{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://kevinmccarthy.house.gov//media-center/in-the-news/californias-water-blockage", "California's Water Blockage", "2014-12-09", "2014", "2014-12", "Republican", "House", "CA", "Kevin McCarthy", "M001165", "kevinmccarthy.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "On Monday House Republicans debated a bill crafted in part by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and supported by Rep. Jim Costa that would provide a short-term salve to Californians south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The White House has threatened to veto the bill, which will be voted on Tuesday.\n\u00a0\nMs. Feinstein disowned her ideas after environmental groups and Sen. Barbara Boxer expressed outrage at negotiating with Republicans. Thus dies another bipartisan solution to California\u2019s water crisis.\n\u00a0\nAccording to a study in an American Geophysical Union journal, California is in the throes of the most severe drought in 12 centuries. Portable showers and jugs of water have been delivered to communities in the parched Central Valley, where more than 400,000 acres of farmland this year were left fallow.\n\u00a0\nThe U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported that fresh fruit prices have increased 6.6% since October 2013 in part because of the drought. By the estimates of the University of California, Davis, the drought will cost the state $2.2 billion in economic output and 17,100 jobs. In September the unemployment rate was 9.7% in San Joaquin County and 9.5% in Fresno County.\n\u00a0\nFederal regulators are limiting water pumping south from the delta to protect salmon and smelt. This last winter, 1.8 million acre feet of water\u2014enough to sustain 1.8 million families and irrigate about 450,000 acres of farmland\u2014was flushed into San Francisco Bay. That\u2019s in addition to 4.4 million acre-feet that are diverted annually to environmental uses including salmon restoration.\n\u00a0\nWater pumping is largely limited by federal agency \u201cbiological opinions\u201d protecting endangered species, but regulators retain some discretion. Yet the Department of Interior is the rare Obama agency that refuses to use it.\n\u00a0\nThus the House legislation would require regulators to operate the delta\u2019s pumps toward the maximum range allowed by law \u201cunless current scientific data indicate\u201d that less \u201cis necessary to avoid a negative impact on the long-term survival of the listed species.\u201d Regulators then must cite data and explain the \u201cconnection between those data and the choice\u201d to restrict pumping.\n\u00a0\nRecall that in January the White House threatened to veto, and Senators Boxer and Feinstein opposed, more aggressive House legislation to plug the water hole. Instead, the Senators urged federal agencies to \u201cexercise their discretion in regulatory decision-making within the confines of the law to deliver more water to those whose health and livelihoods depend on it.\u201d\n\u00a0\nRepublicans then rewrote their bill and worked with Sen. Feinstein to pass legislation this year that would help capture some storm runoff during the relatively wet winter months. The bill would expire Sept. 30, 2016, by which time Republicans aim to negotiate a larger compromise with Democrats and the White House to solve the water woes.\n\u00a0\nMs. Boxer now claims to oppose this stopgap because Republicans \u201cdeliberately left out important stakeholders\u201d\u2014namely, her and her green supporters who don\u2019t seem to mind if the Central Valley reverts to its au-naturel state as a dust bowl.\n\u00a0\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://kevinmccarthy.house.gov//media-center/in-the-news/californias-water-blockage"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.868513947352767, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}