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Over this past summer we were treated to a barrage of rants by demagogic politicians and chants from farmworkers about government favoring "fish over people," that somehow protecting fish -- in this instance reducing agricultural pumping so there'd be some water left instream for California Central Valley salmon -- was drying up agriculture and the food and jobs it supports.
Framing the debate this way, done by a skilled group of PR firms and political advisors, is catchy but is totally disingenuous -- and totally untrue. Allegations that somehow protecting Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed fish stocks -- even fish supporting fishing jobs -- from extinction was the cause of job losses, crop losses or threatened drinking water supplies is not the first time we've heard this line. There have been variations of it over the past two decades whenever fishermen or fishery managers sought protections for fish stocks from bad logging operations, mining, spraying of pesticides and herbicides, polluted discharges, offshore drilling, dam operations or water diversions, to name just a few.
These claims are all just part of a cynical effort to create a crisis to carry off a heist of water of massive proportions, right down to claiming "our food security was threatened" because "we'd have to import foreign supplies."
What we'd like to do is examine first the charges, then look at who is behind them -- the creators of the Big Lie and why -- and then talk about ways to speak up for the fish and ourselves.
We're not going to recite the history of western water policy and the controversies its use has caused fresh water fish or, more importantly, anadromous stocks like salmon. For that there are excellent texts, such as Marc Reisner's classic Cadillac Desert. Rather, let us set the stage for you about the current controversy that bears directly on the salmon closures off California and Oregon right now. All the well-orchestrated rants and chants at the doorsteps of Congressional home offices and on the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento are about creating an artificial crisis intended to push a massive water project at the expense of the fish and taxpayers.
In 2004, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) decided to go ahead with a plan for increasing the diversion of fresh water from California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The USBR, part of the Interior Department, maintains a massive pumping station in the Delta to divert water for its Central Valley Project -- the largest reclamation project in the west -- primarily supplying irrigation water to agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. CDWR also has a large pumping plant nearby to take water from the Delta for the State Water Project (SWP) which primarily supplies agriculture on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley, including the Westlands Water District, and Southern California cities. CDWR is California's largest energy user, pumping to move water along its canals for the west side growers and then over the Tehachapi mountains into the Los Angeles basin.
The Delta, as most salmon fishermen know, is the passageway for Central Valley chinook salmon (winter, spring, fall and late-fall runs) between their natal streams among the Cascade and Sierra foothills to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific. These runs are second only in size to the Columbia-Snake river system. The San Francisco Bay-Delta is the most biologically important of any estuary on the west coast of North and South America.
The problem is that the Delta, which currently provides for about half of the State's developed water needs, is badly overdrafted -- many would saying dying -- as a result of all this water being shipped southward.
More than two decades ago the State Water Board, in a draft October 1988 order, said more flow is needed (www.fishcalendar.net/cac/SWRCBs_1988_draft_Bay-Delta_water_quality_plan.pdf) through the Delta to San Francisco Bay to maintain the health of the estuary and its fish. It found, following two years of scientific testimony, that on average about 1.6 million acre-feet of additional flow annually through the Delta and out the Bay was needed to remain in the river simply to maintain estuary health and the salmon runs. (An acre-foot of water is the volume of water required to cover one acre of surface area to a depth of one foot, or 325,900 gallons.) That 1.6 million acre-foot overdraft is probably now even larger given the increased water withdrawals during the past score of years.
An estuary depends on the mixing of freshwater outflow with tidal inflow to create the rich brackish water important for nursery and/or spawning habitat for numerous important marine species, including salmon, sole, Dungeness crabs and herring. Rather than deal with the overdraft, however, the State chose to bury the science at its own -- and, as it turned out, the salmon's -- peril.
