Water-hungry farmers seek action on drought bill
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2016 - The campaign to
pass western water legislation got a boost Tuesday from Rep. John Garamendi,
D-Calif., who announced he would offer a bill to accompany S. 2533, which was introduced Feb. 10 by his
fellow Californian and Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
His bill, which Garamendi spokesman Dante
Atkins said is substantially the same as Feinstein’s, may be dropped this week
in the GOP-controlled House, where chances of passage are slim.
Garamendi endorsed Feinstein’s bill when it was introduced,
saying she “has been committed to finding a legislative solution to
California’s water challenges that treats all stakeholders fairly while also
staying true to our nation’s landmark environmental laws. This bill fits that
very high standard.”
Feinstein’s bill was referred to the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee, whose chairman, Lisa Murkowski,
R-Alaska, and ranking member, Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., have been preoccupied
recently with getting an energy bill passed. A committee spokesman would say
only that Murkowski is “committed to working with her colleagues on a west-wide
drought bill. As far as timing, we don’t have anything scheduled yet.”
Time is the enemy this year: With party
conventions this summer, there are fewer legislative days than usual to
accomplish something in the Senate – 103 until Election Day, but really only 64
when you remove Mondays and Fridays, when lawmakers are usually still back home
or traveling.
The desire is there, however. “There
is an interest and need in reforming and modernizing the water systems across
the western United States,” which has been suffering from severe drought for
years, said Dennis Nuxoll, vice president of federal government affairs at
Western Growers, most of whose members are in California. Nuxoll would like to see
the Energy and Natural Resources Committee tackle water issues after it’s done
with the energy bill.
“There is momentum, there is energy,”
he said. “It’s time to do something about it.”
Both Western Growers and the California
Farm Bureau Federation released statements after Feinstein introduced her bill.
“Senate action on this legislation is urgently needed in order to create an
opportunity for compromise legislation to be negotiated with the House of
Representatives,” Western Growers President and CEO Tom Nassif said Feb. 16.
“Mother Nature is providing us with the gift of water this year, but we know
this drought won’t be broken with one good year of precipitation, especially
when our policies allow too much of that water to flow out to sea.”
And CFBF President Paul Wenger said
the Senate "must pass this bill so it can advance to a conference
committee with the drought bill already passed by the House of
Representatives.”
That bill, sponsored by Rep. David Valadao,
R-Calif., cleared the House 245-176 last July. The
bill calls for mandated pumping levels – moving water from the Sacramento River
delta south to the agriculturally rich Central Valley – which Valadao said “are absolutely
necessary to ensure a secure, reliable water supply to the areas most in need.”
At the same time, those provisions are deal-killers for Senate Democrats.
“This bill won’t
be everything for everyone — candidly, that’s not possible with California
water policy,” Feinstein said.
Her bill includes provisions
requiring the Fish and Wildlife Service to use “real-time” monitoring to track
the presence of the threatened Delta smelt and “determine how the
Central Valley Project and State Water Project may be operated more efficiently
to maximize fish and water supply benefits.”
The senator said that
Biological Opinions issued by FWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service in
2008 and 2009 restrict pumping more severely than necessary to protect
threatened and endangered fish species.
“More water could safely be
pumped during high-rainfall periods like winter storms, while continuing to
protect fish, if we were to employ regular monitoring of water turbidity and
locations of fish,” Feinstein said.
Her bill also would provide $1.3 billion
for long-term storage, desalination, and recycling efforts, provisions that
Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., pointed to while stopping short of a full
endorsement. He urged swift Senate passage so negotiations could take place.
And a coalition of Central Valley water
agencies that have challenged endangered species protections in the BiOps in
the past called the introduction of Feinstein’s bill “a positive step.”
“The legislation advances efforts to
provide common-sense congressional direction on the application of the
Endangered Species Act to the operations of the (Central Valley Project) and
(State Water Project) and a roadmap for development of new water supplies to
meet the water supply needs in California and other regions of the west,” said
the statement, issued by Westlands Water District, the South Valley Water
Association, Kern County Water Agency, Friant Water Authority, Friant North
Authority, SJR Exchange Contractors, and Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority. For more on the Feinstein
bill, including statements and letters, click here.
#30
For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com