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By Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself, Mr. Kelly, and Ms. Sinema):
S. 2162. A bill to support water infrastructure in Reclamation States, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I rise today to speak about the STREAM Act, Support to Rehydrate the Environment, Agriculture and Municipalities Act, which I am introducing today alongside my cosponsors, Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema. This bill is intended to help Western States upgrade their water infrastructure in preparation for the severe droughts and weather whiplash that we have seen the past few years and that will worsen significantly with climate change.
If we don't take action now, it is only going to get worse. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists project that climate change will cause a 54-percent drop in the Sierras' snowpack within the next 20 to 40 years and a 79-percent drop by the end of the century. This change alone could be devastating for California because we absolutely depend on this snowpack. The Sierra snowpack provides 30 percent of our water supply and is our biggest reservoir.
For these reasons and others, we need an ``all of the above'' water strategy, including increased water supply; incentivizing projects that build in environmental benefits and drinking water for disadvantaged communities, and investing in separate environmental restoration efforts.
The bill I am introducing today helps meet this challenge in four fundamental ways:
No. 1, it authorizes significant water supply funding that, in combination with the bipartisan infrastructure law, would provide California with 1.04 million additional acre-feet of water per year on average, enough water for over 6 million people.
No. 2, it provides additional financial incentives for water supply projects that include environmental benefits and drinking water for disadvantaged communities.
No. 3, it reforms the congressional review process to more quickly approve water supply projects;
No. 4, it significantly invests not only in water supply projects but also in environmental restoration to help imperiled species adapt to climate change.
The recent drought in the West from 2020 to 2022 illustrates why this bill is so desperately needed.
In 2021, the drought caused the California agriculture industry to shrink by an estimated 8,745 jobs and incur $1.2 billion in direct costs, according to a report prepared for the California Department of Food and Agriculture by researchers at the University of California at Merced. Reduced water deliveries resulted in 395,000 acres of cropland left dry and unplanted.
Counting ``spillover effects'' in the broader economy, the U.C. Merced analysis found the total impacts were more than 14,600 lost jobs, both full time and part time, and $1.7 billion in gross revenue losses.
In both 2021 and 2022, homes in significant parts of the State were at risk of running dry. In 2021, large parts of Marin and Sonoma Counties and the Mendocino coast came very close to losing all water supply. In 2022, much of Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Bernardino Counties were placed under emergency orders limiting them to once-a-
week landscape irrigation, with the possibility of a complete irrigation shutoff that was only avoided by the timely arrival of multiple atmospheric rivers last fall.
In California, one in eight acres statewide has burned from wildfires in the last decade, with the past 2 years being the worst on record. The drought has been devastating to the aquatic ecosystem as well as our forests. As just one example, the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon depend on sufficient cold water released by Shasta Dam to rear their offspring in the Sacramento River.
With limited water available in 2021, NOAA Fisheries models predict that approximately 75 percent of the winter run Chinook salmon's eggs died from elevated water temperatures. This is a species with three 1-
year age classes, and a prolonged drought could threaten the survival of the species.
To increase drought resiliency in California and other Western States, the bill authorizes the following funding over the next 5 years: $750 million for surface and groundwater storage projects and supporting conveyance, including $50 million for natural water retention and release projects; $300 million for water recycling projects; $150 million for desalination projects; $250 million for environmental restoration projects; and $100 million for drinking water for disadvantaged communities.
This funding builds on the bipartisan infrastructure law's funding of
$1.15 billion for storage projects, $550 million for water recycling projects, and $250 million for desalination projects.
The STREAM Act, in combination with the bipartisan infrastructure law, would provide California with the Federal cost-share for approximately 1,042,000 acre-feet per year of additional water supply, or enough water for over 6 million people. This comes from the following:
Enough funding for California to finally build three major off-stream storage projects providing 370,000 acre-feet of water on average each year: Sites Reservoir, the Los Vaqueros Expansion, and the BF Sisk raise. In addition, the storage funding could provide an additional 55,000 acre-feet per year from some combination of other smaller surface and groundwater storage projects like the Sacramento Regional Groundwater Bank or Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir. All of the projects are non-Federal projects with a 25-percent Federal cost share, with the exception of the Federal BF Sisk Raise with a 50-percent Federal cost-
share.
Enough funding for 532,000 additional acre-feet from water recycling projects, from the $300 million authorized in the bill plus $550 million in the bipartisan infrastructure legislation, with a 25-percent Federal cost-share for projects.
Enough funding for approximately 85,000 additional acre-feet from the
$150 million authorized in the bill for desalination projects, plus
$250 million in the bipartisan infrastructure legislation, with a 25 percent Federal cost-share for projects.
