“Our Polynesian ancestors respected and cared for the sea,” according to a statement from the Pacific Voyagers. “As we follow in their wake on our journey, we carry with us Te Mana o Te Moana, The Spirit of the Seas, as we venture forth raising awareness to help heal our ocean. Like our forefathers had done thousands of years before us, we travel using traditional Vaka Moana, voyaging canoes.” 

Photo of vakas moanas, boats of ancient Poynesian tradition, courtesy of Pacific Voyagers website.

ttp://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/110808512_budgets-billionaires-bonds-big-profits-and-brown-family-part-two 

The Browns and 50-Years of GO Bond Debts, Part Two 

By Patrick Porgans and Lloyd G. Carter 

Editor’s Note: In Part One of this two-part series, Porgans and Carter showed how land-rich but water-short Southern California billionaires are pushing an $11 billion bond measure on the 2012 ballot to enhance their holdings. Part Two examines the legacy of Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown and his two children, current Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown and Kathleen Brown, and their connection to public bonds, budget deficits, the Bay-Delta Estuary conflict, and the November 2012 water bond measure. 

You can count on Team Billionaire, which includes the actual billionaires, chambers of commerce, local water districts, banks, and all manner of Southern California real estate and development interests, to spend huge amounts of campaign contribution money to convince voters to approve an $11 billion water-related General Obligation (GO) bond measure on next year’s statewide ballot. 

Based on the Team’s track record it has been very successful. In 2006, under then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, himself a first string team member, voters were persuaded to approve more than $40 billion in GO bonds, which will cost $80 billion to repay. According to the state’s Department of Finance director, for every dollar borrowed with GO bonds two dollars must be paid back for interest and principal. 

Over time, that $80 billion will be repaid from the state’s deficit-ridden General Fund, and could trigger even more cuts of General Fund programs in future state budgets. However, Team Billionaire players are not telling that to voters as they stump for next year’s water bond. 

This consortium of “team players” reincarnated an ingenious financing scheme that was first pushed back in 1960 by Gov. Pat Brown, and Ralph Brody, a former Brown aide and later general manager of the Westlands Water District. Back in November 1960, Pat Brown narrowly succeeded in getting voters to approve a $1.75 billion General Obligation (GO) bond to fund the State Water Project (SWP). The project, including reservoirs and a massive canal, was designed to move huge amounts of Northern California water south to the industrial farms of the southern San Joaquin Valley and the ever-growing subdivisions of Southern California. 

Brown Sr., along with large landowners in the arid regions of the state, lending institutions such as Bank America, Wells Fargo, and others, successfully sold the SWP to voters under the false premise that it would pay-for-itself; it never has. It hasn’t even come close. 

According to government records, about 30 percent of the $1.75 billion State Water Project bond authorized in 1960 remains unpaid. The money to repay that debt and other GO bond debt is derived directly out of the state’s so-called deficit-ridden General Fund, a portion coming from SWP contractors. According to the state Department of Water Resources (DWR), capital costs for the State Water Project already exceeds $9 billion; and estimates to complete the project have been as high as $63 billion. 

In October 1960, a report by consultant Charles T. Main, declared it was feasible to engineer the massive water works project, but gave qualified answers to the question of financial feasibility. It pointed out the probability that construction costs would escalate, questioned the future ability of agricultural water users to repay their share of the costs, and declared that the state must be prepared to assume the risk that it might not be completely reimbursed during the bond repayment period. Specifically, it stated that the Burns-Porter Act (enabling legislation) fell slightly short of providing construction funds on the basis of 1960 costs, according to a state Senate Committee report, issued during the SWP’s 1960s economic and financial crises. 

Pat Brown, in a 1979 interview with a University of California-Berkeley Bancroft Library oral historian, said “We were questioning could we pass a bond act of $1.75 billion? We didn’t know exactly the cost of the project. We hadn’t priced it out to any exactitude. As a matter of fact, we thought it would cost more than the $1.75 billion, probably in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion.” 

During that interview Brown also confirmed the fact that what his financial and engineering consultants (Charles T. Main and Dillon Reed) told him back in 1960: the SWP would face financial and structural shortcomings, and the state should be prepared to cover future costs; cost directly attributable to the fact that it had been knowingly underfinanced from the start. 

Former Gov. Ronald Reagan confirmed this in a San Francisco Chronicle interview, stating, “The project was underfinanced from the very start. It is not my intention to dwell on this, but people were allowed to believe that the original bond issue would cover the program [SWP] cost. This was never true.” 

The records indicate that the SWP has and continues to go from one financial crisis to the next; however, that has not impeded the contractors’ ability to profit from the water and power they receive from the SWP. In the process, government officials and SWP contractors have shifted a significant portion of the “reimbursable costs” of the project – which the contractors are required to pay – to the unsuspecting public in the form of GO bond debt. Indeed, a 2007 study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that “some two-thirds of respondents admitted they knew very little or nothing about how the state pays for bond measures.” 

Department of Water Resources records indicate that SWP agricultural contractors include billionaire families including the J.G. Boswell heirs; Orange County land baron Donald Bren; Stewart and Linda Resnick, who own 200,000 acres of farmland in Kings and Kern counties; and the Catellus Corporation, which holds the largest private bloc of land in California in the Tehachapi Mountains. In addition, southern San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts, and other major landowners, over the decades have been the recipients of hundreds of millions of acre-feet of water at cut rate prices (until recently), and have harvested billions of dollars of profits from the agricultural products made possible by the SWP. 

Up until the mid-1980s, the SWP economic, financial and so-called water related shortages and related crises were dealt with in the low-key “government has it under control mode.” A more accurate assessment of the SWP’s financial condition surfaced in the late 1980s and again in the mid-1990s, when Porgans & Associates produced a series of in-depth, fact-finding reports entitled “The State of The State Water Project.” 

The facts contained in that series of reports were used in legislative hearing and within the regulatory processes to provide decision-makers with unbiased findings, prefaced on government data, reports and other official documents. Irrefutable facts revealed that the SWP was not paying for itself as promised. Instead, the unsuspecting public has been picking up the tab to provide SWP contractors with a more reliable source of supply. In some cases, the SWP contractors buy water cheap from the public and sell it back to the public at fat profits. 

