(Webmaster note: The opinions voiced on this page are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of the DSBDC.)
9/30/10
From Round and About:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/zgrader/detail?entry_id=73372
Stealth State Plan Would End Salmon Fishing in California
At the end of any State Administration, agencies try to ram through plans and projects they have been working on for years. That's understandable. But I'm shocked and outraged that the Resources Agency is trying to sneak through a plan that would kill California's salmon fishing industry, eliminate thousands of jobs and devastate coastal communities. That's not how they're framing it, of course: they're dressing it up as a plan to "save" the Delta and distribute water equitably. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In reality, it's a plan to destroy the Delta and keep corporate farms in the San Joaquin Valley awash in cheap, taxpayer-subsidized water.
A week ago, the State Resources Agency released a curious document. The state insists that it is not a draft plan for the Delta, but it sure looks like one. As it stands now, this proposal would gut federal protections for salmon and other fish covered by the Endangered Species Acts. It proposes to revive a version of the Environmental Water Account, an utterly failed and now-abandoned scheme to cap the ability of fisheries agencies to limit the transport of fresh water from the Delta. And finally, the plan promotes a huge new canal and still weaker rules to allow for even more pumping. This is all driven by the desire of Central Valley agribusiness to seize more taxpayer-subsidized water, the salmon and our Bay-Delta ecosystem be damned.
As I write this post, the state is working to finalize this egregious give-away to the nation's largest corporate farms in closed-door meetings -- meetings from which fishermen and the Delta community have been banned. For fishermen, this is producing a profound and uneasy sense of deja vu: we've been here before. Whenever we have been excluded from the table, whenever state authorities and corporate agribusiness convene in secret, the salmon -- and salmon fishermen -- suffer.
For the few people who haven't noticed that wild California salmon is scarce as hen's teeth in their supermarkets, let me summarize: the state's salmon fishery is on the edge. In 2008 and 2009, the fishery was closed entirely. This year, salmon fishermen in San Francisco were allowed to fish for eight days. Obviously, no major industry can survive on eight active days of business annually, and salmon fishing is no exception. Businesses are going broke and closing their doors. Fishermen are losing their boats. Thousands of jobs have been lost. For coastal communities, this is an official, federally-designated disaster -- it is like an earthquake, but it is no natural event. It is fabricated, the product of an utterly misguided policy.
There's no mystery to this catastrophe. Time and again, scientists have told us that the major cause of our salmon declines is high water diversions in the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem -- driver of California's salmon fishery. Record water diversions have produced record low salmon runs. Disregard all the hype spewing from the media shops of corporate ag -- it's really as simple as that. Fishermen know that we can bring this industry back. But we need to take real action to restore our salmon. And that means we need to put more cold, clean water down the Bay-Delta system -- and fast.
The state's proposals fly in the face of science. For example, the current protections for the Delta - the ones that the state proposes to gut like a fish -- were developed through careful scientific peer review. Recently, the strong scientific foundation for these safeguards was verified by the National Academy of Sciences and the State Water Resources Control Board. On the other hand, the state's weak proposed replacement protections have been rejected by the scientific community. Likewise, the state's long-term proposal to increase diversions is not supported by credible science. Fish biologists have already concluded that the state's position doesn't reflect the best available science or meet legal requirements.
Here's the bottom line: the salmon industry can't survive the state's proposals. Without healthy salmon runs in the Bay-Delta, salmon fishing in California cannot endure. Frankly, it looks like the state has decided to increase Delta pumping at all costs and to hell with science, salmon and fishing jobs.
Eighty percent of California's water is consumed by agriculture. Like fishermen, farmers produce the food we all need. But our food requirements will not be met by pumping more taxpayer subsidized water to grow commodity crops while taking delicious, healthful local salmon off the consumer's plate. The real solution is for agriculture to use the vast amount of water it receives more efficiently. A few California farmers are showing how this can be done. Unfortunately, many corporate farms squander, rather than steward, their water supplies. Worse, some are selling their taxpayer-subsidized water for huge profits to private developers, then turning around and demanding still more deliveries from the Delta's government pumps.
It is time to face a simple thruth: for any river, there is a limit to the amount of water that can be diverted without causing ecosystem and fishery collapse. Every scientist and fisherman knows this. Recently, the State Water Board found that to restore a truly healthy ecosystem, diversions from the San Francisco Bay-Delta system should be cut by half. We have not only hit the limit in the Bay-Delta --we're way past it.
Fishermen understand that public resources must be managed conservatively. We have long supported science-based limits on our industry, to insure its health over the long-term. We hope and expect that agriculture and Southern California water users will recognize that we have hit limits in the Bay-Delta. After all, we have plenty of options to meet our water needs -- water conservation, reusing wastewater, cleaning up our groundwater, desalination, water transfers and more. But fish and fishermen don't have these options. If our fish don't have enough water to survive, they disappear and we're out of work.
