John Doolittle: “Mr. Chairman, I think the Boehlert amendment is extremely ill-considered. I really wonder, as a member of the…”

“Mr. Chairman, I think the Boehlert amendment is extremely ill-considered. I really wonder, as a member of the authorizing committee that passed the Herger-Pombo bill out, you read the language, it simply says, ``Consultation and conferencing is not required for any agency action that A, consists of reconstructing, offering and maintaining or repairing Federal or non-Federal flood control project, facility or structure.'' Mr. Chairman, this really is a good debate. I am glad we are having it. We have been trying to get to this debate for over 2 years now in the Congress. It really is going to come down, I guess, between a very extreme application of the law, as is presently the case, by the bureaucrats and the Fish and Wildlife Service and NMFS and others, or whether we are going to have a reasoned, balanced approach. In our State of California alone, there are over 6,000 miles of levees. There is the picture of one, on the far right, that broke. We have 6,000 miles of aging levees that have been built over the decades. Only 2,000 miles of those are even federally constructed levees. The rest are non-Federal. Since we have had the Endangered Species Act and the very extreme interpretations and additions that have come about over the years, we now find ourselves with tremendous aging, unstable levees in much of our State.”