Family Farm Alliance News Release
Family Farm Alliance Calls for Withdrawal
Of Biased, Unscientific Order for Delta Smelt Contact: Dan Keppen @ 541-892-6244
Brenda Davis @ 916-341-7404
Fifteen Years of Failure to Protect the Delta Is Enough;
Group Calls on Government to Restore Scientific Integrity
(Klamath Falls, Oregon - July 13, 2009). Declaring that fifteen years of failure is enough, the Family Farm Alliance (Alliance) has filed suit to force the withdrawal of the federal government's latest order cutting back California's water supplies on behalf of the delta smelt. The order issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) does not meet the Endangered Species Act's standards for quality of data and scientific integrity according to the suit filed on Friday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
"Fortunately the Endangered Species Act (ESA) sets strict standards to protect the public and the environment from biased and unscientific abuses of its provisions," said Dan Keppen, Alliance Executive Director. "We are taking this action to protect the integrity of ESA and to ensure that those standards are applied to correct the federal government's unmitigated record of failure in the Delta."
For the past 15 years, federal regulators have ordered more and more stringent restrictions on the water supplies pumped through the Delta to serve California's farms and cities, on the presumption that the pumps were harming delta smelt. Those restrictions have cost California billions of dollars in economic losses and tens of thousands of jobs. But instead of showing any benefit from these measures, the population of delta smelt has continued to decline.
Among the many defects in USFWS's December order, which reduced by one third the state's water supplies to more than 25 million people, the Alliance pointed out that:
Instead of conducting the independent peer review that the law requires, USFWS brought in the authors of the papers on which the agency's order was based. In effect, they were being asked to review the adequacy of their own work. None would qualify under the standards set by ESA, the Information Quality Act or the federal Office of Management and Budget guidelines.
Although ESA requires USFWS to use the best available scientific and commercial data, the agency instead based its findings in part on an analysis which had not been published or peer reviewed and, supposedly, data, which USFWS refused even to disclose. Moreover, it turns out the agency did not actually possess some of the data that it claimed it used to order the cutbacks in water supplies.
Rather than relying on scientific evidence to form its conclusions as the law requires, USFWS only cited the bits and pieces of information that supported its own assumptions and ignored the rest.
The Alliance is not alone in questioning the integrity of USFWS's smelt order. The California Department of Water Resources has formally asked that it be withdrawn for reconsultation and revision. DWR says there is new information on better ways to protect the smelt that was not considered in the existing order.
And the federal court recently granted a temporary injunction against USFWS' order on a complaint that the order violated the National Environmental Policy Act because the federal government failed to prepare an environmental impact statement. Instead the order was drafted in secret and put into effect without any public hearings or review.
At a recent town hall meeting in Fresno, where area congressmen, business leaders, landowners and farmworkers criticized the order's scientific inadequacy, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar declined to defend USFWS' action, pointing out that these cutbacks in water supplies had been the work of the previous administration.
"President Obama and the leadership in Congress have declared their commitment to upholding the standards and bringing the best science to bear on governmental decision making," said Keppen. "We applaud their commitment and call on them to live up to that promise by withdrawing this flawed and fallacious order now, before it does any more harm."
Numerous scientific studies have identified multiple causes for the delta smelt's decline, including ammonia discharges from Sacramento and other industrial pollution, temperature changes, and invasive non-native species that are devouring the smelt's food as well as the smelt themselves.
"USFWS has refused to analyze these other factors and their importance, sticking instead to their assumption that pumping must be the problem," Keppen said. "But if anything, their failure to produce any benefits for the smelt over the last fifteen years should demonstrate that the pumps are not the problem."
According to analyses prepared by the University of California, federal restrictions on pumping water through the Delta, combined with the ongoing effects of drought, cost California's Central Valley economy more than $300 million in 2008 and nearly $1 billion this year. The economic impacts statewide are much greater.
"These are critical issues for the members of our alliance," Keppen pointed out. "More than 300,000 acres of productive farmlands have been fallowed because of these cutbacks. Rationing is being imposed in many California cities. Our membership includes farmers but we also represent irrigation districts, commodity associations, private water companies, and suppliers of a wide range of farm-related services and equipment. We are all being hurt by these federal cutbacks in water deliveries."
The Alliance brought its concerns with the adequacy of the data used for this order to the attention of USFWS as soon as the order was released in December, 2008. But USFWS has so far refused to address these problems or correct the order. The Alliance has now exhausted all of the opportunities for administrative relief.
"This is the first time that the Alliance has engaged in litigation, and it's not a step we take lightly," said Alliance President Patrick O'Toole. "But in this case, we had no other choice. "Preserving the scientific basis for these decisions and ensuring the fairness and transparency of all the proceedings under ESA is a vitally important issue for all of our members throughout the western states."
