Political Quotes

“I rise to share a few thoughts on the Water Resources Development Act, or, as it is referred to, the WRDA Act. This is a bill which has a tremendous number of water projects across America that in general will work to make many communities' economies work far better. These are widely distributed across the country, and they are widely needed. It was worked out through a tremendous amount of effort on the Senate side and on the House side. There are certainly projects there I have fought for that will be of assistance on the Columbia River and to the tribes who were affected by the dams on the Columbia River and on the WIFIA, the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act--a vision I have been working on for years to put in place. All of that is very good, but I have real concerns about a provision that was airdropped into the conference. This is not just a little one- sentence rider; this is 90 pages called the California Drought Act. Picture the big vision here. For years, the Central Valley of California has been a massive consumer of water for agriculture. We have had years of drought. During those years that the Central Valley was a massive consumer of water, they planted a lot of crops that consume a lot of water. Crops like almonds--it takes a gallon of water for every almond. There are crops like rice, where you have to flood the paddies of rice and there is massive loss to evaporation.…”