Political Quotes

“About an hour ago, this House of Representatives kicked off a new quarter in the ongoing California water war. This House passed a piece of legislation that will ultimately gut the Endangered Species Act; the Clean Water Act; the biological opinions protecting salmon and smelt; the health of the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere, the San Francisco Bay; and salmon up and down the Pacific Coast. This amendment is designed to stop the ultimate threat to the California Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. The ultimate threat is the twin tunnels that are being proposed by the Brown administration, tunnels that are sized at 15,000-cubic-feet-per- second capacity, tunnels that have the capability to take half or take all of the water out of the Sacramento River. Six months of the year, the Sacramento River flows somewhere between 12,000 and 18,000 cubic feet per second. These tunnels, if ever built, will be capable of literally sucking the Sacramento River dry and destroying the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere. This amendment is designed to protect the delta by denying the State of California the opportunity to use the Federal Government to build such a destructive system. We don't need that system. There are solutions to the delta problem. There are solutions that are capable of addressing the water issues of California.…”