Below is an exchange between exchange between Chairman Bishop and Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.

MOUs?

Chairman Bishop: “Have the states…screwed up? Are the state [water] engineers incompetent? Is that what the Forest Service is trying to say?” Bishop asked

Chief Tidwell:  “No...”

Lawsuits?

Chief Tidwell: “We can maybe head off the number of lawsuits that we seem to be increasing every year around this issue,” Chief Tidwell stated today, as he’s done repeatedly since the controversial directive was first proposed in 2014. 

Chairman Bishop:  “We’ve looked at the, your agency has supplied us with, the law suits. Almost all of them deal with mining issues and drilling issues,” Rep. Bishop quipped during the hearing.

If it’s not the lawsuits and not the MOU…. “Then there is no justification for changing this ground[water] rule policy and I’m going to ask you not to just put it on a temporary hold, but to eliminate it,” stated Bishop.