Drought in the Western United States

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENTZ. Mr. Speaker, the problem is drought, and the problem is currently being suffered by some 70 million people across the Western United States, including many in my district.

Reservoirs, creeks, springs, and wells are going dry, leaving fish, people, wildlife, homes, and agriculture without water.

Republican Members have been working hard to bring attention to this issue. We organized a Republican water forum where we spoke with expert witnesses from across the West who are dealing with this issue every day. They are the ones from the communities directly affected.

This problem does not exist in a vacuum. Drought makes wildfires far more severe, and severe wildfires destroy watersheds, in turn making us even more vulnerable to drought. This horrific cycle will only continue until we find a better way to manage our forests. I think Ranking Member Westerman's forest resilience bill takes a huge step in that direction.

My district right now is experiencing the third largest wildfire so far in the State's history. It has burned some 400,000 acres and is now only 56 percent contained.

Some of my colleagues here are facing equally dangerous, destructive wildfires in their own districts, all worsened by the drought.

The effects of this drought are devastating. Crops die in the fields, entire herds of cattle are being liquidated, trees and shrubs die from lack of water, home wells go dry, businesses leave, and communities are devastated. We need to do something.

Briefly, I want to talk about the drought in the Klamath, which is in my district. I spoke earlier this summer about the situation and how the Bureau of Reclamation announced that earlier this year for the first time in the Klamath Project's history, there would be no water allocation to its largest part.

This decision to allocate all of the water that the farmers had stored for their use instead to in-stream use is devastating to the people who live in those communities. Their livelihoods depend upon having adequate water.

But this is, in the Klamath, a regulatory drought because there is sufficient water in a lake that if shared would have at least offset some of this damage. This illustrates the challenge posed by the Endangered Species Act, which was the foundation for the decision by the Bureau of Reclamation to allocate all of the water to in-stream and in-lake purposes, with none of the water going to the farmers.

I have asked the Secretary of the Interior and other Department of the Interior officials repeatedly to allocate at least a small part of the 350,000 acre-feet of water to the project. Those requests have been denied.

This denial has not only harmed the farmers. It has also harmed waterfowl who reside in a refuge in the center of the project. Last year we had more water than we do this year, and even then waterfowl suffered devastating botulism outbreaks. This will happen again this year and, sadly, this is totally preventable if at least a small part of the water was allocated to the district.

The short-term solution would be a financial relief package that Representative LaMalfa and I are working on. I do hope that we will be successful in getting that passed. The long-term solution, though, is to engage in far more careful storage of water and utilizing other means of conservation and finally bringing balance to the Endangered Species Act.

I would like to thank Ranking Member Westerman for organizing this Special Order hour to bring attention to this incredibly important problem in the West. It is time for both parties to put politics aside and get to work on this issue.

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