The Subcommittee on Water and Power held a hearing today on the Bay Area water recycling program. The bill,Bay Area Regional Water Recycling Program Authorization Act of 2007, would provide a federal partner for seven local water recycling projects. In addition to Pittsburg, the bill would help Antioch, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Pacifica, South Santa Clara County, Redwood City, and San Jose, all communities who are increasing their municipal water supplies through innovative water recycling projects.
At the hearing, the subcommittee heard from Californians who are working on the programs, including Gary Darling, the General Manager of the Delta Diablo Sanitation District, Nancy Parent, a Councilmember in Pittsburg, and Larry Wilson, a member of the Board of Directors of the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
More information on the hearing can be found on the Natural Resources Committee’s website.
Congressman George Miller's Statement below.
Thank you, Chairwoman Napolitano, for scheduling this hearing and for your unflagging support of water reuse and recycling as a way of drought-proofing our communities, and as a way of meeting water demands in the face of climate change and other challenges.
I ask unanimous consent to insert into the record a statement of support from Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, this new report on the Importance of Recycled Water to the San Francisco Bay Area, a letter from the city of Mountain View, as well as these fact sheets on the Bay Area projects from the regional coalition.
I want to thank the witnesses speaking on behalf of my bill who have joined us from California:
Larry Wilson from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which is one of the local agencies investing in water recycling.
Gary Darling, the General Manager of Delta Diablo Sanitation District in the East Bay, and a real driving force behind the Bay Area’s regional water recycling coalition.
Nancy Parent, our city councilmember from Pittsburg, California, and a longtime proponent of one of our projects in this bill.
As demonstrated by our witnesses today, communities and agencies in California –and across the west – are putting time and money into water reuse and recycling.
They recognize that water management in the modern era requires innovative thinking, so that they can supply their customers – our constituents – while still protecting the Bay-Delta and other fragile ecosystems.
The best such projects are regionally developed, coordinated, and vetted to maximize their impact. The Bay Area Regional Water Recycling Program is a real success story of regional water planning, which is why I am so pleased to have worked with my colleagues from across the region to introduce this bill.
I want to thank Anna Eshoo, Ellen Tauscher, Jerry McNerney, Tom Lantos, Mike Honda, Zoe Lofgren, and Pete Stark for their support of H.R. 1526.
The bill that I introduced with my Bay Area colleagues simply tells our local communities that they will have a federal partner when they make these local investments.
This is reliable water that the Bay Area desperately needs – and we can bring it about for a fraction of the cost in time and money that a traditional dam and reservoir water supply project would take.
I am proud to say that I have been involved in these issues for years. The Title Sixteen water reuse program was created by P.L. 102-575, an Act that I was intimately involved in, and which also contained my Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
But it is an eternal disappointment to me that the Bureau of Reclamation – which describes itself as “managing water in the West” – continues to oppose water reuse and recycling.
Instead of working to meet the recycling and reuse needs of local communities, the Bureau just keeps studying massively expensive new reservoirs and managing existing projects as if it were still 1902.
If the Bureau wants to continue managing water in the West, they should try joining the twenty-first century with the rest of us.
Again, I appreciate the witnesses who have joined us from California, and I look forward to their testimony.
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