During a House Appropriations Committee hearing before the congressional recess, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) questioned Army Corps Officials about Colorado River water negotiations.
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00:00I was waiting for a Republican but okay thank you give me these rules all right
00:08I'll take it well thank you mr. chairman thank you all for being here
00:15mr. Cameron I obviously am concerned about the water negotiations on the
00:21Colorado River and as we gather here as you know the American Southwest is it
00:27and confronting the effects of the worst drought in 1200 years in fact our local
00:33newspaper just had an article on basically saying we expect Lake Mead the
00:40water runoff to be about at 55 percent of average in this summer so it's just
00:47getting worse and so these negotiations are incredibly important 40 million
00:51people including my constituents rely on the Colorado River so you know
00:58successfully coming to an agreement and implementing new operating guidelines is
01:04incredibly important I heard you say I just want to get confirmation that the
01:09Bureau is prioritizing a consensus based approach to crafting these guidelines as
01:15it has done during previous negotiations is that correct absolutely
01:22congressman Lee why not I first greet the secretary on the Colorado he gave me
01:28three orders the first is department's senior political leadership will be
01:32working intensely with the seven states the second priority or second decision was
01:38he really wants a seven state solution and we're to work aggressively with the
01:43seven states to achieve achieve that the third is and the unfortunate we hope
01:47unlikely circumstance that the seven states can't come to an agreement he'll
01:52exercise his responsibility as water master and lower basin great you know I would be
01:58remiss if I didn't alert you to an amendment that was passed in the middle of the
02:04night during the natural resources markup of this big bad bill that is being
02:11negotiated in the rules committee as we speak and I may have to leave to go
02:16propose an amendment but it sets a precedent for the one for the selling of public lands which my
02:24colleague mr. Simpson adamantly opposes but more concerning to our work is it sets
02:30the stage for a potential water grab by the state of Utah throwing a wrench into these
02:37these already enormously complicated negotiations and so I hope to get
02:43reassurance from you and the bureau that we can ensure that this type of water grab
02:49would be addressed in these negotiations congressman I'm unfamiliar with what
02:55happened last night what I can can tell you is as recently as last week in
03:01Sacramento met with the representatives of seven basin states and they were making
03:07substantial progress together in a very cooperative fashion and I've got to give
03:11John Ensinger the Nevada State Rep credit he's been a real leader and very
03:16creative on these things so really value Nevada's you know active involvement
03:19absolutely well you know our economy and our life depends on it so I just want to
03:27alert you to that I hope that you and your staff will take that into consideration
03:32I want to now turn to the skinny budget that we saw that saw a six hundred and nine
03:42million dollar reduction for you for the bureau which is crazy and you know we
03:49didn't get too many specifics but I am hearing some concerning reports that this
03:55includes may include zeroing out funding for the water smart program altogether now
04:02listen this is a highly successful program when you want to talk about dealing with
04:07these negotiations I think we should be doing everything possible for reduction and
04:13reuse of water but this basically allows the the rec bureau to work with western states to
04:20limit water loss by providing grant funding that has been critical for projects in
04:27Nevada such as converting 1.5 million acre feet or square feet of athletic fields to
04:34water friendly turf you know I hope I just want to confirm am I hearing only rumors or is
04:42this what is coming down the pike I'm not in a position as you know to talk about the details of the
04:50president's budget at this point I can tell you that water conservation particularly in the Colorado
04:55drainage is a priority of this administration and we will look use every tool at our disposal to work
05:04with the seven basin states to achieve the water conservation goals in both the upper and lower basins all right you know it's already been
05:11been just before I close out it's been brought to my attention that existing water smart funding
05:17opportunities have been under review so I hope we can get your assurance that these already appropriated water smart initiatives
05:27will still remain open for application a councilman I believe actually we're sometime this summer we're going to be coming out with the
05:36the FY25 water smart notice of funding opportunity so yeah they are in the pipeline
05:43okay thank you
05:44Ms. Lee I thank you for your questions at this time I'd like to recognize my friend the distinguished gentleman from California and the
05:51chair of the defense subcommittee of appropriations Mr. Calvert thank you
05:56great thank you thank you and general thank you for what you're doing in LA I know your head of schedule
06:04will be done but by July I understand on the cleanup part of that disaster and so we
06:11and so uh
06:12we
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