The Family Farm Alliance is a grassroots organization of family farmers, ranchers, irrigation districts and allied industries in 17 Western states. The Alliance is focused on one mission: To ensure the availability of reliable, affordable irrigation water supplies to Western farmers and ranchers. For more information on the Alliance, go to www.familyfarmalliance.org
Monday, July 13, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
LA Times Weighs in on Columbia River Salmon Issues
Saving the Columbia and Snake river salmon
L.A. Times-7/6/09
By Paul VanDevelder
Opinion
If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.
The policy deadlock that has resulted from the debate among stakeholders along the Columbia and the Snake -- aluminum smelters, the Bonneville Power Administration, politicians, Indian tribes, states, conservation groups, fishermen, barge operators, agribusiness and wheat farmers -- has flushed billions of taxpayer dollars out to sea over the last 15 years while doing very little to prevent 13 endangered salmon stocks from going extinct.
In March, the federal judge responsible for herding all these cats toward a scientifically based solution that meets the requirements of the Endangered Species Act announced that he had heard enough bickering. District Judge James Redden summoned all the stakeholders to his courtroom in Portland, Ore., with the edict to take "aggressive action" and that "now is the time to make that happen."
In addition to being the judge in this case, Redden acts as the government's "special master" for the Columbia River basin, a network of rivers and streams that fans out over an area the size of France. In that role, he has the final say on any proposed changes to fish habitat and the uses of the rivers' payload: water.
At the March meeting in his courtroom, Redden wore both hats and congratulated all sides for getting "very close" to a final rescue plan for the fish. After losing precious years to political infighting and foot-dragging by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Redden noted that much progress had been made in recent years in formulating a workable plan -- "a biological opinion" -- to keep the salmon from becoming extinct.
However, he warned, there were still problems with the plan. For one thing, government scientists had relied too heavily on statistical sleight of hand to support their argument that endangered fish were trending toward recovery. For another, the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River must be included in the recovery plan in case all other remedies fail.
There it was. Out in the open and on the table. Dam removal -- a remedy that the Bush administration had rejected out of hand -- was back in play. Fax machines across the region came to life when Redden's letter reached the stakeholders.
"Federal law doesn't allow dam removal, and no Democrat-politician-turned-activist-judge can rewrite the law," wrote Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) The Northwest River Partners expressed dismay, and the Portland Oregonian's editorial board described Redden's letter as "puzzling."
"The letter is strongly critical of the key strategy in the plan to focus on habitat improvements to offset the harm that federal power-generating dams inflict on fish," the Oregonian wrote, expressing surprise at such a reaction while conveniently ignoring the fact that billions of dollars spent on habitat improvement, fish ladders and barging young fish around dams have done very little to increase salmon populations.
If anything, these measures have lengthened the odds against the salmon's survival by shifting the focus away from more politically explosive solutions, such as dam removal. Redden first issued his warning about the dams in 2004, when he threw out the first Bush rescue plan.
Politicians and stakeholders have steadfastly resisted the painful solution of dam removal while hoping for a miracle. That hope turned out to be a one-way road on a dead-end street, and in many respects they're now blaming the court for their current predicament. With few exceptions, the region's politicians, past and current, have been challenging the recommendations of scientists (including dam removal and increasing the spills over the dams) for more than a decade. Former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) famously vowed to chain himself to a dam rather than surrender, a prospect relished by many conservation groups.
Throughout this stalemate, fish counts have continued to fall, and the underlying science is clear: In river after river where dams have been removed, native fish populations have rebounded and thrived. As the government's former chief aquatic biologist, Don Chapman, concluded, dam removal is the most effective strategy for saving endangered native fish stocks from extinction.
This was the conclusion reached by the Idaho Statesman newspaper back in 1997 after it conducted a yearlong study of the Snake River dams. The paper reported that the economic benefits of a healthy fishery -- and the resultant tens of thousands of jobs -- would swamp the benefits of leaving the dams in place.
Dozens of reports by natural resources economists have agreed. Among other things, they describe the dams as economic sinkholes, which produce less than 3% of the region's power, do nothing for flood control, irrigate only a handful of big farms and subsidize transportation costs (at the expense of taxpayers and salmon) for wheat farmers in Idaho and eastern Washington.
The Columbia-Snake corridor is the salmon's only option for survival, and Redden is probably their last hope. He is the one person in this entire drama who is legally obligated to use science and the law to protect the fish from extinction and from the whims of politicians. If the law and science are unable to trump politics to save this fishery -- a fishery that was the most productive in the world just two generations ago -- how will we ever meet the towering challenges posed by global climate change?