The Delta for sometime has been considered a "black hole" for downstream migrating salmon smolts, particularly in drier years when there is less total flow and thus more of it is being diverted by the pumps. Rather than west to the sea, the baby salmon become entrained at the flows to the pumps and become easy prey for predators in the pumping plants' forebays. If not that, they become lost in the Delta where flows are actually reversed and the water quality degraded by the pumping, leaving young salmon little to eat on their attempt to reach San Francisco Bay and the ocean. This is one of the reasons the State of California for about 30 years has chosen to truck much of its hatchery production around the Delta for release into San Francisco Bay. The problem is that they cannot truck the essential natural spawning salmon who have taken a huge hit because of deteriorating Delta conditions -- declines to the point where they had to be federally protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
So in 2004, under intense political pressure from the Bush Administration (San Joaquin Valley agribusinesses were among their major campaign contributors), the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service put their stamp of approval on the increased pumping plan (called "Operations Criteria and Plan (OCAP)"). In the process, the agencies' political hacks overruled own their scientists when they asserted that these additional diversions by the joint state-federal operation would "not harm" ESA-listed fish species, including winter and spring-run chinook, steelhead, sturgeon, and the resident Delta smelt.
Fishing and conservation groups (including PCFFA) protested, saying the additional diversions would indeed harm the fish, and sued. PCFFA was the lead plaintiff against NMFS over the salmon, while conservation and Delta sportfishing groups went after USFWS over its Delta smelt opinion. The plaintiffs in both suits were represented by Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
PCFFA and its other co-plaintiffs prevailed in their lawsuit against NMFS, as did the NRDC and its co-plaintiffs in the Delta smelt suit against USFWS. The federal judge, who heard both cases, threw both plans out as "arbitrary and capricious" and then ordered the preparation of new Biological Opinions (BiOps) under the ESA. Those two new BiOps found that indeed the additional water diversions caused "jeopardy" (i.e., would lead to extinction) for these fish.
But litigation of this magnitude takes time. Unfortunately, the Judge's Order came too late to prevent the record levels of water diversions that took place between 2004 and 2007. As a result of these huge water overdrafts, Delta smelt populations crashed, as did Central Valley chinook salmon, including the unlisted fall-run that supplies about 90 percent of California's salmon harvest and in some years as much as 50 percent or more of Oregon's ocean salmon catch. These record and near-record water diversions killed all but a very small fraction of outmigrating smolts within the Delta (long before they got to the ocean) as the Delta food chain that supports them simply collapsed.
This is why California and Oregon's ocean adult salmon fisheries were completely closed in 2008 and, excepting for some small fisheries on non-Central Valley stocks, in 2009. The Bush Administration's cynical effort to politically ignore the science to justify maximizing Central Valley water diversions has now cost our industry two years of work, thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost income.
The Bush Administration attempted to claim the collapse was due mostly to ocean conditions, attempting to remove any culpability on their part for the collapse and closure. That didn't really work, however, conflicting with the now-unfettered work of the agency scientists who were developing by that time fully peer-reviewed new BiOps for salmon and other Delta-dependent fish species.
Hatchery fish were also blamed by the Bush Administration's NMFS. However, the problem is not really hatcheries so much as it is the hostile conditions in the Delta the natural spawners are increasingly subjected to. Most of the hatchery fish -- the State of California's anyway -- get a free ride around the Delta. Additionally, Delta smelt for which there is no fishing nor any hatchery program, and which reside only in the Delta, suffered an even greater collapse than salmon. This takes the wind out of claims of ocean conditions or hatchery operations as the primary culprits for these unprecedented Central Valley salmon collapses.
Salmon may not be people but they certainly do feed and support people, every bit as much or more than agribusiness's crops in the San Joaquin Valley, many of which are grown with practices that are unsustainable. Even the Delta smelt -- the "two-inch minnow" -- plays an important role in the estuary's ecosystem in sustaining those fish species which do have a direct value for people.
On June 4th, 2009, NMFS released its new Court-ordered 800-page plan (called a "Biological Opinion" or BiOp) to rebuild Sacramento River salmon runs. The new salmon BiOp, which replaced the prior one issued in 2004 by the Bush Administration which was thrown out of Court as scientifically and legally unsound, clearly finds that excessive water diversions by the Central Valley Project and State Water Project operations jeopardize endangered salmon, steelhead, green sturgeon and even southern resident killer whales far north into the Puget Sound which feed on salmon at sea.
