Marsden for Congress

Water is the single most critical issue of our District.  Water is life.  Water's absence is death.  In this remarkably rich agricultural Eden of the Central Valley, water is the economic lifeblood that allows that Eden to exist.  In the eastern foothill and mountainous portion of the 19th, it's not only the quantity of water, but the quality of it.  And this district’s number one economic priority is agriculture.   Agriculture is the greatest economic engine imaginable - driving the overall economy of the entire district.  But if water goes, agriculture will cease.  And if agriculture dries up, the ancillary businesses dependent upon agriculture will also die.  Countless jobs will be lost and the overall economy will be devastated.  It's just that simple.  The irony exists in the fact that no matter the national or world economic situation, we produce the one incontrovertible commodity needed by every single person on the planet: food - but only as long as we have water to produce it.  There is also a very important issue of morality as well:  as the need for more food worldwide increases, we have a responsibility to produce food for the world’s increasing numbers of hungry populations.  But without water, there’s no agriculture. Farms and ag business will shut down, jobs will be lost.  Removing thousands of acres of productive farmland from use is dead wrong.  Destroying tens of thousands of agricultural jobs as well as ancillary dependent businesses is unforgivable.  As your Congressman, I will wisely and responsibly work in support of agriculture - the backbone of our economy.  I will listen to your needs and serve you—not a party, but the people.  I will place the concerns of agriculture where they belong: as the number one priority of the Congressional 19th.  That has not been the case for the past 14 years.  But agriculture's success must be our greatest focus because just as we've seen with our national economy, a little collapse affects the entire picture; it's all an intertwined economy here in the 19th.  And rather than threaten the whole with losses, we have to strengthen what we have - by stabilizing and increasing the supply of water for agriculture and as well, to guarantee a safe, sufficient supply of quality water for human consumption.   For today, for tomorrow and for decades to come.
 
An infrastructure project I will actively develop and promote is a brand new Central Valley water plan.  Though our region's population has skyrocketed and demand for food has grown worldwide by a boggling degree, there have been no attempts to increase our water supply in more than four decades.  We're operating with a seriously outdated system.  What's needed is a new Central Valley plan for the 21st Century.  Currently, about 75% of seasonal rainfall and snow run-off is not utilized - capturing even a small percentage of that amount would help our region immensely and would also quiet demands for environmentally-devastating alternatives, such as pumping water from the delta.  A well-designed program for capturing more of the water that is currently lost would truly stimulate our region’s economy and increase the amount available for human consumption. We must do everything possible to increase capture and storage capabilities. We must improve our water delivery system. We must plan now to create more resource—and nothing must be off the table: new reservoirs, dams, user conservation must all be options. The agricultural community must also demonstrate responsibility in favoring less water-intensive crops where water is in short supply.   And creating more water resource will also create an incredible economic opportunity.  That’s the sort of infrastructure project that pays off for today, tomorrow and for decades to come.  Expanding and enriching our agricultural base will result in an expanded economy, more jobs, more self-reliance and our increased wealth as a region.
 
I’m proud to be a long-time environmentalist, but a responsible and pragmatic one.  In this time of multiply-successive drought years, the San Joaquin Valley Settlement is just plain wrong, and should have been fought tooth and nail. Six decades of Millerton Lake water being utilized for agriculture has established its own environmental precedent, and to now divert 250,000 acre-feet of that valuable resource away from farmers and ranchers to instead run down a dead riverbed boggles the mind. Trying to recreate a dead environment is senseless: the San Joaquin River Salmon is extinct, and feeble efforts to repopulate the river with a related though genetically different species is certainly not ‘restoring’ an environment—it’s the creation of a false, imitation of something gone forever.  The truly bizarre fact is that even those proponents of the San Joaquin River Settlement have admitted that the terms of this resolution in all likelihood will not succeed in re-establishing a salmon population in the river.  It's an experiment pre-determined by its supporters to end in failure, but in so doing will be disastrous to the agricultural industry.
 
This is a case of pure and total politics, and to play that game at this time of declining precipitation, decreasing snow pack and disappearing aquifers is ridiculous—as well as economically devastating to our region. We’re the world’s most productive agricultural area—we feed the nation and the planet. To support ANY sort of plan that directly threatens our agricultural primacy and economic well-being is simply: dead wrong.  And that is precisely what George Radanovich did, in supporting the San Joaquin River Settlement.  Its implementation will force the abandonment of hundreds of thousands of currently-producing ag acreage.  Constantly giving up instead of standing and fighting for our district marks the history of the incumbent.  What we need is a fighter, and that's me.  As the grandson and son of Central Valley farmers whose roots in the area go back over a century, I know full well the fact that agriculture is the one and only true economy upon which the world will always depend.  When all else has fallen by the wayside: agriculture will remain.  And that’s our great advantage in this region.