We urge the state to withdraw these reckless proposals to kill salmon and California's salmon fishing industry. Federal agencies must step up and reject this plan as well. Solving the Delta's problems will require listening to the scientific community and recognizing that we have hit -- and passed -- responsible limits on pumping in the largest estuary on the West Coast.
The grounding fact in this issue is eloquently stated in the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein: fish gotta swim. To do that, may I add, they need enough water to swim in.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/zgrader/detail?entry_id=73372#ixzz10wZJHEt5
News from Restore the Delta – restorethedelta.org
Resuscitating the California Water Commission
The California Water Commission (CWC) is one of those State boards and commissions that could have sunsetted ten years ago and hardly anyone would have noticed.
But it's back, thanks to the 2009 Comprehensive Water Package. The Legislation gave the CWC some responsibilities with respect to the water infrastructure envisioned by the water bond.
The commissioners have been selected (Click here to see Dan Bacher's article on the subject from last May), and six of the nine met for the first time on September 28. (Two have appointments that are not yet in effect.) Anthony Saracino (director of the California Water Program at the Nature Conservancy) chaired the proceedings. Joe Del Bosque (member of AgSafe, California Farm Bureau, California Latino Water Coalition and Western Growers Association) did not remove his cowboy hat.
Does the CWC have the authority to adopt regulations without voter approval of the water bond? Probably not, according to DWR legal counsel, although they can certainly draft regulations for adoption later.
So what are they going to do?
Well, what did they do before? The Commissioners were briefed on that. The Commission was established by a 1957 statute, and its earliest focus was on development of the State Water Project. When the initial construction of the SWP was complete in the early 1970s, the Commission did annual inspections and reporting on the SWP and worked on getting federal appropriations for regional projects.
Not mentioned in the briefing was the commission's authority to condemn property. As we reported earlier this year, the CWC has the authority to condemn land on behalf of the State Water Project. Hence, it is a commission that must be watched with vigilance by the people of the Delta as Lester Snow (Head of the Resources Agency) and the Governor's office continue to have secret talks with water users on building new conveyance.
DWR Director Mark Cowin briefed the commissioners on the 2009 Water Package and other challenges his department faces, including a new level of expectations regarding public outreach. (The implication was that this is inconvenient and time-consuming.)
Signaling that this group may see its responsibilities a bit differently than the bond language does, Commissioner Saracino told Cowin that the CWC should be evaluating the NEED for water storage, in view of climate change. Since Senator Cogdill, the water's bond's author and a major proponent of storage, will take his place as a commissioner in December, this should make for some interesting discussions.
The Commissioners also got briefings from DWR on the 2009 California Water Plan and on Industrial Process Water Regulation. (The 20% by 2020 reduction in urban water use requires a special exclusion for water used by industrial water users for producing a product or product content, or water used for research and development.)
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The most interesting briefing came from Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission. The subject was the Little Hoover Commission's August 2010 report, "Managing for Change: Modernizing California's Water Governance."
This is a report that hasn't gotten a lot of attention, which is surprising given what it recommends: separating the State Water Project from DWR. An independent, publicly-owned California Water Authority would operate the SWP and eventually merge it with the Central Valley Project.
A new Department of Water Management would be created within the Natural Resources Agency. This Department would collect and monitor data on water use; manage supply and demand (with input from the Department of Fish and Game); administer and enforce water rights; implement the State Water Plan; manage bond-funded grant and loan programs related to water supply, conservation, and integrated regional water management; streamline the water transfer process (whatever that means); oversee dam safety and maintenance; and take responsibility for flood control, levee repairs, and floodplain management.
The Little Hoover Commission had a role in mind for the California Water Commission:
oversight of all natural resources bond expenditures, including current bond programs and future voter-authorized bonds.
According to Drown, the Little Hoover Commission recognized that California had a failure of governance when water policy began to be shaped by a federal judge.
The report recommends relocating the Division of Water Rights from its current place as part of the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to the new Department of Water Management.
According to the report, " One obstacle to locating the Division of Water Rights within the existing Department of Water Resources is the department's operation of the State Water Project. Locating the Division of Water Rights in the same department that holds a sizeable percentage of California's water rights permits and licenses would present a conflict that would undermine the state's ability to credibly administer and enforce water rights."
"The Department of Water Resources was created more than 50 years ago to plan, design and construct the State Water Project. . . . Now complete, the project functions as a utility and no longer fits in the Department of Water Resources, where it dominates the agenda of a state department that also is responsible for water planning and management and where these dual missions often conflict."
