. BOXER. Right. I would say this: I did hear, along with my colleague, Elizabeth Warren describe it. She described it a little bit like this. You take a beautiful bill like WRDA. For the most part, it is not perfect, but it is a pretty darn good bill. Then you put a pile of dirt on top of it, which I call the McCarthy rider, and then you stick a little Maraschino cherry on top, which is Flint, and a couple of other good things, and you say: OK, eat the dirt. That is another way of explaining it.

My friend is right. What is the message if we don't fight this darn thing, perhaps defeat it, and get it stripped out. We have an amendment to strip it out if we could get to it.
What we are essentially saying to all the people, the stakeholders in the water wars, is this: You know, what is important is to your clout.
Give enough money to this person, agribusiness and maybe you can control him, or give enough money to this person and maybe you control her.

The bottom line is we need to bring everybody to the table because my friend and I understand a couple of things. The water wars are not going to be solved unless everyone buys in. There are ways we can do this. We have done this work before. We can reach agreement, because if we don't, what happens? Lawsuits. Let me just be clear. There are going to be lawsuits and lawsuits and lawsuits because this is a clear violation of the Endangered Species Act. Some colleagues say: Oh, no, it isn't. It says in there it is not.

Well, very good, let's say we loaded a weapon and we dropped it on another country, and they said: This is war; you just dropped a bomb on us. We said: No, it isn't. We said we weren't declaring war on you. It is the action that counts, not what you say. A rose is a rose, as William Shakespeare once said--call it any other name.
This is an earmark. This is wrong. This is painful. This violates the Endangered Species Act. This is going to lead to the courthouse door.

That is why my friend and I are not very popular right now around this joint because we are standing here and people want to go home. They are annoyed. Why is she still talking?
Well, I am still talking. I don't want to.

I say to my colleague, I ask her a question on my time, which is this: Does she think it is really painful for me to have to filibuster my own bill?

Ms. CANTWELL. I thank you for your steadfast leadership in the Senate. As to the fact that you are retiring, you are certainly going to be missed. I am sure you would like to have legislation on the water resources pass. I think you brought up a very important point: Strip out language for which there is bipartisan support asking for it to be stripped out. And there is bipartisan support asking for it to be stripped out because people with true water interests have not been allowed to have their say.

We could get this done today--be done with this and be on our way.

I think, for our colleagues who want us to be done, there is an easy path forward--a very easy path. Just strip out the language on California and send it back.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, since we are kind of reversing things, I ask unanimous consent that my friend control the time right now.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Mr. BARRASSO. I object.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

Mrs. BOXER. OK, I will just hold the floor forever. That is fine.

I say to my friend, you have been through these kinds of wars before when you were standing alone trying to stop drilling in the Arctic. I remember all of our colleagues saying: Oh, my God, this is terrible.
This drilling in the Arctic is on the military bill. Imagine--drilling in the Arctic. They put it on the national defense bill.

My friend was approached, and she was told: Senator, you are going to bring down the entire defense of this country if you don't back off.

My friend said: I don't think so. All you have to do is strip this Arctic rider, and we are done.
Am I right in my recollection of that?

Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator is correct. It was December and the same kind of scenario. Basically, jamming something onto a must-pass bill was a way that somebody thought this body would just roll over. In the end we didn't. We sent it back to the House, and the Defense bill was passed in very short order.
In fact, it is the exact same scenario. The House had already gone home, and I think they basically opened up for business again and passed it with two people in the Chamber. So it can be done. It has been done. If people want to resolve this issue and go home, then strip out this earmark rider language and we can be done with it and we can have the WRDA bill and we can be done.

So I think that what my colleague is suggesting--because it isn't really even the authority of the WRDA committee--is that she probably would be glad to get language that is not her jurisdiction off of this bill and communicate to our House colleagues that this is the approach that we should be taking.
So I would like to ask through the Chair if, in fact, the Senator from California understands that that kind of approach on earmarks is something that she has heard a lot about from our House colleagues, about how opposed they are.

