Ken Calvert: “I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, here we go again, debating solutions to California's water woes…”

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, here we go again, debating solutions to California's water woes, with each side making similar arguments we have heard for years. In fact, more than a decade ago, I was standing in this very spot, in the middle of the debate of the last significant Western water law that Congress has passed. We passed the CALFED law in 2004 and hoped that it would help California establish reliable and affordable water supplies that would help us get through dry spells like we are currently experiencing. So why are we back here again debating many of the same issues? The simplest answer to that question is we allowed the ``don't build anything'' faction in California to block the critical investments we need to make in our State's water infrastructure. The CALFED law authorized feasibility studies for large water storage projects like Temperance Flat, Sites Reservoir, Upper San Joaquin, expanding Los Vaqueros Reservoir and raising Shasta Dam. A decade later, our State's population has grown by 3 million new residents, and those projects are still being studied. Think about that for a second. California's population has grown the same amount as the population of the entire State of Iowa, and we haven't made a significant investment in our water infrastructure to accommodate those residents. It is well past time to stop talking about these projects and start building them.…”