Investigate Corporate Greenwashing, Conflict of Interest in Arnold's MPLA Process

President Cindy Gustafson,
California Fish and Game Commission

1416 Ninth Street
P.O. Box 944209

Sacramento, CA 94244-2090

President Cindy Gustafson and the California Fish and Game Commission

I oppose the current direction of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process because it amounts to an enormously expensive form of corporate greenwashing that penalizes already heavily regulated sustainable commercial and recreational fishermen and seawood harvesters while refusing to deal with water pollution and threats to fisheries posed by proposed offshore oil drilling and wave energy projects.

I ask you today the same question that John Lewallen, environmental activist and sustainable seaweed harvester, asked Legislators at the recent Fisheries Forum convened by Senator Pat Wiggins at the State Capitol.

Lewallen asked: Why is Catherine Reheis-Boyd, CEO and Chief of Staff for the Western States Petroleum Association, a key member of the five-member MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force that has decreed new zones where people can take no food from state waters? Is it coincidence that the Point Arena Basin offshore from Point Arena is the area of highest oil industry interest in Northern California, and the only tract here now open to Minerals Management Service offshore oil leasing process?

I request that you as a Commission, in the spirit of transparent and open government, support an oversight hearing into conflict of interest and mission creep in the MLPA process called for by Senator Dean Flores and other legislators. Among the many questions that need to be asked and fully investigated include:

First, why has the MLPA has been expanded from a $250,000 process to a $35 million fiasco that is threatening the economy and fishing jobs on the North Central Coast –at a time when the California economy is in an unprecedented state of crisis?

Second, why is the Resource Legacy Foundation, a private foundation, funding a public process?

Third, what possible conflict of interests are there between members of the California Fish and Game Commission and the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task force and private interests including the oil industry, energy industry and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)?

I’m a longtime environmental activist and investigative journalist. I am a member of the Mother Lode Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Ocean Conservancy, Friends of the River and the Save the American Association.

I hope that you will seriously consider my suggestion in the spirit of openness and transparency.

Thank You
Dan Bacher