Mrs. BOXER. Yes, I have. I wish to say, since our friend is here--I am not doing anything, an attack on anything, and I never would. It is not my way.
I am going to ask unanimous consent right now, Senator Cantwell, without losing my right to the floor and making sure I get the floor back; is that correct? After I make a unanimous consent request, I assume I would still have the floor under the rules.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Unanimous Consent Request

So on behalf of my friend from Washington and myself, I ask unanimous consent that we be allowed to offer an amendment to strip a rider that was placed on the bill by Kevin McCarthy in the House, and it is 98 pages, and it is in the House bill. It is called the California draft provision. I ask unanimous consent that we be allowed to have an amendment to strip out that language.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

Mrs. BOXER. That was a good test.
We can see where this is coming from, I say to my friend from Washington. All we are asking for is to go back to a bill that we worked on for almost 2 years, and now we are looking at a situation where we will be harmed in many ways by this rider.

When I say ``we,'' I mean our States. We have thousands of salmon fishery jobs that will be lost. We have a frontal attack on the Endangered Species Act, which has been called out by every major environmental group in the country. We have letters from every salmon fishery organization saying that this is dangerous. Yet all we are asking for is a simple amendment to strip out a midnight rider, and the Republicans object.
In that rider, it takes away the right of Congress to approve dams.

So whether it is in Colorado or Wyoming or California or Washington or Oregon or Montana--and there are many other Western States--the President-elect will have the right to determine where to put a dam. He will have the ability, for the first time in history, to authorize the building of dams. And the answer comes back from those who support the rider: But Congress has to appropriate.

Well, we know where that goes. I have been here a long time. All you need is a little appropriation every year, and the deal continues.
So we have a circumstance on our hands. I know people in the Senate are really mad at me right now. What a perfect way for me to go out. I was a pain in the neck when I came, and I am a pain in the neck when I go.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I have a question for the Senator from California.
The irony of this situation--first of all, I appreciate the Senator from California, because she is such a stalwart in so many different ways on so many different issues. What people may not know about the colleague we love dearly is that she is greatly theatrical. She has a beautiful voice. She writes music. She obviously lives in L.A. and probably hobnobs with all sorts of people in the entertainment industry. She sang beautifully the other night at our goodbye dinner for the retiring Members.

This reminds me of that movie ``Chinatown.'' There was a famous movie that Jack Nicholson was in that was all about the corruption behind water----

Mrs. BOXER. And Faye Dunaway, just so you know.

Ms. CANTWELL. Yes, and Faye Dunaway. So Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway did a movie a long time ago about the water wars in California; am I correct?

Mrs. BOXER. Yes.

Ms. CANTWELL. So it was a movie about the fight between Southern and Northern California about who gets water, and then people found out that there was so much corruption behind the deal that basically people were trying to do a fast one.

So the subject, if I am correct--that is what the subject of the movie is about. This is not a new subject; it is a very old subject.

The question is, are people trying to supersede a due process here that consumers--in fact, I would ask--I hope the ratepayers and constituents of the utilities in Los Angeles would be asking the utility: What are they doing lobbying against the Endangered Species Act? My guess is there are a lot of people in Southern California that have no idea that a utility would lobby, spend their public dollars lobbying against a Federal statute by undermining it with a rider in the dark of night.

But I wanted to ask my colleague: This issue is a historic issue in California, correct? And when it is done in the dark of night, as that movie depicts, what happens is that the issues of public interests are ignored and consequently people are shortchanged. Is that the Senator's understanding?

Mrs. BOXER. Yes. I wish to yield my time to my friend. But here is what I am going to say right now. The Senator from Washington is absolutely right that this issue has been around California for a very long time. So I will yield my time to the Senator from Washington--I yield for a question. I can't yield the full time; I can yield for a question.

But the answer to the other question is of course the Senator is right. She talks about the movie ``Chinatown.'' Do you know what year? I think it was the 1980s, a long time ago. I remember it well. It was about the water wars, and it resulted in people dying. It was corruption. It was about who gets the water rights.
Here is the deal: Here we have our beautiful State and, as my friend knows, because of the miracle of nature, Northern California gets the water; Southern California--it has been called a desert. So we have always had a problem.

When I came to the Senate, we had 18 million people, and now we have 40 million people. So we have urban users, suburban users, rural users, farmers, and fishermen. We have to learn to work together. Do we do that? Not the way Kevin McCarthy did it, which is a grab for big agriculture, which destroys the salmon fishery and is going to bring pain on the people who drink the water from the delta because it is going to have a huge salt content that has to be taken out before they can drink it. So this is the opposite of what ought to happen.
I yield back to my friend for another question.

