The federal government on February 9 approved a landmark California proposal banning the discharge of more than 22 million gallons of treated vessel sewage to shorelines and shallow marine waters in California every year, drawing praise from environmental and shipping industry groups alike.
U.S. EPA's Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld signed a rule that will finalize EPA's decision and approve a state proposal to ban all sewage discharges from large cruise ships and most other large ocean-going ships to state marine waters along California's 1,624 mile coast from Mexico to Oregon and surrounding major islands.
The action established a new federal regulation banning even treated sewage from being discharged in California's marine waters.
"This is an important step to protect California's coastline," said Governor Jerry Brown. "I want to commend the shipping industry, environmental groups and U.S. EPA for working with California to craft a common sense approach to keeping our coastal waters clean."
"By approving California's 'No Discharge Zone,' EPA will prohibit more than 20 million gallons of vessel sewage from entering the state's coastal waters," said Jared Blumenfeld. "Not only will this rule help protect important marine species, it also benefits the fishing industry, marine habitats and the millions of residents and tourists who visit California beaches each year."
This action strengthens protection of California's coastal waters from the adverse effects of sewage discharges from a growing number of large vessels, according to an announcement from the the U.S. EPA.
"Several dozen cruise ships make multiple California port calls each year while nearly 2,000 cargo ships made over 9,000 California port calls in 2010 alone," the EPA stated. "EPA estimates that the rule will prohibit the discharge of over 22 million of the 25 million gallons of treated vessel sewage generated by large vessels in California marine waters each year, which could greatly reduce the contribution of pollutants still found in treated vessel sewage."
Senator Joe Simitian authored Clean Coast Act
State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) authored Senate Bill 771, the Clean Coast Act that prohibits all commercial ships from dumping hazardous waste, sewage sludge, oily bilge water, "gray water" from sinks and showers, and sewage in state waters. Simitian's SB 771 also required California to petition the federal government for a 'No Discharge Zone' to enforce the bill's anti-dumping provisions.
"This is a great day for the California coast, which is far too precious a resource to be used as a dumping ground," said Simitian. "This 'No Discharge Zone' - the largest in the nation - protects our coastal economy, our environment and our public health."
"California's coastal waters will no longer serve as a sewage pond for big ships," said Cal/EPA Secretary Matthew Rodriquez. "For too long, pollution from these vessels has endangered our marine environment, jeopardized public health and threatened the coastal communities that rely on recreation and tourism dollars. I commend U.S. EPA for helping us ensure that our coastline remains pristine."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has already implemented similar vessel sewage discharge bans in the four California marine sanctuaries that it oversees. Recreational and commercial uses of California's coastal waters are equally important. Seventy-seven percent of the State's population lives on or near the coast and annually, over 150 million visitor-days are spent at California beaches.
California ranks first in the nation as a travel destination and its beaches are the leading destination for tourists. California's commercial and recreational fishing industry also relies upon clean water to help preserve and restore coastal fisheries.
Under the Clean Water Act, states may request EPA to establish vessel sewage no-discharge zones if necessary to protect and restore water quality. In 2006, following passage of three state statutes designed to reduce the effects of vessel discharges to its waters, the State of California asked EPA to establish the sewage discharge ban.
After releasing the proposed rule in 2010, EPA considered some 2,000 comment letters from members of the public, environmental groups, and the shipping industry before finalizing the regulation.
"California's economic health is tied to the health of our oceans and beaches," said Charles Hoppin, Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board. "Pollution from cargo and cruise ships directly threatens public health, marine life and our economy. This led to our request to declare the whole coastline a no discharge zone so that we could provide equal water pollution protection along our precious coastline."
Today's prohibition is unprecedented in geographical scope. In contrast to prior no-discharge zones under the Clean Water Act, which apply in very small areas, the new ban applies to all coastal waters out to 3 miles from the coastline and all bays and estuaries subject to tidal influence. Other California no discharge zones for ten bays and marinas remain in effect for all vessels.
Shipping industry and environmental groups praise ban
Both the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association and environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth applauded the ban.
Consistent with the State's request, the prohibition applies to all passenger ships larger than 300 tons and to all other oceangoing vessels larger than 300 tons with sewage holding tank capacity.
"The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association shares the concern for protection of California's marine environment. Our member companies are dedicated to the facilitation of trade while also minimizing any associated environmental impacts," said John Berge, Vice President of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.
"Big ships make for big pollution but unfortunately, responsible disposal of sewage from ships hasn't always been a given in California," said Marcie Keever, oceans and vessels project director at Friends of the Earth. "The actions taken by the U.S. EPA, the State of California, and the thousands of Californians who supported the Clean Coast Act mean that cruise lines and the shipping industry can no longer use California's valuable coastal and bay waters as their toilet."
In addition to the discharge prohibition, other vessel sewage discharges will continue to be regulated under existing Clean Water Act requirements, which generally require sewage to be treated by approved marine sanitation devices prior to discharge. The State is also continuing to implement and strengthen other efforts to address sewage discharges from smaller vessels, including recreational boats, to state waters.
"California's coastal waters are home to a wide variety of unique, nationally important marine environments that support rich biological communities and a wide range of recreational and commercial activities," the EPA stated. "Four national marine sanctuaries, a national monument, portions of six national parks and recreation areas, and more than 200 other marine reserves and protected areas have been established to protect California's unique marine resources."
Greater effort needed to fully protect ocean and Delta from pollution and water diversions
I laud Senator Joe Simitian for sponsoring the legislation banning sewage discharge from cruise ships - and for the Brown and Obama administrations for implementing the "No Discharge Zone" to clean up the state's ocean waters.
However, while this is a good first step, much more action is urgently needed to protect California's marine waters and the San Francisco-Bay Delta Estuary, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. California's controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative creates so-called "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, corporate aquaculture, wind and wave energy projects, military testing and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering.
The questionable "marine protected areas" that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2001 were created under the "visionary leadership" of Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association and chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast. Now that fishermen have been kicked off large areas of the South Coast, Reheis-Boyd has been relentlessly lobbying for new oil drilling off the California coast, the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and the evisceration of environmental laws.
The failure of the MLPA Initiative to comprehensively protect California waters occurs at a time when the military is planning to expand its training exercises in West Coast waters. A broad coalition of conservation and tribal organizations on January 26 sued the Obama administration for failing to protect thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training exercises along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington.
Earthjustice, representing the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the San Juans, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and People For Puget Sound, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service's approval of the Navy's training activities in its Northwest Training Range Complex.
"These training exercises will harm dozens of protected species of marine mammals-southern resident killer whales, blue whales, humpback whales, dolphins, and porpoises-through the use of high-intensity mid-frequency sonar," said Steve Mashuda, an Earthjustice attorney representing the groups. "The Fisheries Service fell down on the job and failed to require the Navy to take reasonable and effective actions to protect them." (http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/30/groups-sue-over-navy-sonar-impacts-on-marine-mammals-94811)
One of the reasons why this and similar lawsuits are so necessary is because the "marine protected areas" created under the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative - in reality "no fishing zones" that are falsely portrayed by MLPA advocates as "Yosemites of the Sea" and "underwater parks" - fail to protect the ocean from military testing and all other human impacts on the ocean than fishing.
Ironically, the same Brown and Obama administrations that announced the welcome ban on sewage discharge from larger cruise ships on February 9 are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal to export more California Delta water to southern California and corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
Delta advocates believe the construction of the peripheral canal will lead to the extinction of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon, southern resident killer whales and other imperiled species.
So while state and federal officials tout the creation of the New "No Discharge Zone" off the California coast, they are proceeding forward with a canal plan that will kill many more fish and other species that the MLPA Initiative's "marine protected areas" or the "No Discharge Zone" would ever "save."
More Information:
To view the electronic media kit for the U.S. EPA announcement including photos and a copy of the final rule please visit: http://www.epa.gov/region9/med...
Media Contacts:
U.S. EPA Media Contact: Mary Simms, simms.mary [at] epa.gov, 415-947-4270
Cal/EPA Deborah Hoffman, Director of Communications 916-324-9670 dhoffman [at] calepa.ca.gov Cal/EPA Lindsay VanLaningham, Deputy Director of Communications, 916- 324-9670, LindsayV [at] calepa.ca.gov
State Water Resources Control Board - George Kostyrko, Director of Public Affairs 916- 341-7365 gkostyrko [at] waterboards.ca.gov
Sen. Simitian's office, Lisa Gardiner, lisa.gardiner [at] sen.ca.gov, 916-651-4011
Marcie Keever, Friends of the Earth, Oceans & Vessels Project Director, 415.544.0790 x223, mkeever [at] foe.org
We do not believe that the proposed Delta Plan and EIR will result in the recovery of fish and other wildlife in the Delta; it will not stabilize and recover the Delta in a way that provides an ongoing and healthy environment for fish and other species; and it will not provide a sustainable foundation for a viable Delta community," according to the Environmental Water Caucus.
The EWC comments were issued at a time when the Obama and Brown administrations are pushing for the construction of a peripheral canal or tunnel to export California Delta water to southern California and corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Delta advocates believe that the construction of the canal will lead to the extinction of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon, southern resident killer whales and other imperiled species.
Dan
For Immediate Release: February 8, 2012
A Realistic Plan for the Delta
In late 2009, the legislature created the Delta Reform Act which established a suite of requirements and basic goals for the Sacramento-San Joaquin-San Francisco Bay Delta. These included a more reliable water supply for California, protecting, restoring and enhancing the Delta ecosystem, and developing a legally enforceable Delta Plan to achieve these goals. The newly created Delta Stewardship Council has now produced a Delta Plan and a 2,300 page Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that fails to achieve these basic goals.
The Environmental Water Caucus (EWC) and our many affiliated organizations has responded with written comments to that proposed EIR and told the Delta Stewardship Council that they need to reissue an Environmental Impact Report that meets the mandates of the state legislature. This revised EIR should be fact based and clearly establish the specific actions that will put the Bay Delta and its declining fish and wildlife on the road to recovery. In a nutshell, here's what the EWC said:
• "Water supply reliability" does not mean increased exports from the Delta, and is shorthand for a policy to increase Delta water exports for the benefit of San Joaquin Valley farming corporations and Southern California developers.
• The proposed Delta Plan is patently inconsistent with the increased Delta outflows recommended by the State Water Board for the health of the Delta.
• The EIR abrogates the Delta Stewardship Council's duty to carefully evaluate and protect public trust resources.
• The proposed Delta Plan fails to enforce existing water quality laws.
• The provisions of the secretly negotiated Monterey Amendments need to be analyzed for their impact on water supply for Southern California.
• There is a complete lack of quantifiable data to evaluate the alternatives discussed.
• It is inconceivable that such a major undertaking as the Delta Plan so far contains no information on the costs of the alternatives; yet a Proposed Project has been selected with no references to costs or benefits.
• The Environmental Water Caucus' superior alternative should be more accurately reflected in the EIR and then selected as the Proposed Project.
• The Draft EIR should be significantly revised into a legally compliant and enforceable Delta Plan.
We do not believe that the proposed Delta Plan and EIR will result in the recovery of fish and other wildlife in the Delta; it will not stabilize and recover the Delta in a way that provides an ongoing and healthy environment for fish and other species; and it will not provide a sustainable foundation for a viable Delta community.
The Delta Stewardship Council needs to produce at least two additional components for this to be considered an adequate and legal EIR: 1. A water availability analysis to determine if sufficient water is even available for each of the analyzed alternatives, and;
2. A socio/economic analysis to provide the information fundamental to allocating a scarce resource and to balancing the public trust, as required by the State of California.
The EWC alternative, based on the EWC report California Water Solutions Now (http://www.ewccalifornia.org/home/index.php), which was presented to the Council and "evaluated" in the EIR, calls for the following specific actions:
• Reduced exports from the Delta
• Increased flows for the Delta and its connected Central Valley rivers
• An aggressive statewide water conservation and efficiency program to partially compensate for the reduced exports
• Increased reliance on regional water solutions
• Elimination of irrigation water for impaired lands in the San Joaquin Valley
• Maximum use of existing facilities and improved fish screens in the Delta
• Restoration of approximately 18,000 acres of Delta ecosystems
• Reinforcement of existing core levees to higher standards in order to reduce the impacts from projected sea level rise or potential earthquake risks
• Examination of Tulare Basin water storage
• Floodplain and river integration
• Fish passage for Central Valley rim dams
• Cold water for fish in those reservoirs
• User fees to fund agencies,
The combination of these EWC recommended actions would eliminate the need to construct a Peripheral Canal or Tunnel under the Delta and the need for major new surface storage dams as contemplated by the Delta Plan and the upcoming water bond.
These two actions alone would save taxpayers at least $20 billion in new costs.
That would be a more realistic and economically viable Delta Plan.
