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New Executive Director of FOER, Dave Hope David Keller Honored as Environmentalis of the Year What the PG&E PVP Complex Has Done to the Eel Bay-Delta Water Ruling Ditches CEQA for Bogus "Drought Emergency" The Triple Federal Threat to Our Coast Basins of Relations: Protecting and Restoring Our Watersheds Toxic Cleanup Must Come Before Freight The Six Things a River Might Say
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Bay-Delta Water Ruling Ditches CEQA for Bogus Drought Emergency The spin on water use, need and distribution has taken a novel turn as the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) prepares to toss out the existing 150-year-old system of water allocation without public comment or due process. The agencys recent draft ruling allows consolidation of the federal Central Valley Water Project and State Water Project place of use permits. This means that for the first time, water is to be transferred from Shasta to Los Angeles, and from Oroville to the Westlands Water District. This action will ultimately result in less water being released into the Sacramento and San Joaquin riversand thus greater habitat challenges for the beleaguered fish populations both in the Bay-Delta and in the ocean. It also sets a worrisome precedent in its disregard of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Does this mean all water in California is now up for grabs? Recreational and commercial fishing in most of coastal California are largely dependent upon the health of the SacramentoSan Joaquin Delta since the Central Valley Chinook salmon run, the driver of West Coast salmon fisheries, migrates through the estuary both as juveniles going out to the ocean and as adults coming back to the rivers to spawn. The Bay-Delta estuary also supports an array of species, including native species such as California halibut, herring, Dungeness crab, delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, white sturgeon, green sturgeon, and starry flounder, as well as introduced fish including striped bass, black bass, and white catfish, according to Dan Bacher, who writes frequently about fisheries and other issues. The State Water Resources Control Board was castigated in Sacramento on May 19 by Bill Jennings, chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, who presented his comments before the agency in defense of the Delta and Californias imperiled fish populations, including Central Valley Chinook salmon, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, and striped bass. Never before have we had to waive CEQA and Water Quality Control Plans or turn Californias permit system upside down through a truncated hearing that violates the most basic due-process rights, said Jennings. Because the states Department of Water Resources deliberately and despicably withheld introducing the Governors drought proclamation into evidence until no one had a chance to refute it, continued Jennings, his organization was unable to rebut its bogus claims lie by lie. Drought proclamation? This item barely made the news! More of Jennings testimony is excerpted below to summarize the situation: Why? Why are you proposing this order? We live in an arid state that experiences frequent droughtsĶ. Drought in California is as inevitable as death and taxes. Our seniority-based water allocation scheme is designed to adjust to the inevitability of droughts. And the system is working exactly as anticipated.In this third year of drought, Sacramento Valley contractors, Friant contractors, exchange contractors, and eastside San Joaquin users are getting their water. Only contracts pursuant to the most junior water rights are receiving less water. Westlands reduced deliveries are based upon contracts that are predicated on shortages in times of drought. LA is receiving less water only because it voluntarily relinquished its urban preference in the Monterey Agreement. This order is a backdoor attack upon 150 years of water law and precedent. It is an attack upon the public trust. It threatens to undermine faith in public institutions and, indeed, in government itselfĶ. For more information about the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, go to http://www.calsport.org/ http://www.calsport.org. Spinning Fish Tales With the ongoing portrayal by Governor Schwarzenegger and various agricultural interests of a fish versus people or fish versus jobs issue, its important to sort through the rhetoric and learn whats really going on as things change rapidly with California water politics. The battle to save the Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, really comes down to a conflict between a future based on sustainable fishing, farming and recreation, versus a prolonged enabling of corporate agribusiness irrigating toxic, drainage-impaired, marginal land that should have never been farmed in the first placeat the expense of Delta and Sacramento Valley farms and healthy fisheries. Unfortunately, this characterization of the battle to save the Delta as one of people versus fish couldnt be further from the truth. Because of massive exports of water to the Westlands Water District, where permanent crops like orchard trees have been planted in places where historically water is not always available, along with Kern County and the Governors plan to build a peripheral canal to divert even more water, thousands of jobs are threatened as never before! These include thousands of jobs in the recreational and commercial fishing industries, the tourist industries of coastal and Sacramento Valley communities, and on Delta and Sacramento Valley farms. |