Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCARTHY. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chair, I am always amazed by the debates on this floor, and I think they are healthy. I like to listen to what people say and what people desire. Let me explain what I have heard as a desire to deal with the water crisis in California.

People request that whatever we do, do not change the Endangered Species Act. Could we work together on both sides? Could we make sure we stay within the biological opinion?

For some of those people who are watching at home, they may not have watched the last three terms of this Congress. This drought is not new. But what is interesting is, if you just go back in this decade of the snowpack in California--let's go back 5 years--we had 160 percent of snowpack, which was an amazing year for California.

But do you know what was allocated from the State Water Project for water?

Eighty percent out of 160 percent. The next year, we had only 55 percent. In 2015, we only had 8 percent of snowpack. This year was an El Nino, so we got up to 87 percent. Yet, if you look at the numbers, we have only pumped about the same amount of water as we did when we had 8 percent.

My parents would always read me bedtime stories. The one I loved the most was one in which they talked about a grasshopper and an ant. It was interesting how one of them would save for that rainy day. In this case, it would be putting the water away. It would be saving for that next year because, as we go through these years, our snowpack is always not the same.

If we are not pumping the water down, where is it going?

It is going to the ocean.

For the last three terms, we have tried to solve the water crisis, and, every time, we have heard these same arguments; so every term we did something different. A term ago, we got together with Republicans and Democrats, and we worked with our Senate leaders on the other side; but when it got time to make a final decision, I was told: no, no, we couldn't do this because it didn't go through committee, and there weren't enough people in the room.

So we said: All right. Well, we will go back to the drawing board.

This time we went through and we put Republicans and Democrats in the room.

Do you know what is interesting?

It just so happens Republicans are in the majority and Democrats are in the minority, but not in that room. There were more Democrats than there were Republicans, and we stayed months in there talking. We came to a lot of agreements. Maybe some people who were in the room won't say that on the outside, but on the inside, they agreed to a lot of the pieces of the legislation.

I will tell you that those pieces that we agreed to are in this bill.

Do you know why?

Because we listened. We don't change the Endangered Species Act. We don't go beyond the biological opinion.

Are you concerned about fish?

We say in this piece of legislation to pump higher unless there is a concern in the harming of the fish. You don't have to come back to Congress to change the level of pumping. So those solutions I hear on the floor are in the bill. I think it is about time that we stop making false accusations and actually stand for what we need.

Do you know what in these rooms I heard a lot about? Desalinization. And I said I will help with that. Because the whole concept of desalinization is we will spend a lot of money with a lot of energy to take that ocean water and take the salt out of it and make it freshwater.

Don't you think it would kind of be smart of us first to make sure that our freshwater is not becoming saltwater first? That is all we are asking here. We are saying let's live within the biological opinion.

We are protecting the Endangered Species Act, but we are doing something different in California. We are planning for the future. We are planning for those years that you won't have the big snowpack. We are planning for the years that California continues to grow. We are also planning for those people who work in the fields. We are planning for the people who want to build the homes.

Central Valley may be a little different than everyplace else, but those jobs are just as important as any job anywhere else in California. So, yes, we have sat in the rooms. Yes, there were more on the minority side than on the majority. Yes, we listened to you and we took what we heard and put it into a bill.

Because the other thing I heard when we couldn't do this is that it had to be regular order. That is why it could not be in the omnibus bill even though that was an idea from my Senate colleague in the other house.

So you know what? This is regular order on the floor of the House with the ideas that we heard, and it is in the bill.

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