Contacts:
Bill Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Deltakeep [at] me.com, 209-464-5067
Jonas Minton, Planning and Conservation League, jminton [at] pcl.org, 916-719-4049
Jim Metropulos, Sierra Club California, jim.metropulos [at] sierraclub.org, 916-557-1100, Ext 109
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta, Barbara [at] restorethedelta.org, 209-479-2053
Dr. Mark Rockwell, Endangered Species Coalition, Federation of Fly Fishers,
mrockwell [at] stopextinction.org, 530-432-0100
Tom Stokely, California Water Impact Network, tstokely [at] att.net, 530-524-0315
Nick Di Croce, Lead Author: California Water Solutions Now, troutnk [at] aol.com, 805-688-7813
Delta group blasts canal plan as 'Brown legacy, green disaster
by Dan Bacher
In his State of the State address on January 18, Governor Jerry Brown confirmed what everybody knew anyway: the construction of conveyance (a peripheral canal or tunnel) to export more Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta water to corporate agribusiness and southern California is a huge priority for him.
"Last week, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar - met here in Sacramento with those in my administration who are working to complete the Bay Delta Conservation Plan," proclaimed Brown. "Together we agreed that by this summer we should have the basic elements of the project we need to build."
"This is something my father worked on and then I worked on-decades ago. We know more now and are committed to the dual goals of restoring the Delta ecosystem and ensuring a reliable water supply," he said. (http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=17386)
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, took issue with his repetition of the canard about how the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) project "will ensure water for 25 million Californians and for millions of acres of farmland as well as a hundred thousand acres of new habitat for spawning fish and other wildlife."
"Ensure water for 25 million Californians to do what?" she asked. "Flush their toilets? Water their lawns? Grow more permanent crops or housing developments in the desert? We don't want anyone to go thirsty. But the issue here is not thirst. It is the preservation of water-wasting lifestyles that California can't sustain."
Barrigan-Parrilla also criticized Brown for greenwashing the destruction of the Delta when he touted the so-called "habitat restoration" planned for the Delta under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.
"And by the way, Governor, how many thousands of acres of Delta farmland are you prepared to take out of production to create new habitat for which there won't be enough water for anyway? After all a new pipe will not make more water for the system," said Barrigan-Parrilla.
Ironically, the BDCP aims to take out of production some of the most fertile agricultural land on the planet - in order to deliver more water to subsidized corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that are farming selenium-laced, drainage-impaired land, soil that should have never been irrigated!
Delta advocates believe the construction of the peripheral canal would result in the extinction of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species, due to increased water exports from the estuary.
Shock therapy on the Delta
In the same "Delta flows" newsletter, Barrigan-Parrilla made a great comparison between a pattern revealed by independent journalist Naomi Klein in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and state-federal plans to build the canal.
"Journalist Naomi Klein traces a pattern in which economic 'shock therapy' is used to gain control for large-scale corporate enterprises when the public is disoriented by wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters," said Barrigan-Parrilla. "Klein's book reads like a catalog of situations in which corporate interests have waited in the wings and set the stage to take advantage of some kind of disaster."
In her book, Klein states, "I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, 'disaster capitalism.'"
For the past five years, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has been setting the stage that way for southern Central Valley agribusiness to profit from a predicted disaster in the Delta, according to Barrigan-Parrilla.
"Nothing would serve their purposes as well as a flood or seismic event that gave them a clean slate in the Delta. And if they can't have the disaster itself, threatening the public with disaster can work almost as well," she stated.
Barrigan-Parrilla noted that the PPIC" is at it again, "cherry-picking data and misrepresenting facts" to support a major transformation of the Delta benefitting people who want water somewhere else.
"As usual, their latest report, 'Transitions for the Delta Economy,' is presented as an academic project, funded by The Watershed Science Center at UC Davis. But there's some laundering going on here," she revealed. "Page 62 of the report explains that the study was paid for by the Delta Solutions program funders, which once again includes the Stephen Bechtel Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation."
"So it seems this time rather than checks going directly to PPIC from these pro-peripheral canal foundations, checks floated through the University and then to PPIC. Restore the Delta believes this is a worsening scenario because the average person will simply believe that the study was financed by an unbiased educational institution without a hidden agenda. And if there is nothing to hide, then why aren't the funders on the cover?" Barrigan-Parrilla concluded.
It is no coincidence that the Resources Legacy Fund and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, two of the three funders of the PPIC report promoting the construction of the peripheral canal, are also funding Arnold Schwarzenegger's privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. The Brown administration, rather than doing the right thing, has forged ahead not only with Schwarzenegger's BDCP process, but with his MLPA Initiative also.
The initiative is a corrupt process, overseen by a big oil lobbyist, marina developer, coastal real estate executive, agribusiness hack and other corporate operatives with many conflicts of interest, that directly parallels the equally corrupt and corporate-controlled Bay Delta Conservation Plan.
The MLPA Initiative creates so-called "marine protected areas," supported by Safeway Stores, Walmart and the Western States Petroleum Association, that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, wave and wind energy projects and all other human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering.
In one of the most overt conflicts of interest in California history, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the "august body" that designed the "marine protected areas" that went into effect on the Southern California Coast on January 1. Reheis-Boyd, a big oil industry lobbyist advocating for new offshore drilling off the California coast, the Keystone XL pipeline and the gutting of environmental laws, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast, as well as "serving" on the North Central Coast and North Coast Task Forces.
The Packard Foundation and four other "non-profits" donated a total of $20 million to fund the MLPA Initiative. The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation received the funds from these foundations to implement the unpopular MLPA process.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation contributed $8.2 million to fund the MLPA process. Julie E. Packard, the executive director and founder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the foundation.
The Laguna Beach-based Marisla Foundation, founded by Getty Oil heiress Anne Getty Earhart, gave $3 million over several years. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation donated $7.4 million, the Keith Campbell Foundation contributed $1.2 million and the Annenberg Foundation donated $200,000.
All of this money was dumped into the Resources Legacy Foundation to kick recreational anglers, commercial fishermen and seaweed gatherers, among the most vocal advocates of fishery restoration and true environmental protection and the most fervent opponents of the peripheral canal, off the water in a disgusting case of corporate greenwashing. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/02/18/the-corporate-money-behind-the-mlpa-initiative)
In both the BDCP and MLPA Initiative fiascos, corporate interests have waited in the wings and set the stage to take advantage of some kind of disaster, either real or imagined, as Naomi Klein so eloquently pointed out in her book. In the BDCP, the alleged impending "disaster" is an earthquake or a catastrophic drought.
In the MLPA Initiative, the looming "disaster" is alleged "overfishing" by sustainable hook-and-line recreational and commercial fishermen, even though a peer reviewed study by Science magazine published on July 31, 2009 (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/01/18613625.php) concluded that the California Current ecosystem, the most heavily regulated fishery on the entire planet, had the least exploited and healthiest fishery and marine ecosystem of any region in the world studied.
Meanwhile, the "marine protected areas" fail to protect California marine waters from the most pressing problems they face - increased pollution, ocean industrialization, military testing and massive water exports out of the Bay-Delta Estuary, an estuary that dozens and dozens of anadromous and marine fish species depend on for their survival.
If you like the "Shock Doctrine," you'll definitely like the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) and the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative corporate greenwashing processes!
In his State of the State Address on January 18, Governor Jerry Brown emphasized his commitment to fast-tracking the construction of the peripheral canal under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), a Nineteenth Century "solution" to Twenty-First Century problems.
Brown said that water is a "huge issue we must tackle" - and then greenwashed the BDCP process by claiming it will somehow "restore" the Delta ecosystem and create "new habitat for spawning fish and other wildlife."
Brown proclaimed, "Last week, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar - met here in Sacramento with those in my administration who are working to complete the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.
Together we agreed that by this summer we should have the basic elements of the project we need to build. This is something my father worked on and then I worked on-decades ago. We know more now and are committed to the dual goals of restoring the Delta ecosystem and ensuring a reliable water supply.
This is an enormous project. It will ensure water for 25 million Californians and for millions of acres of farmland as well a hundred thousand acres of new habitat for spawning fish and other wildlife. To get it done will require time, political will and countless permits from state and federal agencies. I invite your collaboration and constructive engagement."
Ironically, the theme of his speech was "California on the Mend." Delta advocates oppose the construction of the peripheral canal because it will lead to the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other fish species.
This canal won't "mend" imperiled Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations; it will only exacerbate the ecosystem collapse caused by record water exports from the Delta in recent years!
The plan will not only greenwash the destruction of Delta fish, but will remove vast tracts of Delta farmland, some of the most fertile on the planet, from production in order to increase water exports to corporate agribusiness interests farming drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
Again, removing good land from production in order to irrigate bad land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, land that should have never been irrigated, is hardly "mending" California!
Not only would the canal be environmentally destructive, but it would be enormously expensive. A draft economic report by Steven Kasower of the Strategic Economic Applications Company, released to the California Legislature in 2009, revealed that the costs for the construction of a peripheral canal around the California Delta or a tunnel under the estuary would be much higher than previously estimated, ranging from $23 billion to $53.8 billion depending upon the type of conveyance facility. (http://yubanet.com/california/Op-Ed-Dan-Bacher-Peripheral-Canal-Would-Cost-23-to-53-8-Billion.php)'
"The peripheral canal will only cause more destruction," summed up Caleen Sisk-Franco, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe at a Tribal Water Summit in December 2009. "Our efforts should be instead focused on cleaning up the water to the point where we can drink the water in our rivers and streams."
Record Delta exports and fish kills aren't 'mending' the ecosystem
In his address, Brown claimed, "California is on the mend," touting his "accomplishments" in 2011.
"Last year, we were looking at a structural deficit of over $20 billion," Brown stated. "It was a real mess. But you rose to the occasion and together we shrunk state government, reduced our borrowing costs and transferred key functions to local government, closer to the people. The result is a problem one fourth as large as the one we confronted last year."
However, the "mending" Brown spoke of doesn't appear to apply to the Brown administration's management of Delta fisheries and California water.
The Brown and Obama administrations authorized the export of a record amount of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in the 2011 water year. The water export total, including water diverted by the Contra Costa Canal and North Bay Aqueduct, was 6,633,000 acre-feet in 2011 - 163,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,470,000 acre-feet set in 2005, according to DWR data.
The record pumping from the Delta in 2011 - used to fill billionaire Stewart Resnick's Kern Water Bank and southern California reservoirs - resulted in a huge, unprecedented fish kill at the Delta pumps. Agency staff "salvaged" a total of 11,158,025 fish in the Delta water pumping facilities between January 1 and September 7, 2011 alone. Scientists estimate that the actual amount of fish lost in the pumps is 5 to 10 times the "salvage" numbers.
Approximately 9 million Sacramento splittail, the largest number ever recorded, were "salvaged" during this period. The previous record salvage number for the splittail, a native minnow found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, was 5.5 million in 2006.
These unprecedented water exports and fish killed in the Delta pumps hardly can be described as "mending" the Delta. By exporting a record amount of water and killing a record number of fish, the Brown and Obama administrations surpassed even the Schwarzenegger and Bush administrations in their total disregard for the Delta ecosystem and the public trust.
With a record like this, how are we to possibly believe that the Bay Delta Conservation Plan will "restore" the Delta ecosystem and create "new habitat for spawning fish and other wildlife?"
The BDCP Management Committee that oversees the plan has completely excluded Delta residents, family farmers, Indian Tribes, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, conservationists, environmental justice advocates, elected officials and business owners.
At the same time, the Department of Water Resources has hired two employees of powerful water contractors, Laura King Moon of the State Water Contractors Association and Susan Ramos of the Westlands Water District, to help develop the plan to build the peripheral canal (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/12/14/westlands-official-working-for-dwr-on-delta-plan). If this isn't an overt conflict of interest, I don't know what is.
MLPA Initiative doesn't 'mend' the ocean
While presiding over record water exports and pushing for the construction of the peripheral canal, Governor Jerry Brown has also continued the abysmal environmental legacy of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger by forging ahead with the corrupt Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative process. The MLPA Initiative is a parody of "protection," since it creates "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, military testing, wind and wave energy projects, corporate aquaculture and all other human impacts other than fishing and gathering.
The illegitimacy of the privately funded process is demonstrated by the alarming fact that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to create "marine protected areas" on the South Coast. Reheis-Boyd, a strong supporter of new oil drilling off the West Coast, the Keystone XL Pipeline and the gutting of environmental laws, also served on the North Coast and North Central Coast MLPA panels. What is a big oil lobbyist doing overseeing the creation of "marine protected areas" in California? (http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/02/the-oil-industrys-marine-reserves)
Brown's claim that "California is on the mend" is false when you review his 2011 environmental record, including his forging ahead with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's BDCP and MLPA Initiative fiascos, record Delta water exports and record fish kills in the Delta pumps.
Restore the Delta is challenging the accuracy and value of the Public Policy Institute's controversial "report" on the Delta, "Transitions for the Delta Economy," funded by the Stephen Bechtel Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund and David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
In the report's summary, the Public Policy Institute (PPIC) proclaimed, "Enormous changes-from natural forces to management decisions-are coming to California's fragile Delta region and will have broad effects on its residents. This report finds that in the first half of this century, the Delta as a whole is likely to experience a loss of 1 percent of economic activity as a result of these changes. It also identifies planning priorities for managing the Delta's future."
After reviewing the report, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta (http://restorethedelta.org), commented, "It is disheartening that the report fails to fully and properly analyze Delta water quality, current project proposals, and the real Delta economy."
