Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, welcome to California water wars, Members of Congress. Here we are again, back to our water war.

We need to solve the problem of the delta, but you don't do it by gutting the environmental protections of the delta. Have no doubt about it. This is another water war in California that we do not need.

What we need is some wise legislation that actually can solve the problem. Gutting the Endangered Species Act, overriding the biological opinions, taking away the Clean Water Act, and simply turning the pumps on is not a solution. It is, in fact, the death knell of the delta. Along with Governor Brown's twin tunnels, it will destroy the delta. So let's not go that way. Let's find the right solution in which science-- that is the realtime monitoring of what is happening in the delta--is how we determine whether to ramp up or to reduce the pumping in the delta. That is not in this bill.

Take a look at the opponents here. We have the two delta interests, Mr. McNerney and I. We have the San Joaquin Valley interests. Gentlemen and ladies, welcome to California water wars. This is not the way to handle it--not in an appropriation, not in a bill that guts the environmental protections and simply turns the pumps on.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, all of us can get pretty excited about water in California, and I see my colleagues from the San Joaquin Valley and beyond who are lined up here to protest what has happened over this last year.

There is no doubt that in this last year the rainy season didn't work for anybody. We can find a solution if we base that solution on solid science, if we base it on the realtime monitoring of where the fish are. I know there is a monitoring provision in this bill. Also, this particular bill, as written, would push aside the environmental protections and simply allow the pumps to be turned on even with the monitoring. What we really need to do is to base the delta operation on the realtime monitoring of where the species are and then adjust the pumps accordingly.

There is a solution. My colleague, Mr. McNerney, just talked in detail about the necessity of building additional infrastructure for water. We need Sites Reservoir in the northern part of the State. We need to rebuild the San Luis Reservoir, and the Los Banos Grandes needs to be built. We need to build the infrastructure, the recycling, and all of the other things.

We do not need to take, as this bill does, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the biological opinions and push them out of the way and just allow the pumps to turn on. That is not a solution. That is a solution for the destruction of the largest estuary on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere.

I don't doubt for a moment the sincerity of my colleagues from the San Joaquin Valley and from southern California. They are sincere about the concern, and we share that concern. 300,000 acres of my rice farm didn't get planted this last year because of the drought. We also know the damage that a drought can do, but there is a way of solving this problem. This is not the bill. This bill will set off a war. Obviously, we are already at it here on the floor of the House.

Let's put this aside. Let's sit down, as we can do, and develop a solution that keeps in place the environmental laws and allows the flexibility that is present within those laws to be used to the maximum extent and not push the laws and the biological opinions out of the way to the detriment of the largest estuary on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere. It is critical for salmon and other species in the ocean as well as for the agriculture in the delta and the 4 million or 5 million people who depend upon that water from the delta.

I ask my colleagues to work with all of us, and I will take the chair of the subcommittee up on his offer. I will take the gentleman up on his offer and sit down with him, and we will work this out, but not in this way, at this moment on this floor, with a bill that really does gut the environmental laws and that guts the environmental species as well as the Clean Water Act.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I just heard the most interesting discussion a few moments ago about highly enriched uranium. In fact, we are in the process of spending several billions of dollars in rebuilding our highly enriched uranium facility so that we can produce more nuclear weapons.

The subject of this amendment is about old nuclear weapons. We have some 30-plus metric tons of unused plutonium that is sitting in various storage facilities around the United States. We have designed, in an agreement with Russia, to dispose of about 30 metric tons of that plutonium, and Russia has agreed to dispose of a little bit more than we are going to dispose of. This was all supposed to be done at the Mixed Oxide Fuel Facility in South Carolina, at the Savannah River facility.

It is going to cost about a billion dollars back in 2001. The estimate in 2014 was $7.7 billion. And in 2015, the estimate is some $30 billion, and most people say it isn't going to work.

So we have sinkholes for money, and we have black holes for money. And this is the ultimate black hole into which perhaps $30 billion will be spent. And, at the end of the day, it will probably create more problems and not solve the problem of the 30-or-so metric tons of plutonium that actually came out of various bombs that have been dismantled over the last several years.

So why are we continuing?

In the appropriation bill, it calls for $340 million to be spent on construction of a facility that the Department of Energy says shouldn't be built. But, hey, we are the Congress and we can throw around $340 million with great aplomb and not even worry about it.

So this is a very simple amendment. It doesn't save us the $340 million, which is what we really ought to do. What this amendment really does is say: don't spend it on further constructing this useless--well, not useless--but totally expensive facility, the MOX facility. Don't waste the money on this boondoggle.

And we can spend the money on maybe what the Department of Energy thinks we ought to do, which is to dilute and dispose or maybe we could build a fast reactor, which we actually have built in the past and which Russia is actually using to dispose of its plutonium. They are generating energy in doing so while disposing of their unused plutonium.

So why don't we just accept this amendment and eliminate the construction clause? Keep the $340 million in South Carolina so that they could be happy and maybe they could spend it on something that might actually work.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, how much time do I have remaining?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, with great respect for my friend from South Carolina, who is a most able advocate for his neighborhood, the MOX facility is the ultimate sinkhole for Federal dollars.

In fact, there is a viable alternative, and there are quite possibly two different viable alternatives. One is the Russian fast reactor. We have our own fast reactor. It clearly is disposing of the plutonium stockpile in Russia and creating energy along the way that they are using. We also have our own fast reactor systems that have been built in the past, and they could be viable and could be located at the Savannah River facility to dispose of the plutonium.

We are going to need to come to some conclusion here. This is a debate that we really must have. The Senate has two different versions, and the House has two different versions about what to do. Maybe the gentleman and I could wrestle and we could decide which one is the version we would actually take on here.

This does not stop the facility. It simply says to stop construction, use the money to look at designs, use the money to look for ongoing solutions, which the gentleman, I believe, is incorrect. But if he is right, it could be the MOX facility.

But we need to solve this problem. It is a very, very serious problem. We are required by a treaty with Russia to dispose of our unused plutonium, which is another amendment that I will take up at the end of the day, but I will talk about that much later tonight.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, about an hour and a half ago we had a very important debate on this floor concerning some 30-plus metric tons of unused surplus plutonium to be disposed of in South Carolina at the mixed oxide fuel facility. The debate went on.

I want to thank my colleagues on the majority side for elucidating the issue and bringing to our attention, as did I, that we have some 34 metric tons of plutonium lying around in various depositories around the United States. And from our discussion earlier, it is pretty clear it is not going to be disposed of any time soon.

Now, this bill would set about the United States putting together facilities that would create even more plutonium somewhere in the range of 80 nuclear bomb pits. This is the essential element in a nuclear bomb. For what purpose?

Well, we really probably can't talk about it here in this public setting, but it appears to be a rather unclear purpose as to why we would need to build a new facility at a multibillion dollar cost for the production of more plutonium pits when we have 34 metric tons of them sitting in various repositories.

So I guess I just kind of ask: Why are we doing that?

Well, this amendment would simply limit the PF-4 facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to no more than 10 pits a year, which they can produce. Probably a little bit of refurbishing will be necessary as the years progress, but we really do not need to spend a few billion dollars on a brand-new facility to make brand-new atomic bomb plutonium pits.

Why would we do that? Well, I don't think we do need to do that. We can get by with 10 a year. And I suppose, if we really got into a situation where we need to build more, we could run 2 shifts a day, maybe even 3 shifts a day, and get production up to some 20.

Nobody has really bothered to explain in detail why we need more than 10, and certainly nobody has explained in detail why we need 80.

So that is what this amendment does. It simply says: Let's save our money. Let's not put it into a facility that we don't need and go about our business of making just 9 or 10 new nuclear plutonium pits a year.

Mr. Chairman,

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, 2 minutes is probably insufficient to persuade my colleagues on the majority side that my argument is worthy of support; but nonetheless, I will take a shot at it.

We can build 9 or 10 pits a year now. If we go to two shifts, we could build 20. The only reason we would need 80 has to do with a revamped, refurbished nuclear bomb, which I will talk about tomorrow morning, because at the request of the majority, I was asked to put it off until tomorrow morning.

In any case, where are we today?

We have enough nuclear weapons to pretty much destroy the entire world or any enemy that would like to take us on.

Do we need to have 80 new nuclear pits a year?

In all the testimony I have heard in the various classified sessions, the answer is: We would like to have it. We would like to have that capability because sometime maybe somehow we may have a nuclear war, and we will expend all of our existing bombs and we will need to somehow make more.

I am not exactly sure why we would be making more after a nuclear war, but there are some who would argue that would be necessary.

I don't get it. I really don't understand when we have the capability to build sufficient nuclear bomb components, the pit, the plutonium pit, why we would want to spend a few billion dollars--an unknown number, by the way, not unlike the MOX facility, it is likely to rapidly escalate.

But our Los Alamos scientists would like to have something new and fancy when something old is quite necessary. My wife always said that there is a choice between nice and necessary. I have yet to hear the argument for necessary, why we should set our path on spending several billion dollars on a new pit production facility. I am sure there is some argument to be made. In any case, I have a sense that I might lose this vote on the floor when I will ask for a vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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