Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the STREAM Act (Support to Rehydrate the Environment, Agriculture and Municipalities Act), which I am introducing today alongside my cosponsors Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema. This is a bill intended to address the massive drought affecting much of the Western United States. As the past 2 years demonstrate all too painfully, drought exacerbated by climate change--increasingly severe and prolonged drought--is a stark reality for California and the West. This has resulted in shortages of water for agriculture, for irrigation, and increasingly threatens residential and business uses. The drought has threatened endangered species and results in a drying of the ground and plantlife that makes wildfire an even greater threat. If we don't take action now, it is only going to get worse. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists project that climate change will cause a 54-percent drop in the Sierras' snowpack within the next 20 to 40 years and a 79-percent drop by the end of the century. This change alone could be devastating for California, because we absolutely depend on this snowpack. The Sierra snowpack provides 30 percent of our water supply and is our biggest reservoir. For these reasons and others we need an ``all of the above'' water strategy, including No. 1, increased water supply; No. 2, incentivizing projects that build in environmental benefits and drinking water for disadvantaged communities, and No.…”