Barrigan-Parrilla emphasized that the PPIC report assumes that the new "dual conveyance" system, more commonly known to Californians as the peripheral canal/tunnel, will only divert 4.9 million acre feet of Delta water, despite the reality that water contractors will have difficulty justifying the sale of billions of dollars in new revenue bonds to finance the project if they are going to receive a significant smaller share of Delta water.
Conner Everts with the Southern California Watershed Alliance noted, "Southern California rate payers cannot afford to pay more and more to Metropolitan Water District for an unsustainable water supply. Regional self sufficiency, which can be achieved through conservation, storm water and reuse projects, is a much more affordable way to make more water for Southern California water users."
Restore the Delta policy analyst Jane Wagner-Tyack quipped, "The report is so out of touch with reality that it actually places the new Stockton water supply project under water because the authors have decided that the way to fix the Delta is to permanently flood it. By depriving Stockton of a water supply, it seems that someone has made a decision to relocate the Delta's largest urban population of 300,000 residents somewhere else."
Barrigan-Parrilla said that despite multiple attempts by Delta water agency representatives, Delta engineers, levee experts trained at other renowned universities, economists, and Delta advocates, the authors of the PPIC reports on the Delta have rebuffed attempts to incorporate local input into their research. The report's writers are Josué Medellín-Azuara, Ellen Hanak, Richard Howitt, and Jay Lund, with research support from Molly Ferrell, Katherine Kramer, Michelle Lent, Davin Reed, and Elizabeth Stryjewski.
"The PPIC models regarding salinity changes in the Delta and how such changes would alter our economy are flawed," Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. "If people in California want to know the real value of the Delta economy presently and how exporting water could destroy it, they should read the Economic Sustainability Plan recently published by the Delta Protection Commission - a rigorously reviewed document produced by experts who know the Delta best."
PPIC tries to hide funding by Bechtel, Packard and Resources Legacy
Barrigan-Parrilla noted that while the cover states the report was funded by The Watershed Science Center at UC Davis, page 62 of the report explains that the study was paid for by the Delta Solutions program funders, that once again includes the Stephen Bechtel Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
"So it seems this time rather than checks going directly to PPIC from these pro peripheral canal foundations, checks floated through the University and then to UC Davis," said Barrigan-Parrilla. "Restore the Delta believes this is a worsening scenario because the average person will simply believe that the study was financed by an unbiased educational institution without a hidden agenda. And if there is nothing to hide, then why aren't the funders on the cover?
According to the Bechtel Foundation's website (http://www.sdbjrfoundation.org), "Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. created the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation in 1957 to improve the quality of life for Californians by addressing selected issues that challenge the health and prosperity of the state. In addition to his leadership of the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and the Stephen Bechtel Fund, Mr. Bechtel is Chairman Retired and a Director of Bechtel Group, Inc."
The Brown and Obama administrations are currently fast-tracking Arnold Schwarzenegger's Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build a peripheral canal in order to export more Delta water to southern California and corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Delta advocates believe the construction of peripheral canal or tunnel would result in the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species.
Do PPIC's authors live in a parallel universe?
The PPIC report's assumption that the new peripheral canal/tunnel will only divert 4.9 million acre feet of Delta water is mind boggling, considering that exports from the Delta have reached record levels well over 4.9 million acre feet annually over the past 10 years. The Brown and Obama administrations exported a record amount of water from the Delta in 2011.
The annual export total, including water diverted by the Contra Costa Canal and North Bay Aqueduct, was 6,633,000 acre-feet in 2011 - 163,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,470,000 acre-feet set in 2005, according to DWR data. The annual export total, excluding water diverted by the Contra Costa Canal and North Bay Aqueduct, was 6,520,000 acre-feet in 2011 - 217,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,303,000 acre-feet set in 2005.
Are we to believe that the state water contractors are going to agree to the building of an enormously expensive peripheral canal that would actually divert less water from the Delta than the record levels that were delivered to southern California and San Joaquin Valley agribusiness in 2011? The PPIC report authors apparently live in a parallel universe devoid of science, logic and facts.
The record pumping from the Delta in 2011 - used to fill billionaire Stewart Resnick's Kern Water Bank and southern California reservoirs - resulted in a huge, unprecedented fish kill at the Delta pumps. Agency staff "salvaged" a total of 11,158,025 fish in the Delta water pumping facilities between January 1 and September 7, 2011 alone. Scientists estimate that the actual amount of fish lost in the pumps is 5 to 10 times the "salvage" numbers.
A horrific 8,985,009 Sacramento splittail, the largest number ever recorded, were "salvaged" during this period. The previous record salvage number for the splittail, a native minnow found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, was 5.5 million in 2006.
There is no doubt that the Brown administration has eclipsed the Schwarzenegger administration's abysmal environmental legacy by exporting a record amount of water from the Delta and killing record numbers of fish in the Delta pumps in 2011.
The MLPA/peripheral canal connection
Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown and Natural Resources Secretary John Laird are not only continuing Schwarzenegger's mad drive to build a peripheral canal, but they have forged ahead with Schwarzenegger's privately funded Marine Life Protection Act" (MLPA) Initiative. The initiative is a corrupt process, overseen by a big oil lobbyist, marina developer, coastal real estate executive, agribusiness hack and other corporate operatives with many conflicts of interest, that creates so-called "marine protected areas" on the California coast.
And guess who is funding the MLPA fiasco? The Resources Legacy Fund and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, two of the three funders of the recent PPIC report promoting the construction of the peripheral canal, are also funding the MLPA Initiative! The initiative creates "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, wave and wind energy projects and all other human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering.
In one of the most overt conflicts of interest in California history, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the "august body" that designed the "marine protected areas" that went into effect on the Southern California Coast on January 1. Reheis-Boyd, a big oil industry lobbyist advocating for new offshore drilling off the California coast, the Keystone XL pipeline and the gutting of environmental laws, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast, as well as "serving" on the North Central Coast and North Coast Task Forces.
The Packard Foundation and four other "non-profits" donated a total of $20 million to fund the MLPA Initiative. The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a shadowy organization that North Coast environmental leader John Lewallen describes as a "money laundering operation" for corporate money, received the funds from these foundations to implement the unpopular MLPA process.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation contributed $8.2 million to fund the MLPA process. Julie E. Packard, the executive director and founder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the foundation.
The Laguna Beach-based Marisla Foundation, founded by Getty Oil heiress Anne Getty Earhart, gave $3 million over several years. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation donated $7.4 million, the Keith Campbell Foundation contributed $1.2 million and the Annenberg Foundation contributed $200,000.
All of this money was dumped into the Resources Legacy Foundation to kick recreational anglers, commercial fishermen and seaweed gatherers, the most vocal advocates of fishery restoration and true environmental protection and the most fervent opponents of the peripheral canal, off the water in a disgusting case of corporate greenwashing. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/02/18/the-corporate-money-behind-the-mlpa-initiative)
Assemblymember Alyson Huber's bill to prohibit the construction of a peripheral canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta without a full fiscal analysis and a vote of the state legislature failed in committee on Tuesday, January 10.
The bill vote in the Assembly Water Parks and Wildlife Committee was 5 ayes and 7 nos, with 1 member not in attendance.
However, Huber, a Democrat from El Dorado Hills, noted that the bill made significant progress over last year when the same bill, SB 550, failed to get a second to the motion to vote on it.
"Although my Delta protection bill, AB 550, was unsuccessful, it succeeded in getting support from the Water Parks & Wildlife Chair, Jared Huffman, and bipartisan support from 4 other committee members," said Huber.
"We have made great progress from last year and I am still committed to pressing for a full fiscal analysis and a vote of the legislature before any Delta water conveyance program can move forward," said Huber.
AB 550 would "prohibit the construction and operation of a peripheral canal from diminishing or negatively affecting the water supplies, water rights, or quality of water for water users within the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed, or imposing any new burdens on infrastructure within, or financial burdens on persons residing in, the Delta or the Delta watershed," according to the bill text.
Tracy Chimenti, a Penryn mandarin farmer and recreational angler who attended the hearing, said, "I supported the bill because it gives the Legislature a chance to analyze the fiscal impacts and true cost of the project so a rational decision can be made in the open."
"I oppose the canal because from the economic standpoint, it is a multi-billion dollar boondoggle," said Chimenti. "As a small farmer, I try to use the most cost effective way to grow fruit."
He also opposes the canal because of the dramatic impacts it would have on fish populations and the environment.
"Taking more water from the Delta in an alternate flow regime will simply damage the sport fishery and native fish populations," emphasized Chimenti. "On top of that, the many fishing businesses that Delta and Central Valley fisheries support would go down the tubes with the construction of the canal."
Supporters of the bill included Restore the Delta, Food and Water Watch, the California Delta Chambers, Central Delta Water Agency, City of Lodi, City of Stockton, the Rio Vista Chamber Commerce, South Delta Water Agency, Wilson Farms and Vineyards and numerous other groups and individuals.
"Restore the Delta maintains that the people of California deserve to know that due process will take place before tax payers and rate payers are asked to spend billions of dollars on a peripheral canal," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. "It is imperative that our state's Legislature continues to oversee large-scale projects and does not delegate its authority to unelected bureaucrats who are not held accountable by voters."
The Association of California Water Agencies, Westlands Water District, the State Water Contractors, Kern County Water Agency, Santa Clara Valley Water Agency, Metropolitan Water District, County of Los Angeles and numerous others receiving water exports from the Delta opposed the bill.
In a letter to Huber, these agencies stated, "We view AB 550 as a threat to achieving the co-equal goals of ecosystem restoration and reliable water supplies in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Most importantly, your legislation will undermine water supply reliability throughout California and will threaten jobs and the economic health of three quarters of the state's population residing south of the Delta. AB 550 is a blatant repeal of the historic Delta/water management legislation enacted in November 2009 that created a path towards new Delta conveyance."
The Brown and Obama administrations are currently fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build a peripheral canal in order to export more Delta water to southern California and corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Delta advocates believe the construction of peripheral canal or tunnel would result in the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species.
Advocates of openness and transparency in government believe that the BDCP, like the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create so-called "marine protected areas" on the California coast, is a corrupt process filled with numerous conflicts of interest. For example, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association and a strong advocate for new offshore oil drilling, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force that developed the "marine protected areas" that went into effect in Southern California ocean waters on January 1.
Likewise, an employee of the Westlands Water District is currently working "on loan" for the Department of Water Resources (DWR) on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the plan initiated by state and federal water contractors to allow them to build a peripheral canal or tunnel.
Documents obtained by this reporter under the California Public Records Act reveal that Susan Ramos, Deputy General Manager of the Westlands Water District, was hired in an inter-jurisdictional "personnel exchange agreement" between the Department of Water Resources and Westlands Water District from November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2012. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/12/14/westlands-official-working-for-dwr-on-delta-plan)
The news of Ramos' hiring followed the alarming disclosure that DWR hired Laura King Moon, the Assistant General Manager of the State Water Contractors, to assist in the completion of the BDCP. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/10/25/state-hires-water-contractor-rep-to-help-oversee-bay-delta-plan/)
"People have come to accept these political moves, without any consideration for the Tribal, fishing, small farming and other communities impacted by these processes, as normal," summed up Michael Preston, spokesman for the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and a UC Berkeley Junior studying Society and the Environment and Native American Studies.
Preston's tribe is now engaged in an ambitious campaign to reintroduce McCloud River winter run chinook salmon from the Rakaira River in New Zealand to the McCloud above Shasta Dam.
Ed Begley Jr., a renowned actor and environmental advocate, will narrate Restore the Delta's groundbreaking documentary film Over Troubled Waters.
"The story of the Delta as told by Delta locals is a must-see for all Californians," said Mr. Begley, working with Media Creations, a regional production company.
"We need to know why this area is worthy of protection. It is a hidden treasure, and with enough water it is a place where fisheries and sustainable agriculture can thrive together once again," said Begley.
Begley's role in the film was announced as the Brown and Obama administrations are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal. Delta advocates oppose the peripheral canal's construction because it would likely result in the extinction of imperiled Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and Sacramento splittail populations.
Ed Begley Jr., a veteran stage, television, and film performer, first came to public attention for his portrayal of Dr. Victor Ehrlich on the long-running hit television series St. Elsewhere, for which he received six Emmy nominations. A few of his feature film credits include Batman Forever, The Accidental Tourist, The In-Laws, and most recently Pineapple Express (a movie that I loved!)
"Having served as the past chair of the Environmental Media Association, Mr. Begley's response to pressing environmental issues is one of action and engagement personally and publicly," according to Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta.
A winner of several environmental awards from national and regional conservation groups, Ed Begley Jr. has endorsed Restore the Delta's work and mission.
"While I am a resident of Southern California, I support the work of Restore the Delta, a broad coalition of Delta residents, farmers, environmentalists, concerned citizens, and business people from throughout California," said Begley. "Restore the Delta is a grassroots organization that advocates for adequate water flows into the Pacific Coast's largest estuary - the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta."
"Restore the Delta is fighting to protect the primary nursery for California's coastal fisheries, including salmon fisheries that support the food chain for Orca whales. Restore the Delta is also fighting to protect water needed by thousands of small family farmers within the Delta - including some of California's oldest farming families who helped to build this state," stated Begley.
