PRIORITIES • Protect Our Future • Policy to

Secure Our Water

Why I believe this — and how I’ll fight for it.

I grew up in an agricultural town, so I know that out here, water is survival. It’s whether the farm makes it, whether the town has a future, whether your kids can build a life on the same land you did. Agriculture is the lifeblood of this district, and water is the lifeblood of agriculture.

And right now, our water is being treated like a commodity for the highest bidder. Some of the biggest corporate agriculture operations in the state — like The Wonderful Company, the billionaire growers behind one of the largest private water banks in California — have made a business of cornering it, while our own Northern California water gets pumped south through the Delta to feed corporate mega-farms hundreds of miles away. It’s the same story as everything else: a resource that should belong to the people who live here, siphoned off to the biggest players who can afford to buy the rules.

Here’s what they don’t want you to see: farmers and environmentalists should be on the same side. Both want our water protected, kept local, and used sustainably. Big corporate ag manufactured the fight between them — pitting farmer against conservationist — so that in the noise, it could buy up the water and the Delta rights for itself. Empower our local and family farmers, and they are conservation’s natural allies. That’s the future I’m fighting for: our water, kept here, working for us.

Here’s what I’ll do — and why

Fully fund the water projects our district has been waiting on. We have real projects, right here, that would secure our water for generations — and they’ve been left underfunded and overlooked. Sites Reservoir in Colusa County, whose costs keep climbing while its full funding still isn’t locked. The ARC Spillway at New Bullards Bar, designed and ready but with no construction money secured. The Sutter Bypass levees, still below federal safety standards. The Napa River flood project, funded for one phase but not the finish. Lake Berryessa’s aging federal infrastructure, and the cleanup of Clear Lake in our Lake County communities. These sit in our district’s counties, and our families depend on that water even where it lies just past the line. I’ll use a federal seat to do what ours hasn’t — bring the money home and see these projects through. A district that helps feed California shouldn’t have to beg Washington for the water to do it.

Keep our water local — and stop the corporate water grab. Our water should serve the families, farms, and towns of this district first — not get bought up and shipped south to the highest corporate bidder. I’ll fight to protect local and regional water rights from the mega-operations buying their way to control of the Delta, and to keep Northern California’s water from being drained to enrich a handful of billionaire growers while our own communities go short. Water is a public trust, not a commodity for the powerful to corner.

Invest before the crisis, not after. For too long, we’ve waited until the drought or the flood hits and then scrambled. I’d flip that — invest now in storage, delivery, and drought and flood resilience, so we’re ready before the next disaster instead of cleaning up after it. And I’d cut the decades of red tape and endless studies that keep good water projects stuck on paper while the need only grows. Build the storage, fix the levees, secure the supply — before, not after.

Bring farmers and conservationists back to the same table. The people who grow our food and the people who protect our land want the same thing: water that lasts. I’ll govern like it — bringing local farmers, environmentalists, and communities together against the real threat, which was never each other. It was always the agribusiness interests hoarding the water and the establishment that lets them. We can protect this resource for everyone who actually lives here.

What this means for Our District

This district helps feed the state — from Napa and Sonoma to Lake, Yolo, Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, Placer, and Sacramento, ours is farm country, and water is everything here. Yet we’ve long had representation that answers to big business over the small farmers and families who actually work this land. That’s a big part of why our projects go unfunded and our water gets sent elsewhere. It’s another place the establishment — my own party included — has let this district down. I’ll answer to the people who live and farm here, not the interests trying to buy our water out from under us.

The bottom line

Water is survival in a place like ours — for the farm, the town, the family, the next generation. We can secure it: fund the projects that have been waiting, keep our water local, invest before the crisis, and unite the people who want the very same thing instead of letting the powerful divide them. Do that, and we hand our kids a district where the water still runs, the farms still stand, and the land still feeds California. Let’s secure it.

All Policies
Next Policy
Return to Top

SOURCES

Join the Fight
Contribute