Commissioner Byrne asked Drown what the reaction to the report had been. Drown described the reaction as "mixed." Environmentalists, he said, were concerned about separating water rights from water quality by taking water rights away from the SWRCB. And there has apparently been resistance from DWR, because "The State Water Project and DWR grew up together." The process proposed would be complicated, and "funding is a huge concern."
But as the report says, "The governance recommendations in this study are aimed at ensuring the Legislature's 2009 reforms achieve their goals."
If you want to give some thought to what the Little Hoover Commission's recommendations would mean for the Delta, click here to download the report. It is worth knowing what is there, because - as we have seen - studies like this have a tendency to work their way into legislation eventually.
Drawing lines in the sand
Under the terms of last year's legislation, the Delta Protection Commission (DPC) has until July 2011 to come up with an Economic Sustainability Plan for the Delta.
The DPC has completed five community meetings to gather public input on the creation of the Sustainability Plan "framework" for the Delta. The DPC held meetings in Courtland, Discovery Bay, Rio Vista, West Lodi/North Stockton, and Antioch.
This was the first of a series of community meetings on the ESP, and attendance could have been better. The commission knows they need more outreach, but like everything else related to governance under the Delta Reform Act, this process is on a tight schedule.
Among the issues raised:
- · You can't talk about economic sustainability without looking at the economic effects of unreasonable water diversions.
- · It's hard to put a dollar value on an ecosystem.
- · There's insufficient economic data about the Delta and insufficient time to acquire it. (We wonder, for example, about a DPC pie chart showing that agriculture's contribution to the Delta economy is 4%.)
- The Commission lacks good data about the economy of the Delta because statistics about the region are mixed in with the statistical data of the Delta counties.
The Delta Protection Commission is defensive by definition, and this process is the latest in a long series of defenses against threatened and actual unreasonable water diversions.
Delta water users were threatened by the Burns-Porter Act that authorized the State Water Project. The Delta Protection Act of 1959 was a way to placate them by ensuring their water uses and promising them good water quality. It defined the Legal Delta.
The Delta Protection Act of 1992 established the Delta Protection Commission and defined the Commission's principal jurisdiction, the Primary Zone. The Secondary Zone is not within the DSC's planning area, although both zones lie within the Legal Delta as defined by the Delta Protection Act of 1959.
(Patrick Johnston was one of the authors of the Delta Protection Act of 1992. A former senator, he now serves on the Delta Stewardship Council. It is interesting that that detail is not part of his biography on the DSC website.)
Looking at a map of the primary and secondary zones today, it seems obvious that the primary zone was drawn to exclude areas of the Legal Delta that were already approved for development, including a funny little boot-shaped chunk that includes Isleton.
These borders were created with the input of local communities so that they could either grow or survive (depending on the community's needs). Presently, as directed by last year's SB 1, the newly reconstituted DPC is working on recommendations regarding the potential expansion of or change to the primary zone.
You can change the borders on a map. But you can't isolate the economic well-being of the Delta from that of the five Delta counties, or the five Delta counties from the Delta. The two parts of the legal Delta are linked economically and ecologically. Water quality and quantity have a direct impact on the environmental and economic health of the five Delta counties. And the five Delta counties have a duty to be good stewards of the Delta.
Inquiring Congress members want to know . . .
Westlands Water District got a letter from Congress members George Miller, John Garamendi, Grace F. Napolitano, and Mike Thompson.
"We read with great interest," they write, "that the Westlands Water District has more water at San Luis Reservoir than it can use this year, and is contemplating an exchange with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. . . . [This] announcement of "extra" federal water delivered to Westlands will come as a surprise to anyone who has seen Westlands' political advocacy, press releases, and court filings over the course of this year."
The Congress members have nine questions for Westlands, including a question about why the district isn't using any "extra" water to replenish the groundwater it says is overdrafted.
What would a Delta National Heritage Area look like?
On October 6, the DPC will hold Public Meeting #2 of its Feasibility Study for a National Heritage Area (NHA) in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The meeting will include small group discussion on potential interpretive themes for a Delta NHA.
The meeting will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at D. H. White Elementary School, 500 Elm Way, Rio Vista.
There is also breaking news of a new bill introduced by Senator Feinstein in regard to the creation of the NHA designation. Restore the Delta will keep you posted in the weeks to come.
Salmon fishermen want to talk to farmers
In its new video, "Westlands, Salmon, & Reason," Salmon Water Now (SWN) challenges farmers to meet with fishermen for a meaningful discussion about water, politics, and people. Click here to see this new video.
SWN got a lot of reaction, even from national media, to its last video, "Bullies of Westlands." Some reactions apparently came from farmers who are not part of Westlands. Farmers throughout the state who know how to use resources wisely to grow crops should be distancing themselves from Westlands' increasingly questionable tactics for manipulating water supplies.
