Drought in the Western United States
Floor Speech
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with Mr. Newhouse and my colleagues to discuss the catastrophic drought situation facing the Western United States.
In my home State of Arkansas, we usually have plenty of water throughout all four seasons, but the West is different.
As the lead Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, I have heard personal accounts from folks across the West about the crippling effects of the Western drought both in the past and the present. This map shows the vast majority of the West is under severe drought.
While we can certainly take short-term action to mitigate drought, we must ask ourselves two questions to solve this issue long-term. First, how did we get here; and, next, how can we avoid another situation like this one?
Before we answer these questions, some important context is necessary. Decades ago, water engineers understood that the arid West would remain dry and its rivers went through boom and bust cycles of floods followed by intense drought.
Under the initial direction of President Teddy Roosevelt, who signed the landmark Reclamation Act of 1902, dams were built to capture water in wet times for people to use during the dry times. Major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Denver, would not exist today if it weren't for these projects. Consumers nationwide still enjoy the fruits, nuts, and vegetables produced by these waters.
Yet, starting in the 1970s, serial litigants began weaponizing a series of well-intended laws to curtail these projects. The Endangered Species Act has been the particular weapon of choice for many of the organizations that are actually headquartered in the cities created by water projects.
Not only did litigation compromise existing projects, but it also prevented us from building additional dams. Our current policies failed to measure accountability and results for environmental actions, and our bureaucracy has a paralysis-by-analysis approach when it comes to building new dams. We put a man on the Moon in shorter time than it takes just to study a new dam today.
Our California Republican colleagues did something about this. They authored, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein, an innovative law signed by President Obama in 2016 that streamlined the dam studies and facilitated construction. The Trump administration then moved at a record pace to finish the never-ending studies on potential dams throughout the West.
But today, the other side of the aisle is blocking the reauthorization of that critical law and is halting progress on a process that provides an all-of-the-above strategy to water supplies.
The drought is not only having impact on water supplies for our communities, but it is also making a terrible situation even worse in our poorly managed forests. Every night we see the newscasts about raging forest fires that are destroying communities and scorching habitat for endangered species like the northern spotted owl. For months now we have sounded the alarm, only to be met with inaction from both the administration and our Democrat colleagues.
While water may not be abundant out West, it is abundantly clear the administration has no plan. In contrast, we do. We have the Resilient Federal Forests Act, the Trillion Trees Act, the reauthorization of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, and bringing balance to the Endangered Species Act, to name a few, so we can avoid the next drought.
We have the ability to overcome and avoid droughts, but we must have the political will to act. The American people deserve nothing less.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Stauber for his leadership on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and his participation in all the things we work on trying to do conservation through the Natural Resources Committee.
He is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife. He is a water lawyer. He has got experience both firsthand and academically.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and for his work and for his solutions approach to what we can do to intervene in these drought situations.
Next I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Obernolte), who is no stranger to dry conditions and to the effects of drought.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Obernolte for bringing his expertise in water to the House floor.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Newhouse), the chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, someone who is no stranger to agriculture, no stranger to drought, and certainly no stranger to the importance of water.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. I thank the gentleman again for his leadership on the Congressional Western Caucus. I thank him for the solutions-based approach he takes to problems, whether it is drought or other issues that we face with natural resources across the country. Hopefully, we can continue to work together and to bring more people in across the aisle that recognize that we do need to have action. Talking about things in D.C. don't solve farmers' problems in Washington State. It doesn't fix forest fire problems across the West and across the country. We need to talk and come to solutions and take action. So I do appreciate the gentleman's work.
I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Boebert), who also lives in a place that is very prone to fire and is subject to drought.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for reminding us that we do need to have our priorities in order, that there are important things that we are failing to address here in Congress.
We are getting ready to break for the August break, and nothing will have been done to address wildfires or drought. I don't think that is what the American people deserve, nor what they want. It is a lack of priorities and a lack of leadership.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), who understands agriculture because he is a farmer. He understands drought because he lives in California. He understands abundant water supplies because of where he lives in California. And he also understands catastrophic wildfire and how that is related to lack of management.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to another gentleman from California, who certainly understands agriculture, and he understands drought conditions, water management. He is also a farmer.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California, and I also agree with him that we haven't taken action.
D.C. is fiddling while the West burns again. Here we are, getting ready to break for August recess with nothing to show, nothing to tell the people in the West on what is being done to mitigate these wildfires, to mitigate the drought.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs. Miller- Meeks), who just got the VIP Act passed earlier today.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for highlighting how the drought is affecting the Midwest, not just the West, and for pointing out that our colleagues across the aisle and the administration not only have not taken any action and don't have a plan; they also won't listen to us who have plans, who want to take action.
That is why we are here, why we are making this case that we have to take action. We can't just stand by and not try to do anything to help.
Again, I thank the gentlewoman. She passed a bill with 420 votes affirmative and 0 against. I think she knows how to work in a bipartisan manner, and she wants to do solutions to help people.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Moore), another freshman Member from the West, who certainly understands drought and natural resources.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah. I turn now to California, an area of California that is very dry, an area that has experienced a lot of forest fires. From talking to this gentleman, I know that a lot of those forest fires can be prevented, that we could have an abundance of resources, yet we seem to waste and mismanage these resources.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership in the past in getting bipartisan legislation in place.
I remember a couple of years ago I was out around South Lake Tahoe and I saw the fruits of the efforts of Representative McClintock, working in a bipartisan manner with many groups, to do the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, part of what was in the bipartisan WIIN Act.
And I felt proud as an American from Arkansas to be in California and seeing the forest actually being managed and knowing that it was my colleague, Mr. McClintock, that pushed for that. And more of that needs to be done, enough of it is not happening. We need more land that gets treated like that. It looked like a park. From a forestry perspective, I would have maybe taken a few more trees out, but it was way better than what was left around it and it is making great progress, and that is because of solutions-based approaches to getting the job done and making a difference out on the ground.
But we have got 80 million acres of forest land in this country that is subject to catastrophic wildfire. When you mix that with the drought conditions that we are seeing today, Madam Speaker, it is a recipe for disaster.
Mr. McClintock talked about a lightning strike that was left to burn, when it could have been put out early. We see massive destruction. We are seeing that in eastern Oregon, and we will continue to see it. We are seeing one of the worst wildfire seasons that we have ever seen.
I think Americans need to understand how important healthy forests are to good watersheds. Teddy Roosevelt knew that. He talked about the importance of developing the West and protecting the watersheds and the timber in the upper parts of the watersheds, because that timber acts as a filter. It acts like a sponge that holds water and releases it slowly so that you don't get all of it running off at one time.
We have these massive forest fires, next comes the flooding and the landslides and the degradation to our streams. We want to help species like the Chinook salmon. But when we are washing the topsoil into the streams, that is not helping any kind of fish.
We let wildfires burn right down to the edge of the stream. If we were doing forest management, we would thin the forest. We would be the gardener and the caretaker. We have solutions. We have proposed legislation but, unfortunately, Congress has failed to act. Not only has Congress failed to act, but Congress has failed to be able to come together and talk about these issues, and we need to do that.
I hope that over this August recess my colleagues across the aisle will have a change of heart, so when we get back here in September, these bills will come to the floor, and we will do real bipartisan work that is good for the environment, that is good for the economy, and that is good for America. We stand ready to do that.
Republicans are ready to work for the good of America--for rural America, and we want to make a difference. We invite our friends across the aisle to join us.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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