Tom McClintock

The bill, plain and simple, declares that hydropower is a renewable source of energy.

Local control of your destiny is at the heart of public power.

That comes to about $75 for every working family in the State. That to me seems insane.

Now, we are going to hear a representative sampling of the arguments made in support of this lunacy in the next few minutes.

We have to find more water resources because irrigation increases crop yields tenfold.

The bill would block imposition of the 'Chu Memo', ordered by the Secretary of Energy, that could force power rate increases.

What can we expect to see on our household electricity bills if this lunatic fringe of the environmental left has its way and these dams come down?

Once you eliminate the bureaucratic regulations, what are we dealing with in terms of the actual cost?

Why should taxpayers fund both defendants and plaintiffs?

I have never seen a single proposal that combines more bad policy in one single measure than what has been advocated by the left to tear down these dams.

Their agenda is not to maintain or improve the dams. Their agenda is to destroy them.

But over the last few decades, a radical and retrograde ideology has seized our public policy.

This isn't about dam safety. We already have very good laws in place to assure the safety of our dams.

The folks in my district are facing just enormous costs.

We have not invented a more expensive way of producing electricity.

You are going to have to pay for the much more expensive power.

The bill I introduced two weeks ago shines a bright light on the enormous benefits and potential of federal and non-federal hydropower dams.

I don't think we are going to grin and bear it any longer.

No single person, be they an unelected bureaucrat or federal judge, should ever have authority to initiate such an action.

Well, I am told in Alaska, they are now pioneering what they are calling ocean ranching where the hatchlings are released directly into the ocean and then harvested directly out of the ocean.

They are working for this bizarre fever dream that I mentioned earlier.

The people of my district, as the people of yours, understand the vital role that our dams play not just in assuring abundant supplies of clean water, not just in supplying clean, cheap, and plentiful electricity and critically important…

My district touches the Klamath Valley where the environmental left seeks to spend well over a quarter billion dollars tearing down four perfectly good hydroelectric dams that are capable of producing clean and inexpensive electricity for…

We need more dams, not less.

Every dam must be considered on its own merits.