Skip to main content

Costa Says Administration Must Prioritize CA's Drought Stricken Valley

March 22, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Rep. Jim Costa (CA-16) spoke on the House floor to call on the Administration and federal agencies to act with urgency to help mitigate drought impacts in California.

“The people and communities of California’s San Joaquin Valley have been dealing with devastating drought conditions for nearly a decade,” said Rep. Jim Costa. “It is high time that the Administration acts urgently and prioritizes the farmers, farm workers, and farming communities in California’s drought stricken San Joaquin Valley because our state’s food supply and economy is dependent upon it.”

Yesterday, the White House released a memorandum to direct federal agencies to form a plan for long-term drought resilience.

Today, in conjunction with the United Nations World Water Day, the Administration is holding a White House Water Summit to raise awareness about issues our nation faces related to our water supply and drought conditions.

A video of Rep. Costa’s floor speech can be found here.

Costa’s prepared remarks are below:

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize the water crises we are faced with in California, the nation, and world.

Today, global communities, businesses and organizations have joined together, and the White House is even holding a Water Summit to raise awareness about the 650 million people in the world who do not have access to safe drinking water and are urging leaders to focus on ways in which we can increase access to safe and sanitary water.

On the website, waterday.us, it states that, “Water stress is the impact a lack of water has on a particular sector or population. Water stress affects nutrition, public health, environmental services, housing and urban growth, and national security.”

Those impacts of not having a reliable and safe water supply are all too familiar to us in the San Joaquin Valley.

So while I believe it is fitting and appropriate that we recognize there is a nation- and world-wide issue regarding our water resources, and that we need a comprehensive and long-term plan to increase our drought resiliency, I find it to be extremely disappointing that California’s San Joaquin Valley is not at the forefront of this discussion.

While I empathize with those in Flint, Michigan, other areas of the country, like us in the San Joaquin Valley, face water shortages that have been going on much longer, with much less national attention being paid to them.

In the Valley, instead of lead poisoning due to a failure at all levels of government, we are dealing with water with high nitrate levels in drinking water, if there is any access to water at all.

The solutions are clear, we need:

· Increased federal funding for infrastructure to build resiliency to drought and reduce impacts to water quality,

·Increased coordination between local, state and federal agencies to reduce impacts to communities with impaired water quality or reduced access to water supply,

·And finally, increased focus on ensuring that regulations achieve their intended purpose while minimizing negative effects on impacted communities.

For instance, due to the decisions made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to require the Bureau of Reclamation to operate the pumps in California’s water system under scientifically flawed provisions within the biological opinions, we have lost hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water.

This year, had the federal agencies operated within the flexibility provided in the biological opinions, San Joaquin Valley communities could have been provided an additional 210,000 acre-feet of water, enough water to supply over 400,000 households.

As a result of the drought and the inability to capture water that is flowing in the system, 600,000 acres of productive farmland in the San Joaquin Valley have gone dry and families literally do not have water to drink, cook, or bathe.

There is a very certain human toll that is taking place to provide highly uncertain benefits for species.

This is unacceptable, avoidable, and immoral.

I urge the federal agencies to take action and do anexperimental increase in pumping with increased detection and monitoring, so we can find out if Delta Smelt and salmon travelling through the Delta are even being harmed by the exact pumping levels under discussion.

So while I appreciate the attention and comprehensive plan the Administration is trying to implement to solve our nation’s water crisis, we need short-term solutions now, so that farmers, farm workers, and farming communities in the San Joaquin Valley do not go without water for the third year in a row.

Additionally, we must do everything possible to get federal legislation passed and signed into law.

Because if the federal agencies aren’t going to act, Congress must!

Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.

###