The state of California has jumped into the fight to defeat federal legislation that would usurp state water rights and give Central Valley agricultural interests a greater share of the state’s water. Attorney General Kamala Harris submitted a letter to the House leadership Tuesday opposing HR1837, legislation authored by Rep. Kevin Nunes, a Republican from Tulare, and championed by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash. You can read the letter here.

The House passed 1837 Wednesday afternoon with a bipartisan vote of 246-175. The legislation now moves on to the Senate.

California is joined in opposing the proposed law by Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming, western states where water issues are paramount and communities depend on water agreements. The proposed federal legislation would overturn decades of work in California to balance reasonable water uses among cities, farms and fish and put agricultural water users in the Central Valley at the head of the water delivery line.

It would also return water quality standards for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to 1994 levels just as the state is revising those standards based on the newest, and much more comprehensive, science.

The legislation, titled the Sacramento-San Joaquin Water Reliability Act, is the latest in a long history of “reliable” water legislation. “Reliable” has many definitions in water politics, but simply means, as veteran water policy expert Phil Isenberg put it, “me first.”

You can hear Committee Chairman Hastings’ statement on the floor of the house Wednesday below.

You can hear Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, make her statement here:

