A bill that would set up a plan to provide relief from California’s drought crisis was introduced Thursday by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford.
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Representative Steve Knight, R-Santa Clarita is an original cosponsor of H.R. 2898, the Western Water and American Food Security Act of 2015.
The bill would work within state environmental laws to maximize the amount of water available to Californians by setting up a process for increased pumping, capture, and storage.
“The drought in our state is quickly becoming a national emergency,” said Representative Knight. “Without Congressional action, Californians will suffer immensely and so will everyone who relies on our agriculture.”
Californians have struggled under drought conditions for over a year, but proposed legislative fixes are prohibitively expensive or politically unworkable. Knight and his colleagues believe that the Western Water Act will be neither of these things.
Instead it includes provisions that work within California’s complex environmental laws while modernizing them to drive down costs and increase the flow of water out of the Delta in a sustainable manner.
“The Western Water Act was designed to address the underlying causes of the drought in a pragmatic and bipartisan manner.” continued Knight. “There is no simple answer to this problem. But California needs rational solutions, not more water rations.
H.R. 2898 will be considered in House Natural Resources Committee in early July.
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Not needed. Brown is supposed to open the dam at Tahoe and send some of the 39 Trillion gallons to us down the Aqueduct. Or is he just wishing to get that done with the Governor of Nevada?
All of the bills to provide drought relief are good, but I am NOT HEARING lawmakers come up with a logical solution of piping water from states that flood each year. It would put people to work, provide jobs, but the one thing it does not make money for the government. We’ve been in drought situations for years, and then it rains. Maybe we should plan ahead. Quit building houses until we have water. Quit thinking of how we can make more money in the form of taxes. START THINKING OF WE THE PEOPLE.