Source: United States Senator for Colorado Michael Bennet
Denver — On Tuesday, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, chair of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources, spoke at the annual Colorado Water Congress. He highlighted the progress Congress has made to address extreme drought in the West through the Inflation Reduction Act and called for more action to tackle the Western water crisis.
During his remarks, Bennet discussed the $4 billion he secured in the Inflation Reduction Act to address drought in the West by funding water conservation, habitat restoration, and mitigation as the American West faces extreme drought, fueled by climate change. Bennet also highlighted the law’s $370 billion investment to fight climate change, including nearly $30 billion for drought, forestry, conservation, and environmentally friendly farming, almost all of which is under Bennet’s Senate subcommittee on Agriculture.
In June, Bennet chaired a subcommittee hearing to sound the alarm on the Western water crisis. He continues to work with his colleagues to build on the progress of the Inflation Reduction Act to address extreme drought, combat climate change, and protect Western water.
Bennet’s full remarks are available below.
I wanted to come here this year, as I come here every year, but I wanted to come here this year to say thank you to you for the extraordinary strides that we’ve been able to make because of your leadership. I think there’s a strong case to make that the leaders in this room have done more for the West than anybody in the country thanks to our work together over the last thirteen years.
As Christine said, I’m the first to admit that when I joined the Senate in 2009, I didn’t know a lot about water issues and I didn’t know a lot about ag issues either.
I also didn’t know that people describe the Agriculture Committee as the easiest committee to get on and the hardest committee to get off in the United States Senate. But I am very very grateful that I asked them to put me on there when I first went back because I know how much that it matters to Colorado and I know how poorly Washington understands what we’re facing.
And so I’ve been proud to be there since the day I arrived and I’m still on the Agriculture Committee today so that I’ve had the opportunity to learn from you and work with you to put Colorado’s priorities at the top of the agenda, issues like drought and conservation and forest and watershed health, and elevate farmers and ranchers as part of the solution. And if you step back and look at what we’ve been able to do together over the past thirteen years, there’s a lot to feel good about.
Together we wrote two farm bills that strengthened locally-led conservation programs at USDA and made them work better for Colorado’s farmers and ranches including the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which was literally written in Colorado.
Now we’re working on a third farm bill and last week I invited Secretary Vilsack out to join me in Palisade to see firsthand how these programs could work even better for our state by listening to producers that are here.
We won $575 million in EWP funding to protect our watersheds after the catastrophic fires over the last several years, along with nearly $60 million for the Arkansas Valley Conduit, which — that was the first bill I wrote in the United States Senate…I was just talking to a former commissioner back there saying “I don’t know if I’ll still be alive by that time it’s finished” and he said “You will be, sign me up for the ribbon cutting.”
Just this morning some of us were at a groundbreaking for a project to reconnect the upper Colorado at Windy Gap and we worked with people in this room to help push that forward to secure $14 million in federal funding, nearly half the cost of that project. And together, we’ve written bills to protect our waterways from invasive species, conserve the Dolores River Canyon, strengthen forest management across public and private lands, improve access to clean drinking water on tribal lands, and…finally end fire borrowing — a shortsighted approach that undermined prevention and put our communities at risk.
But more than any one project or piece of legislation, all of this reflects our work to elevate Western water on the national agenda — to make the federal government understand that in the West, water isn’t a secondary issue. It is the issue.
And Washington’s role is to support leaders on the ground, not to micromanage or impose top-down mandates. That’s the case I’ve made over and over in Washington over the last years and it hasn’t always been easy.
I cannot tell you the number of times that I’ve had to explain to Chuck Schumer that in Colorado, water is more important to our economy than the Brooklyn Bridge or the Lincoln Tunnel are to New York.
I will say that last year, the smoke finally arrived in New York and in Washington during those fires from California and that also has made a difference because we have been able to capture people’s attention.
We held the Senate’s very first hearing on Western drought in my subcommittee on the Ag committee so my colleagues can hear directly from Andy Mueller, who is here probably, and other experts about the dire conditions that we face.
And because we made the case and because we laid the groundwork, when opportunities arose in the last two years to make historic investments in the country, Western water had a seat at the table. When the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law came together, Christine helped us write a letter urging the administration to make water a priority.