Here is an indisputable fact. Between the years 2000 and 2010, $19.4 billion of outstanding water- and water-related bond debt was incurred, which amounts to about 25 percent of the state’s existing total authorized bond debt of $79.6 billion. Again, repaying bonds generally doubles the amount of money the bonds generated. 

Ironically, Governor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr., in his second go-around as governor, has once again inherited the financial shortcomings associated with the misleading promises made 50 years ago by his father. During Jerry Brown’s first administration as governor (from 1975 to 1983), he supported efforts to complete the already faltering SWP by supporting a 1982 ballot (Senate Bill 200, also known as Proposition 9), a measure to build a “Peripheral Canal” through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region. 

In the aftermath of voter rejection of the 1982 Peripheral Canal measure, Jerry Brown was quoted in the Sacramento Bee as saying it didn’t matter what the voters decided, that the peripheral canal would be built some day. In that same issue of the Sacramento Bee, it was reported that then Assemblyman Tom Bates, and his aide, Lenny Goldberg, used Porgans’ reports to require DWR and the SWP to repay an estimated $500 million in debt, with a significant portion going back into the General Fund. 

However, the real financial weaknesses of the State Water Project, as predicted by Porgans & Associates, came during the 1987-1992 drought. The Department of Water Resources conceded the SWP was short of cash and began issuing “commercial paper” for the first time in the project’s history, just to buy water so that its agricultural contractors would remain solvent, and the state’s credit rating would not go down the tubes. This tactic raised questions about the legality of DWR issuing commercial paper, which is a type of loan. 

Now, there are indications that Jerry Brown is once again following in his father’s financing footsteps. Brown Jr. recently appointed Jerry Meral to be deputy secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency in charge of the Bay Delta Conservation Planning Program. 

Meral served as deputy director of the Department of Water Resources during Brown’s first administration in the early 1980s. Prior to that, Meral worked for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), at which time he was anti-canal. After taking his position with DWR, Meral became an advocate for the failed 1982 Peripheral Canal ballot measure. Critics now say Meral is again Brown’s point man for implementing the so-called preferred Delta “fix”, which could include a massive canal/tunnel to funnel Northern California around the beleaguered Bay-Delta Estuary and ship more water south. 

Many of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s pro-canal appointees to the Delta Stewardship Council and other water agency positions have not been replaced by Brown. And Brown has the same Director of Finance, Ana Matosantos, who served under Schwarzenegger. The move to reduce the budget and make room to issue more GO bonds also indicates that Brown and his supporters are paving the way to move more water south, duplicating his father’s efforts of half a century ago. 

Jerry Brown’s sister, Kathleen Brown, who served as state treasurer and ran for governor against Pete Wilson in 1994, has also played a key role in the California water bond phenomena. 

Kathleen Brown went to work for the financial institution Goldman Sachs in 2001 and became the head of its West Coast municipal bond operation. 

According to the state Department of Finance (DOF), $79.6 billion of general obligation (GO) bonds which have been issued by the state, were managed, marketed and syndicated by financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and others. 

Public records show that about 17 percent of the General Obligation bonds which have been issued by the state were underwritten or managed through Goldman Sachs, generating hefty profits. 

According to a recent report by Bloomberg, Kathleen Brown, has moved to a newly-created similar post in Goldman Sachs’ Chicago office now that her brother is governor again. 

“Kathleen is taking on this new role because it broadens her client focus,” Goldman Sachs spokesman Michael DuVally said. “Had she continued to work with California municipalities, it might have created the perception of a conflict of interest.” 

Ms. Brown previously held positions at Bank of America and the mega-law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. 

It has been more than 50 years since the SWP was authorized and there is no end in sight to the conflicts and costs to the taxpayers and the devastating impact that the project has had on public trust resources. The Bay-Delta Estuary is the hub of major government projects export vast amount of water to contractors in central and southern California. Government has repeatedly promised and failed to provide the protection provided by law to protect the delta. In fact, it is government’s inherent conflict as a water purveyor and regulator that is and remains at the heart and crux of California’s unrelenting water and financial crises. 

The beginning of the end for the Bay-Delta Estuary came about in 1994, when DWR and its contractors, along with local water agencies and the “major” environmental groups – such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Counsel and the Bay Institute – agreed to what is known as the Bay-Delta Accord. This agreement provided for increased Delta exports. The Accord language, shepherded by Gov. Pete Wilson and billionaires Donald Bren and J.G. Boswell, prohibited listing of additional aquatic species as threatened or endangered, species which were being killed by government water exports. 

Recently, government officials released yet another very expensive draft plan, espousing how they are going to protect the Bay-Delta Estuary. As long as water export proponents continue to hold key positions in water agencies, billion dollar plans for giant canals and tunnels to move rivers of water south will remain the state’s plan and the Delta will continue its death spiral. 

The massive water bond debt, in part, caused State officials to make $115.7 billion in budget cuts from 2008 through 2011, paring programs for the poor, disabled and raising tuition for college students. At the same time, California officials issued $33.8 billion in General Obligation (GO) bonds, according to public documents obtained from the state Treasurer’s Office. Payback for that ill-advised borrowing binge will cost taxpayers over $67 billion. 

Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest bare bones budget cuts appear to be good news for bond syndicators and investors. A bond rating company, Standard & Poor’s, gave an approving nod to the budget cuts, according to a San Francisco publication. 

Recent op-ed articles in the state’s major newspapers by promoters of the 2012 water bond measure, currently estimated at about $11 billion, do not say that it will actually cost $22 billion to pay off the bond. Nor do they say that even more cuts in education, public safety and social programs for the disabled (now financed from the state’s General Fund) will occur so that big growers in the western San Joaquin Valley can keep irrigating and billionaire real estate barons can continue to grow subdivisions in the Southern California deserts with Northern California water. Taxpayers will remain in bondage to bonds for decades. 

Patrick Porgans and Lloyd G. Carter have both been writing about California water issues for 40 years. Porgans’ email address is pp [at] planetarysolutionaries.org. Carter’s email islcarter0i [at] comcast.net. 

