Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

It doesn't take a mental giant to see that floods are among the most costly and frequent of all nature's hazards.

Between 1980 and 2013, the United States suffered more than $260 billion worth of flood-related damages. Flooding accounts for approximately 85 percent of all disaster declarations in the country. And on average, more people die annually from flooding than any other natural disaster. I can tell you that even in the Midwest, which isn't one of the coastal communities, we have more significant storms of late and more rainfall and more flooding to deal with.

The costs borne by the Federal taxpayer by flooding exceed any other natural hazard. Losses caused by flooding impact our economic prosperity, public health and safety, and our national security by straining disaster response resources and increasing the frequency and cost of disaster relief.

When you look at the cost of what FEMA has to spend to try to clean up everything from basements to neighborhoods, oh, my goodness. The millions and millions of dollars that go out, the billions of dollars that go out the door because of these disasters around the country related to flooding is huge.

Flooding risks are anticipated to increase over time due to the continued occupation of flood-prone areas, the impacts of climate change, and other threats. That damage can be particularly severe to our Nation's infrastructure, including our buildings, roads, ports, industrial facilities, and even our coastal military installations.

I actually have traveled to Louisiana, and my heart goes out to the people of New Orleans and all of the surrounding areas for what they suffered. But I can tell you, I was shocked to see that there were decisions made for land planning to absolutely rebuild where all the damage had occurred. I even made suggestions in the Ninth Ward inside New Orleans. I said: Why don't you leave that open for agriculture, so that when you get another big threat from the ocean, you won't harm as many people? It was as though no one wanted to listen.

Well, God bless everyone, because nature we can't control. She does what she wants.

Federal agencies will be given the flexibility to select the best approach for establishing the flood elevation and hazard area they use in siting, design, and construction: utilizing the best available actionable data and methods that integrate current and future changes in flooding based on science and experience; 2 or 3 feet of elevation, depending on the criticality of the building itself, above the 100-year, or 1 percent, annual chance flood elevation; or a 500-year, or 0.2 percent, annual chance flood elevation.

The new flood standard will help reduce the risk and costs and, frankly, loss of life of future flood disasters by providing a margin of safety so that federally funded structures, facilities, and infrastructure last as long as intended.

Why should we ask people who are living responsibly with the land and the forces of nature to pay for those who want to live irresponsibly with those same forces?

It seems to me that one of the most cost-effective things we can do is to be sensible about our land planning for the future, so that we avoid the harm to human life and our built environment. We are more intelligent, we hope, than we were a century ago. We have a lot more data. We have a lot more experience, and it should influence our decisions from now into the future.

I oppose the amendment and urge my colleagues to join me. Let's be responsible in this new century and minimize the harm, both to human life as well as taxpayers' pocketbooks.

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Mr. Chairman, when a company wants to export liquefied natural gas, LNG, it has to submit an application with the Department of Energy. For export to countries with a free trade agreement with the United States, the Department of Energy must grant the applications without modification or delay. For export to countries without a free trade agreement, the Department of Energy must approve an export application unless it finds that the proposed export will not be consistent with the public interest.

To make this determination, the Department of Energy evaluates a range of factors when reviewing an application, including economic impacts, international considerations, U.S. energy security, and environmental effects.

The Rothfus amendment prohibits the Department of Energy from even considering one of the most important factors; that is, the impact of LNG exports on climate change.

The world's leading scientists are unequivocal: climate change is already happening on all continents and across the oceans and will get much worse if we do not act to cut our emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gas gases. That means that we need to scrutinize the energy infrastructure decisions that we make today for their impacts on climate change in the future.

Every decision to build a new LNG export terminal has climate implications. We need to understand and weigh those effects.

Whether exporting LNG will have a positive or negative impact on global greenhouse gas emissions is a complex but critical question. Natural gas combustion for electricity emits less carbon pollution than coal. And that is good. Proponents of LNG exports argue that these exports will displace coal consumption in other countries, which could produce a climate benefit. That is good.

