Drought: Human Impact
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to the real human impact that the drought has had on families across California's San Joaquin Valley. This drought has lasted for 6 years.
Tomorrow, the House will have an opportunity to vote on legislation that will help address the impacts of the drought and begin to repair a broken water system that we have in California today. I hope more than anything that we can get the legislation across the finish line, but it seems that some of my colleagues in the House and the Senate remain unconvinced that a solution is necessary. I tell you that a solution is necessary and we are working on borrowed time.
I would like to take the opportunity to dispel that misconception. The picture next to me here is Mr. and Mrs. Cabrera from Madera, California. I represent these constituents. As you will notice, they look happy. The reason they look happy is because, when I had the pleasure of meeting with them that day, they found out that they had received a Federal resource grant to dig a new well in their backyard. Two years prior to that day, their well had gone completely dry.
For my colleagues who do not represent the rural constituencies across this country or in California, that means for 2 years the Cabrera family could not turn their faucet on to get water to bathe or cook. Instead, they went outside to haul buckets of water into their house. A 2,500-gallon tank in their backyard was where they got the water from. Some families are even less fortunate and had to have water trucked into their neighborhoods.
Also, pictured next to them is Juana Garcia. Juana lives in East Porterville. She was featured in a Fresno Bee story last year. Her family and 700 households in East Porterville have no water. This photo illustrates the delivery of nonpotable water to Ms. Garcia and her family. They walk to the local church several times a week so they can take a shower.
The Cabrera and Garcia families represent the faces of thousands of families throughout the Valley who don't have water and don't have a long-term plan to get water. They have been impacted.
Farmers, farm workers, and farm communities throughout the San Joaquin Valley have been impacted as well. Without water, hundreds and thousands of acres of productive ag land have gone fallow. That means they are not planted. Without planting, that means no jobs and no water. Unemployment, in many of these Valley farming communities, is in the double digits and at an all-time high.
While a California drought relief bill will not resolve every single challenge we face in the Valley and in California's broken water system, it will provide some relief to help these suffering families.
To my colleagues in California and elsewhere who think that the language in the WRDA bill is a poison pill, I say it is not. This is important to help solve the problems of the people in this Valley to ensure that more Valley families do not become the victims of polluted water and dry wells. This is not a poison pill. You should not look at it that way. It is wrong.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in the House and the Senate to support this legislation and act swiftly, not only on the behalf of the people of the San Joaquin Valley but Flint, Michigan, and the others who will benefit in the very important WRDA bill that will be before us tomorrow.
Time is of the essence. The drought-stricken community in California, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, and others who are impacted by very important and needed efforts that Senator Feinstein and others have put together as part of the WRDA bill, a bipartisan bill that Congressman McCarthy has worked on, should be passed tomorrow. Do the right thing before Christmas.
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