Grace Napolitano: “There is no taking of anybody's water rights in this case and the majority knows it. Claiming this is a taking is…”

“There is no taking of anybody's water rights in this case and the majority knows it. Claiming this is a taking is misleading and irresponsible. The only way State or private water rights could, I repeat, could be transferred or diminished in any way is if the owner of those rights volunteers to a transfer or a limitation to a portion of those rights as part of a deal to receive the permission to use Federal land. Volunteering to limit your water rights in exchange for the use of Federal land, taxpayer land, is the opposite of taking. The various court cases the majority has thrown around deal with legitimate, I repeat, legitimate water rights issues; cases where there are overlapping or conflicting claims over the same water. This is not that type of a case. I defy my colleagues to produce any case law holding that a decision to give up a water right, voluntarily, in order to get another Federal benefit is a taking. There are no such cases. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.”