California Drought

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I am not at all sure it is going to be that controversial, but I was just looking outside the Capitol before I came in to make this presentation, and it is raining. It is a downpour. For those of us from California, it has been a long time since we have seen a downpour.

The Golden State, the seventh largest economy in the world and home to over 35 million people, is in the throes of a historic drought. This is the fourth year, and it is a world of hurt in California.

The economy is moving along. We are not complaining about the economy. Many parts of it are moving along. But for everyone in the State of California, whether you are in the far north up near Mount Shasta or way down here in the San Diego area, we are hurting.

There is a lot of talk. Water restrictions are taking place in every city, whether you are on the coast, up in the north, or in the far south at Laguna Beach. Wherever you happen to be in the State of California, these restrictions are tightening up on the ability of communities to prosper, grow, and keep their lawns green, but more important in some communities, to even live there.

In some parts of the Central Valley, down here in the Fresno area, there are communities that are out of water. Communities of 3,000, 5,000, maybe even 10,000 people, have virtually no water at all.

This is a problem today. As we look to the future, we are going to see the State's economy and population grow and the demand for water will ever increase, unless we do something. What we must do is develop a water plan for all of California.

Unfortunately, what we do most of the time in California is fight over water. There is the famous saying from Mark Twain: ``Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.''

And so it has been ever since my great-great-grandfather came to California in the early days of the Gold Rush up here in the mother lode region. You couldn't mine without water. And fighting over that water was the order of the day, and it is today.

So as this entire State and much of the Southwest region--Nevada, southern Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, and even the western parts of Texas--suffer through this historic drought, we have taken to fighting in California. And I want to spend a few moments this evening talking about what we must do immediately and then a long-term solution for the State of California.

Immediate, we are going to have to seek help. The State of California is using some bond money from past bond acts and some bond money from the historic passage of Proposition 1 last November to immediately try to fix problems that exist in those communities without water. And so that money will begin to flow to those communities, wherever they happen to be.

There are a couple up here in the Sacramento Valley and further down in the San Joaquin Valley. The deserts have always been without water, so this is not new to them, although it is more extreme.

It is good that the bond act can provide immediate relief, but the rest of the short-term solutions will come from Washington. I want to congratulate and thank the administration for providing $110 million of money for a variety of projects. Some of those projects are to dig deeper wells for those communities without water, to find ways to improve the conservation immediately, and to set about other programs that are short-term in nature--all to the good. And that should continue.

In the days ahead, we are going to take up the appropriations bill for water. In that appropriations bill, we should direct the administration to do what it is doing--and to continue doing it through this drought--and that is to focus all of those resources on the immediate drought that is occurring.

Whether it is aid for ranchers and farmers or cities, it makes no difference. It is broad and it needs to be done, and it should line up with Proposition 1 of the last November ballot. That is both short-term and long-term. So the Federal Government supports those projects that would be funded under that $7 billion bond act that the citizens of California voted for in an overwhelming majority.

But I would also like to talk about the long-term here. Because droughts will come and go, and we must be prepared not only in California, but across the West.

For many years, the Department of Water Resources in California has looked at the problem and has made many, many suggestions; but until about 4 years ago, those suggestions were never put together in a comprehensive plan.

I am familiar with this. I am a water warrior in California. I have represented this part of California for nearly 40 years, the great Central Valley of California. I will put up another map so you can get a better look at it.

So the plans that were put together by the California Department of Water Resources deal with the Sacramento River, which flows south, and the San Joaquin River, which flows north from the Fresno area. This is way beyond Sacramento. Mount Shasta and Oregon, it is way up there.

These are the two great rivers of California, together with the Colorado, which is way to the south. It flows into an area here which is called the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This is the largest estuary of the Western Hemisphere, which is on the West Coast. From Alaska to Chile, there is no other estuary as important to fish and species of all kinds and to the environment and the economy of California.

