Jared Huffman: “I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time, and I commend my colleague, Jackie Speier, for her leadership on this…”

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time, and I commend my colleague, Jackie Speier, for her leadership on this issue. And thanks also to the ranking member for recognizing the importance, the critical national importance, of the San Francisco Bay Estuary. I have the fortune of representing a beautiful district that starts at the Oregon border but goes all the way down to the Golden Gate Bridge. That means I represent a good portion of San Francisco Bay, the North Bay, where we understand all too well how much we have lost--90 percent of the Bay's wetlands have been destroyed. Starting a century and-a-half ago, there has been incredible degradation of this vital estuary beginning with the Gold Rush, continuing to massive water diversions and pollution inputs, the diking of wetlands, and so on. But despite all of that degradation, San Francisco Bay continues to play a vital role ecologically in our region and an even greater role economically. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity every year as a product of San Francisco Bay--outdoor recreation, commercial and recreational fishing, travel and tourism. And we also see the very real benefits in the San Francisco Bay area of coastal resiliency, using natural systems as a buffer against rising sea levels. The citizens of the nine-county Bay area have stepped up.…”