danbacher | by Dan Bacher
The last thing that the California Delta needs is a new bureaucrat to further Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plans to build a peripheral canal and new dams, but that’s exactly what we now have. The five members of the State Water Resources Control Board recently chose attorney Craig M. Wilson to serve in the newly created Delta Watermaster position – and representives of environmental groups and California Indian Tribes weren’t impressed. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Reform Act of 2009, part of the legislative path to the peripheral canal that was rammed through the Legislature by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Schwarzenegger last November, requires the State Water Board to appoint a “Delta Watermaster.” The Delta Watermaster has the authority to monitor, report and take enforcement actions on the Delta. “The Delta Watermaster will act with a high degree of independence within the Delta to implement and enforce existing water rights laws and State Water Resources Control Board permits, licenses, and decisions and authority to issue a notice of proposed cease and desist order or administrative civil liability complaint,” claimed the State Water Resources Board in a press release. Carolee Krieger, executive director of the California Water Impact Network, disagreed, saying that the legislation creating the Watermaster position was developed under pressure of west side San Joaquin Valley agribusiness interests to “harass” Delta farmers. “The Delta Watermaster is tasked with essentially harassing longstanding senior water right holders in the Delta whose rights go back in many cases 130 years,” said Krieger. “Corporate agribusiness interests with junior water rights are driving the recent Delta water legislation and the Water Master’s agenda with complaints that the Water Master must investigate.” Marc Franco, headman of the Winnemem Wintu (McCloud River) Tribe, emphasized that the most senior water rights of all, tribal water rights, were completely left out of the legislation creating the so-called Delta Watermaster position. “There are water rights of tribal people that are senior to all of other water rights holders that do not get a mention let alone any resolve in the creation of this position,” said Franco. Franco quipped, “water has become like a drug for these people.” As the Inter-Tribal Water Commission declared in a statement opposing the Water Bond, “The Department of Water Resources and their private contractors believe that ‘No Indians’ have ever lived in the Delta, which now they are testing for the new canal. They are not following Section 106 or CEQA requirements in including Tribal participation.” The new Delta Watermaster is a more than 30-year veteran of dealing with California water issues. Wilson is expected to begin work in his new position within 30 days and to put together a staff. The Delta Watermaster serves a four-year term. Wilson is currently a lawyer at Stoel Rives LLP specializing in water issues. He was the State Water Board’s Chief Counsel from 2000 until 2005. Prior to that, he had 24 years of experience in a variety of capacities with the Water Board. In addition to appointing the new Delta Watermaster, the State Water Board will also soon consider a report on water flows through the Delta. The report is currently being assembled by Board staff based on the findings of a variety of scientific experts, according to the Board. The water policy/water bond package, passed by the Legislature and signed by Schwarzenegger last November without consultation with Delta residents, Indian Tribes, fishermen, environmental justice communities and the overwhelming majority of conservation groups, creates the clear path to a peripheral canal that would cost Californians an estimated $23 billion to $53.8 billion. Canal opponents believe that the construction of the canal is likely to result in the extinction of collapsing populations of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, striped bass and the southern resident population of killer whales. The question is: will Craig M. Wilson actually serve as the Deltamaster or the Master of the Delta’s destruction? |
danbacher | I urge EVERYBODY who cares about defending environmental justice, tribal gathering rights and public fishing access and stopping Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative ocean privatization process to attend this demonstration in Fort Bragg, California on July 21 at noon. The MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force, overseen by oil industry, marina development, real estate and other corporate interests, will be meeting in Fort Bragg on July 21 and 22. Thanks Dan TIME TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD MLPA Means Less Public Access! SPEAK OUT! TRIBES , NORCAL FISHERMEN, SEAFOOD PROVIDERS, DIVERS, ANGLERS, ELECTED OFFICIALS, COASTAL BUSINESSES PROTEST OCEAN PRIVATIZATION WEDNESDAY, JULY 21st |
danbacher “We are confident that as we inform voters that this water bond will cost our state billions of dollars while not actually cleaning up our water supply or creating a new reliable and sustainable water system, they will reject this back-room deal,” said Elanor Starmer of Food & Water Watch. “We will continue our campaign against Proposition 18 and our position is clear – this bond should not be postponed, it should be killed and the politicians should get back to work on real water solutions that help all Californians.”
Photo: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has asked to delay the water bond until 2012 because of lack of support by the voters, appeared at a town hall meeting in Fresno on July 1. Photo courtesy of the Governor’s Office.
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Water Bond Proponents and Opponents React to Field Poll
Proponents and opponents of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Water Bond, Proposition 18, had very different responses to the release of today’s Field Poll survey that showed support for the controversial $11.14 billion water bond at 42 percent yes and 32 percent no.
Representatives of both campaigns said that the poll results demonstrate support for their respective positions on the water bond.
“The Field Poll released today shows that only 42% of California voters support Prop. 18 – the $11.1 billion water bond measure placed on the ballot by the Legislature,” said Elanor Starmer of Food & Water Watch, a member of the No on Proposition 18 Committee. “Considering that the Field Poll did not test any of the actual language related to the true cost of the bond, this shows how little support there is for this bond and it highlights why supporters want to move this bond to 2012. But now or two years from now, the bond is a bad deal for California.”
Starmer noted that Proposition 18 is still on the ballot for November and has yet to be either postponed or repealed. “While proponents of Proposition 18 have recommended postponement ‘in light of the economy,’ in essence admitting the negative impact of this water bond on the state’s economic health, opponents, including editorial boards around the state, are urging its repeal,” she said.
“We are confident that as we inform voters that this water bond will cost our state billions of dollars while not actually cleaning up our water supply or creating a new reliable and sustainable water system, they will reject this back-room deal,” Starmer stated. “We will continue our campaign against Proposition 18 and our position is clear – this bond should not be postponed, it should be killed and the politicians should get back to work on real water solutions that help all Californians.”
In contrast, Allan Zaremberg, president and CEO, California Chamber of Commerce, and co-chair of the coalition to pass the water bond, the Alliance for Clean Water and Jobs, claimed that the poll showed that Californians “support” the bond.
“The Field Poll is consistent with our internal polling and other public polls which have shown voters know we have a water crisis and support the bond as a solution to begin fixing our water system,” said Zaremburg. “We continue to believe that in light of the poor economy and the difficult climate in which to raise funds, the water bond is best postponed until 2012.”
“The water bond represents a truly comprehensive solution to fix the problems in the Delta, increase conservation and recycling, and expand the availability and quality of water supplies in every region of the state. That’s why the measure has unprecedented support from business, labor, environmentalists, farmers, water agencies and many others,” he stated.
Zareburg urged the legislature to postpone the bond vote until 2012, an action that Governor Schwarzenegger, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Senator Dave Codgill support – and that the broad coalition of fishing, conservation, labor, tribal, labor, environmental justice and consumer groups united under the No on Proposition 18 Committee strongly oppose.
The bond will fund the infrastructure to build a peripheral canal and new dams, although it does not specifically fund the canal itself. Canal opponents fear that the construction of the peripheral canal, designed to facilitate massive water exports from the California Delta to subsidized corporate agribusiness and southern California, will lead to the extinction of collapsing populations of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, southern resident killer whales and other species. This will lead to further harm to economically devastated coastal and inland communities that depend on healthy salmon and other fish populations for their survival.
The peripheral canal/tunnel will cost an estimated $23 billion to $53.8 billion at a time when California is in unprecedented economic crisis – and the budgets for teachers, game wardens, health care for children and state parks are being slashed.
Food and Water Watch has put together a funny new YouTube spot, http://nowaterbond.com/terminate, to highlight just how bad Prop 18, the $11 billion water bond, would be for California — and why the legislature should scrap it, not postpone it to the 2012 ballot. For more information about the No on 18 campaign, go to: http://www.NoWaterBond.com.
danbacher by Dan Bacher
The environmental review process has begun for the South Coast Study Region Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) developed under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection (MLPA) Initative, a privatized process overseen by an oil industry lobbyist who has praised the industry’s “safety record” as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil gusher continues to devastate marine life and fishing communities in the Gulf of Mexico.
On June 29, the California Fish and Game Commission and Department of Fish and Game (DFG) together issued a Notice of Preparation (NOP) for the project, according to a DFG news release. This initiates the “scoping phase,” during which interested members of the public are invited to help identify the range of issues and type of information to be considered in the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), that will be prepared in the coming months.
“There are currently five MPA proposals under consideration for the South Coast Study Region, which extends from Point Conception to the California border with Mexico,” according to the DFG. “The proposals were developed with input from a regional stakeholder group, a science advisory team and a Blue Ribbon Task Force consisting of marine experts.”
“The currently preferred proposal, the Integrated Preferred Alternative (IPA), was selected by the Blue Ribbon Task Force,” the DFG announced. “The IPA is a hybrid of the other proposals. The DEIR will also look at three alternative proposals and the no action alternative or the status quo (the current South Coast Study Region MPAs with no suggested changes).”
Since only one public scoping meeting is scheduled for this “environmental review,” it appears that the Schwarzenegger administration, the worst in California history for fish and the environment, is doing the bare minimum to comply with the requirements of CEQA while railroading so-called “marine protected areas” over coastal communities.
The announcement failed to note that this rigged process on the South Coast was overseen by oil industry, real estate, marina development and other corporate executives that Schwarzenegger appointed to the Blue Ribbon Task Force to protect their interests from being impinged on in the creation of new “marine reserves.” The initiative is funded by the Resource Legacy Fund Foundation, a private corporation headed by executive director Michael Eaton.
No single action demonstrated the illegitimacy of the MLPA fiasco more than when Schwarzenegger appointed Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, as the chair of the MLPA Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast last year. In essence, Big Oil took control of so-called “marine protection” on the South Coast when Schwarzenegger chose the oil industry’s head lobbyist to lead the process.
Reheis-Boyd now serves on the North Central Coast Task Force and served on the North Coast task force charged with implementation of the MLPA in one of the most overt examples of conflict of interest and corporate greenwashing in California history.
On June 22 in an op-ed on the Noozehawk website, Reheis-Boyd attempted to gloss over the public outrage over the BP Gulf Oil Gusher, the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, by touting the “very good” safety record of the oil industry (http://www.noozhawk.com/opinions/article/062210_catherine_reheis-boyd).
“We realize that recent events in the Gulf of Mexico have shaken public confidence in our industry’s ability to produce oil safely,” she said. “However, our industry’s safety record around the world, around the United States and here in California has been very good. More than 1 billion barrels of oil have been produced from offshore California in the 40 years since 1970 and fewer than 22 barrels per year on average have been spilled during that time.”
Reheis-Boyd should try to tell the fishermen and residents of Gulf Coast communities now devastated by the daily carnage in the BP disaster about the “very good” safety record of the oil industry. Is Reheis Boyd, an oil industry superstar and Schwarzenegger’s “marine guardian,” out of her mind?
Even worse, Reheis-Boyd recently affirmed her support for new offshore oil drilling off the California coast in spite of the BP spill’s ongoing ecocide, in her commentary, “Gulf Oil Spill Comments,” on the association’s website, http://www.wspa.org.
“The tragic Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in California Governor Schwarzenegger’s withdrawal of his support for limited offshore oil development near Santa Barbara,” said Reheis-Boyd. “WSPA has not taken a position on specific offshore projects. But we have been vocal about our views that California businesses and consumers would benefit from development of the huge reserves of petroleum off the California coast, in both state and federal waters.”
Conflicts of interest are nothing new to Reheis-Boyd. On February 24, 2009, Consumer Watchdog and Public Citizen filed a detailed request for public records of the California Energy Commission, seeking communications between its professional staff and a politically appointed member of the commission’s board, James Boyd, whose spouse, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, was a state-registered lobbyist for the oil industry. The two groups previously sent a letter charging a conflict of interest by James Boyd.
“The relationship is clear conflict that should prevent Commissioner Boyd from leading a panel deciding the costs and benefits of fixing the unfair sale of ‘hot gasoline’ in California,” said Judy Dugan of Consumer Watchdog. “Gasoline and diesel fuels are a glaring exception to the usual rules of retail fairness. Buying hot fuel is the same as a buying from a butcher with a hidden finger on the scale. The unfairness is doubled when the oil industry has an inside pipeline to a government body that should protect the consumer, not create loopholes for industry.”
The silence by the “Big Green” environmental NGO’s over Reheis-Boyd’s overt conflict of interest in chairing the South Coast MLPA panel is appalling. Real environmentalists – unlike ardent supporters of the MLPA Initiative such as the representatives of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Ocean Conservancy and the League of Conservation Voters – oppose big oil’s inordinate influence on the corrupt MLPA Initiative.
The DFG press release also failed to mention that Schwarzenegger, under pressure from corporate polluters, has completely taken the “protection” out of the Marine Life Protection Act.
The MLPA, a landmark law passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, was intended to not just ban fishing and seaweed harvesting in a network of “marine protected areas,” but to restrict or prohibit other human activities including coastal development and water pollution.