As this water flows down the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River, it is collected here and pumped south into the San Joaquin Valley and over the Tehachapi Mountains way down here to southern California. That is the Great Southern water project and the Federal water project.

But the result of that pumping is an extreme decline in the environment of the delta, Suisun Bay, and San Francisco Bay. Along with it, the salmon and other species have been largely decimated by those projects.

So what are we to do? We will take the information that has been developed over these many years by the California Department of Water Resources and develop a comprehensive plan.

One plan, which actually dates back some 60 years now, is one that would take the water around the delta and deliver it to the pumps down here at Tracy. That plan, first proposed in the forties and then in the fifties, was taken up by our current Governor, Governor Jerry Brown, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was called the Peripheral Canal--peripheral, that is around the delta, delivering water to the pumps.

I represented the delta at that time, and I said: Governor, what you have managed to create here is the great vampire ditch.

The Peripheral Canal was big enough to take the water from the Sacramento, depriving the delta of the freshwater that it needed for its environment, and deliver it to the pumps.

So we had another great water war. It actually went on the ballot, and the people of California decided not to build that canal. And so there it sat until the second iteration of our current Governor, and he decided it was time to address this problem.

And so now his suggestion is, instead of a canal, bury it underground so nobody can see it. He said: Don't worry about the canal. Don't worry. You will never see it.

I said: Because it is not going to get built?

He said: No, no. Because it will be underground.

Two massive tunnels, each 40 feet in diameter--about as tall as this Chamber, actually, if we consider this is probably 50 feet in here--big enough to take all of the water out of the Sacramento River half of the year, creating an existential threat to the delta.

Something needs to be done, no doubt about it. So by cobbling together the plans that were developed by the Department of Water Resources and others, I put together what I called, a Water Plan for All California.

By the way, this tunnel was first priced at $25 billion and did not create 1 gallon of new water--not 1 gallon of new water.

What it did was to create an existential threat to the delta, in that it was big enough to deprive the delta of the fresh water half of the year. I said: Governor, that doesn't work. Let's look at this in a serious way that can create water for California's future.

This proposal was put together from plans that the State agencies had developed in the past. I commend this to anybody that really wants to look at what California's water future could be. Instead of a battle royal, which we are now commenced with as we fight over these tunnels, and $25 billion--oh, by the way, there is a new iteration of it, and they are throwing aside most of the habitat restoration and most of the environmental restoration and just going for the straight tunnels and just a little bit of mitigation.

Let's do something different. Let's create water that California will need in its future. Let's build a system that will actually deliver more water for California, while protecting the environment, and that is what this plan is all about, a water plan for all California.

There are the following elements in it: conservation; recycling; storage; fixing the delta, which actually has to be fixed; letting science run the process rather than politics; and make sure you protect the water rights that have been in existence for more than a decade and a half--excuse me--a century and a half.

These are the principal elements, and we are going to go through them one at a time and explain why, if we were to spend, let's say, the full $17 billion, the current cost of the tunnels, and that is the first bid; that is not the final cost. Let's say we would spend that $17 billion.

Let's allocate some of it for conservation, agricultural conservation. Now, every agriculturalist--and I am one--in California will say, Yes, but we are already conserving water. Indeed, we are, and a lot of water conservation has taken place, but that much more can be done again.

There are somewhere, by the estimates of the State, 3 to 4 million acre feet of new water, available simply through conservation, and that does not include the urban conservation.

Now, understand, in today's drought, conservation is on everybody's mind, and in fact, it is mandated by law and e
Executive order, but we can do maybe 3 million acre feet of new water. That is enough for over 120,000 homes a year per million acre feet.

Secondly, recycling--I often say, and I think this is more or less accurate, that the fifth largest river on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere are the sanitation plants in Southern California.

Whoa, what do you mean the fifth biggest river? Well, consider this: the Colorado River, over here, abutting Arizona and Nevada, water is taken from the Colorado River, 200 miles into the Los Angeles Basin.

