Water Storage

Water Storage

Water Storage. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

The western part of the U.S. is drying out and will be facing a historic drought if much needed rain and snowpack is not received. California has already had a tough time of it with the northwest not far behind. New water storage development is critical to providing and storing water supplies for farmers, ranchers, and municipalities. On Wednesday, the Subcommittee on Water and Power held a legislative hearing on solutions to jumpstarting construction of additional water storage throughout the western United States, including two proposals by Congressman Doc Hastings to address new ways to finance these projects nationwide.

HASTINGS: The challenge is always going to be, in the future where will funding on water storage projects not only in the Yakima River Basin but elsewhere throughout the west and there's a provision in law that prevents those that receive funding from prepaying the loans back. A lot of times more funds are generated and so the first bill that I had would be a bill that when somebody prepays, those funds then would go into a special account to use in the future for more water storage.

Hastings says a second provision within the Bureau of Reclamation should be simply to fund water storage.

HASTINGS: And then there's a third bill that's sponsored by one of my colleagues in California that consolidates the regulator process so those funds could be more easily accessed. So the three of them kind of go together and we had a hearing in the Natural Resources subcommittee to deal with those issues.

Hastings says it has been 40 years since California has built any storage facilities and over 70 years for the Yakima Basin.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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