The salmon BiOp also sets detailed prescriptions for operating the water projects for the next 20 years in a manner that will avoid pushing the fish to extinction or further destroying their habitat. Some of these restrictions mean keeping more water in the river. Not surprisingly, within days after the BiOp was released, agribusiness and water districts filed lawsuits to overturn this plan.
Large west side San Joaquin growers and water districts such as Westlands then began staging rallies, including one in Fresno with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and various other ones throughout the State and in front of the State Capitol, paying labor contractors (the folks who secure farm labor) to bus-in non-union farmworkers for these rallies and marches. The 50-year old United Farmworkers Union has refused to participate in, or support, these demonstrations, which indicates that these rallies and pickets are far more "Astroturf" than grass roots.
Nevertheless, the commotion caused by the growers has gotten some attention, mainly on Fox News and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal -- enough attention that fishermen needed to begin organizing truth squads to counter this gang of water thugs and their "fish vs. people" agenda.
If in fact, the water shortages were what the heavily subsidized west side San Joaquin growers and the water districts allege, and those shortages in fact caused the crop loss and unemployment claimed, some sharing of the water would be reasonable -- even though salmon fishermen are shut-down, completely out of work, and sport fishermen have only a token fishery on California's north coast. The fact is, however, most of California's agriculture has gotten its water this year (2009).
While unemployment figures for farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley are high, they are still about the average for the past 20 years. This whole area is prone to high unemployment rates generally. Indeed, Fresno County, in the very heart of the San Joaquin Valley, actually saw its farm employment increase this year, and there was a record crop of tomatoes on top of that.
Lloyd Carter, a former United Press International (UPI) correspondent who reported extensively on the San Joaquin Valley, said, "Mendota is the only town I've heard mentioned that has a 40 percent unemployment rate.... Mendota has had chronic unemployment problems for decades ranging from 28 to 35 percent, even in years when Westlands got all of its water supply. Most farmworker jobs are seasonal and many farmworkers go on public assistance every winter.... Many residents are now forced to visit food banks.... Hunger in the food rich San Joaquin Valley has been an ongoing problem for many years."
"The rest of the cutbacks in south of Delta water deliveries are attributable to natural drought and to the fact the Westlands is the last federal irrigation district in the Central Valley Project to get whatever water is left after senior water rights holders get their supplies. And, even Westlands is getting 10 percent of its water. East Side growers are getting between 80 and 90 percent of normal deliveries. Many older irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley, with senior water rights, got a near-normal allotment of water this year and some got a full allotment, ' Carter also reported. Westlands has not been "going dry," however, and has secured water from other sources including from groundwater pumping nearby.
Lester Snow, Director of the California Department of Water Resources, says the Delta smelt court ruling only accounts for only about one-third of the cutbacks of water to the 617,000-acre Westlands Water District, which represents about 15 percent of the farming in the San Joaquin Valley.
In late August, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), which has been one of the leaders among the commercial and recreational salmon fishing groups dogging this issue, discovered "a Westlands' information bulletin dated 23 July 2009 revealing that the giant irrigation district has been hiding considerable carryover storage from last year and is adding even more this year. CSPA is calling for an investigation into Westlands' surplus water and possible surplus water hidden away by other water districts."
CSPA found further that, "at the end of 2008, Westlands had some 233,998 acre-feet (AF) of water stored in other facilities that it didn't need. Some 93,700 AF of that stored water was used through June 2009. However, the export pumping restrictions caused by the Delta smelt Biological Opinion ended 30 June and the State and Federal Projects have ramped up pumping. Westlands has made firm commitments to acquire 141,522 AF of supplemental water and is requesting additional supplies. Consequently, Westlands staff projects that the District will end the water year with approximately 275,000 AF of water it is unable to use."
So where is the unemployment, where is the water shortage? What about the crops, what about America's food security and our reliance on foreign food?
According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the average American now eats about 260 pounds of foreign food a year, 13 percent of the average person's diet. Food imports regulated by the FDA increased from four million shipments in 2000 to 10 million shipments in 2006. Some 79 percent of the American fish and shellfish consumption comes from foreign sources. 32 percent of fruits and nuts consumed in America now come from overseas, and 13 percent of its vegetables.
At the same time, according to Mr. Carter, "we now have 650,000 acres of almonds in the San Joaquin Valley. The price has gone from $4 a pound to $1-2 a pound. How many acres of almonds do we need? These 'farmers' are the most heavily subsidized growers in America, receiving more subsidy money for crops, and subsidized water and power, than any other growers in America."
So what is really behind these attacks on the fish, and subsequently upon fishermen and fishing communities?
We've always had our suspicions about what was behind the push for massive water projects tapping the Delta -- or just intercepting the freshwater before it even reached the estuary. These project schemes, include new storage reservoirs and "conveyances" through or around the Delta (e.g., the "Peripheral Canal"), would be the nail in the coffin for Central Valley salmon and, consequently, for California and much of Oregon's salmon fisheries. Even Washington trollers would be affected, as would fishermen who depend on the Dungeness crab and herring that use San Francisco Bay.
Since its inception in the 1920's and the beginning of construction in the mid-1930's, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) Central Valley Project has coveted California water on behalf of its contractors with whom it has grown cozy over the years. The agency is notorious for breaching agreements, including Congressional mandates, on how much water it can divert, under what conditions, and who it could deliver that water to.
One of its most egregious acts was its diversion of the Trinity River (a tributary of the Klamath in far northern California) by nearly 90 percent and nearly destroying a large part of the Klamath salmon fishery. No sooner had the diversions begun when USBR was sending all the water it could take south to the San Joaquin Valley -- including, later, the Westlands Water District. Only after a Record of Decision was brokered by the Clinton Administration in 2000, did the Trinity get back about half of its historic flows at the diversion site.
The USBR couldn't even play it straight with the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA) when it intercepted the water allocated for fish and wildlife and pumped that south too, all the while thumbing its nose at the Act's "mandatory" salmon water reallocations and population doubling goals. (See pg. 52 of Listen to the River: An Independent Review of the CVPIA Fisheries Program, USBR & USFWS (Dec. 2008), www.cvpiaindependentreview.com/FisheriesReport12_12_08.pdf ).
In the late 1950's the federal Project gained a junior partner with the State Water Project (SWP), which had big plans for sending water from California's other north state rivers south to Southern California. The SWP did manage to build one large dam on the Feather River and the massive California Aquaduct for moving water south from the Delta, but its plans for other big projects on the North Coast came to an end on the Eel River. But that never stopped them -- before or after Governor Reagan's veto of the Dos Rios Project -- from selling water they never had. The State Water Project is the Bernie Madoff of water management.
The plan was to provide water "surplus" to meet its current SWP demands to west-side growers along the path of the Aqueduct, as the demand from southern California gradually built out. Much of that "surplus," however, went to districts like Westlands on a "temporary" basis. But growers in the districts have used much of the water not for annual crops, given its temporary availability, but for planting permanent orchards.
The situation now is that the SWP is so over-committed that it has to find water somewhere or default on its contracts. Meanwhile, its contractors -- some in the south wanting their promised water, many other growers wanting to make temporary water permanent -- were perfectly aware that the water wasn't there but were, and are, willing to take whatever water DWR will deliver through the Project at low rates.
To make these temporary water allocations permanent, the water buffaloes think it's the fish and fishermen -- the Delta ecosystem -- that should take the hit.
The water districts' game plan as of early September, 2009, was to try to pass a package of water bills that could allow for construction of a "Peripheral Canal," or even a tunnel, to take even more Sacramento River directly south around (or under) the SF Bay Delta. This engineering project would, however, kill off the Sacramento's once abundant chinook runs at an estimated project cost to the taxpayer of some $23 to $53.8 billion.
Some of the water contractors have said they'd pay for the project, which would also include two new huge surface reservoirs (at least one of which would be shallow and amount to a gigantic evaporation pond), but don't count on it. They'll offer up a few billions but they'll foist the balance of the project's cost on the taxpayers either through a state bond act, federal appropriations or some combination thereof. So if it makes fishermen feel any better, its not just us getting screwed, the state's general taxpayers are also going to be fleeced for a large chunk of change in the deal.
