Taxpayers for Common Sense Senior Policy Analyst Joshua Sewell testifies at the March 28, 2023 hearing Why We Need to Store More Water and What’s Stopping Us.  

The House Natural Resources Committee’s Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee holds a hearing to discuss the obstacles to providing more water storage in the arid western part of the United States. While the hearing memo produced by the majority points to a number of environmental laws and regulations as the culprit, the majority ignores the primary cause—the unwillingness of water users to pay for their projects.  

Under federal law, federal water projects designed to provide irrigation water to agricultural users or water for municipal and industrial users must be paid for by those beneficiaries. After more than 100 years of federal financing of dams, canals, and other water storage and distribution systems, the easiest and least costly dams have already been constructed. The handful of remaining new dam proposals—all multibillion-dollar projects—are unlikely to yield enough water to justify their high price tags. 

Taxpayers for Common Sense staff testify to this point and call for 21st century water management tools, like stormwater capture, recycling, conservation, floodplain management, and aquifer recharge, to be included in the toolbox of efforts to increase and improve water availability. 

Read the TCS testimony here: 

Follow the hearing here:  https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=412955