Ms. CANTWELL. On that point, in the process for discussing these water agreements, the Senator from California is saying they don't belong in her committee, and they have been controversial over a long period of time, and the best way to do this is not through an earmark, which this is--the notion that the House of Representatives is jamming the U.S. Senate on a half-billion-dollar earmark is just amazing to me because of the water agreements that people have negotiated and that have passed through these committees and that have been agreed to. They are not letting those go, but they are letting this particular earmark go, and sending this over. But the normal process would be for these Federal agencies and communities to work together on a resolution, and then if resources were asked for, they would come through, I believe, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee for authorization because we are the ones who deal with the Bureau of Reclamation and the public land issues. Is that the understanding of the Senator from California as well?

Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely. What is such a joke is that my Republican friends, who were just objecting to our having an amendment to take this earmark off, always give big speeches about how Congress is putting all of these earmarks in. Well, this is a clear earmark because it is directing a project to run in a certain way and diverting water to a special interest and taking it away from the fishery. Therefore, by its very nature, it is giving a gift of water to big agribusiness and letting the salmon fishery just go under.

I would say to my friend that the reason she is down here is that this is not just about California. The provision is called California drought. It is not about the drought. It doesn't cure the drought.

Yes, my friend is right. Every provision, including the one about giving President-Elect Trump the right to decide where a dam will be built and taking it away from Congress, that all belongs in the jurisdiction of the Senator's committee. I am surprised Senator Murkowski isn't here because this is a direct run at her as well as the Senator from Washington.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I would ask the Senator from California then, the question is on this process of deciding the authorization. I notice we had a few colleagues here who were--I don't know if they were coming to speak--but in the Senator's region, there is a lot of discussion among the Western States on how to balance issues on water; is that correct? There are a lot of meetings and discussions?

Mrs. BOXER. Well, we have no choice, because, as the Senator from Washington knows, my State gets a lot of water out of the Colorado River. It is under a lot of stress. We have a lot of problems. My heart goes out to every single stakeholder in my State. That is why I am so chagrined at this, because we all have to work together, I say to my friend, in our State.

We are all suffering because we don't have the water we need. But the way to deal with it is not to slam one complete industry called the salmon fishery, which not only impacts my State but the Senator's State of Washington and Oregon was well.

Ms. CANTWELL. I have a question for the Senator from California because some of our colleagues that were here--my understanding is if you can get water from Northern California by just agreeing to kill fish and not meeting those obligations, then Southern California can take some of that water as well. Then, the consequence is these Western States, which might be supporting this bill, have less obligation to make more conservation efforts.

So, in reality, if you are talking about the Colorado River and all the various resources that have to be negotiated, if somebody can be let off the hook because you are just going to kill fish instead, then you have more water. Sure, if you just want to kill fish in streams and give all the money to farmers, of course you have more water. Then, no one in the Colorado discussion has to keep talking about what are we going to do about drought.

I think the Senator from California is going to tell me that drought is not going away; it is a growing issue of concern, and so we actually need more people to discuss this in a collaborative way than in an end- run way.
Am I correct about the partners and all of that discussion?

Mrs. BOXER. My friend is very knowledgeable and very smart. People tend to look at a provision, I say to my friend, in a very narrow way.

They say: Oh, what is the difference? It doesn't matter. But my friend is right on the bigger picture. If all the fishery dies and all of the jobs with the fishery die and there is no demand for the water for the fish anymore, my friend is right. That relieves the discussion.

So, yes, you know what it reminds me of, I say to my friend. I don't know if she agrees with this analogy. But I remember once when they said: Let's raise the retirement age for social security because people are working longer and it will help the Social Security trust fund.

