Badlands Journal

12-22-08
Merced Sun-Star editorial

...How can we judge if California is taking more water from the delta and its watershed than they can handle?
Consider the evidence: Smelt are at the brink of extinction. Other species, such as salmon, are in serious peril. Federal courts are using the hammer of the Endangered Species Act to deliver a blunt message about the entire ecosystem.
Dry years, when cities and farms suck more from the delta than they do during more rainy times, are especially tough for these species. During wet years, 87 percent of the water entering the delta makes it out to the San Francisco Bay. During dry years, the figure drops to 51 percent.
If California is to have any hope of restoring the delta and avoiding clashes with federal judges, it must develop a water plan that reduces its dependence on this estuary and strives for greater reliability.
What would this plan look like?
To begin with, it must be grounded in reality. Water contracts based on dated premises must be renegotiated, and efficiency should be the law of the land.
Each region of the state -- including Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley -- must find ways to reduce what it takes from the delta and its watershed. And environmental groups must recognize that not every species will be restored to its population predating the Gold Rush...

“The Bush Administration is seeking to gut the Endangered Species Act on its way out the door,” Attorney General Brown said.

News Release
December 30, 2008
For Immediate Release
Contact: Christine Gasparac 916-324-5500

http://www.ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1644&

Attorney General Brown Sues to Overturn Bush Administration Rules Undermining Endangered Species Act

SAN FRANCISCO– California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. has filed suit in federal court to block an “audacious attempt” by the Bush Administration to gut provisions in the Endangered Species Act mandating scientific review of federal agency decisions that may threaten endangered species and their habitat.

 “This is an audacious attempt to circumvent a time-tested statute that for 35 years has required scientific review of proposed federal agency decisions that affect wildlife.”

The new regulations, initially proposed by the Departments of the Interior and Commerce in August 2008 and made final on December 16, largely eliminate a requirement in the Endangered Species Act that mandates scientific review of federal agency decisions that might affect endangered and threatened species and their habitats.

For information:
Carolee Krieger, Executive Director and Board President, California Water Impact Network, (805) 969-0824,
caroleeekrieger@cox.net
Bill Jennings, Chairman, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, (209) 464-5067, (209) 938-9053 (cell),
deltakeep@aol.com
Michael Jackson, Counsel, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and Board Member, California Water
Impact Network, (530) 283-0712, mjatty@sbcglobal.net
For a copy of the complaint filed in Sacramento Superior Court, see www.c-win.org or www.calsport.org.

Calling it “the biggest lawsuit about the biggest ecological and legal catastrophe in California today,” the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) filed suit in Sacramento Superior Court Friday, November 28, 2008, to protect Delta public trust resources—including endangered migratory fisheries of salmon and open water fish species—and to end wasteful and unreasonable diversions of water from the Delta by big state and federal water projects.

The suit also asks the court to halt irrigation of several hundred thousand acres of selenium contaminated lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the drainage from which pollutes wetlands, the San Joaquin River, and the Delta.

Where are all the doomsayers of 2006? Those people, who said the speculative real estate boom could not last, were a kind of answer.

Their argument necessarily called for a governmental solution, a need for immediate, perhaps even drastic regulation of a bubble gone wild and spreading, via securitized debt, throughout the world. By 2007, the doomsayers were even saying that this could result in a global credit freeze. These days, they content themselves with documenting the damage.

Government didn't listen; it continued to enable the bubble. Today, the lame duck Bush administration is desperately trying to restore credibility to securitized credit debt at unbelievable, unimaginable but inadequate public expense, as wave upon wave of defaults, we are told, are yet to come -- more residential mortgage defaults, commercial mortgage defaults, credit card defaults. The ever-cheery mainstream press is beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find credentialled prophets willing to predict even a mid-term reversal of economic bad news.

Obama promised Change! but we doubt he'd like to take any credit for the real changes happening.

The articles below from the Merced Sun-Star tell a story about felony indictments brought against five people associated with Firm Build, a program started in 1998 to train "troubled teens" in construction trades. Merced County Planning Commissioner Rudy Buendia was or is still executive director of Firm Build, which went bankrupt months ago.

Buendia, charged originally with 15 felonies (later 17), according to the newspaper fled arrest and was a "fugitive" for two days before turning himself in with Kirk McAllister, Modesto criminal defense attorney, at his side.

Two of the five charged were arrested. It is unclear from reports if two others were arrested or turned themselves in. Two have posted bail and been released.

Buendia, the only reported fugitive, was released without paying bail on September 18 by Superior Court Judge McCabe. The judge's reasons included Buendia's clean record and that he personally knew seven of the 20 prominent people who wrote letters on Buendia's behalf. The board of supervisors is reported to have no plans of removing either Planning Commissioner Buendia or Patrick Bowman, on the board of the "troubled" Merced County Housing Authority and an official of the Merced County Office of Education, from the positions the board appointed them to.

Check it out! - editors
 

The attempted change should be seen for what it is: a final Bush administration gift to those who benefit when environmental laws are weakened.-– Concord Monitor

Below, we've included the Associated Press story by Dina Cappiello on Aug. 22 about more than 100 conservation groups throughout the nation (including three from Merced) that opposed the Bush administration's latest attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act. Three groups came from the Merced: San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, San Joaquin Valley Conservancy and San Joaquin Et Al. The story was widely distributed throughout the nation and even in the UK -- a partial list is also included. Finally, there is some information about a number of local business and political leaders, large Republican fundraisers, who stand to benefit from this last-minute attempt by the Bush administration to reward its contributors.

Badlands Journal editorial board

--------------------------

Associated Press
Groups: Bush rushing to rewrite species rules...(AP) DINA CAPPIELLO...8-22-08
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hkF1lWZoKQaqIgrv4XHs4RAorcQgD92NHQMG6
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is providing insufficient time for public comment as it seeks to loosen rules protecting endangered species, representatives of more than 100 conservation groups charged Friday.

Thanks to Sacramento’s man on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Anthony Kennedy, who created the meaningless “significant nexis” to determine the connectivity of waters to navigable streams, federal resource agencies have been up a creek as far as knowing their jurisdiction to enforce the Clean Water Act. The EPA has done nothing about more than 400 CWA enforcement cases since the Supreme Court ruling called the “Rapanos Decision.” Kennedy’s middle ground stood between four conservative justices who wanted CWA enforcement only on permanent streams and four liberals who voted for intermittent streams as well, including wetlands and vernal pools.

Jim Marshall, city manager of the City of Merced, intoned theologically in the UK Financial Times on Tuesday that there “should be a special place in hell for” speculators, mainly from the Bay Area, who bought McMansions in Merced, took out subprime loans and tried to flip them before the first balloon payments hit.

In fact, Marshall knew well there was no local market for the subdivisions of McMansions the city was approving weekly during the speculative real estate boom, the collapse of which has made Merced nationally famous for its foreclosure rate, and now internationally famous, or infamous, along with Modesto and Stockton.

For immediate release:
30 July 2008

Contact:
Bill Jennings, CSPA Executive Director, 209-464-5067, 209-938-9053 (cell)
Mike Jackson, CSPA Attorney, 530-283-0712, 530-927-7387 (cell)

CSPA Protests State Board’s Elimination of Key Delta Protection

Stockton, CA. Today, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) submitted a formal petition to the State Water Resources Control Board (State Board) asking it to reconsider its issuance of a “secret” Order allowing export pumping to be increased despite violation of Delta water quality standards. The Order was issued in response to a petition from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR). South Delta Water Agency has also asked the State Board to reconsider the decision.