2023 Species Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. VALADAO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the Endangered Species Act was a well-intentioned effort to protect the species we are at risk of losing. Unfortunately, the ESA has been hijacked by extreme environmentalists who have weaponized the law, especially in California.

Central Valley families and farmers have seen the negative impacts of heavy-handed and misguided regulations that put fish ahead of our families and our farms.

During dry years, the very limited amount of water available is consistently flushed out to the ocean to protect the delta smelt and other endangered species.

While this precious resource was going out to the Pacific, thousands of acres of farmland were fallowed. This has devastating consequences for the people I represent and the livelihoods that depend on agriculture.

This is something that is important for us to address and talk a little bit about, because when the water goes out to the ocean, obviously we are not taking any of that surface water, and it has an impact on our below-ground water and our aquifers.

These past few years, we have had a huge number of wells fail. In agriculture, you drive around the countryside, and I know a lot of people at home probably see this, where you will see wells pulled out of the ground, the pipes stacked, and they clean them. Two days ago, I was driving around the valley, and there was a situation where there was a pile of sand around this well, and it was obvious the well had failed.

What is really devastating is I have communities all across the valley, and in just working with one nonprofit, there were at least 2,000, either homes or communities, where they had actual tanks put in because the wells had failed and there was going to be no clean water for these people at home, so they put in tanks and pumps, and they were trucking water to these people so they could have water in their faucets.

This was happening all across the valley. When we talk about the devastating impact it has on our communities, this was something that was at their faucets. It was really frustrating these past few years when you talk to folks and we have to say, well, we can build projects, but we can't build water infrastructure projects. We have had projects that they have been working on for the last 30 years, a simple expansion of an existing well or existing reservoir. We have got a reservoir, like Sites Reservoir, they have been talking about for six decades and have never been able to break ground on that.

When out talking to folks around the district, farmworkers specifically in some of these communities that struggle most with these wells, the conversation they brought up was they can expedite the permitting process for a project like the high-speed rail and you see the project being built, but they can't do anything for water infrastructure.

It is frustrating because a lot of these folks rely on agriculture to make ends meet. Then they go out and see fields being fallowed, they see the land pulled out of production, and it is less work for them, less ability for them to provide for their families. This is something that should be an easy one, but it is regulations like the ESA that put us at such a disadvantage.

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To add insult to injury, many of the actions taken to protect these fish have not been effective. The population of many of our listed species, including the delta smelt, are now worse off than they were before.

Then you look at the situation we find ourselves in today. Whole communities are on the verge of being under water because environmental regulations have prevented these same reservoirs, that we desperately need, from being built that would actually help us prevent some of the flooding that we are dealing with.

Now, we have more than enough water to provide our farms, communities, and homes with water for years to come and nowhere to store it.

Indefinite listing of species allows activists to abuse the ESA, preventing the construction of critical water storage projects and resulting in millions of acre-feet of water being flushed out to the Pacific Ocean.

The needs of the Central Valley are consistently put last, thanks to the abuse of environmental regulations like the ESA. We must work together to reform the Endangered Species Act to strike a more reasonable balance between protecting our environment and common sense.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I thank the junior member of the Appropriations Committee and chairman of the Western Caucus, Mr. Newhouse.

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Mr. VALADAO. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman from Washington probably knows this, but it is important to highlight the fact that California is the number one agriculture State in the country.

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