Well, if you take that, my friend, to the ultimate, why don't we say people should work until they are 90? Then there won't be any Social Security problem because everyone will die before it kicks in. It is the same analogy here: You kill off all the fish and the entire salmon fishery, then all you have is agriculture demanding water, and then they will try to step on the urban users and suburban users and the rural users and say: We are the only thing that matters. And they are already using, under most analyses, 80 percent of the water in my State.
So you are right. You kill off the fishery, then that is one less stakeholder to care about. You tell people ``Don't retire until you are 90,'' the Social Security trust fund will be very vibrant.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, as the Senator from California knows, one of the States concerned about this is Arizona because they have kind of been left out of that discussion. It also says to people: You don't have to have these discussions amongst everybody together; you can just write it into law. My understanding is that our colleagues from Florida and Alabama also have a similar concern. People are trying to use the legislative process to unbalance the negotiations so they can legislate instead of negotiate. Not only are they trying to legislate instead of negotiate, they are trying to use earmarks to do it and overrule existing law.

So am I correct, to the Senator from California--are we going to get anywhere with getting California more water if, in fact, this ends up in courts and it is stayed, and you really won't get any water in the next few years?
I should make a footnote for my colleague from California. Thank you for your compliment.

I had to chair a 3-hour hearing once on the San Joaquin River settlement. It was about 18 years of dispute on what to do about the San Joaquin water. Because of that, I learned a lot about the fights in California and all of the problems that California had then. This was at the time my colleague Tim Johnson was the chair of that subcommittee and had been stricken ill, and they asked me if I could step in. I had no idea I was going to spend 3 hours hearing about 18 years of litigation. That is right--18 years of litigation on the San Joaquin River. Basically, people came to that hearing that day--which is now probably 10 years ago--to tell me it was not worth the 18 years of litigation. They had determined that while they could sue each other all they wanted, that getting to a resolution about how to move forward on water had to be a much more collaborative solution to the process.

Secondly, I would mention to my colleague from California and see if she knows about this--the same happened on the Klamath Basin, which is legislation we passed out of committee and tried to pass here. The Klamath Basin basically said: Let's negotiate.

The various people in that dispute had a dispute and actually went to court, and the regional tribe won in the court and basically didn't have to do anything more on water issues but decided that, in the good interest of trying to have a resolution, it was a good idea to come to the table and try this collaborative approach.
I was mentioning my time chairing a 3-hour hearing on the San Joaquin River settlement that people had come to after 18 years of fighting each other in court. They came and they said: Oh, we have a settlement.
The point was, we tried to litigate and sue each other for 18 years and we didn't get anywhere, and now we have a settlement and we would like to move forward.

My point is, the best way for us to move forward on water issues is to have everybody at the table and come to agreements because there are a lot of things you can do in the near term while you are working on water in a more aggressive fashion to get to some of the thornier issues. But if you basically try to litigate and legislate instead of negotiate, you end up oftentimes just getting litigation, like what happened with the San Joaquin. So you never get a solution and people don't have the water. You end up not having a resolution, and the whole point is to get people water.

So does the Senator think that is where we are headed if we end up just trying to tell people: You can legislate.
Well, it sounds interesting, and if you get somebody to write an earmark for you, you are in good shape, I guess, if you can get that out of the House of Representatives. But in reality, you are not in good shape if you don't actually get water because you end up in a lawsuit for so many years, like San Joaquin.
Is that where we are going to head on this?

Mrs. BOXER. I say to my friend, she is so smart on this. Of course that is where we are headed. And I encourage this. If this happens and the Senator and I are not successful and this winds up to be the law of the land--a provision added in the dead of night that forces water to be operated in a certain way that violates the biological opinions on fish, that violates the science--I hope they take this to court day one. I don't care; say whatever you want: Oh, this isn't a violation of the Endangered Species Act. Really? Clearly it is.

The Senator is absolutely right. Eighteen years in court over an agreement. That is another reason I am totally stunned at this. But I think it is about what my friend said--who has the most juice, who has the most power to sit down and get someone who is a Senator or a Member of the House to add language? It is a nightmare.
The reason we have been obstreperous, the reason we are standing on our feet, the reason we didn't yield to other people is we are trying to make a simple point. The Senator shows it with her chart.

For all the people who said we shouldn't do earmarks, this is such an incredible earmark, it actually tells the Federal Government how to operate a water project--it is extraordinary--and to walk away from a biological opinion from the science. Of course it is going to wind up in court. I hope it does. What I would rather do is beat it. What I would rather do is get it out because it is only, as my friend said, going to encourage more similar types of legislating, where people have the power and the money and the ear of a Senator to call up and say: You know what. I am having trouble in my agribusiness. I need more water.

