San Francisco Bay Restoration Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership and recognition on this important issue.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation.

I am so proud of Representative Jackie Speier, with whom I have the privilege of corepresenting San Francisco. Jackie Speier has been our champion on San Francisco Bay, and this San Francisco Bay Restoration Act is a vital step to restoring our cherished bay.

It is an honor to be joined in this legislation with other bay area colleagues, Jared Huffman, John Garamendi, Mike Thompson, Jerry McNerney, Mark DeSaulnier, Barbara Lee, Ro Khanna, Anna Eshoo, and Zoe Lofgren. I also thank Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, who have introduced a Senate companion bill.

Madam Speaker, Members may not know, but the San Francisco Bay is an icon of California and a national treasure: inspiring us with its beauty and its might, enriching our lives with world-class recreation, tourism, and jobs.

The bay area delta, of which it is a part, is also the economic lifeblood of our coast, contributing over $370 billion to our economy each year and supporting more than four million jobs.

As part of the bay-delta estuary, it is a vital part of public health, providing drinking water for millions of Californians, a key force in combating the climate crisis.

But, for centuries, this magnificent estuary has been overexploited and underprotected. Today, 90 percent of the bay area's wetlands have been destroyed, undermining the strength of our coastal economies and communities.

The San Francisco Bay Restoration Act--sponsored and championed by Congresswoman Jackie Speier over many years--would make a long overdue $125 million investment in restoration efforts. It improves coordination from San Francisco to Washington, as it revives our wetlands to protect our coastal communities, improves our water quality, strengthens our climate resilience, including by combating sea level rise.

In 2018, the GAO concluded that a centralized initiative providing improved coordination and communication across efforts, along with dedicated Federal funding, would be the best chance for long-term restoration and protection of this vital geographic area on the West Coast. And this bill introduced by Congresswoman Jackie Speier provides exactly that.

Californians have fought to increase appropriations for the bay area for years, and we are grateful for the support of then-chair Nita Lowey of the Appropriations Committee and the chair of the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, Betty McCollum. We secured an increase of $3 million in funding for the bay.

Last year, with the support of Transportation and Infrastructure chair Peter DeFazio and, hence, the committee of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee chair Grace Napolitano, the House passed this Bay Restoration Act by a voice vote, and then again as part of our infrastructure bill, H.R. 2, the Moving Forward Act. Now we want to make it the law of the land.

Our communities and our lives are heavily enriched by the bay-delta estuary. This investment is an economic, health, environmental, and moral imperative.

I urge Members to support it with strong bipartisan support, and I hope that it will be bipartisan on the part of our colleagues on the West Coast, who know the value of the quality of life that the bay estuary project brings to us. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

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