A week after U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein threw what some are calling a hissy fit and blowing up months of negotiations by dozens of participants on crucial Western States’ water and drought legislation, Sen. Feinstein gamely put her football back on the tee Thursday and invited the Chair and Ranking Member of a key Senate Committee and other Western senators to try to kick it again. Lucy Van Pelt of Peanuts’ fame couldn’t act more smug and confident.
In an act of political cover designed to set the table for another kick, Feinstein enlisted the aid of eight other well-intentioned but mistaken senators to sign her December 16 joint letter addressed to Senate Energy and Natural Resources chair Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-WA). The letter calls for a new try at western drought legislation in 2016.
Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO), Steve Daines (R-MT), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Orrin Hatch (D-UT), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Dean Heller (R-NV), John McCain (R-AZ), and Tom Udall (D-NM) signed the letter, but Sen. Barbara Boxer did not.
Earlier this session, Sen. Feinstein suggested that a compromise version of her S. 1894 and Rep. David Valadao’s H.R. 2898 drought bill be included in the hotly contested and just-passed Omnibus Appropriations Bill funding the government.
Then at the eleventh hour she balked, blocking efforts to include the drought legislation in the Omnibus bill. Her action denied California and the West a drought relief solution for the third year in a row.
The irony is that the Omnibus bill just passed, includes Feinstein’s $1.1 billion water and energy research initiative co-authored with Sen. Lamar Alexander to benefit Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. She apparently is willing to use the funding bill to deliver for Tennessee, but blocks all attempts to follow the same path to give Californians water to drink.
Sen. Murkowski and Sen. Cantwell, together with other key Western states missing from Feinstein’s restart-efforts letter —Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Alaska — need to bypass the football Feinstein is offering again, chart their own course and serve the best interests of the West and the nation.
The California Water Alliance (CalWA) is a leading educational voice and authority on California water. Founded in 2009, CalWA is a non-profit, non-partisan 501c4 that advocates for the water needs of California families, cities, businesses, farmers and the environment.