By Patrick Porgans and Lloyd G. Carter 

Editor’s Note: In Part One of this two-part series, Porgans and Carter showed how land-rich but water-short Southern California billionaires are pushing an $11 billion bond measure on the 2012 ballot to enhance their holdings. Part Two examines the legacy of Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown and his two children, current Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown and Kathleen Brown, and their connection to public bonds, budget deficits, the Bay-Delta Estuary conflict, and the November 2012 water bond measure. 

You can count on Team Billionaire, which includes the actual billionaires, chambers of commerce, local water districts, banks, and all manner of Southern California real estate and development interests, to spend huge amounts of campaign contribution money to convince voters to approve an $11 billion water-related General Obligation (GO) bond measure on next year’s statewide ballot. 

Based on the Team’s track record it has been very successful. In 2006, under then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, himself a first string team member, voters were persuaded to approve more than $40 billion in GO bonds, which will cost $80 billion to repay. According to the state’s Department of Finance director, for every dollar borrowed with GO bonds two dollars must be paid back for interest and principal. 

Over time, that $80 billion will be repaid from the state’s deficit-ridden General Fund, and could trigger even more cuts of General Fund programs in future state budgets. However, Team Billionaire players are not telling that to voters as they stump for next year’s water bond. 

This consortium of “team players” reincarnated an ingenious financing scheme that was first pushed back in 1960 by Gov. Pat Brown, and Ralph Brody, a former Brown aide and later general manager of the Westlands Water District. Back in November 1960, Pat Brown narrowly succeeded in getting voters to approve a $1.75 billion General Obligation (GO) bond to fund the State Water Project (SWP). The project, including reservoirs and a massive canal, was designed to move huge amounts of Northern California water south to the industrial farms of the southern San Joaquin Valley and the ever-growing subdivisions of Southern California. 

Brown Sr., along with large landowners in the arid regions of the state, lending institutions such as Bank America, Wells Fargo, and others, successfully sold the SWP to voters under the false premise that it would pay-for-itself; it never has. It hasn’t even come close. 

According to government records, about 30 percent of the $1.75 billion State Water Project bond authorized in 1960 remains unpaid. The money to repay that debt and other GO bond debt is derived directly out of the state’s so-called deficit-ridden General Fund, a portion coming from SWP contractors. According to the state Department of Water Resources (DWR), capital costs for the State Water Project already exceeds $9 billion; and estimates to complete the project have been as high as $63 billion. 

In October 1960, a report by consultant Charles T. Main, declared it was feasible to engineer the massive water works project, but gave qualified answers to the question of financial feasibility. It pointed out the probability that construction costs would escalate, questioned the future ability of agricultural water users to repay their share of the costs, and declared that the state must be prepared to assume the risk that it might not be completely reimbursed during the bond repayment period. Specifically, it stated that the Burns-Porter Act (enabling legislation) fell slightly short of providing construction funds on the basis of 1960 costs, according to a state Senate Committee report, issued during the SWP’s 1960s economic and financial crises. 

Pat Brown, in a 1979 interview with a University of California-Berkeley Bancroft Library oral historian, said “We were questioning could we pass a bond act of $1.75 billion? We didn’t know exactly the cost of the project. We hadn’t priced it out to any exactitude. As a matter of fact, we thought it would cost more than the $1.75 billion, probably in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion.” 

During that interview Brown also confirmed the fact that what his financial and engineering consultants (Charles T. Main and Dillon Reed) told him back in 1960: the SWP would face financial and structural shortcomings, and the state should be prepared to cover future costs; cost directly attributable to the fact that it had been knowingly underfinanced from the start. 

Former Gov. Ronald Reagan confirmed this in a San Francisco Chronicle interview, stating, “The project was underfinanced from the very start. It is not my intention to dwell on this, but people were allowed to believe that the original bond issue would cover the program [SWP] cost. This was never true.” 

The records indicate that the SWP has and continues to go from one financial crisis to the next; however, that has not impeded the contractors’ ability to profit from the water and power they receive from the SWP. In the process, government officials and SWP contractors have shifted a significant portion of the “reimbursable costs” of the project – which the contractors are required to pay – to the unsuspecting public in the form of GO bond debt. Indeed, a 2007 study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that “some two-thirds of respondents admitted they knew very little or nothing about how the state pays for bond measures.” 

Department of Water Resources records indicate that SWP agricultural contractors include billionaire families including the J.G. Boswell heirs; Orange County land baron Donald Bren; Stewart and Linda Resnick, who own 200,000 acres of farmland in Kings and Kern counties; and the Catellus Corporation, which holds the largest private bloc of land in California in the Tehachapi Mountains. In addition, southern San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts, and other major landowners, over the decades have been the recipients of hundreds of millions of acre-feet of water at cut rate prices (until recently), and have harvested billions of dollars of profits from the agricultural products made possible by the SWP. 

Up until the mid-1980s, the SWP economic, financial and so-called water related shortages and related crises were dealt with in the low-key “government has it under control mode.” A more accurate assessment of the SWP’s financial condition surfaced in the late 1980s and again in the mid-1990s, when Porgans & Associates produced a series of in-depth, fact-finding reports entitled “The State of The State Water Project.” 

The facts contained in that series of reports were used in legislative hearing and within the regulatory processes to provide decision-makers with unbiased findings, prefaced on government data, reports and other official documents. Irrefutable facts revealed that the SWP was not paying for itself as promised. Instead, the unsuspecting public has been picking up the tab to provide SWP contractors with a more reliable source of supply. In some cases, the SWP contractors buy water cheap from the public and sell it back to the public at fat profits. 

Here is an indisputable fact. Between the years 2000 and 2010, $19.4 billion of outstanding water- and water-related bond debt was incurred, which amounts to about 25 percent of the state’s existing total authorized bond debt of $79.6 billion. Again, repaying bonds generally doubles the amount of money the bonds generated. 

Ironically, Governor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr., in his second go-around as governor, has once again inherited the financial shortcomings associated with the misleading promises made 50 years ago by his father. During Jerry Brown’s first administration as governor (from 1975 to 1983), he supported efforts to complete the already faltering SWP by supporting a 1982 ballot (Senate Bill 200, also known as Proposition 9), a measure to build a “Peripheral Canal” through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region. 