“Coastal development, water pollution, and other human activities threaten the health of marine habitat and the biological diversity found in California’s ocean waters,” the law states in Fish and Game Code Section 2851, section c.
Unfortunately, the Schwarzenegger administration has taken all other “human uses” and “extractive activities” other than fishing and seaweed harvesting off the table in the implementation of the MLPA process. The MLPA fiasco does nothing to stop water pollution, oil drilling, and wave energy projects or other activities from destroying fish and other marine life populations in California’s coastal waters. The law would do nothing to stop an ecological catastrophe like the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from devastating the California coast.
In fact, respected environmental leaders such as John Stephens-Lewallen, co-founder of the Ocean Protection Coalition and Seaweed Rebellion on California’s North Coast, say that the MLPA clears the path to new offshore oil drilling.
“By setting up these no-take marine reserves and kicking fishermen, Indians, seaweed harvesters and other ocean food providers off traditional areas of the ocean, the Schwarzenegger administration is paving the way for offshore oil drilling,” said Stephens-Lewallen. “Twenty-three percent of the nation’s offshore oil reserves are off the coast of California. The Point Arena Basin off Mendocino is on track now to be leased for drilling by the Mineral Management Services.”
“The Southern California Blue Ribbon Task Force ‘Integrated Preferred Alternative’ is devastating to fishing communities, but good for offshore oil drilling interests,” he concluded.
The evisceration of the MLPA under Schwarzenegger should be no surprise. This is the same Governor that has presided over the collapse of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, striped bass, green sturgeon and southern resident killer whale populations. This is the same Governor that is constantly pushing for the construction of a peripheral canal, an environmentally destructive project that would cost an estimated $23 billion to $53.8 billion.
Meanwhile, a broad coalition of California Indian Tribes, fishermen and environmentalists on the North Coast has united to defend tribal fishing and gathering rights from being stripped by MLPA officials. Members of local Tribes interrupted the MLPA Initiative’s Science Advisory Team meeting in Eureka on July 1, demanding that they not be blamed for the decline in ocean fisheries.
“We gathered and harvested the ocean’s bounty for thousand of years in a sustainable manner,” said Frankie Joe Myers, a Yurok ceremonial leader and member of the Coastal Justice Coalition. “For California to blame Tribes for it’s reckless mis-management of our fisheries for the last century is simply appalling,”
The MLPA is designed to protect ocean resources, but Tribal spokesmen say that it’s “an attempt by the Schwarzenegger Administration to greenwash his legacy.”
To Make Public Comments:
All five MPA proposals can be found at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/southcoastipa.asp.
The DEIR will be prepared pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act and will analyze the five proposals. The NOP for the DEIR can be found on DFG’s website at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/regulatorydocs_sc.asp.
Anyone wishing to provide written input on the scope of the analysis to be conducted and included in the DEIR for this project may send written comments by August 3, 2010 to:
MLPA SCSR DEIR
Department of Fish and Game
South Coast MLPA Office
4665 Lampson, Suite C
Los Alamitos, CA 92679
Comments may also be e-mailed to Thomas Napoli, Staff Environmental Scientist,at tnapoli [at] dfg.ca.gov.
Members of the public may also provide comments verbally at a public scoping meeting to be held in Long Beach on July 23. The meeting will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the following location:
Administration Building of the Port of Long Beach
925 Harbor Way, Sixth Floor
Long Beach, CA 90802
A map to the Port of Long Beach offices can be found at http://www.polb.com/facilities/maps/default.asp.
All comments submitted will be used to help prepare the DEIR, which is scheduled for completion in early August.
danbacher 
Photo of Copco #2 Dam on the Klamath River by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Craig Tucker, Karuk Tribe: 916 207-8294
Steve Rothert, American Rivers: 530 277-0448
Chuck Bonham, Trout Unlimited: 510 917-8572
Karl Scronce, Upper Klamath Water Users Assoc.: 541 281-2053
Mark Rockwell, N. CA Council, Federation of Fly Fishers: 530 432-0100
Glen Spain, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations: 541 689-2000
Curtis Knight, California Trout: 530 859-1872
Greg Addington, Klamath Water Users Assoc.: 541-892-1409
Jeff Mitchell, Councilman, Klamath Tribes – 541-891-5971
KLAMATH RESTORATION BEGINS
-Federal Agencies Initiate Environmental Review of Plan to Restore Rivers, Farms, and Communities
-Agreements Create Jobs, Keep Utility Bills Lower, and Bring New Economic Opportunities
Sacramento, CA – This week the economic and environmental review process of the pending Klamath Restoration Agreements begin with a series of public scoping meetings in the Klamath Basin. For many basin residents this signals the preliminary steps of an ambitious locally driven effort to restore the Klamath Basin’s fish and farm economies.
For the past several decades a crippling cycle of crisis has gripped the Klamath Basin. A series of fish kills, irrigation shut-offs, and bans on commercial salmon fishing has resulting in a rotating crisis for Basin communities that has often led to finger pointing between neighbors.
However, in recent years a large number of affected parties successfully negotiated a pair of Settlement Agreements aimed at resolving many Klamath River conflicts. The Klamath Agreements were signed February 18, 2010 by Governors Schwarzenegger and Kulongoski, Secretary of Interior Salazar, leaders of the Karuk, Yurok, and Klamath Tribes, and a host of local irrigation districts, local governments and conservation organizations.
The Agreements lay out a process for removing Klamath dams and other restoration measures aimed at recovering the Klamath salmon fishery, but they also address the water and power needs of agricultural communities as well. Heralded as the “Fish and Chips Agreement” (potatoes are a popular crop in the Upper Basin), the plan offers tangible benefits for both fishermen and farmers. In addition, the agreements ensure that utility customers’ pay less than they otherwise would to retrofit the aging dams in order to comply with modern environmental standards.
Environmental benefits aside, supporters of the Agreements note that dam removal alone would provide a $1 billion boost to Siskiyou County which has one of the highest levels of unemployment in the state. The Agreements also plan for millions in restoration work and irrigation project upgrades. In addition, water quality improvements will likely increase real estate values in the area as well.
The first step in implementing the Agreements is for Secretary Salazar to determine if the dam removal is in the public interest and will benefit fisheries. This decision constitutes a “federal action” and is therefore subject to the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA requires a thorough review of the economic and environmental impacts of the proposed action as well as public input.
Since California funds must also be applied to dam removal, the process must also meet the requirements of California law. Thus, the environmental review process must also meet the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act.
Supporters of the Settlement Agreements are confident that a fair and objective consideration of the issues will lead the Secretary conclude what many other basin leaders have already – that the Klamath Agreements are the best hope for ending the Klamath’s rotating crisis.