But LNG exports will raise natural gas prices in the United States, which could increase coal consumption and carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. LNG exports also would drive new domestic natural gas production in the United States.

Coming from Ohio, I can guarantee you, this would increase emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, unless we take measures to control that pollution at the wellhead and throughout the natural gas system. It is a great problem to have but one we need to meet.

In a carbon-constrained world, we need to understand and consider the climate impacts of key energy policy decisions, such as building new LNG export terminals and exporting America's natural gas.

The Rothfus amendment takes a head-in-the-sand approach, I am sorry to say. The Department of Energy has completed a report examining lifecycle carbon emissions from LNG. This amendment says that the Department of Energy can't consider those findings of climate impacts when making a public interest determination. Considering climate impacts is not going to slow down the review process. It makes no sense to require the Department of Energy to make a determination without the benefit of all the facts.

Let's make enlightened decisions. Ignoring climate change will not make it go away. Quite the opposite.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. Let's move to the future, not the past.

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The Gosar amendment blocks funding for the Department of Energy's Climate Model Development and Validation program. This is climate science denial at its worst.

The world's top scientific institutions are telling us that we have a rapidly closing window to reduce our carbon pollution before the catastrophic impacts of climate change cannot be avoided.

So far, the world already warmed by 0.8 degrees Celsius, and we are already seeing the effects of climate change. Most scientists agree that 2 degrees Celsius is the maximum amount we can warm without really dangerous effects, although many scientists now believe that even 2 degrees is far too much, given the effects we are already seeing. But absent dramatic action, we are on track to warm 4 to 6 degrees Celsius by midcentury. That is more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The International Energy Agency has concluded that if the world does not take action to reduce carbon pollution by 2017, just 3 years from now, then it will be virtually impossible to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

How do we know all of this? There are multiple lines of evidence, including direct measurements. But scientists also use sophisticated computer models of how the atmosphere and oceans work and how they respond to different atmosphere concentrations of heat-trapping gases. For projections of future emissions and their impacts, scientists have made numerous advances by collaborating across academic fields, including climatology, chemistry, biology, economics, energy dynamics, agriculture, scenario building, and risk management. These projections are critical, as they provide guideposts to understand how quickly and how steeply the world needs to cut carbon pollution in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The goal of the Department of Energy's Climate Model Development and Validation program is to further improve the reliability of climate models and equip policymakers and citizens with tools to predict the current and future effects of climate change, such as sea level rise, which we know is happening, extreme weather events, and drought.

Mr. Gosar's amendment scraps this program. It says no to enhancing the reliability of our climate models. It says no to improving our understanding of how the climate is changing. It says no to informing policymakers about the consequences of unmitigated climate change. That is absolutely irresponsible.

The amazing thing is the base bill already zeroes out funding for this program. But apparently that wasn't enough to satisfy the Republicans' climate denial. So Mr. Gosar has offered this amendment to just reiterate the point that the House Republicans reject the overwhelming scientific evidence about climate change.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this redundant amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chairman, I find it interesting that we have numerous universities already doing this duplicative study, like the University of Michigan, like the University of Colorado Boulder, like Harvard University, the University of Arizona, the University of Chicago, the University of California--Berkeley--hardly squandering research.

This is a duplicative problem and program, and that is exactly what we are doing. I want to find out exactly this climate model change that we have been seeing over and over with time, but it is best to be done by those universities and those who are already there.

We have also got a dire emergency in regards to the finances that we find this country in. Duplicative services from the Department of Energy should be on their mission statement, and that is dependable energy for this country.

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Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Blackburn amendment because it would prevent the Department of Energy from issuing long-needed efficiency standards for residential furnaces. In the end, that will only hurt consumers and needlessly waste energy.

The current standards, which are essentially 25 years old, leave consumers with higher utility bills than are necessary. Further delays to the furnace rule will allow this situation to continue indefinitely. The new DOE standard would cut energy waste, saving consumers more than $600 over the lifetime of their furnaces. On a national level, that will work out to savings between $4 billion to $19 billion. The proposed DOE standard does not apply to furnaces that are already in use. It grandfathers them or it doesn't apply to repairs that can be made to existing furnaces.