While virtually everyone supports water recycling projects, surface and groundwater storage projects are sometimes more controversial. I want to point out a 2022 report from the widely respected Public Policy Institute of California, PPIC, which relates to the benefits of additional surface and groundwater storage as California's climate is changing.
Many climate forecasters emphasize that as climate change intensifies, California will get more of its precipitation in a few large to extraordinarily large storms fueled by atmospheric rivers, and more of the precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow. In between the bursts of atmospheric rivers there will be longer and more intense droughts. We have definitely seen a preview of this pattern this year.
PPIC has studied these projections and estimated that there is substantial water in wet years that is not needed to maintain healthy Delta outflows but currently cannot be captured because California lacks the infrastructure to store for future dry periods. PPIC suggests that given this reality, cost-effective storage projects in appropriate locations could help improve California's drought resiliency.
PPIC also argues that these storage projects should be managed for environmental flow benefits as well as water supply benefits. This bill would help with that because Federal funding for Sites Reservoir would help provide cold water for salmon, and Federal funding for the expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir would provide needed water for wildlife refuges. Regarding cold water reserves for salmon in particular, these reserves will be critical to prevent salmon runs from being wiped out during the potential fourth, fifth, and maybe even sixth and seventh years of devastating droughts.
The bill's funding authorizations apply not just to California but throughout the 17 Western States where the Bureau of Reclamation has a presence. Many of these States have recently benefited from the Bureau of Reclamation's storage, water recycling, and desalination programs and/or have projects currently seeking funding from these programs, including Arizona, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico. I believe the Federal funding assistance authorized by this bill will be particularly important for all seven Colorado River basin States as the States negotiate the next painful round of water supply cuts from the Colorado River between now and 2026 in order to meet the challenge of an increasingly dry Colorado River basin.
In Arizona, the STREAM Act would significantly advance the Salt River Project's proposal to raise Bartlett Dam on the Verde River to counteract the loss of approximately one-third of the nearby Horseshoe Dam's capacity from accumulating sediment.
The bill uses financial incentives to encourage storage and conveyance projects to include environmental benefits and other public benefits such as drinking water for disadvantaged communities. This is important to ensure that the environment and disadvantaged communities are included in our drought resilience strategies.
If proposed storage projects solely provide irrigation and general municipal and industrial water supply benefits, the bill authorizes only low-interest loans to support these projects.
In contrast, the bill authorizes grants for storage and conveyance projects that include environmental benefits, drinking water benefits for disadvantaged communities, or other public benefits either as part of the project design or as part of a watershed restoration plan adopted together with the project.
This access to grants gives project sponsors a strong financial incentive to design environmental and disadvantaged community benefits into their projects. This approach builds on the experience of the Proposition 1 water bond California's voters passed by a 2-to-1 margin in 2014, which also incentivizes projects with environmental and other public benefits.
If storage and conveyance projects take these steps, they can get Federal grants both directly for the public benefits and for an equal value investment in the water supply component of the project. Thus, the Federal Government will provide $50 million for the general water supply benefits of a project if the project also has $50 million in fish and wildlife or water quality benefits either directly from the project or from an associated watershed restoration plan.
The bill not only increases funding for drought resiliency projects, it expedites their approvals and assists them more cost-effectively, stretching taxpayer dollars further.
The traditional Bureau of Reclamation model for approving and funding new water supply projects has involved the following:
No. 1, reclamation studies new projects in detail, which can take a decade or more for major projects.
No. 2, once Reclamation's studies are complete, Congress authorizes projects individually, which can take another 3 to 5 years or longer in many cases.
No. 3, the design and construction can take a decade or longer.
One can quickly see that this model can end up taking decades to construct significant new water supply projects. This is especially the case given the limitations of Federal budgets and the increasing cost of major projects in recent years. Given the tremendous challenge posed by climate change to western water supply, we need a nimbler and more responsive model.
Mike Connor, the Deputy Secretary of the Interior during the Obama Administration and currently Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, testified in support of a new model during an October 8, 2015, hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Deputy Secretary Connor stated:
The traditional Reclamation business model, in which feasibility studies, consistent with the 1983 Principles and Guidelines for Water and Related Resources Development, are first authorized, funded, and submitted to Congress, and then construction is authorized and funded, does not always address the needs of project sponsors at the state and local levels. Moreover, given budget limitations and the availability of other available financing mechanisms, the historic Federal role in financing water storage projects through the Bureau of Reclamation must be revisited with a greater emphasis on non-Federal financing.
In response to the concerns articulated by then-Deputy Secretary Connor and others, the bill we are introducing today, building on the 2016 Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, makes two significant changes to the traditional Reclamation model. These changes expedite project approvals and make more cost-effective use of available Federal funding.