In the aftermath of voter rejection of the 1982 Peripheral Canal measure, Jerry Brown was quoted in the Sacramento Bee as saying it didn’t matter what the voters decided, that the peripheral canal would be built some day. In that same issue of the Sacramento Bee, it was reported that then Assemblyman Tom Bates, and his aide, Lenny Goldberg, used Porgans’ reports to require DWR and the SWP to repay an estimated $500 million in debt, with a significant portion going back into the General Fund. 

However, the real financial weaknesses of the State Water Project, as predicted by Porgans & Associates, came during the 1987-1992 drought. The Department of Water Resources conceded the SWP was short of cash and began issuing “commercial paper” for the first time in the project’s history, just to buy water so that its agricultural contractors would remain solvent, and the state’s credit rating would not go down the tubes. This tactic raised questions about the legality of DWR issuing commercial paper, which is a type of loan. 

Now, there are indications that Jerry Brown is once again following in his father’s financing footsteps. Brown Jr. recently appointed Jerry Meral to be deputy secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency in charge of the Bay Delta Conservation Planning Program. 

Meral served as deputy director of the Department of Water Resources during Brown’s first administration in the early 1980s. Prior to that, Meral worked for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), at which time he was anti-canal. After taking his position with DWR, Meral became an advocate for the failed 1982 Peripheral Canal ballot measure. Critics now say Meral is again Brown’s point man for implementing the so-called preferred Delta “fix”, which could include a massive canal/tunnel to funnel Northern California around the beleaguered Bay-Delta Estuary and ship more water south. 

Many of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s pro-canal appointees to the Delta Stewardship Council and other water agency positions have not been replaced by Brown. And Brown has the same Director of Finance, Ana Matosantos, who served under Schwarzenegger. The move to reduce the budget and make room to issue more GO bonds also indicates that Brown and his supporters are paving the way to move more water south, duplicating his father’s efforts of half a century ago. 

Jerry Brown’s sister, Kathleen Brown, who served as state treasurer and ran for governor against Pete Wilson in 1994, has also played a key role in the California water bond phenomena. Kathleen Brown went to work for the financial institution Goldman Sachs in 2001 and became the head of its West Coast municipal bond operation. 

According to the state Department of Finance (DOF), $79.6 billion of general obligation (GO) bonds which have been issued by the state, were managed, marketed and syndicated by financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and others. 

Public records show that about 17 percent of the General Obligation bonds which have been issued by the state were underwritten or managed through Goldman Sachs, generating hefty profits. 

According to a recent report by Bloomberg, Kathleen Brown, has moved to a newly-created similar post in Goldman Sachs’ Chicago office now that her brother is governor again. 

“Kathleen is taking on this new role because it broadens her client focus,” Goldman Sachs spokesman Michael DuVally said. “Had she continued to work with California municipalities, it might have created the perception of a conflict of interest.” 

Ms. Brown previously held positions at Bank of America and the mega-law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. 

It has been more than 50 years since the SWP was authorized and there is no end in sight to the conflicts and costs to the taxpayers and the devastating impact that the project has had on public trust resources. The Bay-Delta Estuary is the hub of major government projects export vast amount of water to contractors in central and southern California. Government has repeatedly promised and failed to provide the protection provided by law to protect the delta. In fact, it is government’s inherent conflict as a water purveyor and regulator that is and remains at the heart and crux of California’s unrelenting water and financial crises. 

The beginning of the end for the Bay-Delta Estuary came about in 1994, when DWR and its contractors, along with local water agencies and the “major” environmental groups – such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Counsel and the Bay Institute – agreed to what is known as the Bay-Delta Accord. This agreement provided for increased Delta exports. The Accord language, shepherded by Gov. Pete Wilson and billionaires Donald Bren and J.G. Boswell, prohibited listing of additional aquatic species as threatened or endangered, species which were being killed by government water exports. 

Recently, government officials released yet another very expensive draft plan, espousing how they are going to protect the Bay-Delta Estuary. As long as water export proponents continue to hold key positions in water agencies, billion dollar plans for giant canals and tunnels to move rivers of water south will remain the state’s plan and the Delta will continue its death spiral. 

The massive water bond debt, in part, caused State officials to make $115.7 billion in budget cuts from 2008 through 2011, paring programs for the poor, disabled and raising tuition for college students. At the same time, California officials issued $33.8 billion in General Obligation (GO) bonds, according to public documents obtained from the state Treasurer’s Office. Payback for that ill-advised borrowing binge will cost taxpayers over $67 billion. 

Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest bare bones budget cuts appear to be good news for bond syndicators and investors. A bond rating company, Standard & Poor’s, gave an approving nod to the budget cuts, according to a San Francisco publication. 

Recent op-ed articles in the state’s major newspapers by promoters of the 2012 water bond measure, currently estimated at about $11 billion, do not say that it will actually cost $22 billion to pay off the bond. Nor do they say that even more cuts in education, public safety and social programs for the disabled (now financed from the state’s General Fund) will occur so that big growers in the western San Joaquin Valley can keep irrigating and billionaire real estate barons can continue to grow subdivisions in the Southern California deserts with Northern California water. Taxpayers will remain in bondage to bonds for decades. 

Patrick Porgans and Lloyd G. Carter have both been writing about California water issues for 40 years. Porgans’ email address is pp [at] planetarysolutionaries.org. Carter’s email is lcarter0i@comcast.net.

The massive loss of Sacramento splittail and other Delta fish in the “predator” pumps occurs as the state and federal water project facilities are currently exporting record amounts of Delta water to corporate agribusiness and southern California water agencies. 

Aerial photo of the Tracy Fish Collection Facility (TFCF) in the South Delta courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation. Nearly 9 million Sacramento splittail and hundreds of thousands of other fish species have been “salvaged” at the state and federal “predator” pumping facilities in the South Delta.

aerial-view-of-tfcf-1.jpg

Unprecedented Water Exports Yield Unprecedented Delta Fish Kill 

by Dan Bacher 

The staggering losses of Sacramento splittail and other fish species in the death pumps of the state and federal water projects on the California Delta continue as the Brown and Obama administrations export record volumes of water to corporate agribusiness and southern California water agencies. 

An astounding 8,966,976 splittail, 35,556 chinook salmon, 430,289 striped bass, 54,412 largemouth bass, 69,383 bluegill, 76,570 white catfish, 28,301 channel catfish, 233,174 threadfin shad, 264,171 American shad, 1,642 steelhead and 51 Delta smelt were “salvaged” in the state and federal water export facilities from January 1 to August 2, 2011, according to Department of Fish and Game (DFG) data. 

