Ken Calvert Asks Army Corps Officials About Budgeting For 2028 Olympic Facilities

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) questioned officials from the Army Corps about the necessary infrastructure for the 2028 Olympics ceremony in Los Angeles.

Transcript

00:00Okay, thank you.

00:03Ms. Lee, I thank you for your questions.

00:05At this time, I'd like to recognize my friend, the distinguished gentleman from California,

00:09and the chair of the Defense Subcommittee of Appropriations, Mr. Calvert.

00:15Great. Thank you. Thank you.

00:17And, General, thank you for what you're doing in L.A.

00:19I know you're ahead of schedule.

00:21I hope it'll be done, but by July, I understand, on the cleanup part of that disaster.

00:27And so we want to work with you to make sure that it's done right.

00:32Most of the people signed up for it.

00:33Just a de minimis number, unfortunately, did not.

00:36So it looks like it's on schedule, and you're going to get it all done by July?

00:42We are on track right now to meet that need.

00:45I know that it was important to try to get Pacific Coast Highway open,

00:49and we're working with the governor of California on that as we speak.

00:53Great.

00:54And I understand that some of your facilities are going to be used for the 28 Olympics,

01:00and so are they budgeting for that?

01:04Is the budget going to support the Corps' involvement in that national effort?

01:09Representative Calvert, I don't have the answer to that question right now,

01:12but as soon as we know that, we'll share that with you.

01:15Let us know.

01:15And regarding these negotiations with the upper and lower basin states here in California,

01:21obviously California is, like always, a donor state.

01:24And so, you know, with the water rights primarily with Imperial Irrigation District

01:30and other agencies in Southern California,

01:34so I know those negotiations are ongoing,

01:38but obviously you have to recognize those previous water rights.

01:42And we love our friends in Nevada and Arizona and elsewhere,

01:47but that has to be worked out delicately.

01:51More water lawyers involved in that than I can count.

01:56But to make up for that,

01:58we're going to need additional water delivery from the north to the south.

02:02And obviously the San Joaquin Delta and trying to move this conveyance system along,

02:13how are we, how is that moving along?

02:16Unfortunately, we didn't go with a dual pipe system.

02:18We would have had it built by now,

02:19but nonetheless, how is the single pipe system coming?

02:24So a couple of thoughts, Mr. Calvert.

02:27The first is I can assure you I am reminded almost on a weekly basis

02:32of who's got senior water rights everywhere in the Colorado Basin,

02:36so it's not something anyone lets me forget.

02:38And we're, you know, we're very mindful of that.

02:41Speaking in terms of the Delta and the Central Valley Project more generally,

02:47the administration is working very hard with the water districts,

02:52both north of the Delta and south of the Delta to come up with a water management regime

02:58that will allow more water to head south.

03:03We're lucky this year Shasta is fairly close to full, which is a good thing.

03:10But it's unlikely that that'll be the pattern, you know, year after year after year.

03:15So we definitely need more water storage in California.

03:18There's no doubt about that.

03:20We've got no particular position on the governor's latest proposal

03:24for an additional conveyance.

03:28We're watching that closely.

03:29We're interested.

03:31Anything that creates more flexibility in terms of how we manage water in California

03:35would be very helpful and very much appreciated.

03:39Well, obviously, we need to build sites.

03:41I'm going to have a meeting on that later today.

03:43And, you know, hopefully that is going to be all the approvals

03:47that are going to be finalized here very soon.

03:50And we're actually going to get that under construction.

03:53And, of course, I hope Shasta, you know, to me,

03:58we've been going through the permitting process for so long on Shasta

04:02that hopefully we can get an agreement.

04:04We're only going to raise that, what, 16, 18 feet.

04:07But that delivers about 600,000 acre feet of wet water.

04:12So it also works as well for water management.

04:15So I hope we can do that also.

04:17One last quick question to you, General.

04:22Obviously, the L.A. district has been actively involved in several projects in my district,

04:25the Prado Dam, Marietta Creek project, which I'd like to hopefully see completed in my lifetime.

04:32So I'm not just like Mr. Simpson's time in Congress, within my lifetime.

04:37So how are we doing on those projects?

04:42Representative Calvert, on Marietta Creek,

04:45Phase II Bravo should be awarded in June of this year.

04:50So we're excited to see that move forward, and we're re-engineering the Phase II Charlie.

04:55And we'll work to fit that in within available funding.

04:59On Prado, delighted to see that the base pre-construction service contract was awarded in April of this year.

05:07And what that will allow us to do is to make sure that we have a construction contractor looking at our design.

05:12And they'll have an opportunity to go ahead and do the construction, which we hope to get out next year.

05:18Just one final comment, if I can, Mr. Chairman.

05:21But I was around when we had the devastating floods in the early 90s

05:25and wiped out all those helicopters at Camp Pendleton.

05:28Santa Margarita Creek overflowed.

05:31And it's a huge cost.

05:33I forget the number, but it was a big number.

05:36So we don't want that to happen again.

05:37So I hope we can keep Marietta Creek on track and finish that up.

05:42Chairman.

05:44And that does have downstream consequence, even to my friend Mr. Levin,

05:47because that goes into his district.

05:48So there's a project I hope to get funded in California.

05:56Thank you, Mr. Calvert.

05:57At this time, I'd like to recognize my friend and colleague from Indiana, Mr. Mervin, for five minutes.

06:02Thank you, Chairman.

06:03Thank you, panel.

06:04I want to follow up on a line of questioning from our oversight hearing in February.

06:08There's an issue with finding storage for contaminated sentiment in the harbors.

06:12This is extremely costly in the case of...

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