Washington state’s U.S. Reps. Dan Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rodgers joined other Western Republicans in touting the importance of hydropower to rural areas during a recent hearing.

Newhouse, who leads the Congressional Western Caucus, and McMorris Rodgers, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee, hosted a forum that also featured Western Caucus members Doug LaMalfa of California, Russ Fulcher of Idaho and Cliff Bentz of Oregon.

“It’s perplexing to me why we have to spend so much energy defending some of the most important pieces of infrastructure that we have that took generations to develop and build and we've benefited from for so long, in fact so long that many people forget what life was like without the dams that provide us our way of life,” Newhouse said.

“It seems to me that we should be spending our resources, our time, and our energy on even improving the technology we have,” he said. “If we spent more energy doing that, we could continue to benefit from these from these dams for a long time to come.”

The Columbia-Snake River system helped transform the Pacific Northwest from a dry, barren sagebrush to one of the most productive agricultural systems in the world, McMorris Rodgers said.

“And as a result, farmers in the Pacific Northwest are able to send their products: wheat, apples, potatoes all across America and to countries around the world,” she said. “It strengthens our energy grid, it’s lowered energy costs for families and businesses, transformed our entire region all while helping reduce carbon emissions.”

To watch the forum, click here.

Source: Congressional Western Caucus