Increase water storage and conservation in western states with Brenda Berman and water resource efforts from colorado, idaho and arizona. This is about an hour. The hearing of the Senate EnergyNatural Resources soouks will come to order. I want to apologize for being tardy. Im trying to be in a few places at once. Thanks for your patience. Throughout the rest, water is essential to everything we do. The infrastructure took centuries to build. Without these dams and canals and reclaim water plants the American West would not be the worldwide destination that it is today. It has taken tremendous foresight. They have been great investments. In my home state in arizona, what started as a 10 million federal investment which now contributes 250 billion to the nation. Earlier i toured all 15 counties in arizona. I saw forehand how these Major Investments shaped the state. From hoover dam, salt river praur project, federal investment in these projects is therefore critical. When i visited in january, local water experts including one of our witnesses here today laid out to me how the water districts maintain and manage imperial dam and related infrastructure which supplies water to california and arizonas massive economy. Irrigation projects have unleashed the economy. The return on the investments for our nation is clear. It is our turn to step up and make the next round of investments. We must ensure existing facilities keep running and develop the next generation of products. The bipartisan bills will do just that. My bill s2044, the water supply infrastructure rehabilitation and utilization act which im proud to work side by side to develop will make huge strides in addressing significant needs at the existing bureau. The beneficiaries of the assets are responsible for covering the costs. They do so by building the costs into rates that water users pay throughout the year. As with any large scale Infrastructure Project, Large Capital upgrades are needed from time to time. We call this extraordinary maintenance and its often accompanied with a price tag too high to fold into a single year of rates. Imperial dam has upwards of 50 million in needed renovations. Because the water districts are operators, they dont have access to many traditional financing tools needed to fund these critical repairs. This is something that wade and the team brought to my attention right when i visited you there. That has directly resulted in this legislation. My bill addresses this by setting up an account. It allows operators to repay the cost with interest over a longer period of time. My bill modifies the authority to provide Greater Transparency and control to congress and to stake holders so this authority is utilized. The bill establishes a Pilot Program to modernize operations and increase water storage at existing dams without new construction. It looks at the needs of existing infrastructure, the drought resilience and water supply infrastructure act focuses on the need for new infrastructure. Nearly every basin in the west will require new storage and supply to provide drought resilience in the face of population and economic growth, changing run off regimes. The needs and opportunities for developing new Water Resources are different for every community. S 1932 recognizes that fact by creating a broad set of tools that allow water managers to keep all options on the table. We are in an exciting time and have a oo rel opportunity to move forward for solutions. Instead of knee jerk reactions and false choices between Water Development and the environment that permeated the debate, groups are coming together to develop comprehensive solutions. I look forward to continuing this constructive approach and look forward to hearing from our witnesses who are doing hard work to develop needed infrastructure by promoting partnerships rather than conflict. We dont have a rank member here today. Do we have anyone else who wants to make a statement . Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. Thanks to all the witnesses and i welcome the two from colorado. Thank you very much for all of you being here today. Every time you say uma county. Arizona. Its a little bit cooler. Wonderful. Thanks a lot. Before turning to our witnesses, i ask unanimous consent to add a statement from senator feinstein to the record along with support from 58 water districts and municipalities for s1932. These include Water Council of arizona, salt River Project, cities of phoenix. Without objection they will be placed into the record. Lets now turn to our witnesses. We have five great witnesses to discuss Water Infrastructure and the three bills before us today. First up is commissioner of reclamation. Nearly everyone on the panel has arizona roots. Next we hear from mr. Wade noble, a water attorney from yuma who represents a number of irrigation districts that rely on facilities. He also serves in leadership and advisery positions, national Water Resources association and the family farm alliance. What do you do in your free time, wade . Im glad you could be here. Thanks for making the trip out from arizona and for all the work you do. After that, well hear from mr. Marshall brown, general manager for aurora water in colorado. He is also representing the Water Reuse Association. I would note, he comes from aurora by way of scottsdalism i know that we can trust him. Then we will hear from senior counselor for the Theodore Roosevelt partnership. And finally managed recharged Program Manager for the Idaho Department of Water Resources, another arizona transplant. I really didnt plan this, but it is dprat to have a lot of arizonaens on the panel. Commissioner, its good to see you again. Youre recognized for five minutes. Thank you. Chairman mcsally, senator gardner, members of the subcommittee who are here with us perhaps virtually. Im commissioner of the bureau of reclamation. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to appear before you today. Before i begin my remarks, i would first like to again thank you and thank this committee and your staff for their leadership and excellent quick work on the Colorado RiverDrought Contingency Plan authorization act this past spring. It was really incredible work and is moving forward. Just this past week, i was in san diego for a signing ceremony where the water commission, the republic of mexico section and United States section signed a joint report. And this report describes how the United States and mexico will protect lake meade elevations to benefit the Colorado River. This is really the last step in moving forward with our drought and scarcity plans. Its a great accomplishment for cities, states, tribes and all the others who depend on the Colorado River. And thank you. The committee has my written statement so i will use my time to highlight some of the underlying areas where we think the Committee Seeks to address the drought resiliency act, the water supply infrastructure rehabilitation and utilization act, the okafor recharge act. As co sponsors are aware, as a nation, we need to invest in new and existing infrastructure. We need to invest in storage to increase water reliability. And we need to impruchb conviance to secure our Water Supplies for future generations. Reclamations, dams and reservoirs, water command systems and Power Generation facilities are integral components of the nations infrastructure and the economies of the western states. This infrastructure is key to reclamations continued success. We operate just under 500 dams throughout 17 western states. We impound 338 reservoirs with total Storage Capacity of 140 million acre feed. We are the largest of water in the United States. It irrigates 10 million acres so 20 of the farmers in the west and provides Drinking Water to 31 million people. It is the second largest hydro power producer in the United States. We have provided some handouts to help explain the back drop of where we were. Youll see in front of you, one is a map of 2019, the condition in the west for 2019. And the other is exactly a year ago. So 2018. If you look at the two, what a difference a year makes. So if you look at the rio grande, last years spring run off was at 18 . This year its at 160 . Last year the Colorado River basin was in its fifth driest year on record that we know about. And this year, were at 144 of average. I think we even had some snow in june. So this is the back drop we work in. We need as water managers to be able to deliver water whether its wet or whether its dry. And there can be very large swings in the west. So just a thought to keep in mind of like what is the infrastructure we need when its a dry year like 2018 in some areas or a wet year like it can be in 2019. Well see what we have in store for us in 2020. Let me give an example in the Colorado River. Despite a wet year, the Colorado River is in its 19th year of drought. Despite that, we have consistently delivered our treaty obligations to mexico and we have not yet had to declare a shortage in the lower basin. What is the reason for that . First, as you saw in the spring, a lot of cooperation between the states, water districts, a lot of water savings. We have a robust storage system. Federal surface storage is about 60 million acre feed. The federal reservoirs can store four times the annual flow. F if you compare that to somewhere like california, the Sacramento River has about the same run off as the Colorado River. Only their storage is barely up to a years run off. So that means in a time like 2017 which was the wettest year on record in california, we had to let most of that water go out of the system. In 2018 which started off very dry in california and worked its way up, we werent able to make deliveries. We had to take several months where we had farmers who didnt know if they were going to get water or not. The investment thats made in the colorado systems are the generations that went before us that invested in the systems, thats what provided the efficiency, the flexibility, the conservation, thats what increased our water supply reliability during this drought and for the future. Across the west, we look at all of the above approach. We encourage diversity of resources. We have many programs that help with that. We view water reuse, water recycling as well as ground water recharge as important parts of this water supply strategy. Wed like to work with the committee to keep working with you to strengthen the bills that we are here to discuss today. We would like to discuss other windrelated. Thank you for your time. Absolutely. Im going to do something a little nontraditional since we started late. Im going to wait to have you testify. Im going to let mr. Brown testify and then let you ask some questions and then we will continue on with the panel just because he has a hard stop. Flexibility is the key to air power we used to say in the military. Mr. Brown. Good morning. To start, id like to thank chair woman, Ranking Member mansion and members of the subcommittee for inviting me