Richard Pombo: “Mr. Chairman, in conclusion on the debate, I would just like to say that the point is we have drafted a bill which is…”

“Mr. Chairman, in conclusion on the debate, I would just like to say that the point is we have drafted a bill which is designed to allow routine maintenance and operation of the levee system in California. That is what it is designed to do. We have heard a lot of statements that have been made here today which are factually untrue. It does not gut the Endangered Species Act, it does not blow a hole in the Endangered Species Act; none of that is true. What it does is it allows regular routine maintenance of the levee system to happen on a timely basis. That is what it allows. Mr. Chairman, the entire levee system was built to protect peoples' lives and property. Why do our colleagues find it so difficult to put that as a priority of the levee system? Is it so difficult for them to place people as the No. 1 priority of our levee system, of our flood control system? Mr. Chairman, this is a simple bill that has a targeted, very narrow problem that we are trying to correct. That is what we are after at this time. All of the stuff we keep hearing from the minority really is just an effort to block passing on control to the local district managers and giving them the opportunity to manage their levee system.”