Begley emphasized that over the last thirty years, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a once thriving ecosystem that sustains salmon and other fish populations up and down the California Coast, has been in steady decline.
"One of the main causes of the Delta's decline has been the excessive export of water to other areas in the state," he explained. "A great deal of this water has been sent to large-scale corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and in Kern County. But this part of the story regarding the Delta's decline is often overlooked by mainstream media."
As a Southern California resident, Begley noted that there are "many potential programs and resources" that can be put into place to increase their water supply reliability while reducing their dependence on water taken out of the Delta - and he pointed to his own personal efforts to conserve water.
"At my home, I have installed catchment basins so that I can collect rain water each winter for reuse in my garden throughout the year. But we also need to support larger scale water conservation and recycling programs that will enable us to have the water that we need while protecting one of California's most important ecosystems," Begley added.
Over Troubled Waters, the story of the Delta told by Delta locals, is scheduled for release in Spring, 2012. "This project has been initially endorsed by over a dozen individuals and groups, spanning from John McCrae with the rock group CAKE to Congressional representatives, from California legislators to Delta business leaders, and from professional fishermen to regional musicians," said Barrigan-Parrilla.
For more details on Cake's endorsement of Restore the Delta, go to my article in the Sacramento News and Review: http://www.newsreview.com/sacr...
To see the endorsements and learn more about Over Troubled Waters visit http://overtroubledwaters.org/... Staff with Restore the Delta and Media Creations are available for interviews. For more information, contact: Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta, 10100 Trinity Pkwy, Suite 120, Stockton, CA 95219, Email: Barbara [at] Restorethedelta.org, Phone:209-479-2053
2011: a record year for water exports and fish kills
The announcement by Restore the Delta follows a record year for Delta water exports. The annual export total, including water diverted by the Contra Costa Canal and North Bay Aqueduct, was 6,633,000 acre-feet in 2011 - 163,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,470,000 acre-feet set in 2005, according to DWR data.
The annual export total, excluding water diverted by the Contra Costa Canal and North Bay Aqueduct, was 6,520,000 acre-feet in 2011 - 217,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,303,000 acre-feet set in 2005.
The record pumping from the Delta - used to fill the Stewart Resnick-controlled Kern Water Bank and southern California reservoirs - resulted in a huge, unprecedented fish kill at the Delta pumps in 2011. Agency staff "salvaged" a total of 11,158,025 fish in the Delta water pumping facilities between January 1 and September 7, 2011 alone.
A horrific 8,985,009 Sacramento splittail, the largest number ever recorded, were "salvaged" during this period, according to DFG data. The previous record salvage number for the splittail, a native minnow found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, was 5.5 million in 2006.
The fish "salvaged" at the "death pumps" of the state and federal water projects also include hundreds of thousands of threadfin shad, striped bass, American shad, white catfish and other species. DFG data reveals that 742,850 threadfin shad, 514,921 American shad, 496,601 striped bass and 100,373 white catfish were "salvaged" between January 1 and September 7 of this year.
Agency staff also "salvaged" 35,560 Sacramento River spring run and fall run chinooks, 1,642 Central Valley steelhead and 14 green sturgeon in the project facilities during the same period.
Although the salvage counts are certainly alarming, the overall loss of fish in and around the State Water Project and Central Valley Project facilities is believed to be much greater than the salvage counts. The actual loss could be 5 to 10 times the salvage numbers, 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).
At the same time Governor Jerry Brown and Natural Resources Secretary John Laird are forging ahead with the plan to build the peripheral canal after a year of record fish kills and water exports, they are continuing Arnold Schwarzenegger's privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, a process overseen by a big oil industry lobbyist, marina developer, coastal real estate executive, agribusiness hack and other corporate operatives with numerous conflicts of interest.
Assemblymember Alyson L. Huber (D-El Dorado Hills) has re-introduced legislation, A.B. 550, that would prohibit the construction of a peripheral canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta without a full fiscal analysis and a vote of the state legislature.
"Please stand with me as I continue the fight to protect one of our region's most vital natural resources: The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta," said Huber. "I believe this legislation is critical to ensuring oversight over one of the largest infrastructure projects California has seen in decades."
Assembly Bill 550 will be heard in the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife at the State Capitol, Room 437, January 10 at 9 a.m. Space is limited in the hearing room, so please arrive early if you would like a seat.
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, urged people concerned about the future of the largest and most significant estuary on the West Coast of the Americas to attend the hearing and to send a letter in support of the legislation.
"We believe that Assemblymember Huber's bill is one of the most important pieces of proposed legislation for Californians," said Barrigan-Parrilla. "Can California tax payers and water rate payers afford to pay more out of pocket for a project that will benefit a few powerful water district leaders and corporate agribusiness growers? We encourage all RTD members to take the time to support this important piece of legislation."
"With your help we can show that Delta area residents will not stand idle while Southern California water interests attempt to bulldoze their way through the Delta," concluded Huber.
AB 550 would "prohibit the construction and operation of a peripheral canal from diminishing or negatively affecting the water supplies, water rights, or quality of water for water users within the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed, or imposing any new burdens on infrastructure within, or financial burdens on persons residing in, the Delta or the Delta watershed," according to the bill text.
The Brown and Obama administration are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build a peripheral canal in order to export more Delta water to southern California and corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Delta advocates believe the construction of peripheral canal or tunnel would result in the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species.
The BDCP, like the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, is a corrupt process filled with numerous conflicts of interest. Documents obtained by this reporter under the California Public Records Act reveal that Susan Ramos, Deputy General Manager of the Westlands Water District, was hired in an inter-jurisdictional personal exchange agreement between the Department of Water Resources and Westlands Water District from November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2012. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/12/14/westlands-official-working-for-dwr-on-delta-plan)
I applaud Assemblymember Huber for standing up for our fish populations, the Delta and all Californians by sponsoring this legislation to stop the canal!
Send your letter of support to: Honorable Jared Huffman, Chair, Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, 1020 N Street, Suite 160, Sacramento, CA 95814, P.O. Box 94249, Sacramento, CA 94249-00119, FAX: (916) 319-2196
Pasted below, you will find Restore the Delta's letter in support of the bill. Feel free to use it as a template to send your own letter to Assemblymember Jared Huffman.
January 5, 2012
Assemblyman Jared Huffman, Chair
Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee
1020 N. Street, Suite 160
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Assemblyman Huffman:
Restore the Delta supports Assemblywoman Huber's bill AB 550. AB 550 would prohibit the construction of a peripheral canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta without a full fiscal analysis and a vote of the Legislature.
Restore the Delta maintains that the people of California deserve to know that due process will take place before tax payers and rate payers are asked to spend billions of dollars on a peripheral canal. It is imperative that our state's Legislature continues to oversee large-scale projects and does not delegate its authority to unelected bureaucrats who are not held accountable by voters.
Sincerely yours,
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
Executive Director
Restore the Delta
Please send copies of the letter to assemblymember.huber [at] assembly.ca.gov, FAX 916-319-2110. For more information about the campaign against the peripheral canal, go to: http://www.restorethedelta.org.
The abundance of endangered Delta smelt, an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the imperiled Bay-Delta ecosystem, was greater in 2011 than it has been any year since 2001.
Yet state fishery biologists note that population remains a small fraction of historical abundance. "The improvement is likely due in large part to higher than usual Delta outflow which resulted in more and better habitat," according to Marty Gingras, Department of Fish and Game (DFG) fishery biologist, in a press release on December 22.
The high flows resulted in keeping the Delta smelt away from the state and federal pumping facilities in the South Delta, where millions of Sacramento splittail and other fish were killed this year. Only 51 Delta smelt were "salvaged" in the pumping facilities that export water to southern California water agencies and corporate growers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in 2011.
It is exceptionally difficult to determine the actual number of Delta smelt, so DFG biologists use survey data to develop "indices" of the species' abundance, Gingras noted. An index is a number that is likely to vary in direct proportion to abundance.
The Fall Midwater Trawl Survey index of Delta smelt abundance was 343 this year while the index in 2010 was 29 and its record high was 1673 in 1970. "After a decade of record or near-record low annual abundance, the increased number of Delta smelt in 2011 is encouraging," said Gingras.
Delta smelt occur only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. The finger-sized fish was historically one of the most abundant in the Delta, but the species declined dramatically in recent years, due to massive water exports out of the Delta.
It was listed as "threatened" under the California and Federal Endangered Species acts (ESA) in 1993. After a further decline due to increased water exports, the species was designated as "endangered" in 2010 under the California ESA.
Other fish numbers increase over 2010, but still low
The DFG survey also documented an improvement in striped bass, longfin smelt, threadfin shad and American shad indices in 2011, but the numbers of these species are also just a fraction of historical abundance. (http://blogs.esanjoaquin.com/san-joaquin-river-delta/files/2011/12/2011_FMWT_Memo-2.pdf)
The striped bass index was 272 this year, compared to 43 last year and a record high of 19,677 in 1967. This year's index was the highest since 2006.
The longfin smelt index was 477 this year, compared with 191 last year and a record high of 81,737 in 1967. This year's index was the highest since 2006.
The threadfin shad index was 228 this year, compared with 120 last year and a record high 15,267 in 1997. This year's index was the third lowest in the history of the survey.
Finally, the American shad index was 894 this year, compared with 683 last year and a record high of 9,360 in 2003. This year's index was the thirteenth lowest in the survey's history.
"Ongoing efforts to protect and recover the Delta smelt population include research on threats to the species, active management to minimize loss at water diversions under federal ESA biological opinions and a state ESA authorization, development of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, improved water quality, habitat restoration and conservation of genetic diversity through special hatchery-rearing techniques," according to Gingras.
However, Delta advocates counter that the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal to export more water to corporate agribusiness and southern California will actually result in the destruction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations, rather than "protecting and recovering" them. All scientific evidence points to the fact that taking more water out of the system, as the BDCP aims to do, will result in the extinction of Delta and longfin smelt, Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail and other imperiled species.
Why no mention of huge fish Delta fish kill?
Strangely missing from the DFG's press releases is any mention of the fact of the huge, unprecedented fish kill that took place at the Delta pumps this year. That state and federal government agencies "salvaged" a total of 11,158,025 fish in the Delta water pumping facilities between January 1 and September 7, 2011 alone.
A horrific 8,985,009 Sacramento splittail, the largest number ever recorded, were salvaged during this period, according to DFG data. The previous record salvage number for the splittail, a native minnow found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, was 5.5 million in 2006.
The fish "salvaged" at the "death pumps" of the state and federal water projects also include hundreds of thousands of threadfin shad, striped bass, American shad, white catfish and other species. DFG data reveals that 742,850 threadfin shad, 514,921 American shad, 496,601 striped bass and 100,373 white catfish were "salvaged" between January 1 and September 7 of this year.
Agency staff also "salvaged" 35,560 Sacramento River spring run and fall run chinooks, 1,642 Central Valley steelhead and 14 green sturgeon in the project facilities during the same period.
While no comprehensive studies have been conducted on how many of the salvaged fish survive, fish advocates believe that the majority of many species perish during and after the salvage process.
Although the salvage counts are certainly alarming, the overall loss of fish in and around the State Water Project and Central Valley Project facilities is believed to be much greater than the salvage counts. The actual loss could be 5 to 10 times the salvage numbers, 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).
A record year for water exports
The reason for the massive, unprecedented fish kill in the Delta pumps was the record amount of water exported out of the Delta this year by the Brown and Obama administrations. The pumps exported a record 6.5 million acre-feet of water in 2011, while the previous record was 6.3 million acre-feet in 2005.
"One of the reasons for the record-setting pumping is that much of the water this year went to refill the underground Kern Water Bank, largely controlled by billionaire farmer Stewart Resnick, and to the smaller Diamond Valley reservoir, which serves Southern California," according to Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times. (http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19014459 )
Caleen Sisk-Franco, the Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, who is working on an innovative plan to restore winter run chinook salmon to the McCloud River above Lake Shasta, was appalled by the millions of fish killed in the state and federal water export facilities in 2011.
"I am just wondering why it is okay to have the largest fish kill going on in the Delta and no one notices," said Sisk-Franco. "There are more endangered fish killed every day in the Delta pumps that are supposed to be protected. Try catching one of them to eat, and see how fast you get in trouble, but just let them swim into the Delta pumps and no one is trying to save them!"
Sisk-Franco asked, "How many dead fish is too many? Who will speak up for the fish? Everything is connected and soon we will understand what this fish kill means to the human beings."
While the improvement in Delta smelt abundance this year is certainly a positive development, the alarming news about the record fish kill at the pumps this year and state and federal plans to fast-track the construction of an environmentally destructive peripheral canal or tunnel through the Bay Delta Conservation Plan overshadows this welcome information.
Governor Jerry Brown and Natural Resources Secretary John Laird have not only continued the absmal environmental policies of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger by advancing Schwarzenegger's campaigns to build the peripheral canal under the BDCP and to set up controversial "marine protected areas" under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. They have, in fact, exceeded the fish-killing policies of Schwarzenegger by authorizing record water exports and presiding over a record fish kill at the Delta pumps in 2011.
An employee of the Westlands Water District is currently working "on loan" for the Department of Water Resources (DWR) on the 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.