It is ridiculous. We are all suffering in this drought, I say to my friend. California is in a drought. There is a lot of rain coming down in the north, very little in the south, and I pray to God it continues.
I do. We have been getting a lot of rain so far, but I don't trust it at all.

There are two ways to meet this challenge. One way is to figure out a way to get more water to everyone. That means taking the salt out of water--and we do it. I have toured the desal plants, and it is very encouraging. One way is to take the salt out or put more water in the system. Another way is to recycle. Another way is conservation. Another way is water recharging. We know how to do it. The Senator is an expert. All of this is in her committee, which was bypassed.

The other way to do is the wrong way to do it, which is take the side of one business group--agribusiness--versus a salmon fishery and destroy the salmon fishery. Then, as my friend points out, in years to come: Well, isn't that a shame? There are no more salmon fisheries, so we get all the water. In the meantime, we are eating farmed salmon, and all these people are out of work and their families are devastated after a way of life they have had for a very long time.

So my friend is very prescient on the point, and she talks about the reality. We are here. We are not dreamers. We are realists. We know what happens in the water wars.
I continue to yield to my friend.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I would ask my colleague--again, I don't think this is in the jurisdiction of her committee. That is why I am asking--if we did want to pursue with the Bureau of Reclamation the notion that we should do more underground water storage, again, that would be something we would authorize. That is what I want to ask the Senator, if that is, in fact, the case.

My understanding--because we have to deal with this so much in the Pacific Northwest. We are a hydro State which has affordable electricity, but we get it out of a snowpack that comes in the wintertime. Now that the climate is changing and it is getting warmer, we don't have a large snowpack, so one of the ways to store that snowpack--which would be great to do--would be to have underground aquifer storage. I think that is an idea Stanford University has signed off on. They basically signed off on it because they said it was the most cost-effective thing for the taxpayer and had the most immediate impact.

What the Senator was just saying about rain--if you get a lot of rain right now--because it is not snowpack. If it is rain, store it, just like we were storing the snowpack, but now store it in aquifers underground, and that would then give us the ability to have more water. Stanford is like: Yes, yes, yes, this is the best thing to do.
And this is what I think your State is trying to pursue.

In that regard, I don't even think that is the jurisdiction of the Senator's committee, if I am correct, but is that an idea that you and California would pursue as a way to immediately, in the next few years, start a process for getting water to the Central Valley and to various parts of California?

Mrs. BOXER. Without a doubt. My friend is right. It is not like we are dealing with a subject matter that has no solutions, and science has shown us the various ways to do it. Certainly underground storage is fantastic, recharging. There are all these things we know-- recycling, conservation, and desal. These are just some thoughts.

My friend is right: The jurisdiction is mostly in her committee. We may have a few things to do. Wonderful. But that is not the important point. To me, the important point is here we have--and I am going to sum it up and then I will yield the floor and hope my friend will take the floor because I need to run and do 17 things, and then I will be back.

Here is the situation. We have a Water Resources Development Act bill. It passed here with 95 votes. Nothing passes here with 95 votes, even saying ``Happy Mother's Day.'' It is a beautiful bill, my friend.
Is it perfect? No. But it was very good. For my State, for the Senator's State, it was very good. Now, it is moving through the House, and in the middle of the night, without anyone even seeing it, this horrible poison pill amendment is added which essentially is a frontal attack on the salmon fishery and all the people who work in it not only in my State, but in the Senator's State and Oregon. So all of the Senators, save one, are apoplectic about what it means to jobs and what it means to tradition and what it means to have wild salmon. It is very important. So it is a frontal assault on the industry; it is a frontal assault on the ESA; and it is a frontal assault on the notion that there are no more earmarks.

Then it has another provision cutting the Congress out of authorizing new dams in all of the Western States for the next 5 years. This is dropped from the ceiling into the WRDA bill.

Now, I stand as one of the two people who did the most work on that bill saying vote no. It is very difficult for me. But I think it is absolutely a horrible process, a horrible rider. It is going to result in pain and suffering among our fishing families.

