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U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz Pushes Back on Biden's Clean Energy Plan by Leslie Thompson Argus Observer, December 6, 2023

Plans hearing December 62 on keeping
in four lower Snake River Dams

ONTARIO -- A local congressman whose has roles centered around natural resources in the 118th Congress is holding a hearing this month related to the push by environmental groups to remove the four lower Snake River Dams. U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ore., is pushing to keep in the dams and is holding a related hearing on Dec. 12. It will feature "expert testimony on the economic, environmental, legal and inequitable impacts that would occur if these dams were removed or operationally destroyed," according to a news release on Wednesday afternoon.

The hearing is titled "Left in the Dark: Examining the Biden Administration's Efforts to Eliminate the Pacific Northwest's Clean Energy Production."

Bentz, of Ontario, serves on four subcommittees in the 118th Congress, including for the House Judiciary Committee and House Natural Resources Committee. He is the chairman of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries.

He represents Oregon's Second Congressional District, and was first voted into that office in the 2020 General Election.

During an Ontario Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Ontario in July, Bentz reported that more than 400 people attended a similar hearing about the Snake River Dams in Richland, Washington in late June.

The dams were built in the early 1960s and 1970s by the federal government and were designed to aid the migration of juvenile and adult fish, with new technologies adopted in the past 25 years to maximize survival, according to information from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who state an overall positive impact on fisheries.

But proponents of removing the dams say installing those dams are contributing to warmer water that is killing the fish during migration, recently causing lower returns than the 10-year average.

The news release for the upcoming hearing states the Administration's dam-removal proposal is a "destructive, politicized, unfair and deceptive scheme" and a "direct attack on clean energy production and navigation in the Northwest."

The dams are essential to energy production, water navigation on the Snake River into Idaho and the ag industry, according to the release.

"Removing or adjusting their operations to negate power generation and river commerce would be devastating," it reads. "This hearing will expose this Administration's reckless and destructive policies and give the people most impacted by them an opportunity to be heard."

At the luncheon, Bentz said his approach to clean energy is "adaptation as opposed to mitigation," noting the latter of which still has its place.

Yes, it's getting hotter, Bentz said, adding, "Adaptation means 'How in the world do we make sure we have enough water as things get hotter?'"

In the Administration's push to reduce the carbon output in the U.S., one angle is to stop burning coal.

"The real issue is China, India, Africa and how we go into those spaces and address coal," he said. "I don't feel like trying to squeeze every ton of carbon out of the United States of America while we're seeing so many thousands of tons being burned in other places around the world. The questions is, 'What can we do about it?' And the answer is being discussed at all kinds of levels."

Another portion of the Administration's clean energy plan Bentz took issue with was the push to move to electric vehicles.

"The question is not that we shouldn't be trying to burn less fossil fuel, the answer is how do you do that without breaking our country," he said.

During Tuesday's hearing, "witnesses will also discuss the Biden Administration's overreach and abuse of power as shown by its perversion of the court process by use of 'sue and settle' tactics," according to the release.

The hearing can be watched on the YouTube page House Committee on Natural Resources GOP at tinyurl.com/2tbyrzbn. It will start at noon Mountain Time.