“We’ve studied the problem to death,” says Leaf Hillman, Natural Resources Director for the Karuk Tribe. “We believe that when viewed through the lens of objective science, only one conclusion can be reached and that’s to implement these agreements. Otherwise none of the communities and economies on the Klamath River can survive.”
The NEPA process is the first step towards implementing the Agreements. Congressional authorizing legislation must be passed and funding from California must be approved.
According to Yurok Chairman Thomas O’Rourke, “Getting to this point was a monumental effort. Now that Tribal, fishing, and agricultural communities have formed a partnership with a common purpose, we encourage people to become knowledgeable about what these agreements do and help us restore the vitality of the Klamath Basin.”
# # #
Editor’s note: For summaries and the full text of the Klamath Agreements as well as additional fact sheets on the terms of the agreements, seehttp://www.klamathrestoration.org
For more on the process see http://www.klamathrestoration.gov.
Public Scoping Sessions:
The Department of Interior and California Department of Fish and Game will hold six public information and scoping meetings according to the dates and locations listed below.
Oral and written comments will be accepted at the public meetings.
Dates, Times, and Locations:
· July 7, 2010, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Copco Community Center, 27803 Copco Road, Montague, CA 96064.
· July 7, 2010, 6 p.m. to 9 pm, Yreka Community Center, 810 N. Oregon Street, Yreka, CA 96097.
· July 8, 2010, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Klamath County Fairgrounds, 3531 S. 6th Street, Klamath Falls, OR 97603.
· July 9, 2010, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Chiloquin Community Center, 140 First Street, Chiloquin, OR 97624.
· July 13, 2010, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Chetco Activities Center, 550 Chetco Way, Brookings, OR 97415.
· July 14, 2010, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Arcata Community Center, 321 Community Park Way, Arcata, CA 95521.
· July 15, 2010, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Karuk Tribe Community Room, 39051 Highway 96, Orleans, CA 95556.
S. Craig Tucker
Klamath Coordinator
Karuk Tribe
cell: 916-207-8294
home office: 707-839-1982
danbacher Why does Strom-Martin support racist MLPA Initiative?
by Dan Bacher
In her guest opinion in the Eureka Times-Standard on June 29, former Democratic Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin claimed that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative is “the most open and transparent process” that she has ever been involved with.
However, a historic protest the same day by over 40 activists from the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Tolowa, Cahto and other tribes at the MLPA Science Advisory Team meeting in Eureka exposed Strom’s claim for the falsehood that it is. They demonstrated how the only thing “open” about the process is the open, racist disregard by MLPA officials for tribal gathering and fishing rights.
The MLPA team attempted to meet without allowing any public testimony, but Frankie Joe Myers, a member of the Coastal Justice Coalition and Yurok Tribe ceremonial leader, went to the microphone and demanded that the panel open up a public comment period. The panel was prevented from proceeding as they were interrupted by chants of “Keep your laws off my culture” and “M-L-P-A taking Tribal rights away.”
The MLPA officials conceded and members of North Coast Tribes and non-native supporters then provided powerful testimony demanding tribal representation on the science panel and exposing the hollowness of the claim that the process is “open and transparent.”
Tribal members held up signs and banners stating, “MLPA Can’t Hide the Genocide,” “MLPA making my grandmother an outlaw,” “Respect Native Tradition,” “Fish and Game, You’re Lame,” “Don’t Mussel Us Out” and “MLPA I Am Not Your Stakeholder.”
The activists demanded that tribes, who have been the stewards of the ocean for thousands of years, not be scapegoated for the decline in ocean fisheries caused by decades of government mismanagement.
“We gathered and harvested the ocean’s bounty for thousand of years in a sustainable manner,” said Myers. “For California to blame tribes for its reckless mismanagement of our fisheries for the last century is simply appalling.”
The science panel met for two days to review four MPA proposals developed by the North Coast Region Stakeholder Group. All of these have the potential to impact the rights of the Yurok Tribe and other tribes to gather ocean resources.
“The Science Advisory Team, which could potentially influence decisions regarding tribal gathering rights, does not have any scientific evidence suggesting that tribal gathering affects resources, but that has not stopped them from proposing a ban on tribal practices,” according to Myers. “We asked them to show us the science that indicates that Tribes are to blame for the decline of any single species – they can’t because there is no science behind their decision making.”
Strom-Martin also proclaimed in her article, “My fellow (MLPA) task force members share a mutual interest in ensuring that traditional tribal uses of the ocean are preserved.”
However, local tribal members say that the task force’s actions contradict their claims. “If she was really concerned about preserving tribal practices, maybe Ms. Strom-Martin should ensure tribal members and tribal scientists are involved in the process,” suggested Myers.
The tribal members affirm that they will keep gathering and fishing in traditional areas, regardless of what MLPA or state officials decide.
“Tribes have always had the inherent right to gather – whether the state makes it legal or not is their choice,” said Georgiana Myers, Yurok Tribal member and organizer for the Klamath Justice Coalition. “The Yurok Tribe has been gathering since the beginning of time. We have always done it, we will always do it, and we feel that the MLPA is the biggest attempt in the last 30 years to take away tribal gathering and fishing rights.”
Rather than being an “open and transparent” process, the truth is that Schwarzenegger’s MLPA Initiative is a privately funded process overseen by oil industry, marina development, real estate and other corporate interests. Rather than truly protecting the ocean as the landmark law originally intended to do, the MLPA Initiative under Schwarzenegger has completely taken water pollution, habitat destruction, oil drilling, wave energy projects and all other human uses of the ocean other than fishing and seaweed harvesting off the table.
I have a series of questions to ask Strom-Martin, the former Assemblywoman for District 1 and now a member of the Blue Ribbon Task Force for the MLPA North Coast Study Region, and other proponents of Schwarzenegger’s MLPA process.
Why is Strom-Martin, a former Democratic legislator, now collaborating in the implementation of the failed ocean policy of Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the worst Governor for fish and the environment in history? This is the same Governor who has presided over the unprecedented collapse of Central Valley chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, striped bass and other fish populations.
Why did the Governor and MLPA officials install an oil industry lobbyist, a marina developer, a real estate executive and other corporate interests as “marine guardians” to kick Indian Tribes, fishermen and seaweed harvesters, the greatest defenders of the oceans, off the ocean?
Why is Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, allowed to make decisions as the chair of the BRTF for the South Coast and as a member of the BRTF for the North Coast, panels that are supposedly designed to “protect” the ocean, when she has called for new oil drilling off the California coast?
