mr. chairman , the endangered species act is broken and needs to be fixed .  those are not my words , those are the words of a city counselor from santa barbara , california .  in a hearing we had on endangered species last year , she described california as being the greenest state , santa barbara as being the greenest of the cities in california , and she as being the greenest of the green .  she said that the endangered species act is blocking people from making additions onto their homes , it is keeping the beach closed , it is stopping development in their town , and they are tired of it .  they either want it eliminated or fixed .  elimination of the act is too extreme .  the gentleman from california ( mr. pombo )  , our chairman , has taken a very good stance in reforming it .  in new mexico , we have the silvery minnow .  in order to keep the flow in the rio grand river at the level that the biologists said we had to have , we had to release storage of water that had been building up for 50 years in four different reservoirs .  and storage for water like that in new mexico is not easy to get .  when we empty those , we can not maintain the flow .  so one of the most important provisions in this bill is that sound science must be used for any decision .  we also are affecting the outcome for our private property owners , and so i thank the gentleman for his hard work on this and i support the bill .  