On the recordFebruary 29, 2012
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I must say, for those of us who have seen this with our own eyes, who saw the devastation in the Central Valley, we know for a fact that when the aqueduct pumps in California were slowed, when that water came to a halt because of the orders and opinions issued partly by the Obama administration, what we saw was devastation. We saw the worst of it in 2010. Over a million acre-feet of water were lost. Tens of thousands of jobs were destroyed in our State. The unemployment rate, my friends, in some of these Central Valley towns reached 40 percent. Those signs that I saw along the I 5 when I was going up to take a look at this, they told a certain story, and these were written by farmers: ``No water = No jobs.'' You'd go down the highway: ``Food grows where water flows,'' but there was no food growing. The devastation was incredible. The Acting CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.
