Claudia Tenney Presses Army Corps Officials About the Colorado River Water Negotiations

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing before the congressional recess, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) questioned Army Corps Officials about Colorado River water negotiations.

Transcript

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

06:13so

06:14we

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06:23we

06:24so

06:27we

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06:29and we

06:30so

06:31we

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06:35we

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