For the sake of the fish and the 500 other species that depend on this wild and "vital resource" for their survival, many of us hope the judge has the resolve to stay the course and to see the job through.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-vandevelder6-2009jul06,0,1077571.story?track=rss
L.A. Times-7/6/09
By Paul VanDevelder
Opinion
If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.
The policy deadlock that has resulted from the debate among stakeholders along the Columbia and the Snake -- aluminum smelters, the Bonneville Power Administration, politicians, Indian tribes, states, conservation groups, fishermen, barge operators, agribusiness and wheat farmers -- has flushed billions of taxpayer dollars out to sea over the last 15 years while doing very little to prevent 13 endangered salmon stocks from going extinct.
In March, the federal judge responsible for herding all these cats toward a scientifically based solution that meets the requirements of the Endangered Species Act announced that he had heard enough bickering. District Judge James Redden summoned all the stakeholders to his courtroom in Portland, Ore., with the edict to take "aggressive action" and that "now is the time to make that happen."
In addition to being the judge in this case, Redden acts as the government's "special master" for the Columbia River basin, a network of rivers and streams that fans out over an area the size of France. In that role, he has the final say on any proposed changes to fish habitat and the uses of the rivers' payload: water.
At the March meeting in his courtroom, Redden wore both hats and congratulated all sides for getting "very close" to a final rescue plan for the fish. After losing precious years to political infighting and foot-dragging by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Redden noted that much progress had been made in recent years in formulating a workable plan -- "a biological opinion" -- to keep the salmon from becoming extinct.
However, he warned, there were still problems with the plan. For one thing, government scientists had relied too heavily on statistical sleight of hand to support their argument that endangered fish were trending toward recovery. For another, the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River must be included in the recovery plan in case all other remedies fail.
There it was. Out in the open and on the table. Dam removal -- a remedy that the Bush administration had rejected out of hand -- was back in play. Fax machines across the region came to life when Redden's letter reached the stakeholders.
"Federal law doesn't allow dam removal, and no Democrat-politician-turned-activist-judge can rewrite the law," wrote Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) The Northwest River Partners expressed dismay, and the Portland Oregonian's editorial board described Redden's letter as "puzzling."
"The letter is strongly critical of the key strategy in the plan to focus on habitat improvements to offset the harm that federal power-generating dams inflict on fish," the Oregonian wrote, expressing surprise at such a reaction while conveniently ignoring the fact that billions of dollars spent on habitat improvement, fish ladders and barging young fish around dams have done very little to increase salmon populations.
If anything, these measures have lengthened the odds against the salmon's survival by shifting the focus away from more politically explosive solutions, such as dam removal. Redden first issued his warning about the dams in 2004, when he threw out the first Bush rescue plan.
Politicians and stakeholders have steadfastly resisted the painful solution of dam removal while hoping for a miracle. That hope turned out to be a one-way road on a dead-end street, and in many respects they're now blaming the court for their current predicament. With few exceptions, the region's politicians, past and current, have been challenging the recommendations of scientists (including dam removal and increasing the spills over the dams) for more than a decade. Former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) famously vowed to chain himself to a dam rather than surrender, a prospect relished by many conservation groups.
Throughout this stalemate, fish counts have continued to fall, and the underlying science is clear: In river after river where dams have been removed, native fish populations have rebounded and thrived. As the government's former chief aquatic biologist, Don Chapman, concluded, dam removal is the most effective strategy for saving endangered native fish stocks from extinction.
This was the conclusion reached by the Idaho Statesman newspaper back in 1997 after it conducted a yearlong study of the Snake River dams. The paper reported that the economic benefits of a healthy fishery -- and the resultant tens of thousands of jobs -- would swamp the benefits of leaving the dams in place.
Dozens of reports by natural resources economists have agreed. Among other things, they describe the dams as economic sinkholes, which produce less than 3% of the region's power, do nothing for flood control, irrigate only a handful of big farms and subsidize transportation costs (at the expense of taxpayers and salmon) for wheat farmers in Idaho and eastern Washington.
The Columbia-Snake corridor is the salmon's only option for survival, and Redden is probably their last hope. He is the one person in this entire drama who is legally obligated to use science and the law to protect the fish from extinction and from the whims of politicians. If the law and science are unable to trump politics to save this fishery -- a fishery that was the most productive in the world just two generations ago -- how will we ever meet the towering challenges posed by global climate change?
For the sake of the fish and the 500 other species that depend on this wild and "vital resource" for their survival, many of us hope the judge has the resolve to stay the course and to see the job through.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-vandevelder6-2009jul06,0,1077571.story?track=rss
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