On the recordJune 3, 2015
I would like to thank the gentlemen from California and from Pennsylvania for allowing me this time, and the gentleman from California for offering this important amendment. Let me give a little perspective here. Clearly, everyone is aware of the disastrous drought that is having catastrophic impacts in California, not only in the San Joaquin Valley but throughout the State. There are a number of factors that have caused the challenges that we face with a lack of water in California. Obviously, it hasn't rained very much or snowed very much in the mountains for 4 years. In addition to that, we have a broken water system in the sense that, designed in the fifties and the sixties, both the Federal and State water projects, for a State of 20 million people, today we have 38 million people, and we have a lot of demands not only for the use of agriculture, but for people in our cities and for the environment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment relates to our requirements under the law to protect the environment, those endangered species, salmonoid and steelhead that are native to California. What happened is some 100 years ago, before we had a better understanding and before California was a much bigger State, there was the introduction of striped bass from the East Coast, bound from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence Seaway all the way down to Alabama. These are native fish on the East Coast, but they were not native to California.…