One proposal calls for a package of bills to be run through the Legislature, creating a new Delta Authority on which the Governor would appoint the majority of the members. The Governor has expressed dissatisfaction, however, with some of the environmental protections proposed, including those for fish. His Administration has been running a parallel plan for a Peripheral Canal, euphemistically called the "Bay-Delta Conservation Plan" or "BDCP" disguised as a "natural community conservation plan" (NCCP), but really just an end around the ESA and the BiOps for the fish. The latter effort, the Schwarzenegger Administration claims, does not require Legislative approval. But you can bet they'll be back before the Legislature asking for the money to build it.
In both instances, Legislators and those pushing the BDCP process give lip service to the "Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Panel" proposal of making environmental protection and water supply "co-equal goals." The concept of "separate but equal" turned out to be a fiction, as we think these "co-equal goals" will be also.
To begin with, no one knows how much water the Delta ecosystem currently requires. Most don't want to know out of fear they'll have to put some water back, instead of taking more. In this context, "co-equal" is a political fairy tale. What's worse, they've engaged the California Department of Fish & Game, the California Department of Water Resources' (CDWR) perennial hand-maiden, in perpetuating this myth of co-equal goals.
It's not as if California could not meet its water shortfalls by other means, cheaper and probably with a whole lot more dependability. There have been numerous studies, including those by CDWR in its water plan updates, and by the Public Policy Institute, NRDC, and most recently by the Environmental Water Coalition, California Water Solutions Now (http://ewccalifornia.org), identifying means for supplying the state the water it needs out to 2030. These include the three pillars of water conservation and increased efficiency, water recycling and reuse, and groundwater capture, storage, treatment and management.
A fourth part of addressing water needs, "green" desalination of sea water and groundwater, is also a possibility if the state would invest some research and development money in such technologies. California is a world leader in stem-cell research, but has done almost nothing to advance the science of water supply.
So if there are more cost-effective and environmentally protective (e.g., fish friendly) ways of achieving a reliable water supply, why the fixation on a massive multi-billion dollar water project of questionable supply reliability and carrying assured environmental destruction?
The answer is that water achieved through conservation, reuse, or groundwater management will be widely dispersed, so no one entity or small group of entities get control. A major project, however, puts the control of the water into a state agency and a handful of its favored water districts -- many controlled by large agribusiness campaign contributors. In the west, water is power and money. Lots of money.
Just how much money is at stake was revealed in an August 25th, 2009, article in a Kings County (California -- in the San Joaquin Valley) paper, the Hanford Sentinel. "Forget gold. In Kings County, water gets most of the attention," reported the Sentinel. "That's why the Kings County Water Commission spent a good chunk of a Monday night meeting talking about a Westside landowner who plans to sell 14,000 acre-feet of water a year to the Mojave Water Agency in San Bernardino County for $5,500 per acre-foot."
The article continued, saying "[T]he tradeoff is that the unnamed landowner --a member of a Bay Area company called Sandridge Partners, based in Sunnyvale -- plans to cut down 2,500 acres of his [sic] almond trees along Interstate 5 near Kettleman City.... Normally, that probably wouldn't rank high on the concerns of the water commission. The land is far away from Hanford, it doesn't affect Kings River water users and it's California Aqueduct water coming from the Sacramento River, anyway.... But the concern is that the pattern could become more common as scarce water becomes more valuable as a commodity than as a way of growing crops."
The Sentinel continued: "Dudley Ridge Water District, where Sandridge's land is located, has adopted a policy divvying its water among member property owners. That gives each the right to sell their share..... Sandridge plans to use part of the $77 million to buy groundwater rights on adjacent land in Kings and Tulare counties in order to keep at least some of its almond trees alive."
Kathryn Gray did a little further investigating in a August 27th, 2009, Counterpunch article, finding, "Sandridge Partners is owned by the Vidovich family of Silicon Valley, who already amassed a considerable fortune turning Silicon Valley orchards into housing tracts. More recently, according to the Environmental Working Group, as detailed in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sandridge Partners were the biggest 2008 recipients in the entire nation for federal subsidies for thirsty cotton, wheat, and peanuts for their farms in three San Joaquin Valley counties. Think of them as Kern County's Welfare Kings."
