California's High-Speed Rail

Floor Speech

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Mr. VALADAO. I thank the gentleman rice farmer from northern California for the opportunity to speak here today.

Where do you start with something like this? I grew up a dairy farmer in Kings County and continue to be a dairy farmer in Kings County to this day. I spent my first 2 years in elected office in the California State Legislature on a budget subcommittee and watched as this project moved along; and right before election when this was passed back in '08 and up until my election in 2010, the project didn't seem that bad. It seemed like something that was just voted on and put on the shelf and they would continue to build on it. Then, at the last minute, some money showed up and it basically put this project in high gear, and the project wasn't ready for it.

As the Congressman from the northern part of the valley mentioned earlier, there is no real plan. When you show up at the last minute and say, ``Here. Here is some money. Start building right away,'' as if it is shovel ready, it set this project up for a really, really tough time.

What we are facing now today, we see a train system being built, a high-speed rail, and like was mentioned earlier, older technology. Forty years ago, rail with wheels was the technology. Now maglev is the new technology. So to see a project that is starting today with technology that is already 40 years old that probably won't be running for another 30 years, I think we are setting ourselves up for failure.

When you look at what else has been going on with this project, as far as what the opportunities are, when you look at my district specifically, California District 21, you have got communities like Hanford, Corcoran, Wasco, who all rely on a system that we have today, Amtrak. Amtrak doesn't really pay its bills, but it gets people from A to B, and it serves its purpose. You have got a system there where people who live in those communities are able to get to the doctor in Fresno or get to the doctor in Bakersfield or get to work, but a small, commuter train that gets them where they need to be for relatively low cost.

You look at high-speed rail, and as the map that was up on the screen earlier showed, what we have there is a track that will basically pass from Hanford, if Hanford ever gets built, but for sure Fresno to Bakersfield, and it leaves all of the people in California 21 basically out to dry. That is sad. I mean, when you see a project that was supposed to help those less fortunate, or those people who need it the most, you have a project now that is actually going to hurt them and put potentially at risk what they have today, Amtrak, their mode of transportation.

Because this project lacks so much money, that is why it puts us in that position. We have a system in place that is built on someone else's train tracks. It is on Burlington Northern's train tracks in my area, and I am sure it is on other tracks in other parts of the State, but if the project that they have today starts to move forward and they run out of money like we expect them to do, part of the plan is to move Amtrak over there. So what happens to those stations in my district? That is just one of the issues I see.

In California 21, like I mentioned earlier, and a good portion of the valley, we face a water shortage, a drought. Some of that is natural, but a lot of that is regulatory. We have also got a severe lack of infrastructure to deliver water. We have Tempered Flats and we have Pikes Reservoir, we have a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built, and that is infrastructure that would benefit not just California but the whole State in general.

When you look at a project like high-speed rail, if that project was to go forward and be built, you would have a high-speed rail that most people couldn't afford to ride.

If you build water infrastructure, you now have water to grow products, water to feed families, water for our communities, and once you have that, you start to grow crops and produce product. You start to improve an economy and produce a product that you actually can sell and bring dollars back into your community. That, in my opinion, makes a lot more sense.

Education. California has struggled with funding for education for years. We have seen plenty of programs that were cut out or cut back or just flat out gotten rid of. If you have a project like high-speed rail spending money when they are not prepared for it, when we should be investing in our future, education, making sure our kids have the best opportunities, the best foundation to bring, to improve our economy, to be good, productive members of our society and to make a real difference--I think education should be our first priority.

You look at everything we could be spending money on. Right now in California, we have been letting prisoners out of prisons because we don't have enough money to build facilities for them and to keep some of the community correctional facilities open. There is a lot going on, and we have to be spending money on a project like this when we should be focusing on something that helps keep our communities safe.

Those are all things that we should be paying attention to that we are not because of this project. They are in a hurry to build this project right now because they say it creates jobs, but, like was pointed out earlier, those numbers are all bogus. They were pushed up. They were not honest numbers. We are starting to see this project that will put our children and grandchildren into debt for a long time for a small amount of jobs that we really can't account for and we can't ensure will be our own community jobs.

So this is something that has had me concerned my whole time in the legislature, and I have talked about it for a long time. It is something that I am going to continue to fight. It needs to be talked about and pushed out there.

