Mr. BARR. Thank you. I would like to now introduce, although they need no introduction, introduce our very distinguished, indeed, world-class panel here today. Our first witness will be the Honorable Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978 from the great State of Georgia. In 1995, Mr. Gingrich was elected Speaker of the House, a capacity which he served with distinction until late 1998. Mr. Gingrich earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. from Tulane University. From 1970 to 1978, Mr. Gingrich taught history and environmental studies at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia. Speaker Gingrich has been intimately involved in the formulation of the ACT and ACF compacts and presided over marathon negotiations with State and Federal officials and outside stakeholders that ultimately produced the delicate compromises represented in both compacts. Mr. Gingrich currently heads the Gingrich Group, which was established to develop strategic initiatives with national and global employers on a broad range of economic issues, including issues related to health and health care, the environment, information systems, international finance, international relations and trade. Mr. Gingrich is also a member of the congressionally chartered National Strategic Study Group. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the American Enterprise Institute and serves on a number of corporate and charitable boards. It is an honor to have you with us today, Mr. Speaker. Our next witness will be Lindsay Thomas, who currently serve as the Federal Commissioner for the ACF and ACT River Basin Commissions. Mr. Thomas represented Georgia's first congressional district from 1983 to 1993. He graduated from the University of Georgia in Athens, served in the Georgia National Guard and was an investment banker and farmer before being elected to the Congress. Mr. Thomas, it is an honor to have you here as a former colleague and as a friend and certainly as somebody who is perhaps as knowledgeable as anybody regarding the certainly the Federal interests and the Federal framework within which these compacts have been negotiated and are in the process of being implemented. We appreciate your taking time to be with us today. Our third witness will be Jerome Muys. Mr. Muys is a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford Law School and has practiced public land, water resources and environmental law since 1959. He is past chairman of the American Bar Association Section of Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law and is currently chairman of the Water Law Committee of the International Bar Association's Energy and Resources Law Section. Mr. Muys has taught natural resources law at the University of Virginia Law School and at George Washington University Law Center. Mr. Muys has had extensive experience in Federal and State water resources matters. He has been involved in litigation involving State, Federal and private environmental claims representing western water resources allocation, has served as the California Deputy Attorney General and has published a number We are honored to have your very unique and expansive expertise with us today, Mr. Muys. Thank you for joining us. Our fourth and final witness will be George William Sherk. Mr. Sherk obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees from Colorado State University and his law degree from the University of Denver College of Law. Mr. Sherk is currently a research scientist for the Center for Risk Science and Public Health at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the George Washington University and practices law in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Sherk is also a professional lecturer at the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science and served as a trial attorney in the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1984 to 1990. Mr. Sherk has published a number of scholarly articles and books concerning natural resources issues, and he currently serves as vice chair of the American Bar Association's Marine Resource Committee Section of Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law. Mr. Sherk, we are very familiar with your extensive work, not just on these matters generally but especially as they relate to the ACF and ACT compact issues, and we appreciate your taking time from your also very busy schedule to share your expertise with us. We will now turn to the witnesses themselves to introduce into the record such testimony as they think is important for the Subcommittee's deliberations. We will keep the record open, counsel, for 7 days to receive any additional materials that any Member of the Subcommittee or any of the witnesses deems might be useful for the Subcommittee's further work in this area. We would ask the witnesses to do their best to limit their prefatory and opening remarks to 5 minutes. Whatever statements they wish to be submitted will be submitted in their entirety after each of the witnesses has had an opportunity to make their opening statement. We will then open the floor on the Subcommittee in 5minute increments for Members to ask questions. Mr. BARR. We are honored to begin the process today with Speaker Gingrich. STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE NEWT GINGRICH, Mr. GINGRICH. Well, first let me thank the Chair for calling this hearing and for giving us an opportunity to talk about something which I think is extremely important to the people of Georgia, Alabama and Florida and also to all of the citizens of the United States for reasons I will make clear. Let me also just reassure my good friend from North Carolina that in the 16 years I spent in the minority, part of them as Ranking Member, I had very similar educational experiences, and so I totally appreciate a North Carolinian being willing to spend time on what may look like a southeastern problem below your State. But one of the reasons this was such an important effort on our part was because we did believe it was possible to create a model for river basin management between three States. And I must say-and this has no reflection on either Mr. Thomas or anybody else or the commissioners or the States-but the original ideas, which were captured in a letter I submit for the record that I sent to Martin Lancaster, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works on January 11, 1997, illustrates clearly what our hope had been. Our hope had been that the three States would engage in a scientific process, that, in fact, we were quite clear we hoped that the University of Florida system, the University of Georgia system and the University of Alabama system would jointly create, with some help from the Federal Government, the kind of scientific approach to the water basins, the kind of information database, the kind of modelling that would in fact give us a scientific basis for assuring some key public values. It was also our intent-as is made very clear in that letter-for the Federal commissioners and the Federal Government to be intimately involved in the entire process, including the development of proposals, and not to simply be the recipient of State political maneuvering. And let me say as a retired former Member, now speaking as a public citizen rather than from the Government standpoint, I think the three States have consistently fallen below the mark. I think this is this entire process has been a process of politicians seeking to protect development, seeking to protect the interest of each State in a parochial manner. It is tragic, because, first of all, the entire country has an interest in the productivity of Apalachicola Bay, not just Florida. The entire country has an interest in States working together, as all of you know. The