All indications point to the documented carnage in the Delta pumps this year being the largest fish kill of its kind in California history. However, the overall loss of fish in and around the State Water Project and Central Valley Project facilities is believed to dwarf the actual salvage counts, according to “A Review of Delta Fish Population Losses from Pumping Operations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta,” prepared by Larry Walker Associates in January 2010 for the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (http://www.srcsd.com/pdf/dd/fishlosses.pdf). 

The Walker report cites DFG and DWR studies as showing that 75% of fish entering Clifton Court Forebay are lost to predation in project facilities before they reach the salvage facilities, noted Bill Jennings, executive director/chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. An additional 20-30% are lost at the salvage facility louvers. 

Of the remaining fish actually salvaged, 1-12% are lost during handling and trucking operation and another 10-30% are lost to post-release predation because there are only 4 release sites, according to the report. 

The numbers are far worse for Delta smelt, as 94-99% are lost to predation in project facilities and virtually no salvaged delta smelt survive trucking and handling. 

“Fish losses at export facilities represent a staggering embezzlement of public trust resources belonging to all Californians,” Jennings concluded. 

The massive loss of fish in the “predator” pumps occurs as the pumps are currently exporting record amounts of water to corporate agribusiness and southern California water agencies. 

“Exports from the Bay-Delta may reach an all-time high in 2011,” according to Spreck Rosecrans, an economic analyst at Environmental Defense (http://blogs.edf.org/waterfront/2011/07/15/delta-exports-projected-to-reach-record-level-in-2011/). “Through July 15, pumping for the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project has totaled 4.86 million acre-feet. With ample supplies in northern reservoirs and Sierra rivers still full of melting snow, it is likely that the pumps will continue to run at or near capacity through the end of the water year (September 30).” 

The annual export total is projected to reach 6,610,000 acre-feet – 140,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,470,000 acre-feet set in 2005, Rosecrans noted. 

“The record export level is expected even though pumping levels were reduced not only during much of the winter and spring to protect salmon and other endangered fish but also in the late fall and early winter due to mechanical problems at State Water Project facilities,” said Rosecranz. 

At the same time, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is wholesaling water at discount prices, since southern California reservoirs have largely filled. 

“Southern California’s water wholesaler is offering up cut-rate surplus supplies for the first time since 2007, but few local providers can buy in because they are short on storage space,” according to an article by Janet Zimmerman in the Riverside Press-Enterprise on July 10. (http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_surplus11.3abcf4c.html) 

“The bounty comes from abundant snowfall all the way into early summer. Metropolitan Water District of Southern California expects by year’s end to have the highest storage levels since 1928 in its regional reservoirs, including Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet, water resources manager Deven Upadhyay,” the article continued. 

“The rosy picture presents a significant turnaround from the previous four years, when reservoirs and groundwater storage basins were depleted by a double whammy of drought and reduced deliveries caused by environmental restrictions on exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,” Zimmerman claimed. 

While the picture may be “rosy” for southern California water agencies and water privateers like Stewart Resnick of Paramount Farms in Kern County, who has made a handsome profit off selling subsidized water back to the public, the picture is anything but “rosy” for the huge numbers of of splittail, Central valley salmon and other fish killed at the Delta pumps this year! 

So all of these fish are dying – even though southern California is flush with water this year! 

“As the state and federal water exports increase to unprecedented levels, unprecedented numbers of fish are being sucked into the Delta pumps,” said Jennings. “When you kill unprecedented numbers of fish in the pumps, you greatly diminish the ability of these fish to rebound in a wet year like this one.” 

While record numbers of fish are being killed in the pumping facilities, the DFG’s 2010 Fall Midwater Trawl survey revealed that fish populations were at or near historic lows. The 2010 survey documented that splittail were 0% of their 1998 population, striped bass were 0.2% of 1967 numbers, threadfin shad were 0.8% of 1997 numbers, American shad were 7.3% of 2003 numbers, longfin smelt were 0.2% of 1967 numbers and Delta smelt were 1.7% of 1970 numbers. 

Department of Fish and Game (DFG) officials announced on July 20 that young Delta smelt abundance this year roughly doubles that of last year, but noted that this is “but a small fraction of their historical abundance.” The endangered smelt, an indicator species found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, is still near the edge of extinction. 

The carnage at the pumps continues as Republicans in Congress push legislation, HR 1837, to exempt export pumping in the Delta from Endangered Species Act protections for salmon, Delta smelt and other species and to block restoration efforts on the San Joaquin River. Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), the darling of San Joaquin Valley corporate agribusiness interests, has authored the job-killing legislation that will devastate imperiled California fish populations and fishing communities. 

Between the record fish kills caused by record water exports by the Obama and Brown administrations and the assault on the Endangered Species Act and river restoration by House Republicans, the prospects for recovery of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations are increasingly bleak. It is beyond appalling that Natural Resources Secretary John Laird and Governor Jerry Brown have done nothing to stop the massive fish carnage at the Delta pumps this year! 

For more information and action alerts, go to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance website: http://www.calsport.org.

 Natural Resources Secretary John Laird and other Brown administration officials, while paying lip service to more “inclusion” and “transparency” in the BDCP process, are apparently continuing to rig the process in favor of corporate agribusiness and water agency officials to the detriment of fishermen, Delta residents, California Indian Tribes, environmental justice communities and the vast majority of Californians. 

Aerial photo of the Tracy Fish Collection Facility (TFCF) in the South Delta courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation. Nine million Sacramento splittail and hundreds of thousands of other fish species have been “salvaged” at the state and federal “predator” pumping facilities in the South Delta to date this year. 

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Bay Delta Committee excludes Delta residents, Tribes and fishermen     

by Dan Bacher 

It is becoming increasingly clear to Californians that Governor Jerry Brown and Resources Secretary John Laird are continuing the failed environmental policies of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the worst Governor for fish, water and the environment in California history. 

The Brown administration is forging ahead with the three most notorious environmental policies of the Schwarzenegger regime – the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build a peripheral canal, the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create questionable “marine protected areas,” and the massive export of northern California water to corporate agribusiness and southern California water agencies that has resulted in record numbers of Sacramento splittail and other fish species perishing at the state and federal water project Delta pumping facilities this year. 

