San Luis Rey Indian Water Rights Settlement Act Amendment
Floor Speech
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This bill approves a water rights settlement agreement that would resolve nearly five decades of litigation. That is a great thing.
The 2015 settlement between the United States and the parties that Mr. Denham just mentioned is important, and approving this settlement will finally put an end to years of bitter fighting over water rights in the San Luis Rey River Basin. It also leaves intact the full amount of funds Congress previously appropriated for the tribes. This kind of negotiation is important, and the painstaking work that has gone into it is to be commended. Now it is up to Congress to do its part to implement a well-crafted settlement.
I commend my colleagues across the aisle for introducing this bill and for moving it through the House, and I thank the committee staffs on both sides who have been working hard to bring this bill to the floor.
I have to say, though, Mr. Speaker, that all of this good, collaborative work represented in Mr. Hunter's bill stands in contrast to another set of pending water agreements in our State. I hope that the Obama administration will look at this successful example of collaboration in San Diego County and reconsider its current approach to the Westlands-San Joaquin Valley drainage disputes, where Congress and the public have been extremely ill-served.
In the two pending drainage agreements, the Interior Department has agreed to waive hundreds of millions of dollars that are owed to taxpayers. They have failed to close off potential litigation risks from other parties and have failed to secure actual commitments to clean up the contamination. They have also promised to write a new, permanent water contract for a party that is not a tribal party but is in an arid state where everyone is hurting for clean water. Meanwhile, we weren't able to receive administration testimony on one of the agreements due, in part, to a pending inspector general investigation of the beneficiaries.
I am hopeful that, in the next administration and in a new Congress, we can do a better job on this drainage issue and, specifically, that we will be able to tackle those California drainage disputes with the same level of collaboration and problem-solving that we have seen in the San Luis Rey Basin.
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