California Storms and Central Valley Farmers

Floor Speech

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Mr. VALADAO. Mr. Speaker, over the last few weeks, California has experienced severe storms that brought much-needed water to our State. If you thought that meant water shortages in California were over, you would be wrong.

Since October of last year, California has flushed over 6.4 million acre-feet of water out to the ocean. That is 2 trillion gallons. This is extremely frustrating for the Central Valley farmers who are fallowing their fields and the communities that are running out of water for daily use in their homes and businesses.

The pumps that are in place to deliver water to farms, homes, and businesses aren't allowed to run at their full capacity due to environmental regulations. If we had increased flexibility on these pumping regulations to account for real-time conditions, we could have captured 84,000 more acre-feet of water during the 2 weeks of storms.

Increasing flexibility in how we operate these pumps, as well as investing in critical water storage infrastructure and conveyance projects, will allow us to maximize what can be stored for these flow events and make us more resilient for drought.

Every drop of water is critical to my constituents in Central Valley.

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