Good Morning
I urge you to support this action alert calling for a 90-day extension of the public comment period for the South Coast Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) as part of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's widely-contested Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. Please send in your comments TODAY and then attend the California Fish and Game Commission meeting at McClellan (north of the city of Sacramento) from noon to 5 pm on Thursday.
Below the action alert is my article on the upcoming meeting, followed by a letter from the California Fisheries Coalition supporting an extension of the public comment period.
Please forward widely!
Thanks
Dan
Urgent Action Alert from Keep America Fishing:
California Fish and Game Commission to Hold Special Meeting to Discuss Timeline for South Coast MLPA Report
Send in your comments today asking for more time for review of this large, complex and highly important document
The Situation
On September 29, 2010, the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) will hold a special meeting to discuss and consider a potential extension to the public comment period for the South Coast region Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) as part of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) implementation process. The DEIR, which was released on August 18, 2010, analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the marine protected area (MPA) proposals currently under consideration for this area. The DEIR was given a 45-day review and comment period.
The DEIR is a 548-page document that addresses a number of complex environmental issues that require careful consideration. The recreational fishing and boating community believes that it is imperative that the FGC extend this to a 90-day period to provide the public with sufficient time to review and comment on this report.
Decisions made under the MLPA process, including the DEIR, will have significant and long-lasting consequences for angling and boating in the region. The public deserves enough time to carefully review and provide input on the DEIR to ensure it is as comprehensive, informative and accurate as possible and is not driven by a need to meet arbitrary deadlines.
SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW – EXTEND THE COMMENT PERIOD DEADLINE
Send the letter to the FGC urging them to extend the comment period on the DEIR to 90 days by going to http://www.keepamericafishing.org.
For more details regarding the September 29 FGC meeting, visit http://www.fgc.ca.gov/meetings/2010/2010mtgs.asp.
Hot Sheet Contributors:
Trinidad:
Northwind Charters – (707) 826-7201
Eureka:
Full Throttle Fishing Capt. Gary Blasi (707) 498-7473
Shelter Cove:
Shelter Cove Sport Fishing Capt. Trent Slate (707) 923-1668 codking.com
Ft Bragg:
North Coast Fishing Adventures Fort Bragg (707) 964-3000
Bodega Bay:
Bodega Bay Sport Center (707) 875-3344
SF Bay & Golden Gate:
Happy Hooker – Capt. Jim Smith (510) 223-5388
California Dawn – Capt. James Smith (510) 773-5511
Emeryville Sport Center (510) 654-6040
Half Moon Bay:
Huck Finn Sportfishing Center, Half Moon Bay (650) 726-7133
Santa Cruz:
Fish On Sportfishing (six pack) (408) 348-4866
Monterey:
Chris’s Landing (831) 375-5951
Delta:
Jay Sorensen – Jolly Jay’s Guide Service (209) 478-6645
Mark Delnero – Fin Addict Sport Fishing (209) 367-4665
Jay Lopes – Right Hook Sport Fishing (916) 417-5670
Mark Wilson’s Sport Fishing – (916) 682-1630
The Fishing Instructor – Randy Pringle (209) 543-6260
Intimidator Sport Fishing – Captain Mike Gravert (916) 806-3030
North Wind Outfitters – RJ Waldron – (925) 323-1928
Guides - North Coast Rivers:
Bruce McGregor – North Coast Outfitters (707) 694-9444
Kenny Armstrong Guide Service (707) 498-4087
Wally Johnson (530) 496-3291
Steve Huber (530) 623-1918
Little Rays Tackle Lower Klamath (707) 482-7725
Guides Central Valley:
JD Richey (916) 388-1956
Off-Duty Sport Fishing – Jesse Hall (916) 715-0041
RH Guide Service – Raith Heryford (530) 674-5871
High Country Lakes:
Rick Kennedy Tight Lines Guide Service (Eagle, Stampede, Davis) (530)263-0990
Tom Noxen Fish Traveler Guide Service (Eagle Lake) (530) 825-3524
Brian Roccucci Guide Service (Eagle. Davis, Bucks, Almanor) (530) 283-4103
Mother Lode Lakes:
Gold Country Sport Fishing: Monte Smith – (209) 848-2746
Fishn’ Dan’s Guide Service – Danny Layne (209) 586-2383
Radio Shows
Sep Hendrickson's "California Sportsmen" outdoor radio show Saturdays from
6:00 AM to 8:00 AM on 1140 AM. You will find a ton of great info listening to this show!
Ground Fish were also seriously curtailed since 2009, though we can still take the certain species like blacks and blues, with spearguns from boat or with poles from shore only.