The more people who get involved--you take groups like my Kings County group of residents who have sued the State and sued the Federal Government over this project. When they first got involved, they looked at this project and said this is going to affect our families and homes, let's fight it. Once they started getting into the details and saw where the funding was coming from, or the lack of funding, the amount of deceit that goes into this project just to get it rammed down our throats, they decided to keep fighting no matter what, even though the alignment was moved off their property across town to another part of town. The high-speed rail people thought all of these people will back off now because it doesn't affect them personally, but once they knew what was really in this project, they thought there is no way we can let this fight go. So the group actually grew.

Now that the new constituents were affected by the new alignment, the new guys joined with the old guys and the group grew. Now they have moved the alignment back. The first group is continuing to fight, and the second group is in it as well. It is just amazing how the more you get to know about this project and how it is being pushed and how it is being run, the more you want to fight it, and the more you want to shut this thing down.

Just to close, California high-speed rail comes at a tremendous cost to taxpayers while delivering no benefit to my constituents. This project will destroy homes and businesses throughout California's 21st Congressional District and divert precious tax dollars away from water infrastructure, public safety, and education.

I will continue to uphold my promise to my constituents and do whatever I have in my power to stop this project as fast as possible.

Mr. LaMALFA. One question: a commission, a board in California, recently moved to the three-person board to authorize the rail authority to start condemning property under eminent domain. Of course, there is going to be a lot of resistance. Kings County is a hot bed of resistance to this project. The eminent domain procedures are not easy or cheap to get through a court process. They are already moved to condemn two pieces of property, I believe, in Fresno County, and I believe there are at least 380 that may have to go through this process. How do your constituents feel about the forced taking of land and an alignment that doesn't make a lot of sense and some of the infrastructure that might be lost in these communities?

Mr. VALADAO. Over the years, there have been a lot of things built in the valley--freeways, just different

things that obviously needed to be built for the good of the State. Farmers, and constituents in general, if they understand why it is being taken and it makes sense for the State, usually it is an easy deal.

But once they get involved in the details of this project and start to see how they are being treated themselves and how the project is going to end up looking, because it is pretty apparent with the lack of funding and with the rest of the Federal Government looking at this project and understanding that it is pretty much ruined now because of the management, they are not happy. They are fighting this thing tooth and nail.

When it comes down to their own personal property, obviously they are offended with some of the prices and some of the numbers they are seeing. If they owned the property or if their family owned it, if it is a generational thing, or just in general an eyesore running alongside their home, affecting how they drive to work or how they move around the district in general, it is just offensive to many of them, depending on the different route or how you want to approach it.

Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed. Let me ask you, too: How easy is to relocate a rendering plant? A rendering plant, that is a facility that processes dead agricultural animals, which happens, and so they need to be taken to be processed, and one of those is right in your district, I understand.

Mr. VALADAO. We have a rendering plant that is right in the middle of the alignment as the alignment is today. Obviously, the alignment moves on a weekly basis, but the rendering plant has been in the alignment twice now. The first time, and we are back in there again.

As far as permitting for a new rendering plant, back in 2006 during the heat wave, we struggled in the Central Valley to handle the amount of animals that were needing to be processed at that time. Permitting for a new facility was nearly impossible, and we were never able to upgrade or expand the facilities. So to actually build a new one today I would say is nearly impossible.

Mr. LaMALFA. Is the high-speed rail authority guaranteeing to help or see through as part of the environmental documents to help make sure this is replaced or other infrastructure is replaced? There are dairies in line. Again, in California, securing a permit for a new dairy has become nearly an impossibility, as my colleague in the dairy industry would probably report. So there are a lot of people weighing in on that. Relocating the dairy, these are facilities and lands that have been for generations of families that have been there. Is anything being taken into account on the authority helping with these processes as part of the impact they are having?

Mr. VALADAO. We have no guarantees on any of that. Some of the things that affect some of our constituents, somebody that has a restaurant and the high-speed rail goes through their property, they go in and give them what they assume is the value of that, but no one takes into account replacement value. Or they bought their first home when prices were high, and now prices have come down, and now it is an opportunity for high-speed rail to come in and offer them market price, which basically leaves that person homeless and in debt. So there are a lot of situations.

We have farmers with long-term leases on property who do not own the property, but own the permanent crop on top of that. High-speed rail hasn't taken into account the value of that crop on top. People will invest $10,000 to $15,000 an acre to get trees planted, and if they are only buying the land for the value of the land but not what is on top of that land, that obviously will put a lot of people upside down in a really bad position and affect a lot of jobs.

One of the biggest economic drivers in the valley, and in California, we export a lot of agricultural products. That brings a lot of dollars in. That will have an impact on our economy as well.

Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed. We are both from long time farming families. I think when you are a farmer, or any business that is multi-generational, but especially on the land, you develop a bond. You develop a love of the land that you don't really put a price on. I think most farmers will farm until they can't farm any more, either due to age or regulations taking it away from them, or whatever. So how do you put a price on my family, raising the fifth generation, and you and your neighbors, you have multi-generations as well. How do you put a market price on your legacy? Someone is coming in from Sacramento or Washington saying we think it is worth that. It may be worth infinitely more to you and your family and the generations behind you. How do you quantify that?

Mr. VALADAO. Well, you can't. When it is a project necessary for the benefit of the country, benefit of the State, one that actually makes sense with a good plan behind it, it is a little easier to swallow, but when you see this project in general and how big of a disaster it has been and how little information has been out to the public, how they plan on funding it, how they plan on moving forward, if people are going to be able to actually afford to ride this thing, it makes it that much worse. This is important. I mean, when you look at how hard some people have worked to build their homes and build their farms and companies, we have restaurants and we have a little bit of everything that is being affected by this. When you see their blood, sweat and tears, you can't put a price on that.

Mr. LaMALFA. Certainly. Eminent domain is something that governments should use very reluctantly, very rarely, and only when there is no other option available. My farm has been affected by that as well with the large towers, the power lines that move basically from hydroelectric projects in the northeast part of the State down to the San Francisco Bay area. It is something that affects our fields, but it is part of the greater good. Our tractors have to drive around those now and figure out how to still keep straight lines going through towers running at an angle, and you have ag aircraft that have to tangle with avoiding wires and flying over the towers at 200 feet and trying to drop seed or fertilizer, things like that. So we get some pretty strange streaks in our fields because of that infrastructure, but it is important. We want the folks in the Bay area to have that.

Eminent domain isn't always very fair. What I am seeing here is the promises, if there are any promises made by the high-speed rail authority, to truly keep people whole on this and give them options, and as you mentioned, the alignment changes frequently. We are not even sure if they have a full 520-mile alignment decided yet. They could have gone for a more low-impact route, perhaps putting it down the middle of Interstate 5 or adjacent to it, using parts of 99, perhaps.

Mr. VALADAO. Or maybe fill in gaps where Amtrak doesn't serve today. Currently, if you want to go from Bakersfield to L.A., you get on a bus. There is no connection there. That would have been a great place to start this project.

That is one of the arguments we have. When you have got a project of this size and such a percentage of the money that is needed to build this project, you can see the failure coming. But you have to make sure that whatever resources are spent are spent in a way that benefits the overall majority of the people.

Right now, if you are riding Amtrak from Fresno to L.A. and you get off at Bakersfield and you get on that Greyhound bus and ride over the hill, I am sure Greyhound does a great job, but that would be a great place to fill in the hole and build a rail, and build it up to today's standards and put something in place that we can build on in the future that makes sense.

Mr. LaMALFA. Certainly you can make an argument that the first places you should look are the urban areas where you can have the potential ridership. Here on the east coast, you have a lot of ridership between Washington, D.C., on up all the way to Boston. I don't know about the financial viability of that, but at least you can make a case there. Here, as was reported just a couple of years ago, they wanted to start in the Valley because, as was quoted, they had the least amount of resistance to building the rail starting in the rural Valley as opposed to what it was going to take to run through the South Bay area, places like Palo Alto and others, that some people are feverishly opposed to what that would do and what that infrastructure tends to bring to high-value communities like that as well.

But, again, the promise lies in the Central Valley for us in what we do well already. My portion in northern Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, these are strong agricultural areas.

I am wondering--and maybe you can touch on this as well--we have had different ideas for water projects that for a fraction of the money we are talking about with the high-speed rail system, how far could we go to do one or two water storage projects and what would that mean for especially communities like you have down there that have seen a huge economic impact with the cutoff of water due to the delta smelt and those other problems? What would that mean in real jobs for the people that have the skills and education level that likely aren't going to be working on a high-speed rail project, but have a strong background in agriculture? What do you see that doing to help your area?

Mr. VALADAO. Well, when we look at a company that wants to invest in the Valley, if they are in agriculture, obviously they are attracted to the area for those reasons. But if they are looking for an affordable place that makes sense between L.A. and San Francisco because of access to larger populations, they look at the Central Valley, but they also want to make sure that there is security there. If you are going to build a company, you are going to make sure it is in a great place for your employees.