Water is taken from northern California, the Sacramento River, in a canal, pumps here at the delta, in a canal, 5,000 feet over the Tehachapi Mountains, into the Los Angeles Basin. That water is cleaned once. It is used in the Los Angeles Basin, cleaned again, in most cases, to a higher standard than the day it arrives in southern California; and nearly all of it is dumped into the ocean.

What? You do that in California? Well, we do. Fortunately, Orange County, a bastion of conservatism, is far ahead of the rest of the State and probably the Nation in water recycling. We need to do more of it.

For a few million, a couple of million dollars--excuse me, a couple of billion dollars, we could recycle at least a million acre feet of new water in southern California, water that is already there, water that is not being used.

In northern California, the San Francisco Bay area, for my friends in San Francisco, you are taking what you tell the world is the cleanest water in America, right out of Yosemite National Park, piping it across the Central Valley into the San Francisco area, clean it--well, you really don't have to do much cleaning because it is already clean--use it once, then you pipe it a mile offshore and dump it in the ocean.

Recycling is necessary in every part of California. Another million, perhaps, more acre feet of water could be available through recycling.

So conservation, recycling, 3, 4 million acre feet--we are getting close to what California needs in the future.

So where are you going to put the water? Even in the midst of a drought, we have had heavy rain flows--no place to put the water.

My colleague from northern California, the Sacramento Valley, Mr. LaMalfa and I have introduced a bill to build an off-stream storage reservoir here on the west side of the Sacramento Valley, a reservoir that could hold 2 million acre feet of water--well, slightly less--and that water would be available when needed.

It could flow down the Sacramento River, sweetening, pushing back the saltwater in the delta; or it could be used for agricultural purposes in the Sacramento Valley or down in the San Joaquin Valley.

It also gives flexibilities to the great reservoirs of Shasta, the Oroville Reservoir on the Feather River, and the Folsom Reservoir here on the Sacramento River, giving flexibility to the water managers.

When it is needed for salmon and other species, you could use the water out of Sites Reservoir. When it is needed for agriculture or for water quality in the delta, you could use it out of Sites Reservoir, keeping the cold water in Shasta, Oroville, or Folsom that is necessary for the salmon that spawn in those rivers.

Storage, off-stream storage, off-stream storage here, just east of Contra Costa, in Los Vaqueros Reservoir, off-stream storage further south down here in Los Banos at the San Luis Reservoir, and the biggest off-stream reservoir of all, the great aquifer of the Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley, the great Central Valley of California, arguably, the second or third largest aquifer anywhere in the world, one that is now seriously overdrafted, as Californians, agriculture, cities, and others thirst for the water in this drought.

These storage reservoirs in northern California are just one part of the storage systems that are needed for the future. The other part actually exists here in southern California, out here along the coast, the West Basin, the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, the Santa Ana in Orange County, and as you move east into Riverside and San Bernardino.

These are all historic aquifers that could be available to take that recycled water, put it back in the ground, pull it out, clean it, and recycle and recycle and eventually, these aquifers, many of which are contaminated, would be clean and available for the future.

We could probably add all of the capacity of these aquifers in southern California and have greater storage capacity than the largest reservoir in the State of California, which is Shasta Reservoir, way up here in northern California.

By using the aquifers as a storage facility in what we call conjunctive water management, when you have a lot of rain, you store it--store it off-stream, store it below ground in the aquifers. Then when you have your dry periods, as California historically does, you can take that water out, but you cannot take out as much as currently being taken from these aquifers in California.

We are seeing the collapse of the aquifers in the San Joaquin Valley. We are seeing the land subsiding in some places, as much as a foot a year as the water is extracted, so we have to stop that, and so water management becomes extremely important in the process.

I want to now turn to the delta, put this delta map back up and remind us, the Sacramento River coming down, the San Joaquin River coming north. From the north, the Sacramento, from the south, the San Joaquin, meeting here in the great delta of California--this delta is seriously at risk, as I said a moment ago.

