Alan Lowenthal: “I, like many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, am concerned about the long-term prospects for water…”

“I, like many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, am concerned about the long-term prospects for water infrastructure and storage in the West. As the western climate continues to get hotter, we are going to have more hot, dry, drought years. That is why many States and communities, including the cities that I represent, are doing all that they can to make their water infrastructure more resilient, to reduce unneeded runoff, to recycle water, and to store as much ground water as possible. To support these critical activities, Congress needs to invest in our country's water infrastructure. The bill before us today does not do any of these things. It does not authorize new or additional funding for water projects. It is not an infrastructure bill. Instead, the bill before us today makes many Americans nervous because it loosens key environmental safeguards and imposes arbitrary deadlines for the approval of dams on our rivers and streams. This bill threatens the health of our streams, our rivers, and coastlines, which could harm fish populations important to commercial fisheries. Therefore, I am offering a straightforward amendment. It simply requires proposed new dams to go through the normal project review process if they are likely to harm commercial fisheries. The construction of poorly permitted dams has been a major cause of mortality for California's fisheries.…”