Documents obtained by this reporter under the California Public Records Act reveal that Susan Ramos, Deputy General Manager of the Westlands Water District, was hired in an inter-jurisdictional personal exchange agreement between the Department of Water Resources and Westlands Water District from November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2010.
The contract was extended to run through December 31, 2011 and again to continue through December 31, 2012.
Ramos "will serve as a liaison between all relevant parties surrounding the Delta Habitat Conservation and Conveyance Program (DHCCP) and provide technical and strategic assistance to DWR, in cooperation with all appropriate Federal and State Water Contractors, on a variety of matters based on her experience working with the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, federal contractors and others," according to the agreement (Contract 4600008672).
"Under the direction of Raphael Torres, Ms. Ramos shall work cooperatively with other DWR/DHCCP Executives. Ms. Ramos shall apply her knowledge and experience with State and Federal Water Contactors and/or initiatives as they relate to DHCCP or Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) in support of the success of the DHCCP," the contract continued.
The maximum amount to be paid in the agreement for the entire period is listed as $652,180.54, She will be paid the same monthly labor rate, $17,444.50, as she would be in her position as Deputy General Manager, from March 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012.
Ramos, a former U.S. Bureau of Reclamation official, made $165,000 a year in her job at Westlands in 2009 (http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/110706500_nice-payday-top-westlands-officials).
Why was Ramos, rather than a current state employee, hired for the project?
The justification for contracting out, as provided in the contract signed by Richard Sanchez, the Chief of the DWR's Division of Engineering, on September 14, 2011, is "Ms. Ramos possesses specialized knowledge and has experience working with the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and federal contractors. The technical and strategic assistance that will be provided by the Contractor cannot be performed satisfactorily by State civil service employees."
A phone call and email to the Westlands Water District regarding Ramos' status was not returned.
Westlands, the largest water district in the U.S., is known for the numerous lawsuits that they have launched against fish restoration on the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Trinity rivers and their continual lobbying of the state and federal governments for increased water exports from the California Delta. Corporate growers in the district, located on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, use subsidized water from the federal Central Valley Project to irrigate drainage impaired land laced with selenium and other toxic salts.
Hiring of Westlands official draws fire from conservation groups
News of Ramos' employment by DWR while on loan from Westlands drew outrage from representatives of fishing and environmental groups and Indian Tribes.
Dick Pool, president of Water for Fish, said, "The Department of Water Resources is supposed to be looking out for the water interests of everybody in the state. This and other actions point to the fact that DWR is working with Westlands and a few other water contractors to the detriment of fish and every other water interest."
"Susan Ramos' hiring by the Department of Water Resources is a classic example of the revolving door between government agencies and water districts controlled by mega-corporate farms such as Westlands," said Tom Stokely, Water Policy Analyst for the California Water Impact Network. "It further erodes public confidence at a time when distrust of government is at an all time high. We can be sure the public's interests will not be protected."
News of Ramos working for DWR followed the revelation that recently retired federal judge Oliver Wanger was planning to represent Westlands in a lawsuit filed against it by fishing and environmental groups and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. However, political pressure and a series of negative editorials convinced apparently convinced Wanger to withdraw from the case. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/12/06/wanger-backs-out-of-representing-westlands-water-district)
The news of Ramos' service on loan from Westlands also follows the alarming disclosure that the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) hired Laura King Moon, the Assistant General Manager of the State Water Contractors, to assist in the completion of the controversial Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/10/25/state-hires-water-contractor-rep-to-help-oversee-bay-delta-plan/)
In a letter to Assemblymember Jared Huffman on October 13, Natural Resources Secretary John Laird attempted to explain 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."
Conflicts of interests have become normalized
Michael Preston, spokesman for the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and a UC Berkeley Junior studying Society and the Environment and Native American Studies, commented, "It's outrageous that these conflicts of interests have become normalized."
"People have come to accept these political moves, without any consideration for the Tribal, fishing, small farming and other communities impacted by these processes, as normal," stated Preston.
Preston's tribe is now engaged in a campaign to reintroduce the winter run chinook salmon to the McCloud River above Shasta Dam and to stop a controversial federal plan to raise Shasta Dam.
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, also commented on the latest Brown administration scandal in the context of increasing conflicts of interest and corruption in California water politics.
"I think the hiring of Susan Ramos exemplifies the nexus between corporate agribusiness and government in California and how a very small percent of Californians control the public interest through water," she stated.
"There is a revolving door at the Department of Water Resources for water contractors to move in and out of positions within the Department," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. "It is akin to the way lobbyists move in and out of government positions in Washington D.C. As more Californians learn about how a small group of special interests control our water future, their anger will match that of the general public toward lobbyists."
"A couple of years ago we would encounter a potential conflict of interest every six months. Now we find a new conflict of interest nearly every day," she quipped.
What about transparency?
Advocates of openness and transparency in government contend the cases of Susan Ramos, Oliver Wanger and Laura King-Moon exemplify how corporate interests completely dominate water politics in California at tremendous expense to the public trust.
Ironically, the Brown and Obama administrations recently committed themselves to being more open and transparent regarding the controversial BDCP process.
According to a news release on November 29, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Department of Water Resources announced a "first step" in responding to public comments on a draft Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with California water agencies that "will enhance transparency in developing the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) by speeding access to draft technical documents. This initial step will be followed by additional responses to public comments that have been filed on the MOA."
"Our expectation is that broad stakeholder understanding of its scientific underpinnings will improve their engagement in both the plan and its implementation," claimed Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird. "Fish, farmers and the 25 million average Californians who rely on the San Francisco-San Joaquin Delta for water deserve nothing less."
Laird continued: "One thing is absolutely clear as review of the comments on the MOA have begun -- no one wants even the appearance of a special advantage."
However, if the state and federal governments are so committed to "enhancing transparency" and avoiding creating "even the appearance of a special advantage" under the BDCP, Delta advocates are asking why it required a California Public Records Act Request to find out that Westlands' Deputy Manager was surreptitiously inserted into the Department of Water Resources to guide writing the permit that would give more of the public's water to Westlands?
Supporters of the Delta and transparency in government are now asking, "What else are the state and federal governments hiding?"
"We couldn't make up the numerous conflicts of interests between those who want the water and the Department of Water Resources if we tried," summed up Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla. "Truth once again is stranger than fiction."
Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird on November 5 lauded the release of seven-member Independent Scientific Review Panel's report on the "Effects Analysis component" of the controversial Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), a plan to build a peripheral canal under the guise of a habitat conservation plan.
"The Bay Delta Conservation Plan is without a doubt one of the largest and most complex science-based ecosystem restoration programs ever undertaken," Laird claimed in a statement. "Having a panel of well-respected, independent scientists peer review the adequacy of the many vital science components of this plan and publicly, openly presenting those findings will help set the stage for the many important conversations we will have with stakeholders."
"Also, this independent, peer review helps create a more dynamic, sound plan that will stand the test of nature and time," he gushed.
"This independent panel's recommendations establish an important framework for discussion about how to meet one of the dual goals. We will continue to work with the team to ensure sound scientific justifications for any potential actions. Fish, farms and the 25 million Californians who depend on the Delta for their water deserve nothing less," Laird concluded.
Laird neglected to point out that the only reason why the science plan was released was because of massive outrage by an unprecedented 242 fishing, tribal and environmental organizations, 11 Members of Congress and 17 California Legislators about the lack of transparency and the bias towards water contractors in the BDCP process.
On November 16, an amazing 242 fishing, tribal and environmental organizations signed onto a letter to Laird and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that slammed the top-down process dominated by corporate agribusiness and water agency interests that export water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. To read the entire Environmental Water Caucus letter, go to: http://www.ewccalifornia.org/r...
"The MOA (Memorandum of Agreement) was negotiated behind closed doors and only serves to reinforce the growing awareness that the BDCP is biased in favor of the export water contractor's agenda to increase exports from the Delta and its connected rivers, despite the documented negative impacts those exports have had on endangered fish species, Delta habitats, water quality and public trust values," the letter stated.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on October 24, U.S. Representatives Jerry McNerney (CA-11), George Miller (CA-7), Mike Thompson (CA-1), Doris Matsui (CA-5) ) and John Garamendi (CA-10) asked that the "Memorandum of Agreement" between the Department and water agencies be rescinded. They also said the process must be opened up to include key stakeholders left out of the discussions, including Bay Area, Delta and coastal communities, farmers, businesses, and fishermen. (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/24/18694808.php)
Eleven Members of Congress also slammed the BDCP MOA in a letter to the US Bureau of Reclamation on November 16 (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/11/17/salmon-advocates-praise-members-of-congress-for-delta-water-stand.) The Representatives included George Miller, Jackie Speier, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark, Lynne Woolsey, Pete Stark, Kurt Schrader, Earl Blumenauer, Sam Farr, Michael Thompson and Anna Eshoo.
Even more disturbing than Laird's failure to mention the reason for the document's release is Laird's statement, "We will continue to work with the team to ensure sound scientific justifications for any potential actions." So the science is being used to "justify" already planned "potential actions" - the peripheral canal or tunnel in this completely rigged process?
Laird, like officials in the Schwarzenegger administration that preceded him, is doing his best to greenwash the destruction of the Delta by promoting the Bay Delta Conservation Plan - better described as the "Bad Delta Canal Plan."
Delta advocates oppose the peripheral canal's construction because it will inevitably result in the export of more water from the imperiled Bay-Delta Estuary to Southern California and corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. The peripheral canal, if built, will likely lead to the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Sacramento splittail and green sturgeon.
In addition, a review of the independent science board's membership shows a glaring omission: the lack of any tribal scientists, in spite of the fact that the Yurok Tribe's Natural Resources Department alone has 70 staff in the peak of the fishing season (http://www.deltacouncil.ca.gov/science-board/delta-isb-members). In this way, the BDCP mimics Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Science Advisory Team that failed to include any tribal scientists.
While Governor Jerry Brown in September appointed a Tribal Advisor "to strengthen communication and collaboration between California state government and Native American Tribes," there are no tribal scientists on either the Delta or MLPA science panels.
Of course, the BDCP Management Committee, in a classic example of environmental injustice, has excluded all of the stakeholders who care about restoring the Delta, including California Indian Tribes, Delta residents, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, family farmers and environmental justice advocates.
Congressman Jerry McNerney (CA-11) said he "appreciates" the state and federal government announcement Tuesday to release Delta science studies, but emphasized that it is only "a very small step forward."
The U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Department of Water Resources announced that "key" documents regarding the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) Memorandum of Agreement will be made public via the internet to all parties at the same time.
Delta residents, fishermen, environmentalists, Indian Tribes, family farmers and environmental justice advocates have blasted the BDCP for being a plan to build a peripheral canal or tunnel, designed to export more water to corporate agribusiness and southern California, under the guise of a "Habitat Conservation Plan."
"Having access to documents does not guarantee that the concerns of the Delta communities will be considered, and I am resolved to fight against any plan that includes a peripheral canal," said McNerney.
"The entire process has been conducted in secrecy and without the Delta region represented," he stated. "We need a more steadfast guarantee that our input will be included in the Bay Delta Plan. Any other outcome could cost the Delta communities millions of dollars and countless jobs."
"I continue to stand with the farmers, families and businesses that depend on a healthy Delta for their livelihoods and way of life. A healthy Delta is vital to the health and well-being of our region. Much more must be done to level the playing field and ensure that the needs of the Delta communities are respected," he concluded.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on October 24, McNerney and U.S. Reps. George Miller (CA-7), Mike Thompson (CA-1), Doris Matsui (CA-5) ) and John Garamendi (CA-10) asked that the agreement between the Department and water agencies be rescinded. They also said the process must be opened up to include key stakeholders left out of the discussions, including Bay Area, Delta and coastal communities, farmers, businesses, and fishermen. (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/24/18694808.php)
Eleven Members of Congress also slammed the BDCP MOA in a letter to the US Bureau of Reclamation on November 16 (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/11/17/salmon-advocates-praise-members-of-congress-for-delta-water-stand.) The Representatives included George Miller, Jackie Speier, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark, Lynne Woolsey, Pete Stark, Kurt Schrader, Earl Blumenauer, Sam Farr, Michael Thompson and Anna Eshoo.
"In short, we believe that the MOA must withdrawn, and the state and federal agencies must dramatically recalibrate the BDCP process," the Representatives wrote.
Delta advocates believe the peripheral canal, if built, would lead to the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail and other imperiled fish species.
The Brown and Obama administrations authorized the export of a record 6.5 million acre-feet of water from the Delta in water year 2011. The previous record, set during the Schwarzenegger and Bush administrations, was 6.3 million acre-feet in 2005.
The record exports have resulted in unprecedented numbers of fish killed at the state and federal pumps. The state and federal governments have to date "salvaged" over 11 million fish, including 8 million Sacramento splitttail, but scientific studies reveal that actual loss in the pumping facilities is actually 5 to 10 times the amount of fish "salvaged." (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/09/09/over-11-million-fish-salvaged-in-delta-death-pumps-since-january-1).
State and feds to release Delta studies after massive complaints
by Dan Bacher
The state and federal governments on November 29 announced they plan to release Delta science studies in response to the voluminous comments they received criticizing a controversial agreement that fast-tracks the construction of the peripheral canal under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).