Why has the Initiative shown no respect for tribal subsistence and ceremonial rights? This is an overt violation of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Article 32, Section 2, of the Declaration mandates “free prior and informed consent” in consultation with the indigenous population affected by a state action (http://www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp ).
Why did MLPA staff until recently violate the Bagley-Keene Act and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by banning video and audio coverage of the initiative’s work sessions?
Why do the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) and Science Advisory Team continue to violate the California Public Records Act by refusing to respond to numerous requests by Bob Fletcher, former DFG Deputy Director, for key documents and records pertaining to the MLPA implementation process?
Why does the initiative discard the results of any scientists who disagree with the MLPA’s pre-ordained conclusions? These include the peer reviewed study by Dr. Ray Hilborn, Dr. Boris Worm and 18 other scientists, featured in Science magazine in July 2009, that concluded that the California current had the lowest rate of fishery exploitation of any place studied on the planet.
Why do MLPA staff and the California Fish and Game Commission refuse to hear the pleas of the representatives of the California Fish and Game Wardens Association, who oppose the creation of any new MPAs until they have enough funding for wardens to patrol existing reserves?
Finally, why is a private corporation, the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, being allowed to privatize ocean resource management in California through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DFG?
“It is only by working together that we can ensure a healthy ocean and successfully teach future generations to be good stewards for our precious community assets,” Strom-Martin gushed in her article, “MLPA: A more holistic approach to protecting our ocean resources.”
How can she possibly conclude that a privately funded initiative filled with so many conflicts of interest and violations of numerous laws will result in a “healthy ocean?”
Rather than writing an article filled with generic, unsubstantiated falsehoods shamelessly greenwashing the failed ocean policy of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Strom-Martin should wake up to the conflicts of interest, racism and violations of state, federal and international laws that infest the MLPA process and stand up for environmental justice.
A webcast of the public testimony at the June 29 science panel meeting can be found at the following website: http://www.cal-span.org. To access the webcast, go to the left menu bar, and choose “Science Advisory Team” under “All MLPA.”
Similar testimony will be provided at the July 21-22 Blue Ribbon Task Force meetings in Ft. Bragg. Agendas for these meetings are available at the following website: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/meetings_n.asp.
For more information about the Coastal Justice Coalition, call Frankie Joe Myers, (707) 951-5052.
Below is Virginia Strom-Martin’s guest opinion in the Eureka Times-Standard celebrating Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative:
MLPA: A more holistic approach to protecting our ocean resources
Virginia Strom-Martin/For the Eureka Times-Standard
Posted: 06/29/2010 01:31:39 AM PDT
As a fifth generation resident, I share a deep connection with my North Coast neighbors. As local citizens, we treasure the breathtaking natural beauty that surrounds us and draw renewed inspiration from the rich history that has woven together this unique community.
I’m not alone when I say the North Coast is truly unique — it is unlike any other region along California’s vast coastline. This is why I have been a lifelong advocate for the community, first as an educator seeking to improve our school system to successfully prepare our next generation of local and national leaders and later as a California State Assembly member, where my interest in maintaining a vibrant ocean economy led me to chair the Joint Legislative Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture.
A more holistic, long-term perspective is required to improve our community livelihood. This is equally true with respect to protecting our ocean resources. Last year I was appointed to the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Blue Ribbon Task Force to help ensure that local community involvement and knowledge is utilized in the creation of the north coast portion of a statewide network of marine protected areas (MPAs). The MLPA North Coast Study Region encompasses state waters from the California-Oregon border to Alder Creek near Point Arena in Mendocino County.
As the most open and transparent process I have ever been involved in, the MLPA Initiative continues to impress me. The initiative utilizes every available means to seek the advice of residents every step of the way. It incorporates local expertise along with the best scientific knowledge in an effort to more holistically protect the ocean ecosystem we are highly dependent upon for our food, spiritual traditions, recreational enjoyment and economic livelihoods.
The eight-member task force’s role includes ensuring that all voices are heard throughout the north coast MPA planning process. My fellow task force members and I share a mutual interest in ensuring that traditional tribal uses of the ocean are preserved and that negative economic impacts to the North Coast community are minimized to the extent possible. We also hold strong support for MPA ideas that meet the MLPA’s science and ecosystem-based protection goals to support long-term success of the statewide network and ideas that receive broad, cross-interest support from the community.
The tough task of developing MPA proposals is currently underway by the diverse interests from Del Norte, Humboldt and Mendocino counties represented on the 33-member North Coast regional stakeholder group. The group has developed four draft MPA proposals, which will be further refined following public input provided at a series of public open houses on July 6 through July 8 throughout the North Coast Study Region.
The Humboldt area open houses will be held on Wednesday, July 7, from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center in Eureka and on Thursday, July 8, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Redwood National and State Parks South Operations Center in Orick.
Members of the public are invited to attend, at any time, during one of these “open house” events. The events offer stakeholders, MLPA staff and task force members the chance to engage in informal one-on-one conversations with community members to gather input and provide feedback on the four draft MPA proposals developed thus far by the stakeholder group. The stakeholder group members will use this input when they meet later this summer to begin refining their MPA proposals.
At the open houses, you will also have the opportunity to speak with MLPA staff to learn more about the North Coast MPA planning process, have questions answered, and discuss how these MPA ideas will help meet the science and ecosystem goals to improve marine life, habitats and overall ocean health as required by the act.
The success of this effort requires local expertise and input from the diverse perspectives that comprise our unique community. All voices are needed to develop a strong network that works for everyone — and, most importantly, helps protect the marine life and underwater habitats upon which they depend that are a vital component of our local community.
I hope you will attend one of the upcoming open houses, and continue to provide input until the proposals are completed later this year.
It is only by working together that we can ensure a healthy ocean and successfully teach future generations to be good stewards for our precious community assets.