What to do about this? The Governor's plan, to take water around it, to deliver it to the pumps down here, I think, creates an existential threat. Don't build something that could destroy the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere.

Instead, build something that is the right size, recognizing that while the delta is imperiled, perhaps by earthquakes, perhaps by sea level rise, nonetheless, all the plants call for water to be pumped out of the delta, even if it is taken around the delta.

The first thing to do, right now, is to armor, strengthen those key levees in the delta that are necessary for the transfer of water to the pumps, for the protection of the cities here on the eastern side, and to make sure that you are able to always be able to take that water through the delta. It is called the armored delta.

Under the Governor's plan or my plan or any other plan, those levees are going to be used for at least the next two decades, if not for a much longer period of time. Improve the delta, levees, and that is a job for the Federal overnment.

I talked earlier about what could be done immediately by the Federal Government, and that is to secure some of these key delta channels by improving the levees on those channels. That is step one.

Step two is what I call science. This area, the richest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere, home and nursery to salmon, to other species, such as the delta smelt and many other species, requires very careful attention and very careful scientific study.

We are talking over here, in a place called Rio Vista, about building a science center, bringing together all the State and Federal agencies so they can work in a collaborative science program. That is a great program called the Rivers Program. There are other science studies that are underway.

You have to let science drive this process. You cannot allow politics to drive it; otherwise, you put at risk the communities in this area; you put at risk the environment; you put at risk the fish species, and you put at risk the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere.

Keep in mind that the Congress of the United States, twice in the last 4 years, has passed legislation that removes the environmental protections for this estuarine system and simply grabs 800,000 acre feet of water that was meant for the environment and sends it into the southern valley, into the southern valley here.

It is a rip-off. It is part of what has taken place in California since the gold miners came in the 1850s, and that is, if you want water, you simply take it from somebody. In this case, you are taking it from the delta, from the environment, from the agriculture; and you are pushing aside the environmental protections. Don't do it. It is not necessary.

There is another thing, in addition to fixing the levees, and I call it the ``Little Sip, Big Gulp.'' Here it is. This is a map of the delta of California. Sacramento is up here, the confluence of the American River and the Sacramento River. That is the State capital. This is the delta here.

We were talking about it in the larger map. San Francisco Bay is over here, Suisun Bay and the rest. This is the heart of the delta. Stockton is down here. Tracy and the big massive pumps at Tracy, capable of taking well over 15,000 cubic feet per second, are down here in this area.

The tunnels that the Governor wants to build would start here, travel through some of the richest agricultural land in the delta, or in the Nation, agricultural land that has been in production since the 1850s and 1860s, along the Sacramento River, displacing, oh, maybe 4 or 5 miles of habitat and agriculture and communities along this area. The tunnel would come down into this--the tunnels would come down into this area.

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$17 billion--why would you do something that, first of all, is large enough to allow for the destruction of the delta? Why would you spend all that money, when a good portion of that project is already built? This is it.

This is the Sacramento Deep Water Ship Channel, an ocean, a channel that begins at San Francisco Bay, comes up the Sacramento River, and then, in a channel that was built by the Army Corps of Engineers, all the way up to the Port of Sacramento here in West Sacramento, on the other side of the State capital.

This is a deep water shipping channel. Ocean ships come into San Francisco Bay and come all the way up here. It is a pretty good economic activity. Agricultural products are shipped out.

I was over that way this last weekend, and they have log decks. I guess these are logs from the various fires that have occurred in California, and those are going to be shipped off to China. I sometimes wonder why we don't use those logs for the things that we should be making in America, but that is another subject for another day.

So what is an alternative? I call this the little sip solution, ``Little Sip, Big Gulp solution.'' Take the water out of the Sacramento River here, 3,000--not 15,000--3,000 cubic feet per second. We know how to do that. Fish screens are already built to do that.

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