Central Valley Project contractors. It was not written by lobbyists, 

 as some would assert, but by water users in the San Joaquin Val- 

 ley who tried to include municipal water users and environmental 

 groups in the process. 



I know this to be a fact because my chief legislative assistant. 

 Bob Winters, worked directly and personally for over six months on 

 eight drafts of this legislation with water valley users and their 

 representatives. In fact, I spent six months pushing the principals 

 to work faster so we could reach this day today, Mr. Chairman. It 

 is an odd situation when Members of Congress are faulted for actu- 

 ally asking the people affected by laws for ideas to make their life 

 less complicated and the law more equitable. 



Finally, I want to make it clear that at no time did the people 

 who I worked with try to promote a repeal of the Central Valley 

 Project Improvement Act of 1992. In fact, I made that a sine qua 

 non of our discussions about changes. I am sure some folks want 

 to try to turn back the clock, but that was not the direction of any 

 discussions that we had with any of the principals involved. I don't 

 think it is prudent, and I don't think it is necessary. 



Everyone in the room needs to understand that the water users 

 and the members who are supporting H.R. 1906 are not trying to 

 reclaim the 800,000 acre feet of water the 1992 bill took from agri- 

 culture or to prevent other environmental improvements in the 

 1992 bill from continuing to be enacted. What we are all concerned 

 about is the lack of clarity left behind by the 1992 law and some 

 of the unnecessarily punitive things that it continues to permit. 



For example, no one is certain of the amount of water the 1992 

 Act may ultimately strip from the farm communitv because a vari- 

 ety of ways to keep claiming water can be found under the text, 

 making lenders reluctant to loan to a valley farm operation, al- 

 though I must say based upon the change in the majority of Con- 

 gress, we may have less reluctance if we can create some certainty. 



But, frankly, if the people who were the authors and the majority 

 at the time this bill was written were still in power, you would con- 

 tinue to have a real concern about the way in which all of these 

 triggers that were embedded in the bill were going to be pulled. 



For example, the Act requires the Bureau of Reclamation to keep 

 studying restoration of anadromous fish runs in the San Joaquin 

 River even though the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, 

 himself has stated he does not view putting water back into the 

 river to restore fish runs as reasonable or prudent. 



For example, the Act provides for a series of short interim con- 

 tracts while environmental reviews are conducted and, once the 

 studies end, a guarantee of a single contract of no more than 25 

 years' length, making water supplies uncertain and, once again, 

 discouraging capital from being made available to farmers in the 

 valley. 



In the 1992 law, instead of permitting the Secretary to choose to 

 spend 100 percent of the funds from the restoration fund on fish 

 screens and other projects authorized by the '92 Act, which would 

 improve salmon and steelhead survival, the Secretary can only use 

 33 percent of the funds for these projects. 



Now, H.R. 1906 was designed to address these kinds of problems 

 in a way that is being intentionally misdescribed by individuals 