With that, I thank my friend, and I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for her steadfast support of doing the right things on clean water and clean air and for focusing on this issue for her State because ultimately she wants water for her State. She knows litigation is not the route to get it. She knows that there are things we can be doing here but that we have to get people to support that. So I thank her for her obligation to making sure her constituents get real results.

This rider is a giveaway to projects that are basically described as deadbeat dams, projects in California that are opposed by tribes and fishermen and sportsmen and environmental communities. Basically, it writes a blank check to them, allowing millions of taxpayer dollars to be used to construct dams throughout the West without any further congressional approval.

That, in and of itself, should cause our colleagues to pause. You are going to go home and have to tell your constituents all of a sudden that someone is building a dam on a beautiful river in your State and you can't do anything about it. I would hope our colleagues in those 17 Western States that would be impacted by this would do something to help tell our colleagues to strip out this controversial provision and send it back to the House in a clean bill.

In addition, as I mentioned, section 4007 authorizes the Secretary to pay up to one-quarter of the cost of State water storage in any of these 17 reclamation States. The Secretary would have to notify Congress within 30 days after deciding to participate.

These issues on our process are going to make it much harder for us in the future to not have the taxpayers paying for projects that are nothing but further litigation in the process. Why is collaboration so important? Collaboration is important because these are thorny issues.

There are lots of different national interests at stake and a lot of local interest and a lot of jobs. My colleague from California, probably not in the last hour that we have been discussing this but probably earlier in the afternoon, mentioned the huge amount of Pacific West Coast fisheries that are also opposed to this bill, and Trout Unlimited which is opposed to this legislation, and various fishing groups and organizations because fishermen want to have rivers that are functioning with clean water and enough stream flow for fish to migrate.
The fishing economy in the Northwest, I can easily say, is worth billions. Anybody who knows anything about the Pacific Northwest-- whether you are in Oregon or in Washington, maybe even Alaska--the pride of our region is the Pacific Coast salmon.

The Pacific Coast salmon is about having the ability to have good, healthy rivers and stream flow. For us in the Northwest, this is an issue I can easily say we have at least 100 Ph.D.s on; that is to say, the subject is so knowledgeable, so formulated, so battled over, so balanced that it would be like having 100 Ph.D.s in the subject. That is because we have a huge Columbia River basin, and because the Columbia River basin has many tributaries and because the salmon is such an icon, it needs that basin.

We also have a hydrosystem, and we also have an incredible agriculture business in our State. I think we are up to something like--when you take varieties of agricultural products, something like 70 different agricultural products--we, too, have to balance fish, farming, fishermen, and tribes, the whole issues of our environment and recreation and the need for hydro, and balance that all out. We have to do that practically every single day.
It has been these kinds of decisions that have taught us as a region and a State that by collaboration, we can get results and move forward.

I and one of my colleagues in the House who was the former leader on the Committee on Natural Resources, Doc Hastings, probably now more than 10-plus years ago, had regional discussions with then-Secretary of the Interior Salazar who came to the Northwest, and we sat down and we asked: What do we do about the Yakima Basin?

It was Sunday morning, and you would think that everybody getting together on Sunday morning, is it that important? Well, it was. There were probably 50 or 60 different interests meeting with us--the Bureau of Rec, the Secretary of the Interior, Congressman Hastings, me, and many other interests, and we talked about what do we want to do with the Yakima Basin.

There has been great pride that I have had to offer legislation, along with my colleague Senator Murray, on how to move the Yakima Basin project forward in the U.S. Senate. I say with ``pride'' because it was a collaborative effort. These are people who do not agree with each other, who have fought each other, who basically probably disagree on the most essential elements of their viewpoint, and yet reached consensus--delighted in their resolve--and came forward with legislation to say this is how you should deal with our water problems in a drought when your State has both farming and fishing needs.

Our Governor got behind it, Governor Inslee. Other people got behind it. I have been at several forums. National organizations, California institutions are holding up the Yakima deal as the example of how water management should be done in the future. Why? Because it was holistic.
That means it included everything on the table. It was a regional approach and everybody came to the table, and because it didn't try to solve every single problem up front but came to what we could agree to today and move forward--because it would claim some water that we need now.