First, the bill eliminates the need for Congress to authorize individual water recycling and desalination projects and non-Federal storage projects a Federal investment of less than $250 million. It can take 3 to 5 years or longer for projects to get legislatively approved. In fact, zero new water recycling projects were authorized from 2009 to 2017 despite dozens of meritorious projects with approved feasibility studies.
Federal storage projects, which are often more controversial, continue to require congressional authorization, as do non-Federal storage projects with a greater than $250 million Federal investment. The bill shortens the timeline for congressional approval of these projects through directing Reclamation to follow a process that the Army Corps of Engineers uses to notify Congress of completed feasibility studies each year to set up an orderly timeline to authorize projects.
Second, the bill no longer requires 100 percent Federal funding upfront as was necessary under the traditional Reclamation model. Instead, the bill allows a maximum of 50 percent Federal funding for federally owned projects and a maximum of 25 percent Federal funding for non-Federal projects that are built by States, water districts, or Indian Tribes.
Federal dollars can be stretched further by the partnerships with States and water districts that will be fostered under the bill. For example, the proposed expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir in California would be funded nearly 50 percent by the State of California, which has already conditionally awarded funding, in addition to potentially 20 to 25 percent by the Federal Government and the remaining 25 to 30 percent by water users.
Multipartner projects like the Los Vaqueros expansion frequently have multiple benefits. For example, much of the State and Federal funding for the Los Vaqueros expansion would go to augment the water supply of wildlife refuges that provide essential water for migratory birds on the Pacific flyway. These benefits would complement the project's water supply benefits for many Bay Area water districts.
If proposed storage projects solely provide irrigation and general municipal and industrial water supply benefits, the bill authorizes only low-interest loans to support these projects.
In contrast, the bill authorizes grants for storage and conveyance projects that include environmental benefits, drinking water benefits for disadvantaged communities, or other public benefits either as part of the project design or as part of a watershed restoration plan adopted together with the project.
Let me give an example of how this works. If a project sponsor is seeking $100 million in Federal funding for a $400 million non-Federal storage project, the sponsor can get that $100 million funding as a grant if there is
$100 million in public benefits from either the project itself or other projects as part of a watershed restoration plan approved with the project.
The public benefits could be either drinking water for disadvantaged communities or fish and wildlife benefits. Some examples of fish and wildlife or water quality benefits from a watershed plan could include water leasing during a dry year, water sharing agreements, water banking, ongoing water conservation, and related activities if they provide fish and wildlife or water quality benefits; environmental restoration projects; and natural water retention and release projects.
The longer and more severe droughts coming with climate change will adversely affect not just farms and cities but also the natural environment. The bill includes provisions to improve species' drought resiliency as well.
The significant funding authorization of $250 million for environmental restoration can be used to benefit many different species, including fish and migratory birds. Some authorized uses of this funding include improved habitat for salmon, Delta smelt, and other fish species adversely affected by the Bureau of Reclamation's water projects; additional water for wildlife refuges hosting migratory birds along the Pacific flyway; improved stream gauges, monitoring and science to better understand how to restore species and to operate Reclamation water projects with reduced environmental impacts; ensuring that when Sacramento Valley rice growers sell their water and idle their crops, some water is left behind and applied to bare fields in late summer and early fall to create shallow flooded habitat during a critical shorebird migration period; and assistance in implementing water-related settlements with State agencies and State water quality laws.
The bill would also authorize $50 million of the broader storage funding for natural water retention and release projects.
These projects would help restore stream and river channels with natural materials like wetlands. Like many other projects prioritized by the bill, these projects could have multiple benefits, including increased groundwater recharge, improved flood protection, and increased floodplain habitat to benefit salmon and other species. I look forward to receiving comments on ways to prioritize multibenefit projects like natural water storage projects as we move forward with the bill.
The bill also authorizes pay-for-performance environmental restoration approaches that award grants contingent on the success of the restoration effort. These approaches can expedite environmental restoration and build public/private partnerships to increase the number of acres restored.
In addition, the bill makes clear that it must be implemented consistently with all Federal environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act and all other environmental laws. All applicable state laws must also be followed.
California is home to more than 40 million people, but our major statewide water infrastructure hasn't significantly changed in the past 50 years, when we had only 16 million people.
We must modernize the system or we risk becoming a desert state. Critically, this means putting in place infrastructure to allow our cities, our farmers, and our natural communities to withstand the severe droughts that we are projected to face as a result of climate change.
I hope my western colleagues will join my cosponsors and me on this bill because drought is a serious threat for all of our States.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 169, No. 109
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