Natural Resources Committee

In 1970, S. Dillon Ripley of the Smithsonian Institution predicted that by 1995, between 75 and 80 percent of all species of living animals on our planet would be extinct. In 1979, Oxford University biologist Norman Myers predicted that one million species would go extinct by the year 2000. In 1989, Noel Brown, a senior U.N. Environmental Official, warned that by the year 2000, entire nations would be wiped off the face of the earth as oceans would rise by up to three feet. Now along comes the latest contribution to apocalyptic predictions...

The Subcommittee meets today to consider H.R. 2532 by Congressman Grijalva. The bill would over-ride the provisions of the Endangered Species Act and apply permanent regulatory restrictions to the management of grizzly bear populations -- perpetuating federal control of wildlife management decisions traditionally and effectively managed by state authorities -- even after a listed species has recovered its population to sustainable levels.

The subcommittee meets today to consider nine bills dealing with various aspects of ocean resource management.

The subcommittee meets today to consider “The State of Western Water Infrastructure and Innovation.” Central to this discussion is a simple question: which is better: abundance or shortage? The answer is so self-evident, it seems like a trick question.

The Subcommittee meets today to consider the Colorado Drought Contingency Plan, agreed to by all of the states that draw from the Colorado River Basin. The dams on the Colorado have been the foundation of the prosperity of the Western states that rely on them to store water from wet years to assure abundance in dry ones. Forty million people and 5 ½ million acres of productive farmland now depend on the water stored behind these dams and 4,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity their turbines generate.

For many years, our nations’ water policy was one of abundance and our nation’s lands policy was one of sustainable, scientific management. These policies served the betterment of both humanity and nature.

According to the EPA, since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of roughly a tenth of an inch per decade, while precipitation in the contiguous 48 states has increased at a rate of nearly 2/10ths of an inch per decade. Globally, annual rainfall alone produces roughly 50,000 gallons of freshwater every day for every man, woman and child on this planet. The problem is that this abundance of freshwater is unevenly distributed over time and space. Throughout the 20th Century, it was the policy of this government to guarantee abundant water for all the people and regions of our country. We built reservoirs to transfer water from wet years to dry years and we built canals to transfer water from wet regions to dry ones. By doing so, we made the deserts bloom, protected our communities from floods and droughts and opened up vast tracts of land to support a prosperous population made possible by water abundance. Sadly, these policies were reversed over the last 45 years...