For example, Laird and other Brown administration officials, while paying lip service to more “inclusion” and “transparency” in the BDCP process, are apparently continuing to rig the process in favor of corporate agribusiness and water agency officials to the detriment of fishermen, Delta residents, California Indian Tribes, environmental justice communities and the vast majority of Californians. 

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, exposes this exclusion of Delta advocates in the organization’s “Delta Flows” newsletter published on August 3. As you can see, many of the people represented on the BDCP “Management Committee” are the same folks who helped to engineer the collapse of Central Valley chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, striped bass, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other fish species by pumping record amounts of water out of the estuary from 2003 to 2006 and an anticipated new record level of pumping this year. These are the same folks who want to build the peripheral canal or tunnel to facilitate increased water exports to southern California and agribusiness interests on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side. 

Below are the interests represented on the Committee: 

Natural Resources Agency: Jerry Meral and Karla Nemeth 
Department of Fish and Game: Scott Cantrell 
Department of Water Resources: Mark Cowin, Dale Hoffman-Florke, and Cathy Crothers 
Bureau of Reclamation: Ron Milligan, Sue Fry, and Federico Barajas 
Westlands Water District: Jason Peltier 
Hallmark Group (a capital program and construction management company): Chuck Gardner 
State Water Contractors: Laura King Moon 
Science Applications International Corp.: Paul Cylinder 
Metropolitan Water District: Steve Arakawa 
Ebbin Moser & Skaggs LLP (specializing in environmental law and natural resources law): Marc Ebbin 
Kern County Water Agency: Brent Walthall 
Santa Clara Valley Water District: Joan Maher 
Environmental Defense Fund: Spreck Rosecrans 
U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Michael Chotkowski, Jennifer Norris, and Dan Castleberry 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): Maria Rea and Michael Tucker 
The Nature Conservancy: Anthony Saracino (who is also, incidentally, the chair of the California Water Commission) 

“Meetings are held bi-weekly and are open to the public,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “The ‘public’ includes all these interests that are NOT represented on the BDCP Management Committee.” 

Who are the public? 

Delta Agriculture 
Delta Recreation 
Delta Reclamation Districts 
Delta Water Agencies 
The Delta Protection Commission 
Delta Business Groups 
Delta Marina Interests 
Delta Fishing Groups 
Coastal Fishing Groups 
California Tribal Nations 
California’s Environmental Justice Community 

If the BDCP isn’t a rigged, orchestrated process to produce results detrimental to the interests of Delta residents, fishermen, family farmers, California Indian Tribes, environmental justice communities and the majority of Californians, I don’t know what is! 

Meanwhile, Barrigan-Parrilla has criticized Laird for his “weasel words.” 

As Delta Protection Commission chair Don Nottoli pointed out in a letter to Resources Secretary John Laird, “The current BDCP process, although heralded as a ‘fresh look,’ seems to be a continuation of the past process that will harm the lives and livelihood of the people who live in the Delta and shut out those people from full, fair and effective participation in the real decision-making processes. This current process will only serve to strengthen the resolve of the Delta to protect its interests by opposing any changes to the Delta, and possibly lead to litigation of the BDCP and the Delta Plan.” 

Not to worry, said Laird in his reply. The management committee is charged mainly with “ministerial issues such as monitoring contract compliance and assisting the progress of the working groups.” 

Laird continued, “I believe that the more important participation for the DPC is in the working groups that are actually going to recommend resolutions to the issues that are of greatest concern to Delta interests. I know Delta representatives are participating in these groups, and I hope that the fact that they have been brought into the policy discussions on issues most important to the Delta is fully understood, and would motivate participation in deciding those issues.” 

What the heck? 

“This is pretty ambiguous, a textbook example of using words to obscure and evade,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “Laird seems to be hoping that since the Resources Agency has brought Delta interests into working group discussions, the Water Contractors will let them participate in deciding BDCP policy issues.” 

“Go ahead and hope, Mr. Secretary. But if you think the Water Contractors will monitor their own contract compliance without involvement by Delta interests, then you haven’t done your export water management homework,” she challenged Laird. 

“We can help you understand how water exporters really think. Just take a look at what one of them had to say in a recent interview (http://www.familiesprotectingthevalley.com/topstory.php?ax=v&n=99&id=99&nid=2551),” she said. 

As the classic song by The Who states so well, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” 

To read the newsletter and for more information about the campaign against the peripheral canal, go to: http://www.restorethedelta.org 

Webcasts of BDCP management committee meetings are available after the meetings. Find more information at this link: http://baydeltaconservationplan.com/Home.aspx

As happens every year, endangered coho salmon are being stranded in drying pools in the Scott River system, due to inaction by the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG), NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Water Resources Control Board. 

An independent investigation by Klamath Riverkeeper Erica Terence reveals that in spite of the DFG “rescuing” 1,500 coho out of disconnected pools up Kidder Creek, a Scott River tributary, on July 25 and 26, hundreds of juvenile coho salmon were still trapped in Patterson Creek. 

“At the rate the creek is drying up, those fish will be jerky by the end of today,” Terence said in a note to DFG officials. “I suggest that in addition to rescuing what fish you can, your agency should open an investigation into nearby diversions and possible Fish and Game Code violations immediately.” 

CDFG Game Warden Steve McDonald responded to Terence’s note within days, supplying a report that all three surface diversions upstream of the dewatered reach with the photographed dying coho were shut off or were returning all the water they diverted back into the creek after using it, according to Terence. 

Although fish rescue in the Scott River fails to address the root causes of the dewatering such as irrigation dams, canals, ditches, groundwater pumping and soil deposition caused by irresponsible logging in the watershed, “it is a necessary tactic to prevent total extinction of the severely endangered Scott River coho population,” Terence said.

The stranding of endangered salmon on Scott River tributaries occurs at a time when one of the largest fish kills in California history is taking place at the state and federal pumps on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. 

A horrific total of 8,942,347 splittail, 35,435 chinook salmon, 385,392 striped bass, 49,812 largemouth bass, 67,383 bluegill, 66,403 white catfish, 20,178 channel catfish, 91,956 threadfin shad, 166,336 American shad, 1,642 steelhead and 51 Delta smelt were “salvaged” in the state and federal water export facilities from January 1 to July 21, 2011, according to DFG data. The actual numbers of fish lost in the pumping facilities dwarf the salvage numbers. 

