Political Quotes

“it is not the first time I have come to the well to address the House and my colleagues about the terrible plight of the people of the Klamath Basin in Oregon and northern California. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, on April 6 of last year, the water was cut off to the farmers at Klamath Basin. Some 1,400 farms were affected. The decision was unprecedented. Never in the near-hundred-year history of this water project run by the Bureau of Reclamation had the water been totally cut off; but a new scientific analysis and decisions by the various agencies, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marines Fisheries Service, said, sorry, there is not enough water for the farmers. We have to maintain the highest lake levels we have ever maintained to protect sucker fish, and then we have to release water later on in greater amounts than we have before to provide water for the Koho salmon, which are in danger. Mr. Speaker, a number of us, especially the farmers and ranchers in the basin, argued against that, saying that there was no scientific evidence to prove that this was necessary; but those arguments fell on deaf ears.”