Grace Napolitano: “I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I do heavily oppose H.R. 2898. It does create no new wet water. I am…”

“I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I do heavily oppose H.R. 2898. It does create no new wet water. I am hearing a lot of rhetoric on all these different things that have happened. I have been on that subcommittee for 17 years, and I have heard it all. I have been to the Central Valley. I have been talking to farmers. But I don't see any of my colleagues on the other side visiting southern California and checking out how we do things in San Diego and Los Angeles, to be able to have hearings with the water agencies and all those that are critically affected by what is affecting southern California. Now, this bill has been introduced. There has been no hearing in our Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. There has been no consultation with Democrats, except one maybe, with no water agency, with State agencies, with cities, and with tribes. It does nothing for farmworkers, the ones who are really affected by the drought and who have no way of being able to have income or other way of subsidence. The bill focuses on the Central Valley at the expense of the rest of both northern California and southern California. It requires mandatory pumping to agribusiness, which reduces southern California water deliveries. It creates a complicated and ill-defined system that is a very poor attempt at protecting State water deliveries to southern California.…”