Late twist threatens state’s salmon
Proposals push destructive dams, tunnels
It’s no coincidence that terrible California water deals are made under the cover of opaque lame-duck sessions of Congress where the political rules are warped, or behind closed doors in Sacramento where state and local agencies have signed confidentiality agreements.
This year’s grand water bargain centers around three goals that threaten the salmon fishing industry that I represent: Build more dams and enlarge the ones we already have;
Construct tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to divert the Sacramento River water; and
Pump more water south to Central Valley corporate farming interests and Southern California cities.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act extension and its $1 billion price tag is proposed as the linchpin to meet these three goals. Feinstein, a Democrat, has teamed up with Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and outgoing Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to promote this extension.
Feinstein’s anti-fishing rider would allow the Trump administration to pump even more water out of the delta in violation of required protections for endangered salmon. The five-year WIIN Act was initially passed during a similar lame duck period in 2016, without any hearings or oversight, as a temporary measure to respond to drought. Now the feds are proposing to extend its authority to 2028, and to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the pork barrel, again without any public hearings.
This agreement also provides hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funding for unwise dams and diversions, such as building the proposed Sites Reservoir and raising the height of the federal Shasta Dam (which is currently being studied by the Department of the Interior despite such a plan being illegal under state law). The beneficiaries: corporate agricultural interests who are federal water project contractors and who will continue to receive cheap water heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
President Trump, as eager as anyone to weaken environmental safeguards, and outgoing Leader McCarthy, who has worked to coordinate with Feinstein on bad water policies, have done unthinkable damage to fish and the fishing community. This playbook will only result in policies that drive us closer to the brink of salmon extinction.
Despite his neutral stance on the WIIN Act in 2016, Brown endorsed the extension two weeks ago. Why this aboutface?
For starters, the governor’s legacy project, the twin tunnels (also known as “WaterFix”), is on life support. Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom wisely has stayed out of the battle over the tunnels, and Brown may never see his infrastructure project move forward if he doesn’t get a deal in his remaining weeks in office.
Brown has also been a champion of “voluntary settlement agreements” that seek to weaken environmental standards proposed in the State Water Board’s Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, which goes up for a vote on Wednesday. Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California stated publicly that voluntary settlement agreement discussions included WaterFix. Far from representing the panaceas they promise, voluntary settlement agreements are private alternatives to public regulatory processes, shortchanging anyone unlucky enough to be kept out of the room.
While Feinstein seeks a deal with McCarthy and the Trump and Brown administrations to weaken the protections that salmon fishermen and the environment depend on, Californians have repeatedly voted against weakening environmental protections and for standing up to the Trump administration. That’s why Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., denounced the WIIN Act rider last week. This proposed deal benefits agricultural irrigation interests, and the losers would be fishermen, the salmon and taxpayers, who are asked to foot the bill — just like always.
Tell our elected officials it is time for a new vision for California water. Noah Oppenheim is executive director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations