Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Today I rise in opposition to the litany of bad, environmentally harmful bills that the House Republican leadership is offering in place of the bipartisan Senate energy bill.

Now, the Senate bill, S. 2012, was sound policy and represented real progress on many important issues, but the package we are considering today is a dangerous threat. Not only is this package bad for drought- stricken States like California, but it includes a wish list of giveaways for the fossil fuel and mining industries, it undermines vital Endangered Species Act protections, and it undermines public review.

This is not a promising start to conference negotiations. Why are we wasting our time on a package of partisan bills that we have considered before and which we all know will never be signed into law?

Even worse than the substance, Republicans shot down the request to consider this bill under an open amendment process. Now, I, for one, would have recommended many changes if we were allowed to consider this very controversial omnibus bill under regular order. Just to name a few:

The House amendment we are considering today continues the unending threats that Congress poses under current management to the health of the bay delta and the vital salmon runs that are so important to California and to my district, not to mention specific threats to the San Joaquin River and to the Klamath and Trinity River systems, their salmon fisheries, and the people that depend upon them;

The House amendment we are considering today would bring back from the dead the undeniably harmful Keystone XL pipeline;

The House amendment we are considering today would roll back building codes;

It would be harmful to forest management policy and wildfire mitigation because it uses a short-sighted model for funding instead of bringing forward the actual fix to the fire borrowing problem, the bipartisan legislation by Representatives Simpson and Schrader that I have supported each of the last several years but we never seem to be able to actually bring to a vote in this House.

I urge my colleagues today to vote for the Senate energy bill in its current form, in its original form, which is the result of true, bipartisan compromise, so we can actually get that legislation and all of its useful provisions over the finish line.

Calling the Valadao water bill bipartisan does not make it genuinely so.

Let me just share with my colleagues what Senator Dianne Feinstein has said about this bill. She said it contains ``provisions that would violate environmental law,'' which she cannot support.

California Senator Barbara Boxer said the bill is ``the same-old, same-old and will only reignite the water wars.''

The Obama administration opposes this bill. The State of California not only opposes these provisions, but has opposed all previous incarnations of this bill, which has been bouncing around for some time, long before the current drought gave it a new drought-related title.

I will just close with what the Fresno Bee has said about this bill.

Matsui), who has long fought to protect the delta and the interests of her region.

I share the majority leader's view that California is a unique and iconic and majestic place. I would only add that part of what makes it so includes the great rivers and iconic salmon runs in California from the Central Valley to the North Coast, where I represent, and the incredibly important bay-delta estuary, the most ecologically important estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, which despite all of the damage we have done to it over the past 100-plus years, still teams with waterfowl and wildlife and still supports salmon that are the staple of the commercial salmon fishing industry, not just in California, but in Washington and Oregon.

That is why groups who advocate for these fisheries, folks who make their living by depending on these fish, are uniformly against the Republican water bill that has been added in by way of this amendment. Fishing jobs matter, too. It is part of what makes California great. There is no one that understands that better than my colleague, Mike Thompson.

When I hear my colleagues across the aisle continually describe outflow through the delta estuary as water that is somehow wasted and available to be taken for any purpose, it requires us often to remind them that this delta water system without that outflow would not be available to millions of Californians for drinking water and it would not be available to the Central Valley for agricultural irrigation because that outflow maintains salinity control and water quality in this very complex water system.

It is also incorrect--and, yet, we continue to hear it regularly-- that huge amounts of water in the last few years have been wasted for environmental purposes.

The State Water Resources Control Board in California estimates that, in 2014, only 4 percent of all runoff in the bay-delta watershed flowed into the San Francisco Bay solely for environmental protection, again, because there are other values, other benefits, to this outflow that sustains water quality and other values in the system.

In 2015, the State estimates that it was only 2 percent of the runoff in the watershed that made it through the system for environmental purposes only. It is important that we bear those facts in mind.

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Mr. HUFFMAN. I yield back the balance of my time.

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