Meanwhile, the state and federal governments are pumping record amounts of water out of the California Delta at a time when southern California reservoirs are full and the Metropolitan Water District of California is selling water at cut-rate prices. 

As the Delta fish kill proceeds while Brown and Obama administration officials do virtually nothing to stop the carnage, the California Department of Fish and Game refuses to take a proactive and comprehensive approach to stopping the dewatering problem that takes place yearly on the Scott and Shasta rivers. 

As the Who song said so well, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” 

I applaud the Klamath Riverkeeper to standing up for the fish and fighting against the diversions of water of the Scott and Shasta rivers that lead to the stranding of endangered coho salmon every year. For more information, go to: http://www.klamathriver.org. 

Photo: Dead endangered coho salmon on Patterson Creek, a tributary of the Scott River. Photo by Erica Terence, Klamath Riverkeeper. 

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Klamath Riverkeeper Press Release | For Immediate Release   

Contact: Erica Terence, Klamath Riverkeeper, office: (530) 627-3311, cell: (530)340-5415, erica [at] klamathriver.org 

August 3, 2011 

Stranded Salmon In Dewatered Northern California Streams Trigger Rescues, Investigations And Alarm 

Scott Valley, CA– More than a thousand ESA-listed coho were reportedly “rescued” from dewatered creeks feeding a major tributary to the Klamath River by California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) personnel last week. The agency transferred the stressed baby salmon into the nearby mainstem Scott River where water diversions to grow hay and water cattle is likely to dewater the streambed in many reaches before October. 

More than 1,500 coho were transported out of disconnected pools up Kidder Creek July 25 and 26, according to the Yreka CDFG Senior Scientist Mark Pisano. 

An independent inspection documented in the attached photos by the non-profit organization Klamath Riverkeeper following initial rescue efforts found hundreds of juvenile coho salmon still trapped in Patterson Creek. Other reports suggest that young coho salmon were facing similar dead ends in neighboring Kidder Creek, and that total dewatering is also imminent for Shackleford and French creeks. All four Scott River tributaries offer key juvenile coho salmon rearing habitat. 

Shortly after documenting the dewatered channel and stranded baby salmon, Klamath Riverkeeper Erica Terence notified CDFG officials in writing, effectively warning them that inaction by the agency would be inadequate under numerous environmental statutes. 

“At the rate the creek is drying up, those fish will be jerky by the end of today…I suggest that in addition to rescuing what fish you can, your agency should open an investigation into nearby diversions and possible Fish and Game Code violations immediately,” the note by Terence said. 

CDFG Game Warden Steve McDonald responded to Terence’s note within days, supplying a report that all three surface diversions upstream of the dewatered reach with the photographed dying coho were shut off or were returning all the water they diverted back into the creek after using it. 

“What’s sad about this situation is that this isn’t just happening in Patterson Creek. It’s happening in tributaries across this agriculturally dominated valley, and the worst actors on tributaries we weren’t able to document that day are getting away with murder because CDFG isn’t taking a proactive and comprehensive approach to coping with this dewatering problem,” Terence pointed out. 

Although fish rescue in the Scott River fails to address the root causes of the dewatering such as irrigation dams, canals, ditches, groundwater pumping and soil deposition caused by irresponsible logging in the watershed, it is a necessary tactic to prevent total extinction of the severely endangered Scott River coho population. 

The bleak reality is that scientists have already declared two out of three generations (called year-classes or cohorts) as “functionally extinct.” The only biologically viable run of coho came home to spawn in the Scott River last year. 

These stranded salmon have been identified as the offspring of that final coho run, and their survival rates will decide the future of the species in the watershed. Fall Chinook salmon numbers are still slightly stronger than the coho counts in the Scott River, but their populations are also in steep decline. 

“Fortunately, both 2010 and 2011 were wetter than average years. Unfortunately, even in extremely wet years, we’re seeing total dewatering in many reaches of the Scott River and its tributaries,” Terence said. 

“Even more unfortunate is the fact that the agencies with the power to do something about the problem–California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Water Board–have all been unwilling to take meaningful steps to put water back in the river so far,” she added. 

A 1974 CDFG report on optimal in-stream flows for fisheries suggests that the mainstem Scott River should retain more than 100 cubic feet per second, yet the channel dropped to zero cubic feet per second in the summer of 2009 and was also dangerously low in 2010. The report is the best science currently available on the subject of in-stream flow needs of salmon in the Scott River. 

Klamath Riverkeeper was the lead plaintiff in a court case challenging CDFG’s California Endangered Species Act (CESA) permitting program aimed at bringing activities that could kill endangered coho into legal compliance. Riverkeeper and co-plaintiffs alleged that the program didn’t do enough to protect in-stream flows or endangered coho salmon, and could even harm the species’ chance of making a comeback there. 

In April, 2011, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldstein sided with plaintiffs Klamath Riverkeeper, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Quartz Valley Indian Tribe, Environmental Protection Information Center, Northcoast Environmental Center and the Sierra Club, stating that “Program participants start with an inadequately scrutinized clean slate that is purged of past illegal take and is more permissive of future take of a population already depleted by illegal take,” (Klamath Riverkeeper et al v. California Department of Fish and Game et al, Page 13, Lines 10-12.) 

Judge Goldstein’s opinion refers to decades of past inaction by CDFG in response to illegal coho deaths known as “take” of an endangered species under CESA. 

But rather than take steps to fix the flaws in that program, CDFG has decided to appeal the judge’s ruling. 

The Siskiyou County Farm Bureau is also currently pursuing a legal challenge to CDFG’s authority to regulate water diversions in order to save listed salmon. 

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Editor’s note: This is a two-part series. Part One focuses on how the wealthy and landed have used the public bond process in California to further their own interests, while promoting and profiting from the state’s “budget crisis.” Part Two, which will run August 8, focuses on the family legacy of Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, who first mastered the art of selling water bonds half a century ago, to finance the construction of the State Water Project, which was sold as a project that would pay for itself, and unify the state. It never has, and it is at the crux of the Bay-Delta conflict and the state’s water crisis.  

