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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentlewoman.
One hardly knows where to start, when you take California water law and push it aside and preempt it with Federal water law, really running over the top of the State of California, and then you steal 800,000 acre-feet and transfer it to your buddies--yes, you're going to come up with a lot of reasons why it makes sense. But the reality is quite different.
Let us understand very clearly here that 150 years of California water law is thrown out and a new Federal law is put in place that preempts California water law. The 1994 CALFED agreement was an interim agreement. It was never, ever intended to be a permanent statutory agreement on how water would be delivered in California.
In addition to that, let me understand--yes, I see your little chart over there that you're going to throw up. That was 1994, and it said precisely what we ought to do today. And that is: today, we ought to be working together to solve the problems of California water. And guess what, California is.
But with this law in place, it won't happen. The ability of California to work together to solve its problems are thrown out. What sense does that make unless you want to steal 800,000 acre feet of water and take an agreement that was forged over 20 years ago to solve a problem on the San Joaquin River that is not for year-round salmon flows but only for the spring salmon flows. Why would you want to do that, except you want to take somebody's water?
The water is the water of the fishermen as well as the water of the farmers.
By the way, facts are ugly little things. There are no 3,000 people that lost their jobs, no 60,000 people that lost their jobs. The University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Davis, and the University of the Pacific all say that the losses were less than 7,000, which almost equaled the loss of the fisheries.
When we get to the end of this story, it is going to be a story of the rest of the Nation. If you happen to be a Western State, if you happen to be a Midwestern State that has a Federal water project from the Bureau of Reclamation, beware, because this is the first-ever attempt to throw aside 100 years of reclamation law in which deference is given to the States over the power of their water rights and their water laws.
Yes, you can say section 4 of this bill deals with that. No, it doesn't. It does not deal with the totality of California law. In fact, the bill destroys that totality.
Western States are opposed to this. The list has been given. Other States, watch out. This is a power grab. This is a water grab. This is an imposition of the Federal authority over the States, and specifically over California.
Yes, Mr. Chairman--excuse me, if I might, through the Chair--you said that there is 100 percent water. No water district except those that preceded the Federal project have 100 percent allocation. Every other water district has shortage provisions in those water contracts.
By the way, whatever power we may have, we don't have the power to overcome a natural drought, which is precisely what is happening in California today and happened during the period that this bill speaks to. It was a natural drought. Yes, there were restrictions placed on the pumps, restrictions that were necessary to protect an endangered species.
By the way, the judge that you cited took a job 45 days after he quit with the water contractor that is supporting this bill. Figure it out yourself. Figure out what is going on here. This is a theft of 800,000 acre feet of environmental water. This is an overturning of California water law, and we ought not do it.
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