Klamath Dam Removal Secret Meetings

Floor Speech

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Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, a government for, by, and of the people cannot hold its most basic deliberations in secret. I am not talking about matters of national security, but basic, everyday government deliberations.

Yet the Department of the Interior, the State of California, and the State of Oregon are meeting with select groups in private in places like Portland, Sacramento, and even proposed San Francisco, to make public policy decisions affecting my district in the north end of California and south Oregon without public or legislative input. In order to be invited to join these meetings, individuals are required to sign confidentiality agreements and agree to a predetermined outcome.

The issues involving the Klamath River water and possible removal of the hydroelectric dams are indeed of concern to the public. The decisions regarding whether these dams should be removed and what water and environmental policy should govern the region are fundamentally a public policy decision. The deliberations should be made in public and free for all to be involved, yet long-distance locations an hour or a full day's drive away don't make that possible, especially when they are held in secret.

These secret meetings have been happening for years, and they are wrong. The agencies of the government are meeting in secret to create a 501(c)(3) dam removal entity called the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. This new corporation will be the recipient of taxpayer and utility rate dollars.

These meetings need to be held in public where the people can meet and hear what they are planning to do.

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