Museum managers said the exhibition will feature Schwarzenegger’s first set of dumbbells and a replica of his governor’s desk. “The 200-square-metre museum will also include the ‘Terminator star’s favourite pair of cowboy boots and many old photographs documenting the different stages of the famous Austrian’s life,” the Austrian Times explained. 

Photo: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks at a corporate agribusiness rally at the State Capitol on October 9, 2009 to campaign for the peripheral canal. Photo courtesy of Governor’s Office.

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Schwarzenegger museum should honor his true environmental legacy 

By Dan Bacher 

“Arnie’s World,” a museum focusing on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life in bodybuilding, acting and politics, has opened at the house in the small Austrian town of Thal where he was born. 

A “soft” opening took place on July 30 to mark the ex-California Governor’s 64th birthday before a grand opening ceremony takes place later this year, the Austrian Times reported on July 29. 

“Peter Urdl – an old friend of Schwarzenegger’s – explained he and his team wanted to give the former governor of California a chance to attend the occasion,” according to the Times. “Urdl said the date of the official ceremony depended on the action film hero’s schedule.”

 

Museum managers said the exhibition will feature Schwarzenegger’s first set of dumbbells and a replica of his governor’s desk. “The 200-square-metre museum will also include the ‘Terminator star’s favourite pair of cowboy boots and many old photographs documenting the different stages of the famous Austrian’s life,” the Times explained. 

I believe that “Arnie’s World,” to reflect his true record as Governor, should add some exhibits showcasing the environmental legacy of the “Green Governor.” If there’s not enough space in the existing museum, perhaps a wing can be added to the house or a separate building could be built. Here are my suggestions for exhibits to add. 

Fish Kill Hall: This exhibit would commemorate the millions of Central Valley chinook salmon and Delta fish species killed in the Delta pumps and elsewhere by the Schwarzenegger administration. 

The centerpiece of the exhibit would be a model of the state and federal water project pumping facilities on the Delta. Accompanying charts and photos would document the massive numbers of Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento splittail, striped bass and other species killed in the Delta pumps during Schwarzenegger’s reign from 2003 to 2010. 

Accompanying the charts of fish killed would be photos and charts showing massive amounts of water exported to corporate agribusiness and southern California during his administration, including the record water export years of 2003 to 2006. 

Interspersed throughout the exhibit would be video displays of Schwarzenegger and his staff at press conference after press conference, at photo opportunity after photo opportunity, touting the administration’s “green” environmental policies. 

Restored Delta Hall: This exhibit would feature Schwarzenegger’s vision of a “Restored Delta” that he pushed for relentlessly through the Delta Vision and Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) processes and the water bond/water policy legislation in 2009. 

The centerpiece of this exhibit would be an interactive model of a “Restored Delta” with Schwarzenegger’s beloved peripheral canal delivering water “around Delta” from the Sacramento River to the state and federal water project facilities 

The model would include vast tracts of Delta farmland, some of the most productive farmland on the planet, converted to salt marsh, so that corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley can continue irrigating drainage impaired land. 

Of course, the exhibit would include a large saltwater aquarium filled with leopard sharks, sevengill sharks, halibut, bat rays, and surfperch demonstrating the exciting new fishing opportunities that would be available on the “Restored Delta.” 

Surrounding the aquarium and “Restored Delta” model would be video displays of Schwarzenegger and Resources Secretaries Mike Chrisman and Lester Snow gushing about the glories of the peripheral canal and taking Delta farmland out of production. 

Marine Protection Hall: This hall’s centerpiece would be a giant model of the California coast featuring the “marine protected areas” created under Schwarzenegger’s “visionary” Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. True to Schwarzenegger’s’ vision of “marine protected areas” that fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling and spills, pollution, habitat destruction, corporate aquaculture, wave energy projects and military testing, there would be no fishing boats, shore fishermen or tribal gatherers in these marine protected areas. 

However, the “marine protected areas” would be studded with oil rigs, wave energy projects, corporate aquaculture facilities, the yachts of millonaires and billionaires, oil tankers and military planes and ships conducting exercises. 

Around the room would be videos of Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association and chair of the Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast, MLPA officials and advocates, and ocean industrialists praising the “open, transparent and inclusive” MLPA Initiative. 

Side by side with these exhibits would be video screens featuring Tribal members, fishermen and grassroots environmentalists speaking out against the corruption, conflicts of interest and violation of state, federal and international laws under the MLPA Initiative. The exhibit would prominently feature videos of three direct action protests conducted by the Coastal and Klamath Justice Coalitions, including speeches by Georgiana Myers, Klamath Justice Coalition organizer, and Thomas O’Rourke, chairman of the Yurok Tribe, blasting the MLPA’s refusal to respect tribal gathering rights. 

Corporate Greenwashing Hall: Finally, this exhibit would document how politicians from the Republican and Democratic parties, business leaders and corporate environmental NGO leaders greenwashed Schwarzenegger’s war on fish, fishermen, family farmers and Indian Tribes. 

The exhibit’s centerpiece would be a life-size model of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Chief Prosecuting Attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, handing Arnold Schwarzenegger the award for his “environmental advocacy” at the “Riverkeeper’s Annual Fishermen’s Ball” at Pier Sixty on the Hudson River in New York City on April 14, 2010. 

Displayed around the exhibit would be plaques and awards given by politicians and NGO leaders to Schwarzenegger to greenwash his environmental legacy, interspersed with video footage and press releases and articles covering the Governor’s relentless attacks on the Endangered Species Act protections for Central Valley chinook salmon and Delta smelt and his support and endorsement of “Astroturf” groups such as the Latino Water Coalition seeking to increase water exports out of the Delta to Westside growers and Southern California water agencies. 

If the town leaders of Thal, Austria don’t have the money to build these much needed exhibits to properly commemorate the environmental record of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, I suggest that groups and individuals that helped to promote his policies step up to the plate to help fund the historic exhibit. Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the owners of the giant Paramount Farms and huge contributors to Schwarzenegger’s campaigns, the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation and the Western States Petroleum Association are among those who could be solicited to fund this ground-breaking exhibit. 

We can’t fail to take advantage of this unique opportunity to “celebrate” Schwarzenegger’s real environmental legacy!