Virginia Strom-Martin, former Assemblywoman (District 1) and Sonoma coast resident.
danbacher | By Lloyd G. Carter
Nearly three decades ago, federal scientists discovered the cause of a massive die-off of fish and birds at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in Merced County, 10 miles north of Los Banos. Selenium, a trace element scattered through the soils of the western San Joaquin Valley, had been dissolved by irrigation in the Westlands Water District and then funnelled in drainage water from the fields to evaporation ponds at Kesterson through a cement-lined drainage ditch called the San Luis Drain. As the selenium moved up the Kesterson food chain, it became more lethal until it caused the deaths of thousands of migratory birds and near total reproductive failure in some avian species. In February 1985, the State Water Resources Control Board declared the Kesterson evaporation ponds a public nuisance threat and gave the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the big federal irrigation project delivering northern California to the Western San Joaquin Valley, three years to stop the pollution or close the Kesterson facility. The next month, the Reclamation agency closed Kesterson and Westlands growers have been without drainage since then, causing nearly 100,000 acres of land to salt up and go out of production, a process known as salinization, which is occurring to this day throughout the world where irrigated agriculture is practiced. Shockingly, nearly 30 years since scientific confirmation that selenium was killing migratory birds protected by international treaty, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not established wildlife protection criteria for selenium dumping in aquatic environments. Selenium is a strange element, which is a micro-nutrient in animals and humans but also highly toxic in amounts slightly higher than that needed for nutritional necessity. A dramatic example is an overdose of selenium given to 21 polo horses from Venezuela that were to compete in the U.S. Open polo tournament in April of 2009. They all died within hours of taking the selenium, which was given to the horses purportedly to help them recover from exhaustion. Selenium continues to be popular on the vitamin and supplement market, being touted as a cure for everything from cancer to dandruff. Its dangers, particularly to fish and wildlife, are rarely mentioned. Yet selenium continues to negatively affect fish and birds not only in the irrigated agriculture of the western San Joaquin Valley but also in other parts of the United States where coal mining or phosphate fertilizer mining occurs. In mid-June, a federal judge in Charleston, West Virginia, acting in a suit filed by environmentalists, including the Sierra Club, ruled that Patriot Coal Company continues to dump selenium-laden mining waste into the watershed of Mud River in Appalachia, killing off the fishery. District Judge Robert C. Chambers criticized Patriot Coal’s Hobet Mining subsidiary and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection for failure to set a deadline for complying with state selenium limits at the company’s Hobet 21 mountaintop-removal mining complex. The judge ordered a hearing for August to consider issuing an injunction. “Hobet’s track record of non-compliance and the WVDEP’s history of acquiescing to deadline extensions and other modifications to ease permit requirements suggest compliance is not likely without intervention on the part of this court,” Chambers wrote in a 55-page opinion. More than two years ago, nationally recognized selenium expert A. Dennis Lemly said fish in the Mud River are suffering grotesque deformities evocative of selenium poisoning, including fish with two eyes on one side of the head and others with curved spines, eerily reminiscent of the deformities in Kesterson bird embryos. In a report to the federal court, which is looking into the selenium poisoning at the Hobet mine, Lemly predicted that continued selenium dumping in the Mud River by coal mining would put the river’s ecosystem “on the brink of a major toxic event . . . If waterborne selenium concentrations are not reduced, reproductive toxicity will spiral out of control and fish populations will collapse.” And yet in January of this year, the U.S. EPA actually approved expansion of the Hobet mining operation, apparently oblivious to the spreading selenium problem. In southern Idaho, both wildlife and livestock have died from selenium poisoning as a result of phosphate for fertilizer mining by several mining companies, including J.R. Simplot Company. According to the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (http://www.greateryellowstone.org), research by Simplot company itself on the effects of selenium released from one phosphate mine revealed that trout populations were being devastated in the Sage Creek watershed and downstream in Crow Creek. The report showed that selenium was causing declines of 20% and higher in creek trout populations. The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality reported that the entire Blackfoot River and more than 90 miles of its tributaries – nearly 40 percent of the perennial stream miles in the Upper Blackfoot River watershed, along with their fish populations – are showing evidence of being poisoned by selenium. In August of 2009, at least 18 head of cattle died from eating selenium- The U.S. EPA has stood by for decades, unwilling to set a wildlife safety standard for water anywhere in the United States. A little history is illuminating. Section 101 (a) (2) of the 1972 Clean Water Act stated that “[It] is the national goal that wherever attainable, an interim goal of water quality which provides for the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife . . . be achieved by July 1, 1983[']” Ironically, 1983 was the year that federal scientists, including the EPA, indisputably knew that selenium in elevated amounts was highly dangerous for critters living in aquatic environments. That 1983 deadline came and went with no selenium standard in place. The EPA’s last Federal Register proposed revision of national selenium criteria (December 17, 2004) specifically stating “Therefore, this draft selenium recommendation is not designed to protect birds or terrestrial wildlife.” (Emphasis added.) How much selenium can fish, birds and mammals in an aquatic environment handle? According to research in the early 1990s at an EPA laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon, one part per billion is about the safety threshold for fish and mammals. That’s about one drop in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. That report, by researchers Jeffrey A. Peterson and Alan V. Nebeker, was published in 1992 in the peer-reviewed Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (Vol. 23, pages 154-162). Apparently, top officials at the EPA during the Clinton years, the Bush II years and the first part of the Obama administration, aware that cleaning up selenium contamination caused by irrigated agriculture on high selenium soils, coal mining and phosphate mining would cost those industries money, decided to shelve the Peterson/Nebeker report and as a result the EPA is still working on establishing a national selenium criteria for wildlife three decades after the Kesterson disaster. The EPA has the responsibility and the authority to protect wildlife from selenium not only under the Clean Water Act but also under Executive Order 13186, signed on January 10, 2001, by President Clinton 10 days before he left office. That order is titled “Responsibilities of Federal Agencies to Protect Migratory Birds;” and one part of it states “each [federal] agency shall . . . prevent or abate the pollution or detrimental alteration of the environment for the benefit of migratory birds, as practicable . . .” It must be remembered that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was the law cited by the Reagan administration in shutting down the evaporation ponds at Kesterson in 1985. That was the last time any presidential administration has used the treaty to protect birds from poisoning by agricultural waste water in California. And the same story applies here in the San Joaquin Valley. The February 1985 Kesterson cleanup order also included language that the Central Valley Regional Water Board begin addressing the problem of unregulated discharges of agricultural wastewater from federal irrigation districts north of Westlands. Those districts from Merced County north to the Delta receive their irrigation supplies from the Delta-Mendota Canal, which was completed in 1951, long before anyone uncovered the dangers of selenium in waterways (although rangeland selenium toxicity for livestock was known in the Dakotas and other states nearly a century ago). Thus, those Delta-Mendota Canal irrigation districts have been dumping their untreated Ag wastewater into the lower