Tuesday's press release from the U.S. Department of Interior claimed that Interior, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Department of Water Resources "announced a first step in responding to public comments on a draft Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with California water agencies that will enhance transparency in developing the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) by speeding access to draft technical documents."
"This initial step will be followed by additional responses to public comments that have been filed on the MOA," Interior noted.
The "public comments" included letters from unprecedented 242 fishing, tribal and environmental organizations, 17 California Legislators and 11 Members of Congress, who slammed the top-down process that is dominated by corporate agribusiness and water agency interests that export water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. To read the entire Environmental Water Caucus letter, go to: http://www.ewccalifornia.org/r...
The letter from the 242 groups stated, "The MOA was negotiated behind closed doors and only serves to reinforce the growing awareness that the BDCP is biased in favor of the export water contractor's agenda to increase exports from the Delta and its connected rivers, despite the documented negative impacts those exports have had on endangered fish species, Delta habitats, water quality and public trust values."
Both Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes and Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird extolled the "virtues" of the plan to build the canal or tunnel to export more water to corporate agribusiness and southern California.
"The Bay Delta Conservation Plan may propose the largest habitat restoration project ever to be undertaken in the United States in the largest and most important estuary on the west coast of the Americas," claimed Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes. "This needs to be done right, and that is why we are announcing our joint commitment that all parties have access to key documents involved in the development of the BDCP."
"Our expectation is that broad stakeholder understanding of its scientific underpinnings will improve their engagement in both the plan and its implementation," said Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird. "Fish, farmers and the 25 million average Californians who rely on the San Francisco-San Joaquin Delta for water deserve nothing less."
Laird continued: "One thing is absolutely clear as review of the comments on the MOA have begun -- no one wants even the appearance of a special advantage. Thus, while other comments on the MOA will be addressed in coming weeks, there is no need to wait on committing to release all documents to all parties at the same time."
The "enhancement" will be finalized in a letter among the controlling agencies in December, according to Interior. The letter will spell out that key BDCP-related documents will be posted on the internet at http://www.BayDeltaConservatio... and made available to all parties for review at the same time. A list of expected release dates will be posted on the website within the week.
I am glad that Laird and Hayes have agreed to releasing all of the controversial BDCP documents "to all parties at the same time." However, I find Laird's comments greenwashing the peripheral canal plan, under the guise of a habitat conservation plan, disturbing.
When he says, "Fish, farmers and the 25 million average Californians who rely on the San Francisco-San Joaquin Delta for water deserve nothing less," Laird echoes the false notion that the only "real stakeholders" regarding the future of the Delta are fish, "farmers" and urban water users, a concept that both the Delta Vision and BDCP fiascos have embodied.
What about Delta residents, boaters, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, California Indian Tribes, conservationists, environmental justice communities, business owners and all of those other people whose lives depend on the health of the Delta and its fish populations? Laird has to date done nothing to include them in the BDCP Management Committee because he apparently considers water exporters and political hacks to be the only "real" stakeholders.
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (http://www.restorethedelta.org), responded to Interior's release by stating, "The BDCP decides to start releasing science documents because they haven't been transparent. So now we are supposed to trust the science that they are selectively releasing - after we were not at the table to see how that 'science" was created. Judge Wanger, the Delta smelt judge who retired a few weeks ago, is now a lawyer for the Westlands Water District (Nothing like the growing nexus between corporations and the judiciary in this country.)"
"Phil Isenberg, chair of the Delta Stewardship Council, is telling everyone that the contractors will settle for a 9000 cfs. pipe to grab Delta water, and (drumroll please), the BDCP, which doesn't have a project, released a job description for a project manager to build the tunnel. Qualifications are: he/she must have worked for one of the water contractor groups that wants to take the water," Barrigan-Parrilla noted.
Laird and Gerald Meral, Deputy Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, have continued the abysmal environmental policies of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in pushing for the construction of a peripheral canal or tunnel through the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.
However, Laird and Hayes have actually eclipsed the Schwarzenegger and Bush administrations in slaughtering Delta fish and Central Valley chinook salmon in the state and federal water project facilities in the South Delta. The Obama and Brown administrations, under the "leadership" of Laird and Hayes, have killed record numbers of Sacramento splittail and other fish in the pumps while exporting record amounts of water out of the Delta this year.
Over 11 million fish, including 9 million Sacramento splittail, have been "salvaged" at the Delta pumps near Tracy in 2011. The previous record salvage number for the splittail, a native minnow found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, was 5.5 million in 2006.
The other 2 million fish "salvaged" at the pumps include striped bass, largemouth bass, Sacramento River spring chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead and other species. Yet the numbers salvaged are just a fraction of the actual loss of fish in the pumps; scientific studies point to the real loss being 5 to 10 times the "salvage" numbers. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/09/09/over-11-million-fish-salvaged-in-delta-death-pumps-since-january-1).
The state and federal water projects pumped a record 6.5 million acre-feet of water from the Delta in 2011. The previous record, set during the Schwarzenegger and Bush administrations, was 6.3 million acre-feet in 2005.
The peripheral canal or tunnel that Laird and Hayes are pushing will only result in the extinction of protected Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and green sturgeon because this "improved conveyance" will inevitably result in increased water exports from an estuary that has been ravaged by the current diversions.
The BDCP is in reality a "Bad Delta Canal Plan," not a "Bay Delta Conservation Plan."
Legislators ask Salazar and Laird to rescind Bay Delta Plan agreement
by Dan Bacher
On November 22, Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) and 16 other Northern California state legislators asked the Department of the Interior and California Resources Agency to rescind the approval of the widely-criticized Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with a select group of water exporters.
The Obama and Brown administrations are continuing to fast-track the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build a peripheral canal or tunnel to export more water to corporate agribusiness and southern California, in spite of tremendous risk to Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations and Delta communities.
Their letter to Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and California Natural Resources Secretary John Laird was preceded by a letter sent to Salazar and Laird on November 16 by an unprecedented 242 environmental organizations, environmental justice groups, Native American Tribes, recreational angling organizations, commercial fishing groups and outdoor businesses urging them to rescind the MOA. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/11/18/bay-delta-plan-agreement-opposed-by-242-groups)
"As representatives of the people of California, we have serious concerns with the current direction of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP)," the California legislators wrote. "The most critical among those include a failure of transparency in the process; the limited set of alternatives being considered; scientific inadequacy, including a lack of flow criteria for the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary (Bay Delta); the absence of cost/benefit analyses; and, the undue influence granted to State and Federal export water agencies to the exclusion of a meaningful role for other public interests."
The letter criticized the agreement for offering the signatories, including water agencies from southern California, the San Joaquin Valley and Santa Clara Valley, "extraordinary opportunities to influence the process, to the disadvantage of Delta communities, environmental organizations, fishing groups and the public at large."
"The MOA binds the parties to a rushed timeline for completing the plan, making adequate scientific analysis and consensus-building impossible. It establishes that long-term guarantees of 'certainty' to Central Valley Project export water contractors will be a first priority for state and federal decision makers. And, it memorializes the 'pay to play' nature of the BDCP, as many of our Washington legislators have phrased it, by giving the export water agencies an unprecedented level of control over what should be an open, public process," the letter continued.
The legislators cited the recent letter by Representatives George Miller, Doris Matsui, Jerry McNerney, Mike Thompson and John Garamendi to U.S. Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar that urged him to retract Interior's approval of the MOA and allow a public comment period of 45 days on the agreement prior to final approval.
"We urge the same, and for the State, in parallel, to retract the Department of Water Resources' approval of the MOA immediately," Wolk and the other legislators wrote.
Signees to the letter include California Senators Mark Desaulnier, Loni Hancock and Jared Huffman and Assembly Members Michael Allen, Bill Berryhill, Susan Bonilla, Joan Buchanan, Wesley Chesbro, Paul Fong, Alyson Huber, William Monning, Dr. Richard Pan, Nancy Skinner, Mariko Yamada, Jerry Hill and Roger Dickinson.
The letter asked for a reply in writing by December 16, 2011.
The opposition to the BDCP MOA, a plan to export more water disguised as a habitat conservation plan, is mushrooming. Members of Congress and California legislators are opposed to it. A massive coalition of 242 environmental groups, Indian Tribes, fishing organizations, environmental justice groups and consumer advocacy organizations is opposed to it.
Yet the Obama and Brown administrations appear committed to a peripheral canal plan that is likely to result in the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and Sacramento splittail.
These are the same administrations that have eclipsed even the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations in slaughtering Delta fish and Central Valley salmon in the state and federal water project facilities in the South Delta. The Obama and Brown administrations killed record numbers of Sacramento splittail and other fish in the pumps while exporting record amounts of water out of the Delta this year.
Over 11 million fish, including 9 million Sacramento splittail, have been "salvaged" at the Delta pumps near Tracy in 2011. The previous record salvage number for the splittail, a native minnow found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, was 5.5 million in 2006.
The other 2 million fish "salvaged" at the pumps include striped bass, largemouth bass, Sacramento River spring chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead and other species. Yet the numbers salvaged are just a fraction of the actual loss of fish in the pumps; scientific studies point to the real loss being 5 to 10 times the "salvage" numbers. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/09/09/over-11-million-fish-salvaged-in-delta-death-pumps-since-january-1).
The state and federal water projects pumped a record 6.5 million acre-feet of water from the Delta in 2011, according to government data compiled by Spreck Rosecrans at Environmental Defense. The previous record was 6.3 million acre-feet in 2005.
If Ken Salazar and John Laird have no problem killing record numbers of fish and exporting record amounts of water, is it any surprise that they are fast-tracking the plan to destroy the Delta by building the peripheral canal?
David Nesmith, Environmental Water Caucus, ewc [at] davidnesmith.com, 510-893-1330
Bill Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Deltakeep [at] me.com, 209-464-5067
Jonas Minton, Planning and Conservation League, jminton [at] pcl.org, 916-719-4049
Jim Metropulos, Sierra Club California, jim.metropulos [at] sierraclub.org, 916-557-1100, Ext 109
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta, Barbara [at] restorethedelta.org, 209-479-2053
Dr. Mark Rockwell, Endangered Species Coalition, Federation of Fly Fishers,
mrockwell [at] stopextinction.org, 530-432-0100
Tom Stokely, California Water Impact Network, tstokely [at] att.net, 530-524-0315
Nick Di Croce, Lead Author: California Water Solutions Now, troutnk [at] aol.com, 805-688-7813
An unprecedented coalition of 242 environmentally-oriented organizations blasted a recent federal and state rollover to south of Delta water exporters. The breadth of the opposition to an agency Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) extended from Northern California and Oregon organizations to South Coast groups, to environmental and environmental justice organizations, commercial and recreational fishing organizations, and Indian tribes.
The MOA in question turns over exceptional powers to a select group of exporters involved in the development of the Bay Delta Conservation Program, a program designed to control the future of water supplies from the Bay Delta. No other exporters are granted the same power to influence the project development process.
The MOA provides the exporters with unacceptable influence over the science and technical analyses fundamental to this kind of complex project; it allows exporters to obtain advance reviews of planning documents to the exclusion of others; it allows the exporters to select project consultants.
It also provides water exporters assurances on water supplies while ignoring the same kinds of assurances for the recovery of fish species or Delta habitat; it dictates an unrealistic schedule that will preclude a full analysis of the numerous alternatives to a Peripheral Canal that are available to satisfy the goals of the project, and it changes project goals to one that would increase exports instead of increasing water supply predictability and reducing supply vulnerability. It is clearly a "stacked deck," as the environmental coalition points out in their letter to federal and state agencies.
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan is an unprecedented experiment combining one of the largest multispecies habitat conservation plans in history with the potential for a massive hydrologic modification to the largest estuary on the West Coast.
It is essential that this project serve its fundamental purpose as a conservation plan for the critical fish and wildlife resources of the estuary, and not primarily as a Peripheral Canal construction project to increase exports from an already severely degraded estuary.
The environmental coalition appropriately asks that the Memorandum of Agreement be rescinded and rewritten. Here's hoping the federal and state agencies listen to this unprecedented expression of public input that they always claim to be looking for.
An unprecedented 242 environmental organizations, environmental justice groups, Native American Tribes, recreational angling organizations, commercial fishing groups and outdoor businesses sent a letter on November 16 to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and California Natural Resources Secretary John Laird urging them rescind a controversial Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).
The state-federal BDCP aims to build a peripheral canal or tunnel to export more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to corporate agribusiness and Southern California. Delta advocates believe it would lead to the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail and other imperiled species ravaged by record water exports from 2003 to 2006 and in 2011.
The list of logos of organizations, tribes and businesses signing the letter alone is six pages long. This letter features probably the most extensive, diverse list of organizations ever mobilized in defense of our fish populations and waterways in California history.
For example, Tribes signing the letter include the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Karuk Tribe and Modoc Nation. Environmental groups signing the letter include the Environmental Water Caucus, Sierra Club, Friends of the River, Restore the Delta, Save the American Association, Planning and Conservation League, California Water Impact Network, North Coast Environmental Center, and Environmental Protection Information Center.
