Natural Resources Committee

Water - particularly in California - has become such a complicated tangle of competing interests and ideological agendas that I think we have lost sight of some self-evident truths. Self-Evident Truth #1: More water is better than less water.

Up until a generation ago, federal resources policy could be summed up in a single word: abundance. In 1905, we instituted the National Forest Service under the guidance of Gifford Pinchot, who summed up the agency's mission with this simple maxim: "The greatest good for the greatest number in the long run." We recognized that America's vast natural resources gave us the tools for unparalleled prosperity, and that we should responsibly manage these resources on a sustainable basis for the continuing prosperity of the American people.

The Subcommittee meets today to consider S. 997 to extend a water contract between the United States and the East Bench Irrigation District in southwestern Montana

The subcommittee sits today to hear two bills, one removing government impediments to development of one of the cheapest and cleanest forms of electricity generation and one proposing more government subsidies for one of the most expensive forms of water delivery.

This year, we must produce legislation to remove the regulatory obstacles that are pointlessly and artificially making new water and power projects cost prohibitive. We must re-establish a practical structure to finance and approve those projects that meet clear and uniform cost-benefit analysis and that are paid for by the actual beneficiaries of these projects and not by general taxpayers.

We are all aware of the human and economic tragedy that occurred in California's Central Valley in 2009 and 2010 when hundreds of billions of gallons of contracted water were diverted to the ocean in the name of the Delta Smelt. This policy fallowed between a quarter million and a half million acres of some of the most productive farmland in America