San Joaquin River for nearly 60 years. For the first 25 years after the Kesterson cleanup order, those districts operated under a waiver issued by the Central Valley Regional Water Board and continued to dump their toxics in the lower river. This year, the Regional Board granted those drainers yet another 10-year exemption! How is it a polluting industry killing off a river gets 35 years to continue business as usual? The Regional Board’s exemption is being appealed to the State Water Board, but given the state board’s lax enforcement policies it seems likely it will merely rubber stamp the Regional Board’s exemption. Those federal irrigation districts north of Westlands surround the 50,000-acre Grasslands Water District, which is a duck hunting district and wintering ground for tens of thousands of migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway. Thus, the districts are known as the “Grasslands drainers” and funnel their selenium-tainted wastewaters through Grasslands canals and sloughs into the lower San Joaquin River in an effort to reduce selenium loading into the river. The Grassland Bypass Project also includes the use of subsurface drainage to irrigate salt-tolerant crops in areas called “re-use areas” to reduce the volume of drainwater entering the river. Approximately 4,000 acres (three times the size of the Kesterson killing ponds) of land has been planted with salt-tolerant crops and irrigated with the high selenium drainwater. Re-use areas are also a crucial part of the proposed in-valley management plan for Westlands’ drainage, but on a much larger scale. Monitoring of selenium levels in the Grasslands’ re-use area is required because these lands integrate with the landscape and provide habitat for wildlife. Critics claim the trade-off here is a cleaner river for a more polluted terrestrial landscape. More than 42 studies of birds have been found to use the 4,000-acre drainage re-use area. Selenium concentrations of up to 90 micrograms per gram dry weight in two bird species-avocets and stilts-were recorded in 2006 in the Grasslands re-use area, a value representing an astounding degree of contamination that rivals the lethal selenium levels documented at Kesterson. The re-use area monitoring is a grim reminder of the enormous volume of selenium that exists within the soils of the western San Joaquin Valley (eroded from the shale of the Coast Range mountains), both in the Grasslands and the 600,000-acre Westlands district. The disturbing selenium levels in the re-use area are a reminder that the drainage problem for western valley agriculture remains unresolved and that the selenium genie is now out of the bottle. Experts say regulators need to shift the focus back to regulating selenium in the Valley, in addition to regulating selenium discharges to the San Joaquin River, the Delta and the San Francisco Bay (which is also affected by selenium discharges from oil refineries). However, the Regional Water Board, rather than doing its job, has decided to give the drainers/polluters another free pass for the next decade. There is one bright spot in this gloomy picture. New EPA Region Nine Administrator Jared Blumenfeld seems interested in addressing the selenium problem in California. On June 14, Rep. Grace Napolitano, a southern California congressperson who chairs the House Subcommittee on Water and Power, and fellow California Rep. John Garamendi, wrote Blumenfeld and Bureau of Reclamation Regional Director Don Glaser to complain about the 10-year waiver granted by the Regional Water Board and urged that only a one-year waiver be issued. Their letter noted, “Many Californians remember the horrific photographs of deformed ducks from Kesterson Reservoir, a scene that forced the Bureau of Reclamation to abandon their historic practice of dumping contaminated water and thinking it would just go away. Thirty years have passed since the first impacts of the agricultural drainage water first began to be seen. Thirty years when we should have been developing solutions rather than continuing to ask for waivers to continue to put Californians and their environment at risk.” It should be noted, however, that Rep. Napolitano has never held a field hearing in the San Joaquin Valley to draw attention to the dangers of drainage water. In any event, it is no longer a question of proving selenium’s dangers to aquatic ecosystems, wildlife and fish. The evidence is clear. It’s only a matter of political courage in the EPA regionally and nationally and more members of Congress demanding action. The U.S. Geological Survey is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to draft selenium standards for the San Francisco Bay. Three decades late, but at least it’s a start. As things now stand, no one can state with certainty what the selenium loading of the lower San Joaquin River is doing to South Delta wildlife and fish. However, the EPA needs to establish nationwide aquatic environment criteria for selenium, despite the complaints from mining companies and agribusiness that it will cost them money to be responsible for their own pollution. And the EPA needs to do it sometime this century, while there are still some fish in America’s rivers. Thirty years of stall-and-delay is enough. To learn more about selenium, go to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Selenium Library at http://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/Selenium/library.htm. Lloyd Carter has been writing about Valley water issues for 40 years. His Web site is http://www.lloydgcarter.com. This article is published in the current Fresno Community Alliance newspaper. |
danbacher Please support this urgent action alert from Michael Preston of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe to pressure the U.S. Forest Service to allow the Winnemem Wintu Tribe to conduct their puberty ceremony in private, free from harrassment and public interference.
Dan
Action Alert: Defend the Winnemem Wintu Tribe’s Balas Chonas Ceremony
I hope all are well and in good health. On behalf of my people I thank you for all your help in the continuous struggles we find ourselves in. We sincerely appreciate your efforts. At this time we would like to ask for your help once again.
We will be holding a coming of age ceremony for two young girls of the tribe, one of which is in training to become the future leader of our people. The ceremony will be held from July 24th to July 27th at McCloud River Bridge and it is very important that these girls receive the spiritual teachings and blessing from this ceremony that will help guide them in a good way for the rest of their lives.
The ceremony has already been pushed back one year because the US Forest Service has refused to allow us to conduct our ceremony in privacy, free from public interference. Today we find ourselves in the same situation with the Forest Service refusing to help out in the matter.
It has already been demonstrated through the documentary “Puberty Ceremony Comes Home,” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiB72fudb5I) a 2006 movie documenting our first puberty ceremony since the early 1900’s, that it can indeed be dangerous during this ceremony without freedom from public interference. The ceremony is held right on the banks of the McCloud River and boaters coming up the river, sometimes drunk and belligerent, can become quite volatile while we are trying to be in a state of reverence conducting ceremony.
We are asking that you please sign our petition urging Senator Boxer to assist us in the this matter of closing the river for four days and help only the good things enter into the ceremonial grounds.
As of now we have 469 signatures and we are tying to reach our goal of 1000. Please sign and distribute to list-serves, support groups, and people you might know to help In the matter. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/protect-winnemem-wintu-tribe-puberty-ceremony
Other ways people can help Include: (Excerpt from Debbie Davis call to action)
1) Use any connections you have with the Forest Service to urge them to close the campground, give the Winnemem free and exclusive use of what was originally a tribal village site (McCloud River Bridge Campground), and close the stretch of river the Tribe uses for the ceremony. Please coordinate with EJCW.http://www.ejcw.org/
2) Show up on the River to help. There are countless activities in the week leading up to the ceremony and during the ceremony including – securing the campground the Sunday before, visiting the marinas in the days preceding the ceremony to inform marina owners and boaters about the voluntary closure, assistance with setting up for the ceremony, paddling on the river to intercept boaters during the ceremony, etc. Please let me know if you can be on the River.
3) Lend a boat(s) so that we can have numerous people on the River during the ceremony. Let me know if you have a boat(s) you can lend.