It is also worth mentioning that the Blackburn amendment would be especially negative for low-income households. Many low-income people who are renters do not get to choose the furnaces that heat their homes. Property owners will generally choose the lowest cost furnace even if that furnace will result in higher energy bills. In the end, it is the low-income renters who are stuck with the gas bills from the inefficient furnace. The DOE standard would help ensure all Americans can benefit from lower energy bills thanks to increased efficiency.

Finally, the proposed rule would save more natural gas than other rules to date and would, therefore, deliver large, cumulative greenhouse gas emission reductions at a cost savings to everyone. The Blackburn amendment would throw away that opportunity.

It is true that there are still some things to be worked out with the regulation, and we should move toward that end, but what the industry needs and what the consumers need is certainty going forward, so everyone can plan to build and install the latest and most efficient technology. We should let the Department of Energy do its job.

Let's not waste time; let's not waste energy, and let's not waste money and consumer savings that will result.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the Blackburn amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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The way you balance budgets is to have a robust economy, where everybody is helping to pull the ship forward. That isn't the case right now.

What we have dug out since 2008 was the largest recession since the Great Depression. America's chief strategic vulnerability throughout this period of time--for actually over a quarter century now--and our largest area of economic loss is energy.

It rests in energy. Since 2003, just since 2003, our country has spent $2.3 trillion importing foreign petroleum. That is just petroleum. That is not a country that is self-reliant. That is a country that deeply needs energy security here at home.

The result of this amendment will be less investment in the sector most critical to helping us right this hole that we have dug for ourselves.

Can you imagine if that $2.3 trillion had been spent in this country, the number of jobs we would have, the greater amount of income and revenue we would have flowing into people's pockets and also into the public sector where we have to pay the bills?

In addition to moving us backwards on the energy front, this amendment will be less investment in water resources, and we have $62 billion worth of Army Corps projects alone that have sat on the shelf. We have no new starts in this bill. That is not a country on the grow. That is a country in retrenchment.

So this amendment, it isn't a 50 percent cut. It is meant to send a signal. I say to the gentlelady, as I said to the chair of the Ways and Means Committee today who turned away from me and walked to the back of the Chamber, you know, it is pretty hard to balance a budget when not everybody is at work, their wages have been cut, the middle class has shrunk, but then you don't put revenues on the table.

Some of those lucrative operations, these transnational corporations have operating offshore aren't bringing their money home. They are holding it over there.

Revenues need to be on the table and mandatory spending has to be on the table.

He walked away from me, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. It was a rather interesting conversation.

The Appropriations Committee can't do this alone, and we certainly shouldn't do it in sectors where America truly is hurting.

At a time when unemployed Americans are losing jobless benefits and many young families struggle just to survive, we should be creating jobs and securing the American Dream, starting with a self-reliant energy future.

This bill underfunds that. The chairman has spoken eloquently to that. And it harms American economic growth and energy growth and energy security, and it damages those portions of our budget that are critical to our national security: vital weapons programs, our Naval research reactor research, and nonproliferation funding.

We believe our bill builds America forward to achieve progress for our country again and not retrenchment.

So I oppose the gentlelady's amendment. I think she has the right spirit, but I think she is looking in the wrong place in terms of what we face as a country. I oppose her amendment.

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Mr. Chairman, I oppose this McClintock amendment because it sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

This amendment seeks to undermine the Endangered Species Act by restricting the Bureau of Reclamation from expending funds on water for the purpose of managing endangered fish populations.

While I oppose the spirit of the amendment, I must also object to it because it does absolutely nothing. The Bureau of Reclamation does not purchase water for the purpose of temperature management. The Bureau of Reclamation does not purchase water now, and they have no plans to do it in fiscal year 2016. In fact, due to water scarcity, the price of water is too high.