here to speak about these issues today. I appreciate the opportunity to represent the city of aurora and also the Water Reuse Association who represent over 250 utilities and over 300 other businesses and institutions across the country that implement water recycling. Aurora water is a utility located east of denver, colorado. We provide Drinking Water, wastewater and storm water suvtss to a population of over 370,000 people. Aurora water and the Water Reuse Association strongly support the drought resiliency and water supply infrastructure act or senate bill 1932 and thank you for your leadership on this important legislation. Senator gardner has long been an advocate on critical water issues and we very much appreciate your leadership. Meeting the water needs of a growing community in the arid west is challenging. Auroras water supply infrastructure is extensive and complicated. Aurora owns or partners in 12 reservoirs located throughout about a third of the state of colorado. And we manage and maintain hundreds of miles of pipes. We have three Drinking WaterTreatment Plants as well as reclaimed Water Treatment facility. As most of the water supply is located west of the Continental Divide and most of the population is to the east, aurora must transport and store water including transporting it over mountain ranges up to this requires large and a concerted effort to move on through tunnels pipelines and pumping facilities, and requires that we build and maintain large reservoirs to effectively utilize that supply. Senate bill 1932 creates valuable funding programs for utilities like aurora water to help address the enormous Capital Needs required to build and maintain the infrastructure necessary to sustain the growing populations that we have. In order to ensure our ability to provide water we must create robust systems that integrate multiple increasingly complex components or technologies. For example, aurora water has Storage Capacity to meet three years of our annual average demand to help us through variable climate and endemic droughts. This is integrated into a system that also includes our ability to reuse 100 recapture and reuse, essentially 100 of our wastewater return flows. We use that for irrigation and to meet potable demands. While weve invested over 700 million in process including riverbank filtration aquifer recharge and recovery, advanced oxidation in order to create those reuse capabilities, we are not done. Source water conditions, we are planning to add 150,000 acre feet of additional storage in our system, and since we operate in essentially closed loop, increasing levels of salinity and we know that eventually probably in the not too distant future we are going to have to start removing the faults from that water in order to continue were using it. Reusing it. Those types of needs and projects can benefit greatly from the legislation being considered here today. While the roles of Government Agencies may not be exactly the same today as they have been in the past, there remains a critical need for partnership at a local state and national level. Almost 36 of the land in colorado is federally owned and systems like auroras, both our current or existing are not possible without partnership and support. Thank you again for allowing me the opportunity to visit today about how senate bill 1932 could be hugely beneficial to us and assist aurora water and other similarly situated water providers in meeting these needs into the future. This bill goes a long way of providing realistic and sustainable funding mechanisms to help us develop or expand these complex multifaceted systems and solutions to address those ongoing what it needs. We are going to go to miss kassen next. We are going a little bit out of order. Exactly. Thank you for letting me beyond this panel when i dont have a tie to arizona. The Conservation Partnership is an alliance of 1600 Outdoor Recreation and science organizations dedicated to ensuring allamericans enjoy quality places to hunt and fish. We appreciate the opportunity to testify about how to help the west build drought resilience in the face of decreasing Water Supplies and increasing demand. Will focus federal policies and resources will allow us to meet a range and of needs. Congress can incentive id incentivize Water Conservation, innovative technologies, and strategies to help build a future with thriving cities and rural communities, diversified economy, sustainable agriculture, and Healthy Rivers and watershed that provide recreation and ecological benefits to residents and businesses a life. Alike. After recreation infuses 887 billion into the economy and is especially important for rural america. Fish swim in clean flowing rivers and streams, migratory birds feed and rest on ruslans. Local bird populations ripe in their quarters. recognize how many interests complete for the limited Water Supplies of the west. Experience shows that Cooperation Among diverse interests is the only path that leads to durable solutions. Recently this committee helped pass the Colorado River dcp, an example of basin wide cooperation, thank you. One of the bills you are considering would build on the sit success of dcp. I suggest several modifications for your consideration. The committee shirted sure compliance with state and federal laws in support of the governor of the state for section 3 storage projects at each step from feasibility to construction. Second, we asked the committee to expand eligible products in section 3 to sec