SPEAKER_05: Okay, the subcommittee will come to order. Today we're holding our first hearing of the Subcommittee on Water and Power. I want to thank the ranking members, Senator Wyden for joining me and for the members that are here now and will be joining us. I want to begin by saying that Senator Wyden and I have worked together on a number of things related to energy, and he might even comment on that. I had him out in North Dakota, but I'll let him mention that. Today obviously we're talking about water and power. Water access is fundamental to quality of life. For families, it means safe drinking water when they turn on the tap. For farmers and ranchers, it means the ability to grow crops and raise livestock. For communities, it means the opportunity to attract businesses and grow. Western states face unique challenges in reliable access and delivery of water. I'm going to be intrigued here to see if my staff put in what we all know, and that is that whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting. We'll see if they got it in there, just in case I wanted to reference it. It's an old saying, but it does have real meaning, and that is water is so important to everyone across the country. So incredibly important issue and a challenging issue. These challenges include all regions of the country and rural population center areas that are very wet, areas that have drought. It affects all of us. In North Dakota, we understand these challenges very well. Our state has long worked to manage both floods and drought, sometimes in the same year, which requires a close relationship with our federal partners, including the Bureau of Reclamation on critical water supply projects in our state. Today we'll be hearing testimony from the Bureau of Reclamation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on a number of bills, including a priority for my home state to reauthorize the Dakota Water Resources Act, which I want to thank Senator Padilla for joining me on. I appreciate it very much. This bill provides much-needed authorizations to provide more reliable, drought-resilient water supplies for North Dakota and the five tribal nations located in our state. Also it will support completion of two key regional water supply projects, the Northwest Area Water Supply Project, serving Minot and surrounding communities, and the Eastern North Dakota Alternate Water Supply Project, helping to serve communities in the Red River Valley of the North. North Dakota has yet to fully realize the promise of over a million acres of irrigation as compensation for the loss of approximately 550,000 acres of prime farmland permanently flooded by federal water projects under the Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944. Access to clean, reliable, and affordable water supplies is a quality-of-life issue, and our legislation is consistent with the historical federal promise to the state and tribes upon construction of the Garrison Dam and Lake Oahe. Senator Wyden did get to the Wilson Basin, but he did not get to Lake Sakakawea, which is a hundred-mile-long man-made lake which competes with some of the other reservoirs to hold the most water of any reservoir in the United States, and of course is incredibly important not just to our state, but to states downstream all the way down to the end of the Missouri River, which of course joins the Mississippi in St. Louis, or just south So, with that, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses this morning, and I would like to turn the microphone over to Senator Wyden for his opening comments.