The fact that the Yakima project became such a milestone, our colleagues in Klamath, OR, did the same things: They worked together in a collaborative fashion and tried to discuss these issues. I would say, for the most part, all of these issues have been, with these discussions in the past that our colleagues bring legislation to the U.S. Senate, very rarely has somebody brought language without everybody locally working together and agreeing.

I don't know of times when my colleagues have brought legislation where they are basically just trying to stick it to one State or the other--except for now, this seems to be the norm. This seems to be what we are being encouraged to do today. The California project is one in which we wish that they would seek the same kind of collaborative approach to dealing with both fishermen, whose economy is immensely important in California, and farmers who also are important but should not have the ability to supersede these laws that are already on the books.

What they should do is learn from the San Joaquin River proposal. You can battle this for 18 years or you can resolve these differences and move forward. When you can write an earmark and send it over here as a poison pill on a bill, you are hoping that you don't have to sit down at the table and work in a constructive fashion.

It is very disappointing to me that some of the partners in this deal, as we put ideas on the table to give 300,000 acre-feet to the farmers in the Westlands region over the next 2 years, give them 300,000 acre-feet of water over the next 2 years while we are working with them on an aquifer recharge. Their answer back to us was: We want to play our hand here and see if we can jam this through first.

Basically, they don't want to work in a collaborative fashion. They don't want to work with the region to find solutions. They want to legislate something that will lead to litigation. Litigation is not going to lead to more water, it is going to lead to longer delays in getting water to everybody who needs it.
I wouldn't be out here spending this much time with our colleagues if it wasn't for the fact that this issue is just at its beginning.

Drought has already cost our Nation billions of dollars, and it is going to cost us more; that is, drought is causing great issues with water, fish, and farming. It is also causing problems with fire. It is making our forests more vulnerable to the type of explosive fires that we have seen in the Pacific Northwest that wiped across 100,000 acres of forest land in just 4 hours. Those are the kind of things that hot and dry weather can do.

Our colleagues need to come together on what would be the process for us dealing with drought. The fact that California has been the tip of the spear is just that; it is just the tip of the spear. Everybody else is going to be dealing with this in Western States. My colleagues who represent hot and dry States already know. They have had to deal with this from a collaborative process.

I hope our colleagues who care greatly about the fact that drought is going to be a persistent problem for the future would come together with us and say: We can get out of town tonight. We can get out of town in the next few hours. All you have to do is accept our offer to strip this poison pill earmark, which is costing taxpayers one-half billion dollars, off the WRDA bill because it is not even part of the WRDA jurisdiction and send back a clean WRDA bill to the House of Representatives.

That is what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want, and that is what we want. The only people who are holding this place up are the people who want to jam somebody in December at the end of a session because it is the way to get poison pill ideas done.
People are taking note. I know the San Francisco Chronicle had a story about the House Oks a bill to increase pumping from our rivers and putting fish at risk. There was a quote about undermining the Endangered Species Act.

There was an editorial as well, I believe, from the same newspaper. I don't know that we have a quote from the editorial here, but I think I submitted that earlier for the Record. It basically said: Stop the Feinstein water bill rider. It basically said that we have to work to share water among people, farmers, and the environment, not try to benefit one interest over the other with a midnight rider.

The press is watching. I think there was a story today in the San Jose newspaper as well. I don't know if I have that with me, but we will enter that later into the Record. Having other newspapers in California write editorials on this is most helpful because it is bringing to light the kinds of things that are happening in the U.S.
Senate that people all throughout the West need to pay attention to.

We wish that drought could be solved so easily by just giving one interest more resources over the other, but that is not the way we are going to deal with this. If we have colleagues in the House who would rather steal water from fish than fund aquifer recharge, then we should have that debate in the U.S. Senate in the committee of jurisdiction or even here on the floor as it relates to whose jurisdiction and funding it really is. To stick the taxpayer with the bill of paying for dams in 17 States without any further discussion by our colleagues is certainly putting the taxpayers at risk, and that is why taxpayer organizations have opposed this legislation.

If we want to get this done and if we want to get out of here, let's strip this language off and let's be done with it and send to our colleagues a clean WRDA bill and be able to say to people that we did something for water this year, but we didn't kill fish in the process of doing it.
I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source