Oversight Hearing titled “Advancing Federal Water and Hydropower Development: A Stakeholder Perspective.”
House Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries
2025-04-30
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Source: Congress.gov
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Transcript
Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries will come to order. Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome members, witnesses and our guests in the audience to today's hearing. And without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the subcommittee at any time. Under Committee Rule 4F, any oral opening statements at hearings are limited to the chair and the ranking member. I therefore ask unanimous consent that all other members' opening statements be made part of the hearing record if they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 3.0. Without objection, so ordered. We are here today to hold an oversight hearing titled Advancing Federal Water and Hydropower Development, a Stakeholder Perspective. Oh, I now recognize Mrs. Hoyle for her opening statement. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you to the witnesses who traveled to be here. I look forward to hearing from you about how Congress can help address the challenges that you're facing. I expect that we will hear a lot of bipartisan agreement at this hearing. There's a lot that we can work on together. Communities across the West are facing water challenges. There's not enough of it. Sometimes there's too much in different places. Droughts are getting longer and more severe, snow packs are getting smaller, and everyone is having to adapt. Hydropower, when done right, is an important part of the balanced energy system. However, the administration and the DOGE effort has been haphazardly gutting federal agencies, so nonpartisan civil servants can't do the work that everyone here agrees that we should do. For example, I was happy to support the generational investments in our Western water infrastructure and drought resilience through the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
These laws provided over $15 billion to repair our aging infrastructure and modernize our water systems for the 21st century. That's something that everyone can agree that federal tax dollars should be spent on, infrastructure. That funding has been at work updating our aging systems, supporting tribal water access, and boosting water efficiency and reuse. Despite that progress, the administration has paused key water grants and fired the workers who've helped communities across the West access those funds. This chaos is preventing the federal government from supporting reliable water power deliveries across the West and also leaving contractors and workers in limbo they have to stop the work that they were planning to do. At the Bonneville Power Administration and other power marketing administrations, staffing cuts have targeted engineers and operations staffs, the people who keep the lights on. Power marketing administrations provide affordable power across the West at no cost to the taxpayer, so these cuts are not about government efficiency because we as rate payers pay for them. These cuts are threatening our grid stability, especially in rural communities like the ones I represent. For example, I heard from a constituent that DOJA's mass firing at BPA meant there weren't enough linemen in central Oregon to repair a high-voltage transmission line if it went down. They left us with one. That's not government efficiency. There are real opportunities to improve efficiency in government, but cutting programs and staff across the board without thought or strategy is just creating chaos and hurting our economies. We need well-staffed and well-funded federal agencies to deliver safe, reliable water and electricity, and of course, everyone should want efficient use of those dollars and that work that's done. I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses on how we can make that happen.
I now recognize myself for a five-minute opening statement. I want to apologize for being a bit late today. I was at a press conference at the Department of Ag with some important announcements. So again, I am sorry. I know that your time is valuable, and we want to be considerate of everyone in the room. Today, the Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries will hear from stakeholders on how Congress may continue to advance and support federal water resource and infrastructure management and hydropower development. Water is the Interior West's most important resource. In my home state of Wyoming, access to water resources is crucial to our success. Whether water is used for irrigation, recreation, human consumption, manufacturing, or hydropower production. Our rivers, lakes, reservoirs, dams, canals, laterals, siphons, head gates, and tunnels are key to ensuring that we have an adequate water supply to meet the demands and needs of our citizens, ag producers, energy producers, small business owners, and manufacturers that operate across our state.
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