{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://mcclintock.house.gov/newsroom/speeches/wrda-a-critical-moment-for-tahoe-and-the-west", "WRDA - A Critical Moment for Tahoe and the West", "2016-12-07", "2016", "2016-12", "Republican", "House", "CA", "Tom McClintock", "M001177", "mcclintock.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WRDA Conference Report: Water for California; Fire Protection for Tahoe\n\tDecember 7, 2016\nMr. Speaker,\nThe conference report on the Water Resources Development Act is the product of many, many hours of good-faith negotiations between the House and Senate and between Republicans and Democrats. \u00a0Like any compromise, I don\u2019t like everything in it; but the net effect is an important step forward in protecting against the devastation of future droughts in California and catastrophic wildfire that threatens Lake Tahoe.\nIt provides for $335 million for desperately needed surface water storage. \u00a0It opens a new era of hatcheries to provide for burgeoning populations of endangered fish species. \u00a0It adds flexibility to management of New Melones Reservoir and water transfers to assure water can be more efficiently moved to where it is most needed. \u00a0It adds strong protection to Northern California area of origin water rights. \u00a0It expedites review and approval of new projects. \u00a0It updates flood control management criteria to make better use of our existing reservoirs. \u00a0 \u00a0\nI particularly want to highlight the provisions related to Lake Tahoe. \u00a0For many years, we\u2019ve spent enormous resources to adjust drainage in the basin to improve water clarity at the lake. \u00a0The Senate version of the measure introduced this session by Senators Heller and Feinstein continued this effort.\nBut the Heller-Feinstein bill neglected the most immediate environmental threat to Lake Tahoe, and that is catastrophic wildfire. \u00a0The Senate bill had no provision for forest management specifically for fire prevention. \u00a0\nThe number of acres burned by wildfire in the Lake Tahoe Basin has increased each decade since 1973, including a ten-fold increase over the past decade. \u00a0Eighty percent of the Tahoe Basin forests are now densely and dangerously overgrown. \u00a0They are dying. \u00a0At lower elevations, there are now four times as many trees as the land can support. \u00a0 Modeling by the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit warns that in two thirds of the forest, conditions now exist for flame size and intensity that are literally explosive. \u00a0If a super-fire of the size we\u2019ve seen in other parts of the Sierra were to strike the Tahoe Basin, it could decimate this lake and its surroundings for a generation to come. \u00a0\nFor this reason, Congressman Amodei and I introduced a bill aimed strictly at fire prevention. \u00a0This measure is specifically designed \u2013 after extensive input from fire districts throughout the Tahoe region \u2013 to reduce excess fuel before it burns.\u00a0\nIt provides for expediting collaborative fuel reduction projects consistent with the Lake Tahoe Land and Resource Management Plan and it calls for funds generated by timber sales and other fee-based revenues to stay in the Tahoe Basin to provide for further fuels management and other improvements. \u00a0\nThis was falsely portrayed by left-wing activists in the region as a substitute for the Senate bill. \u00a0As Congressman Amodei and I repeatedly made clear, it was designed to supplement that bill and to fill a very glaring deficiency that ignored the single greatest environmental hazard to the lake.\nI am very pleased to note that the critical provisions of both bills \u2013 for lake clarity and fire prevention \u2013 are now in the conference report, thanks to the bipartisan negotiations between House and Senate negotiators, most notably by Senator Feinstein and House Majority Leader McCarthy.\nUnfortunately, in the last 48 hours, Senator Boxer has threatened to blindside this effort and destroy the fruit of these years of labor and endless hours of negotiation. \u00a0She has threatened to assemble enough votes \u2013 not to put forward a positive and credible plan of her own to address these critical needs \u2013 but rather to ruin the painstaking negotiations of many others just as they are coming to fruition.\nIn the last four years, the King Fire, the Butte Fire, the Rough Fire and the Rim Fire have destroyed more than a thousand square miles of forests in the Sierra. \u00a0If we don\u2019t restore forest management in the Tahoe Basin NOW, the next fire could reduce its magnificent forests to cinders, and clog the lake with ash and debris for decades to come.\u00a0\nWe can only pray that wiser heads prevail in the Senate and that this conference report is speedily adopted by both houses and signed by the President. \u00a0\n# # 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