The extreme drought in the West presents significant management challenges, and Bureau of Reclamation biologists should have every tool possible to make decisions and provide a safety net for species nearing extinction.

Instead of attempting to undermine the judgment of those professionals, we should be working on solutions to grow the water supply in California. That involves water reuse; increased efficiencies, which have already started; conservation; storm water capture; agricultural practices.

The dry West faces very difficult choices, and we want to walk alongside them but with solutions that make sense and that are capable of being implemented.

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I rise to oppose the amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa). This amendment makes a significant change to the Clean Water Act regulations, one we should not be making late at night in an appropriations bill. It deserves thoughtful consideration. I think the gentleman probably would agree with that.

Mr. Chairman, under current law and regulation, activities that convert wetlands that occur as part of existing, ongoing farming, ranching, and silviculture activities do not require a section 404 wetlands permit.

Let me repeat that for my colleagues. The Clean Water Act explicitly exempts certain activities from regulation, and these include normal agricultural activities like plowing fields, planting and harvesting crops, and maintaining irrigation and drainage ditches.

Those exemptions were added by Congress in 1977. The 1977 law created the list of activity-based exemptions from normal farming, ranching, and forestry activities; but it also included safeguards to ensure that these exempted activities were not exploited by large-scale commercial interests. The regulations implementing those exemptions were completed in 1986 during the Reagan administration.

The underlying fiscal year 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations bill before us already includes language in section 106 affirming that these activities exempted by Congress 38 years ago continue to be exempt. It clearly states that none of the funds made available by this act may be used to require a permit when these activities are conducted.

The gentleman from California wants to go further than the language already in the bill with his amendment. In his view, wetlands should be able to be filled even when a farm has been converted to another use or farm fields have lain idle so long that modifications to the hydrology are necessary to conduct operations.

I say to my colleague from California, it is hard to understand how any discharge can be normal for an operation that isn't established.

Mr. Chairman, let me tell my colleague why this concerns me. According to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, in my home State, since the late 18th century, 90 percent of Ohio's wetland resources have been destroyed or degraded through draining, filling, or other modification. Because of the valuable functions the remaining wetlands perform, it is imperative to ensure that all impacts to wetlands are properly mitigated.

Wetlands help filter impurities from water. Sediment settles out of runoff, and contaminants bind to plant surfaces in wetlands resulting in improved water quality. Wetlands perform other valuable functions, including reducing flood flow and shoreline erosion control. They are almost like lungs. They are the lungs of the Earth and connect the land to the water.

In Ohio, we also depend upon our wetlands as haven for rare and endangered plants, and one-third of all the endangered species depends on wetlands for survival. Many wetlands are important fish spawning and nursery areas, as well as nesting, resting, and feeding areas for waterfowl.

We should make certain that any changes we make to wetlands policy that may result in the destruction of these remaining very important ecological areas are evaluated carefully and we do not overturn nearly 40 years of policy lightly.

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Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment but, believe me, with sympathy toward what the people of the West are facing. I just hope that we can get through this situation reasonably and seamlessly somehow. I oppose the amendment because it would lock in a specific operating regime, regardless of facts on the ground.

In 2014, the Bureau of Reclamation made the decision not to release water above the minimum requirement, clearly showing they are realistic and willing to change to meet the circumstances at hand. I hope the gentleman agrees. Reclamation monitored temperatures and fish health to balance risks.

Then last September, the Bureau of Reclamation did release flows because of a deadly detection of a parasite impacting salmon. Yet we must ensure that the massive fish kill of 2002 doesn't happen again. This balancing act is really difficult, but we cannot sacrifice the environment either. We must find a way to balance the needs of people and the environment in the West.

Further, in the Klamath Basin, we must meet our obligations to the tribes who have relied on the river. None of this will be easy. We should not be locking in an operating regime that ignores science and does not allow us to adapt to changing circumstances.

On this basis, I oppose the gentleman's amendment and honestly hope, as a country, we can do what is necessary to help the West.

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