California, Arizona problems on the Colorado River are fully as complex and difficult as the challenges in the Southeast. In fact, because of our rainfall, the East has had much less of a problem with water than the West, and we were hoping to avoid litigation. I asked this compact in its origin was developed in my office literally, as Chairman Barr knows, because Governor Miller called me prior to a briefing and said this would be really important and helpful if we could get an agreement. I was having a meeting with the representatives of the State of Georgia who were representing the States of Florida and Alabama as well and the Federal Government to be told by the various Federal agencies why we would not get an agreement. This was in 1997. After listening to them on a Saturday morning, I repeated back to them the four problems that they said we had hit; and I said, "Well, if that is the definable four, we should be able to solve this." And at two o'clock the next morning, partly with substantial help from the Clinton White House which enabled us to track through the White House operators every Federal official we needed literally until 2 in the morning to get sign-off, we were able to hammer out the beginnings of this compact. Now, our goal in doing that was to try to create a model and to avoid litigation, which is something I believe that Commissioner Thomas and I agree on, which—and I wanted to just cite the-Patrick Burns was my staffer who helped develop this. He stayed with it the whole time while I was in office, and he wrote me a memo Litigation, which is the only rational alternative to this, has a track record of automatically ending up in the Supreme Court. Some water litigation in the West ranges between 10 and 30 years. The longest Western water litigation is currently in its 50th year. Now, that is not a way to solve public policy problems; and I just want to say I came here today to commend Chairman Barr for being willing to work on this, to commend Commissioner Thomas and his co-commissioners for the time they put in as citizens far beyond any possible compensation or public honor and to appeal to the three States to get back on track with a scientifically based approach, to use the right kind of modeling and to understand that there is a very simple set of principles here. Apalachicola Bay has to receive enough water not to be in a catastrophe; the States of Georgia and Alabama have to agree to deliver that water in a quality which preserves the Bay; and we then have to look at the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is the largest consumer of water, in that context. And I would start by saying that the disgraceful-and I use this word deliberately-the disgraceful mismanagement of water and sewage by the City of Atlanta is a prime reason that no one downstream ever feels comfortable relying on good will, and I attended my first as a minority Member, I attended my first hearing on Atlanta mismanagement of the water system in 1981, chaired by then Democratic Member Elliott Levitas, and this has been an ongoing process. So I would say the Atlanta region is going to have to think through what does it have to do to reuse water, what does it have to do to be efficient with water and to understand that, in a drought year, you cannot design a 50-year plan which is going to say in a drought year we are going to destroy Apalachicola Bay. I would say to Florida, it is to their advantage to come out in public, share the information and work together, because litigation is to the disadvantage of both the citizens of the United States and the citizens of all three States. Finally, I would commend the Chairman, because if you note in my letter to Chairman Lancaster and I think the to Secretary Lancaster, rather—and I think this was a point you made several times recently, Mr. Barr-this legislation emphasizes the full participation of Federal agencies during the development of the allocation formula. Federal agencies must have equal participation in all technical working groups and meetings in which the terms and conditions of the allocation formula are negotiated. And we also go on to say that there will be input from the interested public. So I think this is a complex process. I commend the commissioners for the work they have done. I am, frankly, more than discouraged by the State's behavior on a parochial basis. I think it is very short-sighted, and I would reemphasize this is an American Federal issue of interest to the Federal Government and a totally appropriate topic for this Subcommittee to hold a hearing on. Mr. BARR. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I am reminded once again of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, and we may have already exceeded that with some of the Western cases. I had forgotten that they dragged on for 50 years. But it truly is one of our goals in this Subcommittee to try and avoid that and try and identify some of the problems that have cropped up that have given rise to what has happened or hasn't happened so far. [No prepared statement was submitted for this hearing by Mr. Gingrich.] Mr. BARR. But I agree with you, Mr. Speaker, that one of the bright lights in this process is the work of our next witness, the Honorable Lindsay Thomas, who is our Federal Commissioner and is playing an increasingly important and, I think, positive role in the negotiation between the three States in ensuring that all Federal interests are adequately represented and addressed. Mr. Thomas. STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LINDSAY THOMAS, FEDERAL COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA-COOSA-TALLAPOOSA AND RIVER BASIN APALACHICOLA-CHATTAHOOCHEE-FLINT COMMISSIONS Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to have the opportunity to appear before the Committee today as a Federal Mr. BARR. Is your speaker on, Lindsay? Mr. THOMAS. Sorry. Now I have it engaged. Thank you. Let me go back. I am pleased to have this opportunity, Mr. Chairman-and thank you for your opening comments-to appear before the Committee today as Federal Commissioner of the ACT and ACF River Basin Compacts. I want to stress, though, from the very start that in no way do I see myself as the final authority on these matters that we will be discussing but that I work with a very capable group of Federal employees and the Federal Commissioner Pete Conroy, who is with us today, who comprise the Federal team. So my response to your question and, for that matter, any statement that I make here today will be founded on the basis of the knowledge and the understandings reached through this group's effort. The task before us is tremendous, both in scope and in complexity, how to share and steward wisely the surface waters of the confluence of nearly 40,000 square miles of Southeastern river basins. Nothing of this scope has ever been accomplished east of the Mississippi, to my knowledge, but I can assure the members of this panel it will not be the last challenge of this nature, whether we succeed or fail. Inevitably our need for water for our people and our commerce is going to continue to grow. Neither can happen without water, and the simple truth is we don't manufacture or create one gallon or one ounce of water. We can only manage what is provided to us from the rain that falls on our watershed and is delivered into our basins and streams and aquifers. Now, this would be much easier, I admit, if we were only apportioning the water, but if we are responsible in the actions that we take, the apportioning and the sharing and managing must be in balance with the needs of the natural resources within the life-sustaining confluences of these vast basins that are amongst the most priceless vestiges of the world that we have inherited and this con |