Auburn, California.  September 27, 2010.  Thank you all for coming today. The purpose of today’s hearing is to air this community’s concerns over regulatory and litigatory excesses that are imposing increasingly oppressive costs on our families and businesses for the operation of local water and sewer systems.

 Colfax has been a flashpoint for this revolt – its residents are being eaten alive by litigation filed by predatory law firms who party while residents pay.  But as we will hear, Colfax is hardly alone – small communities across Northern California face the same outrages – and are now demanding relief.

 Like all movements, the impetus for stronger environmental protection of our air and water was firmly rooted in legitimate concerns to protect these vital resources.  But like many movements, as it succeeded in its legitimate ends, it also attracted a self-interested constituency that has driven far past the borders of commonsense and into the realms of political extremism and outright plunder. 

 We’ll hear today of requirements that water be purified to ridiculous standards having nothing to do with public health or safety and with absolutely no concern for prohibitive costs.  We’ll hear of communities that meet every expensive requirement heaped on them by state and federal agencies only to be told at the end of the process, “Sorry, the rules have changed and you’ll need to start over.”  We’ll hear of lawsuits filed over technicalities that reap unconscionable windfalls for the lawyers – all paid by struggling families in our communities. 

 It is time that pendulum moved back to the middle, and the purpose of today’s proceedings is to define what reforms are necessary to restore common sense and rationality to these laws at both the state and national levels.

I am very honored to be joined by my neighboring colleague, a senior member of the House of Representatives, Congressman Wally Herger.  Wally has been a leader in fighting to restore balance to our environmental laws and I’m very grateful to him for making the trip to Auburn today. 

 I am also honored to have with us Senator Sam Aanestad, representing the 4th State Senate District of California.  He is leaving after a truly distinguished legislative career due to term limits, and it is a testament to his dedication to this district that he remains at his post actively engaged in these issues.

 Finally, one of the great forces in the State Assembly, Assemblyman Dan Logue, joins us today.  Californians could not possibly have a more fearless or energetic defender against an over-reaching bureaucracy than Dan Logue and I am very glad to have him here today as well.

 We have assembled two panels of experts.  The first panel is comprised of representatives of our local communities that have struggled with this situation until it has become intolerable.  This hearing is actually the direct result of a meeting I had in my district office with local officials whose story I believed our region needs to hear.

 The second panel is comprised of representatives from the Federal EPA and the State Water Resources Control Board that administer the current law and write the regulations under that law.

 After each panel’s initial testimony, there will be up to five minutes of questioning by each of us on the dais. 

Finally, we will open the proceeding to public comments.

Since we have many to speak and much to say, I will do my best to rigorously maintain time limits of five minutes for each testimony, five minutes for each round of questions and three minutes each for public comments.

 It is my hope that at the end of this hearing, we will have accomplished two things: First, we will have established a clear view of the problem; and second, that we will have produced a list of concrete and specific legislative reforms that can be introduced in the upcoming legislative and Congressional sessions to bring these excesses and abuses under control. 

 We will be recording the hearing and submit it into official congressional proceedings at the earliest opportunity in the 112th Congress.

No one disputes that we need to maintain and enforce sensible and cost-effective protections of our precious water resources.  But legitimate environmental protections must no longer be used as an excuse for regulatory extremism and litigatory plundering of our local communities.