The result was $8 billion for water infrastructure and $5.5 billion for forests. When the Inflation Reduction Act came together over the last month, we were ready for that as well. We partnered with other Western senators to make sure that we had funding for Western drought. I went on national television and I said because I couldn’t get the leader on the phone, but I didn’t give him time. I called him and then I didn’t wait for the callback, but I went on national television and I said…I’m not going to vote for a bill that’s not good for the upper basin of the Colorado. I’m not going to vote for a bill that’s not good for Colorado.
And in the end working with some of you we were able to get the language that we needed. And as we drafted that language, we spent hours on the phone with Colorado water leaders to make sure it worked for our state and the upper basin. And I want to be crystal clear that that will be true of any agreement we make going forward for the Colorado River.
In the end, we got $4 billion for Western drought in the final bill. The initial version had $0 and Senator Manchin only wanted $1 [billion] and Senator Sinema who’s from Arizona wanted $5 [billion] but it was for the lower basin. And they were not liking each other at the moment very much, so Joe is saying how about $1 [billion] or $0 and I was saying Joe if it’s $1 [billion] we’re never going to get this done. And in the end we settled on $4 [billion], and Senator Kelly from Arizona and I got to go spend the evening on Joe Manchin’s houseboat on the Potomac River for the first time.
But it couldn’t come soon enough obviously because the conditions are as dire as we’ve ever seen. And we all know that we’ve got a very difficult negotiation in front of us. We are going to need the federal government to backstop whatever states decide with the Bureau of Reclamation. And whatever they decide it should be obvious that the Upper Basin can’t solve these challenges on our own.
We have always lived within the compact. And when there is less water, we take less. Last year we actually cut our water use by a million-acre feet even as the lower basin increased their use by 600,000 acre feet.
The people in this room have stepped up and you’ve made sacrifices to do more with less. And although we’ve got more difficult choices ahead, and I know that we do, we know temporary mandates are not going to cut it, and any long-term solution requires permanent reductions in use by the lower basin and all parties have to live with what the Colorado River can provide.
As everybody here knows, the number one reason why the Colorado River is providing less water every year is climate change. A few years ago, you might remember, we were outside I think that day, I was here several years ago to ring the alarm on how climate change threatened the future of Western water and since then matters have only gotten more challenging.
The people in our state on the front range and the West Slope are deeply worried about what’s happening to the quality of their lives. Just ask the outfitters, the anglers, the businesses here in Steamboat who rely on the Yampa [River]. Between the volunteer closures and the threat of mandatory closures, Steamboat’s economy faces a stark new reality. The same is true for Colorado’s $46 billion outdoor recreation sector and our $47 billion agriculture sector.
And we see our state literally being incinerated by wildfire. We see less water in our rivers, more smoke in our skies. We worry about the future that we’re handing to our kids and to our grandkids, whether that farm or that ranch is going to be able to stay in the family.
And we’ve been right to be worried. Because, unlike Colorado, Washington has done very little to meet this moment until now. Now the federal government has finally stepped up with $370 billion to fight climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act.
With a single bill, Washington has gone from doing virtually nothing on climate to setting an example to the world for a responsible energy policy that will cut emissions, that will strengthen our energy independence and our economic independence, will help free us from tyrants like Vladamir Putin. And out of that $370 billion, nearly $30 billion touches the work that we’ve been doing together for the last thirteen years — drought, forestry, conservation, environmentally friendly farming, and almost all of that is under my Senate subcommittee, which means that Colorado now has an incredible opportunity to put our stamp on these programs.
Speaking for myself, one of the best moments that I’ve had in this job is when I called my oldest daughter Caroline, and told her that we had finally done something meaningful on climate. That we’ve finally done something to make it a little bit better for her generation right when they started to give up hope. Because we can’t give up hope.
We have to keep going and we have to build on the historic progress that we’ve made by making sure this funding gets to the right projects and lifts up the hard work of our state and local leaders by fighting to defend Colorado’s seat at the table and the American West by continuing to push for more investment because we know this is only a down payment on what’s required.
So I am so grateful for everything that we’ve accomplished together, but our work isn’t done. We face profound challenges ahead, but I think we should view this as the opportunity of a lifetime. The opportunity to make decisions over the next five years that will strengthen the West for another hundred years — to lay a durable new foundation for our Western environment, for our economy, and for our way of life. And to fulfill our responsibility to the next generation, and leave them Colorado in a better shape than we found it. I think that it is in the future, I think that is in the cards, and that there is a lot of reason for hope.
Thank you for having me today.