The Extended Drought in California

Floor Speech

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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention again to the devastating drought that has impacted California for over 4 years.

Much is said about California and the success that we have had post- World War II, but a lot of it is owed to the fact that we have developed a water system, both a Federal and State water project, that allows us to move water throughout California for beneficial use to every region of California, and that has been a great success.

But today that water system is broken. It is broken because it was designed to meet the needs of 20 million people and the agriculture that we had in the 1960s and 1970s. Today we have over 40 million people in California, we have more intensive agriculture, producing half the Nation's fruits and vegetables--the leading agricultural State in the Nation--and demands for water for the environment that was not part of the project in the beginning.

I have made and will continue to make it a priority to speak on the House floor regularly regarding the devastating drought impacts and will attempt to offer solutions both for the State and Federal agencies to maximize our ability to move water through the system where it is most needed to ensure that we also make the changes at the Federal level and at the State level to fix this magnificent but broken water system today that no longer can meet all of the demands and needs that are subscribed for it.

Protecting and securing a reliable water supply in the San Joaquin Valley is arguably the most important issue facing the region of 4 million people that I, along with four of my other colleagues, represent. We worry every day about job security and the future success of the San Joaquin Valley's economy, which are directly dependent upon our access to a reliable and secure supply of water that is of high quality. The people of the valley and the entire State of California have been directly impacted by this devastating drought in one way or another.

There are many examples of how the San Joaquin Valley, a place I represent, has been impacted:

Over 6,000 acres of productive agricultural land has been fallowed, unplanted.

The land in the San Joaquin Valley is subsiding because, out of devastating need, families are drilling deeper wells to meet their everyday needs to keep what land they can in production and permanent crops irrigated, and farmers are pumping groundwater at unsustainable rates to avoid the catastrophic impacts of pulling out hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of permanent crops.

Unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley is twice as high as the rest of the country; and in 2015 alone, California lost $2.2 billion as a result of the drought.

These devastating impacts have brought many of us to pray for rain and snow in the mountains, but that is not enough. We need to fix this broken water system.

While we will continue to hope for the El Nino year to bring additional rainfall amounts that are significantly greater than average, we know that that is not enough.

With above-average rainfall and snow in the mountains, San Joaquin Valley communities and farmers can now rest easy; right? Sadly, no. Since October 1, 2015, over 3.4 million acre-feet of water has gone out into the ocean. That is water that could be used in the valley and in southern California. This is nearly 1.1 trillion gallons of water. To put that number in context, an average American family uses around 400 gallons of water a day.

My point is that only a small amount of water is being pumped out of the delta to move south for the San Joaquin Valley to assist the farm communities, as well as for southern California. We have yet to recover from the devastating impacts of the drought over the last 4 years, even though we have got more water this year as a result of the El Nino conditions.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced recently that, even with well-above average rainfall, reservoirs in California are still below the 15-year average for this time of year, and there is no Federal water stored in a major reservoir, the San Luis Reservoir, for the San Joaquin Valley that would be available for water this summer.

Yet, this week, we were devastated to hear that the Bureau of Reclamation is releasing 200,000 acre-feet out of Folsom Lake because of flood control purposes. We are not moving that water--not even 100,000 acre-feet--through the system. That is just not right. This is directly due to the unwillingness of State and Federal agencies to pump water at the maximum levels based the biological opinions that many of us believe are flawed because the science is at least 10 years old.

While weather patterns have had a great impact on the delivery of water over the last 4 years, it has only been one of the impacts. We must make a difference. We must fix this broken water system. I will continue to update the Members of the House on the challenges we face and on legislation that is important to do just that.

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