Gray was a bit more direct in her assessment than the Sentinel reporter. "The next time you're driving on California's Highway 5, and you see a grove of dead trees sporting those 'Congress Created Dustbowl' signs, hold off reaching for your hankie. If you're watching a Fox News feed of farmworkers who were paid a day's wages for 'protesting' at a Democratic Congressman's office, wielding commercially produced signs, and chanting 'Aqua now,' sit back and do a reality check. And if you've read about the Pacific Legal Foundation's petition to call in the 'God Squad' to dump the Endangered Species Act, and get those pumps on to save beleaguered Westside San Joaquin valley farms, stop and hum your bible school hymn 'All creatures great and small... the good Lord made them all...'
"One of the fish being complained of receiving favorable treatment over people was the salmon. Well, last we looked those salmon were food, and they provide jobs -- or at least did anyway. So what these growers and politicians were complaining about was a fish that is food and supports jobs being protected from possible extermination."
Thus in California's Central Valley, if you can get hold of large chunks of water there's money to be made. Of course, it's at the expense of a world class estuary -- the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay, Delta agriculture (e.g., crops such as asparagus), the salmon, salmon fishermen, a swath of fishing communities along the California and Oregon coast, and the public who may just prefer California's native wild-caught king salmon over the non-native, double subsidized, King Cotton grown with what was once the salmon's water.
Water gains through conservation and reuse are chump change for the big boys here; it's in the massive water projects that they can control. That's where the real money is.
Unfortunately we're living another chapter of Disaster Capitalism. The grower's PR firms and political advisors, with some help from the Governor, have succeeded in creating a panicked frenzy in the Legislature and even among some of the public. "The status quo is unacceptable," is the mantra in the Legislative hearings and among the BDCP proponents. Yes, there's no doubt the status quo is unacceptable, but the question is, do we work to improve the situation based on sound science and policy or make things worse in a contrived panic?
Plans to take away even more of the Delta's water through some form of artificial conveyance -- likely a Peripheral Canal -- and more surface storage reservoirs, are a bullet through the brain for fishing-dependent communities. These projects are designed in such a way that they will kill the Delta and kill California's salmon fishery.
The challenge for fishermen is now to act as an outspoken Truth Squad. Some of that has been occurring, such as the recent "Million Boat Float" -- actually a float on behalf of millions -- to the California State Capitol and other actions aimed at getting the truth out, before the killing of the fishery and this grandiose heist of public water can succeed.
But much more needs to be done over the next year, confronting the lies and letting people know that those fish are your livelihood and salmon the public eats (or should be eating).
We're certainly not attacking farmers. Real family farmers, organic growers, the United Farmworkers are all the fellow food producers that fishermen need to work with. The enemy here is the large highly subsidized Agribusiness firms parading as farmers, and their land developer buddies, who are far more likely to be harvesting the federal treasury or trading in water futures than growing a valued food crop.
Chances are this battle between the theft of water and protection of Central Valley salmon is the forerunner of many future conflicts we will be witnessing here in the west as climate change dries up always limited water supplies salmon need to survive. It's already playing out in another form in the Klamath Basin. Where next, the Columbia and the Fraser?
To learn more about the issue, contact PCFFA or groups such as the Environmental Water Caucus. Also go to the Salmon Water Now website (www.salmonwaternow.org) to view the videos that have been produced to spread the truth about salmon fishing and counter Big Agriculture's lies. Pass them on to everyone you know -- and keep fighting the Big Lie with the one thing it can never abide: the Truth.
Capt. Larry Collins is a commercial salmon, crab and rockfish fisherman from San Francisco and President of the Crab Boat Owners Association -- the oldest commercial fishermen's organization on the Pacific coast -- as well as Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA) Vice-President. Zeke Grader is the Executive Director of PCFFA, with headquarters in San Francisco. PCFFA can be reached at its Southwest Office at PO Box 29370, San Francisco, CA 94129-0370, (415)561-5080, and at its Northwest Office at PO Box 11170, Eugene, OR 97440-3370, (541)689-2000 or by email to: fish1ifr@aol.com. PCFFA's Internet Home Page is at: www.pcffa.org.