Commercial fishing groups include the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, Small Boat Commercial Salmon Fisherman's Association and Half Moon Bay Trollers Association. Recreational angling groups and businesses include Water for Fish, the Golden Gate Salmon Association, Northern California Council Federation of Fly Fishers, Kokanee Power, Coastside Fishing Club, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, California Striped Bass Association, Black Bass Action Commiteee and the Fish Sniffer magazine. And these organizations are just a fraction of the 242 featured on the lette
The groups wrote, "The MOA was negotiated behind closed doors and only serves to reinforce the growing awareness that the BDCP is biased in favor of the export water contractor's agenda to increase exports from the Delta and its connected rivers, despite the documented negative impacts those exports have had on endangered fish species, Delta habitats, water quality and public trust values. Our concerns are similar to the October 24 letter you received from Congressmen Miller, Thompson, Matsui, McNerney, and Garamendi on the same subject." (http://www.c-win.org/content/dan-bacher-california-representatives-slam-closed-door-bay-delta-process.html)
"We understand that MOAs are a regular aspect of the HCP and NCCP process. Nevertheless, this MOA makes unacceptable concessions to the exporters' substantive agenda to influence the analytic process, extends no surprises guarantees to contractors in clear conflict with current law, and elevates the contractors to the status of permit holders for public works projects owned and operated by state and federal agencies," the letter continued.
"We are deeply disappointed that the Obama and Brown Administrations have acquiesced to the export contractors' efforts to twist what should have been a straightforward financing agreement for planning into a negotiation vehicle to successfully secure unprecedented influence over the HCP/NCCP process," the letter states.
The letter concludes, "We request that you rescind this biased and unjustified MOA and prepare a new agreement that fairly includes the interests of all parties, including NGO's, Delta residents, farming and business organizations, environmental justice groups, recreational and commercial fishing organizations, and Native American Tribes. In the absence of such a fundamental rewrite, the undersigned organizations have little alternative but to oppose continuance of the BDCP process.
Bill Jennings from the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Tom Stokely of the California Water Impact Network, Dick Pool from Water for Fish and the Golden Gate Salmon Association, Mark Rockwell of the Endangered Species Coalition, and David Nesmith from the Environmental Water Caucus were instrumental in obtaining the 242 signatories to the letter. Credit must go to Bill Jennings for masterminding the sign-ons for this amazing achievement.
In addition to the unified group letter, organizations also sent letters of their own to oppose the state-federal plan to build the canal. For example, Dick Pool, President of Water for Fish, sent a strongly-worded letter to Salazar and Laird.
"This agreement corrupts the entire Bay Delta Conservation Plan and assures that there will only be one result of that plan - the export of additional water to the agricultural and Southern California interests at the expense of the water needs of the salmon, the Delta environment and every other water user in California," wrote Pool.
"You are destroying any pretense of an open and transparent process that includes the interests of all the concerned parties including the salmon fishing industry. By doing this, it is our belief you are setting the stage for the extinction of the Central Valley salmon. By their past actions, it is very clear that the water exporters are unwilling to give up the water that salmon need to survive. You are giving them the power to destroy the salmon and 23,000 jobs in the industry," Pool concluded.
Under intense pressure from northern California anglers and Delta advocates, the California Fish and Game Commission decided on November 16 to postpone consideration of a controversial proposed striped bass regulation change proposal to their February 1-2, 2012 meeting in Sacramento.
Consideration of the proposed regulations - a proposal that many anglers say amounts to a striped bass "eradication plan" - was originally scheduled to take place at the Commission meeting in San Diego in December.
This decision came after Department of Fish and Game (DFG) Director Charlton H. Bonham requested the change in order to allow interested members of the public residing near the Delta the opportunity to voice their opinions to the Commission.
"After the DFG public meeting in the Delta last week, we learned there are many passionate anglers who would like the opportunity to share their views on the draft proposal," Bonham said. "I think it's important to hear these views. The discussion is welcome. Moving the public discussion to Sacramento from San Diego will allow these constituents to attend the meeting. It's the right thing to do."
Dick Pool, administrator of Water for Fish and Secretary Treasurer of the Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA), applauded Bonham's decision to postpone discussion of the striped bass proposal to the Commission meeting in February.
"Postponing the hearing is the only fair thing to do," said. "There are thousands of striped bass fishermen and others that are deeply concerned about this issue. They need to have a chance to have their voices heard."
More than 350 anglers and members of the public who showed up at a DFG "public workshop" in Rio Vista Tuesday, November 8 voiced unanimous opposition to the new regulations to dramatically increase size and bag limits for anadromous striped bass (http://www.fishsniffer.com/content/1500-public-voices-100-percent-opposition-striped-bass-reduction-plan.html).
Bob Boucke, owner of Johnson's Bait and Tackle in Yuba City, echoed the feelings of hundreds in the room when he urged the DFG, rather than trying to eradicate stripers, to instead focus on the real problem - curbing the massive Delta water exports that have spurred the collapse of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and striped bass themselves.
"The stripers have been here 130 years and they have gotten along with the Delta smelt and the salmon all of that time until they started pumping all this water down there," said Boucke. "That's when the whole problem started. And yet Fish and Game doesn't want to do anything about the water problem, but they want to ruin our striper fishing. There is nothing wrong with the stripers the way they are."
The proposal is the result of a court settlement of a lawsuit between the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, an agribusiness "Astroturf" group representing San Joaquin Valley corporate growers, and the DFG. This group is housed in Stewart Resnick's headquarters for Paramount Farms in Kern County. Resnick, a politically connected Beverly Hills billionaire and the largest tree fruit grower in the world, has made tens of millions of dollars annually from buying and reselling water back to the state for a big profit and is a big advocate of state and federal plans to export more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Dleta.
We need a huge turnout of anglers at the meeting to stop the striped bass eradication plan from being approved by the Commission! The meeting is scheduled for February 1-2, 2012, Wednesday-Thursday, at the Resources Building Auditorium, 1416 Ninth Street, Sacramento, CA. The agenda is not available yet; for more information, go to: http://www.fgc.ca.gov/meetings...
Please also write a letter to the Commission opposing the proposal. You can copy and paste a sample letter from: http://water4fish.org/write-le... and mail it to: Jim Kellogg, President, California Fish and Game Commission, P.O. Box 944209, Sacramento, CA 94244-2980. Submit comments on the proposal via email to: fgc [at] fgc.ca.gov.
The http://www.water4fish.org website will soon feature an easy to use on-line letter writing campaign to oppose the striper proposal soon. I will send out an action alert when the on-line campaign is ready to go.
I also strongly encourage you to watch this video by Cal Kellogg, Fish Sniffer Magazine Editor, covering the DFG workshop in Rio Vista: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... . Please join two organizations, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (http://www.calsport.org) and California Striped Bass Asssociation (http://www.striper-csba.com), listed at the end.
The striped bass proposal has been developed at a time when the state and federal governments are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal. Delta residents, fishermen, Indian Tribes, family farmers, business owners, conservationists and environmental justice advocates are opposing the peripheral canal's construction because it would lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations.
DFG Striped Bass Proposal
The basic proposed changes to the striper regulations are as follows:
Raising the daily bag limit for striped bass from two to six fish.
Raising the possession limit for striped bass from two to 12 fish.
Lowering the minimum size for striped bass from 18 to 12 inches.
Establishing a "hot spot" for striped bass fishing at Clifton Court Forebay and specified adjacent waterways at which the daily bag limit will be 20 fish, the possession limit will be 40 fish and there will be no size limit. Anglers fishing at the hot spot would be required to fill out a report card and deposit it in an iron ranger or similar receptacle.
Changes to the sport fishing regulations for the Carmel, Pajaro and Salinas Rivers to allow harvest of striped bass when the fishery would otherwise be closed.
DFG is also recommending an adaptive management plan that will help assess how the new regulations influence the fishery.
The Commissioners will decide whether to pursue the proposed regulations at their February meeting in Sacramento. If they choose to pursue the proposal it begins a process that includes at least three public hearings and the completion of an environmental document. A final decision is not expected until later in 2012.
Congress should continue ban on "catch shares" programs
by Dan Bacher
As the Occupy movement spreads throughout the nation and world, sustainable fishing communities, consumer groups and grassroots environmentalists have mobilized to stop the 1 percent from stealing ocean public trust resources from the 99 percent.
This week the U.S. Congress is expected to vote on a critical bill that would continue a recently instituted ban on a wasteful government program that gives large corporations control of the nation's fishery resources, in effect privatizing the ocean's public trust resources.
The Obama regime is promoting a "catch shares" program for fisheries that, like the Wall Street bailouts, will concentrate money and natural resources in fewer hands. Corporate environmental NGOs promoting the catch shares fiasco are heavily funded by the Walton Family Foundation (WalMart) and other foundations that represent the 1 percent (http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/08/19/wal-marting-the-oceans).
The ban has broad bi-partisan support. On November 3, nineteen Members of Congress from seven Eastern Seaboard states signed a letter urging Congress to not fund the Obama administration's catch shares program.
Drafted by Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Appopriations Committee and the Commerce subcommittee, the letter asks that "language be included in the final FY 2012 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill to restrict the use of funds for development or approval of new 'catch share' programs for any fishery under the jurisdiction of the New England, Mid Atlantic or South Atlantic Fishery Management Councils." (http://www.savingseafood.org/washington/19-members-of-congress-ask-appropriations-and-authorizing-committees-not-to-fund-new-catch-share-pro-3.html)
"The last thing the American government should be doing in these economic times is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to expand programs that will put even more Americans out of work," the letter stated. "But that's exactly what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is attempting to do by requesting $54 million in its FY 12 Budget to accelerate implementation of new fisheries catch share programs across the U.S."
Food & Water Watch, a national consumer advocacy organization, is one of the organizations leading the charge to ban catch shares. "In recent years the government has been ramping up spending of taxpayer dollars on catch share programs," according to Zach Corrigan, Fish Program Director of Food & Water Watch. "These programs divide up our nation's fishery resources for exclusive use by the biggest and fastest fishing operations and then allow corporations and banks to buy and sell these 'shares' for profit."
"Catch shares turn the opportunity to go fishing into a commodity, requiring commercial fishermen to buy shares before being able to go fishing. As has happened with family farms on land, the added costs push smaller-scale fishermen out of business and consolidate the industry, paving the way for industrial fishing methods that can destroy sensitive ocean habitats," Corrigan noted.
Make your voice heard now!
Last year, Congress passed a one-year measure to stop new catch share programs on the east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, but industry proponents are attempting to end this ban this week, noted Corrigan.
"Congress needs to hear that you oppose making small-scale fishermen a relic of the past and increasing our reliance on corporate-controlled food production. Can you ask your member of Congress to keep this ban on "catch share" programs?" urged Corrigan.
If you don't want what's happened to our housing, banking, health care and other industries to happen to our ocean, send a letter today!
On a similar note, the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (http://namanet.org) is circulating a graphic entitled, "Occupy the Ocean?" warning of the increasing consolidation of fisheries in the hands of a few.
"In 2010, 20% of vessels accounted for about 80% of the gross nominal revenues from groundfish sales in New England," the alliance states. "Diversity matters when it comes to who catches our fish, grows our food, banks our cars or keeps us healthy."
Privatization of the public trust and conservation is bad for fish, communities
The increasing corporate control of public resources that has occurred wherever "catch shares" have been introduced has devastated fish populations and fishing communities.
"The current focus of U.S. policy for managing our fisheries, called catch shares, is destroying the way of life of our nation's fishermen and coastal communities," according to a groundbreaking Food & Water Watch event released in August. (http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/Fish-Inc.pdf). "This time-honored trade is being replaced by a privatized system that often leaves the future of our nation's fish, one of our most precious natural resources, in the hands of a small number of larger operations, whose primary goal is often immediate profit rather than sustainable use and long-term conservation."
In California, the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a private corporation, has funded the controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. The MLPA Initiative, overseen by oil industry, real estate, marina development and other corporate interests, creates so-called "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling and spills, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, wind and wave energy projects and all other human impacts other than fishing and gathering.
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), was chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force that oversaw the development of these questionable "marine protected areas" on the Southern California coast. She also served on the panels for the North Central and North Coast. Reheis-Boyd has lobbied for new oil rigs off the California coast and tar sands drilling in Canada - and is no friend of the environment.
Yet MLPA advocates refused to question or oppose the appointment by Schwarzenegger of a big oil lobbyist - and falsely claimed that the rigged process was "open, transparent and inclusive," while it was anything but. For more information, go to: http://redgreenandblue.org/201...
Occupy movement message spreads to the California Delta
Meanwhile, the same Obama administration that is promoting the catch shares program and the same Brown administration that has continued Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's MLPA Initiative are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral canal to export more water from the California Delta to corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies. Delta residents, family farmers, Indian Tribes, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, conservationists and environmental justice advocates are opposing the enormously expensive government boondoggle because it would likely lead to the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and green sturgeon populations.
In a public meeting held by the Department of Fish and Game on November 8 regarding the Department's striped bass eradication proposal, Dawn Gulick, owner of Eddo's Harbor, echoed the theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests taking place throughout the country. Gulick said the water contractors, including Stewart Resnick, the politically connected Beverly Hills billionaire who has made tens of millions of dollars annually from buying and reselling water back to the state for a big profit, are waging "class war" against the people of the Delta.
