State hires water contractor rep to help oversee Bay-Delta plan

Delta advocates say King Moon has conflict of interest 

by Dan Bacher 

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), has served to date as the classic example of the egregious conflicts of interest that dominate California water politics. 

While calling for new oil drilling off the California coast, she served as the chair of the Blue Ribbon Task Force for the controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create so-called “marine protected areas” on the South Coast. She also served on the North Coast and North Central Coast panels to create these “marine protected areas.” 

As you can expect, the “marine protected areas” developed under the “leadership” of Reheis-Boyd and other corporate operatives fail to protect California marine waters from oil drilling and spills, pollution, military testing, wave and wind energy projects, corporate aquaculture and all other human impacts upon the ocean other than fishing and gathering. 

Well, move over Reheis-Boyd, and make way for the new “poster girl” of conflicts of interest in California water politics, Laura King Moon! 

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has recruited King Moon, the Assistant General Manager of the State Water Contractors, to assist in the completion of the controversial Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), the plan initiated by state and federal water contractors to allow them to build a peripheral canal or tunnel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. In a letter to Assemblymember Jared Huffman on October 13, Natural Resources Secretary John Laird explained King Moon’s status with DWR. 

“Ms. Moon is working for the California Department of Water Resources, serving on loan from the State Water Contractors until the completion of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan,” said Laird. “She is responsible to and represents DWR solely, and is subject to all DWR rules, protocols and confidentiality agreements.” 

“Ms. Moon’s history with the project, as well as her experience working with the many stakeholders concerned with the BDCP, will be a significant asset to DWR in achieving timely completion of this critical effort,” claimed Laird. 

Delta advocates are outraged by the hiring of King Moon by DWR, charging that she has a conflict of interest in her new position. 

“This is a glaring conflict of interest,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. “DWR is a state agency with responsibility for managing water wisely for all the people of California. Employing someone on loan from a special interest group to advance a planning effort that will benefit that interest group is wildly inappropriate. It sets the fox to guard the henhouse.” 

Jane Wagner-Tyack, Restore the Delta policy analyst, disagrees with Laird’s assessment that Moon’s “history” and “experience” with the State Water Contractors is a “significant asset” to the BDCP. 

“From the beginning of this habitat conservation planning effort, ’stakeholders’ has been synonymous with ‘water contractors,’” said Wagner-Tyack. “The concerns of people in the Delta, recreational and commercial fishing interests, and cities and counties in the Delta region have been systematically ignored or over-ruled. With Moon assisting with communication at DWR, we can expect that to continue.” 

“As a representative of the water contractors, I don’t think it is appropriate that King Moon was hired by DWR to work on the water contractors’ project,” said Dick Pool, administrator of Water for Fish and Secretary of the Golden Gate Salmon Association. “Most of us feel that DWR is way too cozy with the water contractors to start with. Rather than becoming more independent, they continue to represent the water contractors’ interests, to the detriment of all other water users in the state.” 

In fact, Delta residents, family farmers, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, California Indian Tribes and representatives of environmental justice communities have been completely excluded from the BDCP Management Committee that oversees the process. 

News of Moon’s appointment follows Monday’s announcement by five U.S. Northern California Representatives demanding that the U.S. Department of the Interior withdraw from an agreement to continue their involvement in the BDCP. 

Representatives John Garamendi, Doris Matsui, Jerry McNerney, George Miller and Mike Thompson slammed the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for being “developed behind closed doors” and giving water export agencies south of the Delta and in Southern California “unprecedented influence” over the BDCP process. 

In a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the Members of Congress demanded, “Interior should immediately rescind this flawed MOA and work instead to establish a successful BDCP process that is transparent and based on parity, and that genuinely puts the restoration of the Bay-Delta and its fisheries, the needs of local communities, and the quality of local water resources on par with other water supply goals.” 

Delta advocates charge that the peripheral canal, by exporting more Delta water to agribusiness and southern California, would likely lead to the extinction of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species. They also criticize the BDCP’s so-called “habitat restoration” plans for proposing to remove large tracts of Delta farmland, some of the most fertile on the planet, from agricultural production in order to irrigate drainage-impaired land owned by corporate agribusiness interests on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side.