CJ Dablo
Staff Writer
Rep. Linda Sanchez said Monday the federal government isn’t doing enough to address California’s water challenges.
Sanchez spoke at a meeting where local leaders and community stakeholders gathered, an event sponsored by the Water Replenishment District of Southern California (WRD) at the agency’s Lakewood headquarters. The WRD is the agency responsible for managing two groundwater basins that service almost 4 million people in their Southern California territory.
“We need to develop water policy that is shaped by how we conserve this precious resource. So prices and policies must be set in ways that give everyone a clear incentive to use water efficiently and to avoid waste,” Sanchez said.
The Democratic Congresswoman from Lakewood named a few areas in which incentives could be placed on water conservation: supporting regulation affecting water use in appliances, and creating incentives to shift from irrigated lawns to “water smart” landscapes.
And when it comes to water use, Sanchez explained that the tax code could be used as the vehicle for incentives.
“And all of the tax code…is a series of incentives or dis-incentives to do certain things with money,” she said. “And by our policies, the policies the federal government sets, we can incentivize certain behaviors and we can dis-incentivize others. So when it comes to water use, there are ways in which we can cajole people to act a little more responsibly or at least reward people for acting a little more responsibly.”
The Congresswoman formerly served on the House Ways and Means Committee, a key group responsible for writing tax legislation.
She acknowledged that it might be difficult to educate those outside of California on the importance of water conservation. As a native of the Southern California area, Sanchez said that she sees water issues from a different perspective than those of her peers from the East.
On the heels of severe weather where communities up and down the Eastern seaboard are struggling with the damage done by Hurricane Irene, Sanchez recognized that the East Coast doesn’t have to contend with water issues like Southern California does. The 39th District Congresswoman said that some colleagues in the House tell her that there is no science to support the idea behind global warming. But since the Republican Party currently enjoys a majority in the House, Sanchez has had to focus her efforts in convincing her peers in Washington to make California’s water resources a priority.
She also defended the practice of using earmarks in Congress, stating that they don’t cut money from the federal budget.
“That means that the spending that goes on in a particular agency, whether it’s the Department of Justice, whether it’s Health and Human Services, all the earmarks do is get a member of Congress an ability to have input in funding certain projects in their area,” she said. “If you take out that step, and you say members can no longer submit earmarks, the money still gets spent by that agency. It’s just that bureaucrats get to decide how to spend it, rather than the people that are responsible for the area that they represent.”
And although she acknowledged that earmarks have been misused in the past, Sanchez especially defended the projects from the past that benefitted from earmarks.
She named a pilot project in 2005 that effectively used earmarks to benefit her local community. When a repaving project was planned in Whittier, she secured funding to add to the plan bioswales that would help prevent pollution and preserve clean water. Bioswales are natural landscape elements that help to filter polluted water before it drains into the ocean.
“Every single project that I submit is a project I believe in 110 percent and I would be happy to stand up and defend,” Sanchez said, although she acknowledged that she didn’t have much hope that Congress will reconsider earmarks for this term, but a future Congress might.
“This misperception, this fiction that all earmarks are bad or that!if we eliminate members’ input into how that money is going to be spent that somehow that’s going to help our federal deficit, that’s simply not true,” Sanchez added in an interview later that day.
Sanchez released a press release Wednesday stating that she will be seeking election in the new 38th Congressional District that was finalized by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in August. The newly formed district includes Artesia, Norwalk, Cerritos, La Mirada and Lakewood.
