{"content":[{"text":"Testimony of Bruce Hallin \n Director, Water Rights and Contracts \n Salt River Project","bbox":{"left":0.342163,"top":0.104624,"width":0.315705,"height":0.05115799999999998}},{"text":"Before the \n Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources \n Hearing on “the Federal government’s role in wildfire management, the impact of fire on \n communities, and potential improvements to be made in fire operations”","bbox":{"left":0.124322,"top":0.16855,"width":0.751423,"height":0.06706299999999998}},{"text":"May 5, 2015","bbox":{"left":0.450002,"top":0.248381,"width":0.10002699999999998,"height":0.01919499999999999}},{"text":"Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member Cantwell and members of the Committee, thank you for \n the opportunity to testify before you on “the Federal government’s role in wildfire management, \n the impact of fire on communities, and potential improvements to be made in fire operations.” \n For over a hundred years, the Salt River Project (SRP) has responsibly managed water supply \n for the Phoenix valley including efforts to protect the forested headwaters that provide the \n majority of the water for metropolitan Phoenix. Around the turn of the 20th century, watershed \n protection efforts centered on setting aside lands in the federal forest system to ensure \n development and timber harvest were conducted in a way that preserved a sustainable water \n supply for Arizona. Today, the unhealthy state of these forests, created in large part to protect \n the water flowing from them, has led to catastrophic wildfires that threaten not only the wildlife, \n recreational, and multi-purpose value of these forests, but also the reliability, sustainability and \n quality of drinking water for millions of Arizonans.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.280428,"width":0.7592889999999999,"height":0.19477899999999998}},{"text":"SRP is currently involved with several forest restoration projects which have highlighted the \n need for federal action to address both fire suppression funding and the planning and \n compliance processes in order to accelerate the pace and scale of work needed to protect our \n forestlands and water supply. As the Committee has recognized, fixing the annual “fire \n borrowing” that often funds fire suppression, at the expense of preventative restoration \n activities, is important to increase the capacity of projects the U.S. Forest Service can \n administer. We appreciate efforts by the Chairman, Ranking Member, Senators Flake and \n McCain, and other senators to find an acceptable solution to this ongoing problem. However, \n budget is only one of several issues that must be addressed. The length of time it takes to \n undertake the required planning, environmental compliance, and administrative activities also \n needs to be addressed to recognize delayed action increases the risk of a catastrophic fire that \n will damage our national forests and watersheds, ecosystems, and species for decades.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.488045,"width":0.75366,"height":0.19488}},{"text":"Salt River Project \n SRP is composed of the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association (“Association”) and the Salt \n River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District (“District”). Under contract with the \n federal government, the Association, a private corporation authorized under the laws of the \n Territory of Arizona, and the District, a political subdivision of the State of Arizona, provide water \n from the Salt and Verde Rivers to approximately 250,000 acres of land in the greater Phoenix \n area. Over the past century, most of these lands have been converted from agricultural to urban \n uses and now comprise the core of metropolitan Phoenix.","bbox":{"left":0.117647,"top":0.695535,"width":0.7619039999999999,"height":0.131031}},{"text":"The Association was organized in 1903 by landowners in the Salt River Valley to contract with \n the federal government for the building of Theodore Roosevelt Dam, located some 80 miles \n northeast of Phoenix, and other components of the Salt River Federal Reclamation Project. \n SRP was the first multipurpose project approved under the Reclamation Act of 1902. In","bbox":{"left":0.117665,"top":0.839376,"width":0.7453259999999999,"height":0.067021}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}