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term contracting to proceed upon the completion of the Programmatic 

 Environmental Impact Statement. 



Section 4 of HJL 1906 also seeks to address the imcertainty created by the 

 CVPIA treatment of contract term. The CVPIA creates the possibility that 

 existing contracts would themselves not be renewed after an initial 25-year term. 

 Section 4 provides for the mandatory renewal of contracts for successive periods 

 of 25 years, thus recreating the stability in water supplies that existed prior to the 

 enactment of the CVPIA. This provides CVP contractors with comparable, 

 although still less advantageous, water supply reliability as users in every other 

 Reclamation project in the West and the State of California's Water Project. 

 Moreover, Section 4 does this without, in any ^vay, affecting the environmental 

 purposes of the CVPIA. All contracts that would be executed under this section 

 are to include (and already do, in the interim renewals) provisions that will 

 allow the environmental purposes of the CVPIA to be enforced and 

 implemented. 



Proposed modification to CVPIA provisions on water transfers and water 

 conservation are geared toward advancing these purposes. The provisions of 

 H.R. 1906 that address these issues and repeal of ttie "one size fits all" tiered 

 pricing were developed through experience and relate to how things really work 

 as opposed to dealing with these issues on a purely theoretical basis. 



Section 6 of H.R. 1906 seeks to add certainty to the environmental 

 complicmce aspects of the CVPIA and to coordinate the CVPIA environmental 

 restoration goals with that of the State of California. Section 6(b)(3), in particular, 

 provides needed clarification with respect to the commitment of 800,000 acre feet 

 of CVP water to advance the purposes of the CVPIA and other provisions of law. 

 It provides, however, the common sense limitation that once the water is used 

 for environmental purposes it can be diverted to agricultural and municipal and 

 industrial purposes. As things currently stand, there is a great deal of resistance 

 to the idea that once the 800,000 acre feet of CVP water is utilized for 

 environmental purposes it can, where appropriate, be reclaimed for other CVP 

 needs. Congress never intended that CVP contractors receive credit for the 

 800,000 acre feet for the environment only if it hurt them. 



My purpose here is to focus on the aspects of H.R 1906 that are most 

 crucial to Sacramento Valley interests. It is important to us that these crucial 

 issiies be addressed in a reasonable fashion. The fact that I have not addressed 

 the rest of H.R. 1906 does not mean that we have not reviewed these provisions 

 or that we do not, on balance, support them. They are, however, best described 

 by others. 



The CVPIA was developed in a "cut-and-paste" manner with varioxis 

 interested parties, particularly the environmental community, providing ideas 

 and language that was adopted with little evaluation or question. In light of this. 