I think the focus should be right now making sure that people have affordable energy to live there because obviously it gets hot in the summer, and the water situation. Are you going to move your family into an area where the water isn't safe to drink, which is commonplace in some of those communities that we have been fighting for funding for some of the water treatment facilities that are so necessary.

Then when you get into the infrastructure itself, if you are going to build a plant or anything or a processing facility for the type of commodities we grow, water is a necessity. It starts from growing the crop, to cleaning the crop, to making sure that the facilities are up to code and that we've got some treatment in place and that we have a product that we can sell and bring dollars to those communities.

That is how you create jobs, that is the right way to do it, and that is something that we should be focusing on and investing our limited resources on today. Obviously, we have been making some really tough decisions in the last few months over spending and budgets and everything else that we have got going on. Not just on the national level, but at the State level there are going to be some tough decisions as well.

Those decisions should be based on priorities, and those priorities should be making sure we have the resources, and resources today means water. Water is the number one priority, and that is where it should be focused at.

Mr. LaMALFA. I think everybody in California in the midst of this drought probably find agreement with that. Our own Governor was underlying that in a speech the other day, and yet still so wedded to this high-speed rail project, which the funding for is highly questionable. Indeed, a judge handed down a decision the other day ordering California not to spend any of the State bond money because it wouldn't be legal to do so under the lack of a plan they have.

We both served in the State legislature. And is California's financial situation such that it can get out there on its own somehow with new funding? If the Federal money falls short or no private investment comes out, where will it come from?

Mr. VALADAO. Well, we have got a lot of priorities here in Washington, D.C. The different Members from different parts of the State are not looking at California's high-speed rail project the way it is being rolled out today and thinking that is a good place to invest the resources that the taxpayers in their district want to see them spend the money on.

It is not going to be an easy lift. As this project seems to move forward and the press gets worse and worse, and when you've got judges involved saying that they are not following the letter of the law, what was asked of the voters when they voted for it, it just makes it that much harder to come up with the rest of the money they are going to need to finish this project.

So to get it started, just to build a big berm, or maybe even a berm with some metal on top to hopefully throw some older-style Amtrak trains on top, doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when you are going to cut off communities that need it today, need what we have got in place today and not put that in jeopardy.

Mr. LaMALFA. What doesn't get talked about much are different impacts like the high-speed rail. In order to sustain a high-speed, you have got to build a very long elliptical form in order to make turns with a train going 220 miles per hour. It is kind of like the angled towers running at angled lines on my property that we farm. It doesn't fit in real well with a grid that is set up on straight lines and squares like that.

So when an elliptical-shaped rail comes through your community through agricultural zones, as well as high-speed rail having to cut off all the crossings, can you build enough overpasses to not stop the flow of traffic, whether that is cars or trucks or even a farmer on a tractor who now may have to drive his tractor instead of just across 6 miles down the road and back up to get around. I mean, there are a lot of impacts that are really not meeting the eye here when you line them out.

Mr. VALADAO. Like I mentioned earlier, when this project was started, it was started as a long-term project; but then $3 billion showed up from the Federal Government and the project managers basically said put this thing in high gear, start breaking ground.

You have got a project of this type that affects so many people in so many different communities--how they

travel around their homes to work, around their farms, around their businesses, transporting products between warehouses and processing facilities. You have so much going on, and you have got this project now that is going to disrupt all of that just because they have got a timeline that they have got to spend.

The timeline is really on a small portion of it. We are talking a couple percentages of the total cost of the project. It is not worth risking a project of this size over such a small amount of money.

That is probably one of the worst things that has happened to this project since its inception. It could have been something great. It could have been a project that could have made a big difference if it was given the time to be designed and planned in a way that benefited the State, didn't burden the State with debt forever, and actually helped the constituents of that State.

It is too bad this project has gone down the path it has; but, again, we are going to try to stop this thing so that this doesn't happen and doesn't affect our communities.

Mr. LaMALFA. Well, indeed, it does appear that they are hell-bent on spending that approximately $3.5 billion that has Federal deadlines on it in order to get the project started; and then at that point, well, we are invested in the project, we can't stop now, even though the judge ruled it is illegal to spend the State dollars because it is not fulfilling the plan. So, indeed, big impact on the Valley and on taxpayers.

Mr. Valadao, I really appreciate your time and your leadership on this here tonight. Let's keep putting the message out that there are better ways. Most anything might be better than investing in this at this point. So I thank you for your help here tonight.

Mr. VALADAO. Thank you.

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