4) Donate to defray the Tribe’s costs. There are numerous expenses associated with holding ceremony including the costs of traveling back and forth to meet with Forestry and other officials to push the request for closure; the costs of having people on site in advance to take over campsites as people depart the weekend prior to the ceremony, food for volunteers and ceremony attendees, gas to visit all of the marinas on the Lake, etc. You can make your tax deductible donation to the Indian Cultural Organization by following the link below:
http://www.winnememwintu.us/donation.htm
Your assistance could mean that the Forest Service will relent, but it will at least mean that there some sort of buffer between the Tribe and those who would disrupt their ceremony.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Michael Preston
danbacher Dan
For Immediate Release, July 2, 2010
| Contact: | Adam Keats, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 632-5304 Bill Jennings, CSPA, (209) 464-5067 Carolee Krieger, C-WIN, (805) 969-0824 |
Suit Filed to Reverse One of the Biggest Ripoffs in California History:
Groups Seek Return of Kern Water Bank to Public Control
BAKERSFIELD, Calif.— A coalition of farmers, sportfishing interests and environmentalists filed suit today seeking to have the Kern Water Bank returned to state control. The water bank, a massive underground reservoir in Kern County built by the state’s Department of Water Resources, was illegally gifted to powerful corporate agribusiness interests and real-estate speculators as part of the controversial “Monterey Plus Amendments” to the State Water Project system.
“The Kern Water Bank is an integral part of our State Water Project and crucial to the future health of our farms, our cities and our environment,” said Adam Keats, urban wildlands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It was built and paid for by the people of California and should remain the property of the people of California, not handed over to a small group of powerful private interests.”
California’s state constitution expressly forbids any agency giving away or “gifting” of state assets to private interests. The current lawsuit asserts that the Kern County Water Agency gifted the Kern Water Bank to the Kern Water Bank Authority, a public-private joint powers authority controlled by Paramount Farming Company (one of the world’s largest agricultural and holding companies) and Tejon Ranch Company (the massive landholding corporation seeking to develop several new cities north of Los Angeles — including the largest development ever proposed in California).
The suit is the coalition’s second in the last month over the State Water Project. The first targeted the Department of Water Resources for approving the Monterey Plus Amendments – a huge set of structural changes for how the State Water Project is managed. In one of those changes, the department transferred the Kern Water Bank to an entity called the Kern County Water Agency. That agency then quickly handed over the water bank to the newly formed Kern Water Bank Authority. The latest suit seeks to bring the Kern Water Bank back into state control.
“We’re not going to stand aside and allow a few very powerful and wealthy water barons to illegally privatize a publicly funded facility worth hundreds of millions of dollars so they can reap vast profits from growing nut trees in the desert and building thousands of speculative McMansions in the wilderness,” said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. “All while our rivers and streams are dewatered, farms fallowed, and fish and wildlife plunge toward extinction.”
The sportfishing and environmental groups are joined in the suit by two delta water agencies, the Central Delta Water Agency and the Southern Delta Water Agency, whose constituents are dependent on in-delta flows to irrigate their farms.
“A properly managed Kern Water Bank could benefit the entire state, providing backup water during drought years for farms and urban areas, while helping to ensure that water is available to keep the Delta ecosystem healthy,” said Carolee Krieger, executive director of the California Water Impact Network. “But instead, as a result of this giveaway, both the State Water Project and the Delta ecosystem are on the brink of destruction while the water barons hoard water they don’t own and use it for their own maximum profits, no matter what the consequences.”
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For more information on the Monterey Plus Amendments, see
http://www.c-win.org/press-room-monterey-plus-amendments-and-environmental-impact-report-lawsuit.html
and http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/monterey_plus_amendments/index.html.
The California Water Impact Network promotes the equitable and environmental use of California’s water, including instream uses, through research, planning, public education, and litigation. www.c-win.org
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance is a nonprofit conservation and research organization established in 1983 for the purpose of conserving, restoring, and enhancing the state’s water quality and fishery resources and their aquatic and riparian ecosystems.www.calsport.org
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 255,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. www.biologicaldiversity.org
danbacher by Dan Bacher
Leonard Masten, chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, today said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement to postpone the California Water Bond (Proposition 18) from the 2010 ballot until 2012 is “indicative of the measure’s weakness” and called on the Legislature to repeal the bond.
“It’s a choreographed political move for Schwarzenegger and his special interest cronies to postpone the measure,” according to a statement from Masten. “It buys them more time to falsely convince the public that they need this pork-filled bond to have water when they turn on their spigots.”
Masten noted that the proposition, known as the Safe, Clean and Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act, “is not really about drinking water.”
“It’s about building and privatizing taxpayer-built dams and moving the control of the California’s water from the public trust to the private sector,” he said. “The measure also paves the way for the construction of a peripheral canal that would more easily ship Northern California Water south.”
Masten said he agreed with the statement by Mark Franco, headman of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, that “The peripheral canal is a big, stupid idea that doesn’t make any sense from a tribal environmental perspective. Building a canal to save the Delta is like a doctor inserting an arterial bypass from your shoulder to your hand– it will cause your elbow to die just like taking water out of the Delta through a peripheral canal will cause the Delta to die.”
The Hoopa Valley Tribe is urging the California legislature to vote NO on postponing proposition 18 until 2012, according to Masten.
“We also urge legislators to go one step further and repeal the water bond entirely,” said Masten. “It is not only fiscally irresponsible, it is a bad idea now and it will continue to be a bad idea in two years.”
Masten said the Hoopa Valley Tribe has lived on the banks of the Trinity River since time immemorial, carrying on traditions that hold the water and fish in the highest regard. The damming and diversion of the Trinity and Klamath Rivers has devastated the Hoopa people’s livelihood, salmon.
“The Trinity River is the only source of imported water to the Central Valley Project,” said Masten. “A drop of Trinity River water can travel all the way to Los Angeles, over 900 miles, via Central Valley Project plumbing. For decades, over 90 percent of the river was siphoned south to quench the mounting thirst of Southern California. We have fought ever since to restore the Trinity River, with great opposition from Southern California water districts.”
The Hoopa Valley Tribe joins the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Inter-Tribal Water Commission, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water and many diverse groups in opposing the water bond.
No on the Water Bond (Proposition 18) is sponsored by a coalition of consumer, education, environmental, fishing, farming, tribal, labor and social justice organizations opposed to the water bond. Proposition 18 opponents include the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, California Teachers Association, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the River, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Planning and Conservation League, Restore the Delta, Sierra Club California and United Farmworkers Union.
For more information on the campaign against the water bond, go to http://www.NoWaterBond.com. For more information about the Hoopa Valley Tribe, call Allie Hostler, (530)739-2323, http://www.hoopa-nsn.gov.