"This is a class war and they're winning," she stated, followed by a person next to her shouting, "Occupy the Delta!" Others joined in shouting, "Occupy the Delta."
"It's our Delta. Big Money has big influence over our government and it's time to take our government back!" she continued as people in the crowd applauded.
After reading my article on the meeting, an editor of the San Francisco Chronicle decided to interview Gulick (http://blog.sfgate.com/opinionshop/2011/11/11/occupys-message-heard-in-the-delta) regarding the water contractors' war on the Delta.
"It's the 1 percent coming after our water, our fish and our farms," Gullick told the Chronicle. The real elephant in the room is pumping, not bass predation, she said. "The pelagic organisms decline the more water they pump from the delta."
Caleen Sisk-Franco, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and one of the most outspoken opponents of the peripheral canal and state and federal plans to export even more water out of the Delta, urged support for the Occupy movement as the police were raiding the Occupy Oakland encampment Monday.
"All California people need to keep up with what is happening to the 99%! That is US, we are the 99%!" she emphasized.
Her Tribe is pushing for an innovative plan to restore native winter run chinook salmon to the McCloud River above Lake Shasta with eggs provided by the Maori and New Zealand governments. Although extinct in their native habitat on the McCloud, the salmon are now thriving in the Rakaira and other rivers in New Zealand.
I believe it is time to "occupy the oceans," "occupy the Delta," and stand up for local communities and our oceans against the privatization of conservation and public trust resources. The 99 percent must rise up against the 1 percent that only care about their profits as they greenwash their privatization plans.
Bruce Tokars of Salmon Water Now has unveiled a new video, Railroaded Salmon (14:39), that looks at the state of affairs regarding the state and federal efforts to "fix" the Sacramento San Joaquin river Delta by way of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal.
"The fate of wild salmon in California is destined to be determined by the political posturing that takes place deep in the weeds," said Tokars. "It's easy to get lost in the weeds because every issue related to salmon is complex. Most people have little time in their busy life to keep up with the details of who is pushing what and how a particular piece of legislation or court challenge will impact them.
"In the case of the effort to fix the most important ecosystem in California, the broken San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, the stakes are particularly important," Tokars emphasized.
This video looks at the BDCP (Bay Delta Conservation Plan) and highlights the voices of the biggest and most powerful players in the efforts that are "railroading" salmon. "The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Westlands Water District on the west side of the Central Valley have managed to inject their agenda into the process so seriously that the fate of wild salmon are critically threatened," said Tokars.
"The voices that represent farm water advocates will look at this video and proclaim again that anyone who disagrees with their position is an 'objectionist' and that if the opposition get their way, 'that would all but guarantee that California and its citizens have less water in the future' (a quote from the California Farm Water Coalition website)," he stated. "So at the risk of being labeled an 'objectionist,' Salmon Water Now points out that there is only so much water to go around and all of it has been spoken for.
Railroaded Salmon is yet another look at the way the BDCP is going. "It's a reminder that those who care about developing a rational, fair, and effective water future for California need to stay informed and involved," noted Tokars.
"As is always the case, sharing and embedding is encouraged. The struggle continues," he added.
The Obama and Schwarzenegger administrations are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral canal, in spite of massive opposition by Delta residents, family farmers, Indian Tribes, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes, environmental justice communities, conservation groups and five Delta region U.S. Representatives. If constructed, the peripheral canal or tunnel would likely lead to the extinction of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail and other imperiled species.
The state and federal governments are pushing this plan even though all scientific evidence points to the fact that water exports out of the Delta must be reduced, not increased, to prevent the extinction of Central Valley salmon and Delta smelt.
One of the biggest fish kills in California history took place this year when over 11 million fish, including 9 million Sacramento splittail, were "salvaged" in the state and federal pumps in the Delta. The previous record salvage number for the splittail, a native minnow found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, was 5.5 million in 2006 (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/09/09/over-11-million-fish-salvaged-in-delta-death-pumps-since-january-1).
The fish "salvaged" at the "death pumps" of the state and federal water projects also include hundreds of thousands of threadfin shad, striped bass, American shad, white catfish and other species. The salvage numbers reveal that 742,850 threadfin shad, 514,921 American shad, 496,601 striped bass and 100,373 white catfish were "salvaged" between January 1 and September 7 of this year.
Agency staff also salvaged protected Sacramento River spring run chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt and green sturgeon, all listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, in the pumping facilities. The salvage numbers list 35,560 Central Valley chinook salmon, 1,642 steelhead, 51 Delta smelt and 14 green sturgeon. In all, a total of over 11 milllion fish including 46 species were salvaged in the facilities since January 1.
While the salvage counts are certainly alarming, the overall loss of fish in and around the State Water Project and Central Valley Project facilities is believed to be much greater than the salvage counts. The actual loss could be 5 to 10 times the salvage numbers, 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).
This carnage took place during a water year when the state and federal projects pumped a record 6.5 million acre-feet of water from the Delta, according to government data compiled by Spreck Rosecrans at Environmental Defense. The previous record was 6.3 million acre-feet in 2005.
It is rare that a group of anglers find consensus on any issue. It can be said that if you have 10 anglers in a room, you will find 20 opinions.
However, over 350 anglers and members of the public who showed up at the Department of Fish and Game "public workshop" in Rio Vista on Tuesday night made it very clear - they unanimously oppose the new regulations to dramatically increase size and bag limits for striped bass in California.
The proposal would raise the daily bag limit for striped bass from two to six fish, raise the possession limit from two to 12 fish, lower the minimum size from 18 to 12 inches and establish a striper "hot spot" in the South Delta where anglers can possess up to 40 fish.
The proposal is the result of a court settlement of a lawsuit between the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, an agribusiness "Astroturf" group representing San Joaquin Valley corporate growers. This group is housed in Stewart Resnick's headquarters for Paramount Farms in Kern County. Resnick is the politically connected Beverly Hills billionaire and largest tree fruit grower in the world who has made tens of millions of dollars annually from buying and reselling water back to the state for a big profit.
DFG biologists Marty Gingras and Stafford Lehr gave a power point presentation explaining the proposed regulations, their rationale and the time table for their proposed adoption, including a series of public meetings. "This is part of a settlement that mandates us to created a proposal for striped bass regulations," said Lehr.
He said that the Fish And Game Commission in 1996 adopted a policy goal of increasing the striper population in the Bay-Delta estuary to 3 million adults. As a result of ESA concerns and the settlement, the agency had to now balance striped bass management with the need to preserve listed species. "The data indicates that the existing striped bass population won't collapse with these regulations," he noted.
While the charts displayed in the presentation showed what striped bass ate back in 1967, the DFG disclosed no new data documenting alleged striped bass "predation" of Delta smelt and ESA listed salmon.
"The reason why we don't find Delta smelt in the guts of the striped bass that we examine is because the smelt are so rare now," said Gingras. "There are an estimated 600,000 striped bass in the system and miniscule numbers of smelt. Plus the striped bass digest their food fast."
After the biologists made their presentation, Bob Boucke, owner of Johnson's Bait and Tackle in Yuba City, was the first one to speak in opposition to the proposal. He urged the DFG, rather than trying to eradicate stripers, to instead focus on the real problem - stopping the massive carnage of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and striped bass themselves that takes place in the Delta export pumping facilities.
"You talked in the presentation about the stripers eating salmon and smelt," Boucke told Gingras and Lehr, "but you didn't talk about the main reason for fish declines - the Delta pumps.
He added, "If you adopt this proposal it will run every bait and tackle shop from here to Chico out of business."
One speaker after another echoed Boucke's message that the state and federal pumps that have exported record amounts of Delta water to corporate agribusiness and southern California are the key factor behind the declines of salmon, smelt and other fish.
I asked Lehr and Gingras for their reaction to the statement by renowned fishery scientists Dr. Peter B. Moyle and Dr. William A. Bennett, Center for Watershed Sciences, that decreasing the population of striped bass could possibly have a negative impact upon salmon and smelt by changing "basic ecosystem processes."
According to a letter by Moyle and Bennett to the Fish and Game Commission on August 26, 2010, "Reducing the striped bass population may or may not have a desirable effect (http://calsport.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Moyle-and-Bennett-to-CFGC-20100826.pdf). In our opinion, it is most likely to have a negative effect. While the ultimate cause of death of most fish may be predation, the contribution of striped bass to fish declines is not certain. By messing with a dominant predator(if indeed it is), the agencies are inadvertently playing roulette with basic ecosystem processes that can change in unexpected ways in response to reducing striped bass numbers."
Lehr responded to me, "That's a good question." He admitted that the impact of reducing striped bass's impact was uncertain - and that basic ecosystem principles dictate that something will fill the niche of a fish like the striped bass in the food chain as their numbers decline.
Jay Sorenson, founder of the California Striped Bass Association, exposed the absurdity of blaming stripers for salmon and smelt declines when the massive Delta pumps, not striped bass predation, are the key reason for the collapse of listed fish species.
"In 67 years of fishing, I've caught and released thousands of stripers and I've also kept many stripers to eat," said Sorenson. "However, I've only found one salmon in the stomach cavity of a striper among all of the fish that I've cleaned."
"I hope that we will see the stripers around for future generations so that young people will enjoy what I have experienced on the Delta," he concluded.
Roger Mammon, Restore the Delta Board Member, said, "If you're so concerned about the Delta smelt and salmon, why doesn't the state quit exporting so much water out of the Delta?"
Lehr responded, "There is no way I can answer that question here, but I will bring it to the attention of Charles Bonhan, DFG Director, tomorrow."
Dawn Gulick, owner of Eddo's Harbor, echoing the theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests taking place throughout the country, said Stewart Resnick and the big water contractors were waging "class war" against the people of the Delta.
"This is a class war and they're winning. Occupy the Delta!" she shouted, followed by people in the crowd also shouting "Occupy the Delta!"
"It's our Delta. Big Money has big influence over our government and it's time to take our government back!" she urged as people in the crowd applauded.
The proposal was released at a time when the Obama and Brown administrations, in spite of massive opposition, are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build a peripheral canal or tunnel to export more Delta water to corporate agribusiness and southern California. The peripheral canal, a controversial plan to divert water from the Sacramento River in the North Delta rather from the existing pumps in the South Delta, came up during the workshop when Gingras responded to a question why state-of-the art fish screens hadn't been installed at the Delta pumps, as mandated under the CalFed Record of Decision.
Neither Gingras or Lehr were able to answer this question. However, Gingras, appearing to endorse the concept of the peripheral canal, claimed, "If we take water out of the Sacramento River, we won't have to continue the trap and truck system of salvaging fish and we won't have the same problems with the fish screens we have now."
"I don't want to deal with the peripheral canal at this workshop," Lehr noted.
Bill Jennings, executive director/chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), explained how CSPA, the Northern California Council Federation of Fly Fishers (NCCFFF) and the California Striped Bass Association (CSBA), as well as Delta water agencies, intervened in the lawsuit in support of DFG, but DFG caved and cut a deal. CSPA, NCCFFF, CSBA and the Delta agencies opposed and refused to sign the settlement agreement
"CSPA was looking forward to trial because the evidence in the record did not support the conclusion that striped bass predation caused population level effects on salmon and smelt," said Jennings. "We felt that the predation that does occur would be pinned on the state and federal project facilities on the Delta."
"These pumps create dining halls that invite the fish in," said Jennings. "Now the state wants to execute the fish for entering the dining halls they created!"
Jennings emphasized that if the Fish and Game Commission refuses to adopt the striped bass proposal, the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta must drop the lawsuit.
Sep Hendrickson, host of the California Sportsman Radio Show, urged everybody in the room to deluge the Fish and Game Commission with letters opposing the striped bass proposal. "If you don't all stand up now against this proposal, the water contractors will roll over us!"
Send letters to:
California Fish and Game Commission
P.O. Box 944209
Sacramento, CA 94244-2090
Phone: (916) 653-4899
Fax Number: (916) 653-5040
E-Mail to Submit Comments on Proposed Regulations: fgc [at] fgc.ca.gov.
For more information about upcoming Fish and Game Commission meetings, go to: http://www.fgc.ca.gov.
DFG Striped Bass Proposal
The basic proposed changes are as follows:
Raising the daily bag limit for striped bass from two to six fish.
Raising the possession limit for striped bass from two to 12 fish.
Lowering the minimum size for striped bass from 18 to 12 inches.
Establishing a "hot spot" for striped bass fishing at Clifton Court Forebay and specified adjacent waterways at which the daily bag limit will be 20 fish, the possession limit will be 40 fish and there will be no size limit. Anglers fishing at the hot spot would be required to fill out a report card and deposit it in an iron ranger or similar receptacle.
Changes to the sport fishing regulations for the Carmel, Pajaro and Salinas Rivers to allow harvest of striped bass when the fishery would otherwise be closed.
DFG is also recommending an adaptive management plan that will help assess how the new regulations influence the fishery.
The proposal and management plan will be presented to the Fish and Game Commission for consideration at its December meeting.
For more information about the DFG's draft striped bass proposal and upcoming workshops and meeting, go to: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news.
