On the recordMarch 1, 2023
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I couldn't agree with the gentleman more. California's Central Valley, whether it be the Sacramento Valley where Doug serves and represents or the South San Joaquin Valley where I serve and represent is really where America finds its greatest abundance of its salad bowl, its fruit bowl, almonds, plant protein--walnuts, pistachios. California leads the world in production of all of these crops and it really centers right in the Central Valley. Many of these water resources, whether north of Sacramento or south of Sacramento, share the same assets, the same infrastructure. So after several years of devastating droughts in California that have really hurt farm families and communities up and down our district--through acts of nature greatly, but also through mismanagement of our water resources and lack of infrastructure in California--it has really cut the abundance that delivers nutrition and affordability to so many American working families who are suffering from high inflation, both the energy costs, the food costs--and in California particularly--their housing costs, because we are simply not responding to the needs of our people as we need to. So in the last couple of days after a very, very wet season and immense hope on the part of our farmers that relief is on the way and they would get water allocations, many farmers--and Doug is in my district--received a letter from the Bureau of Reclamation.…
