Corporate Welfare Republicans Vote to Make California Salmon Extinct

Corporate Welfare Republicans Vote to Make California Salmon Extinct

by Dan Bacher

The House of Representatives, dominated by big government/corporate welfare Republicans, passed one of the worst job-killing bills in U.S. history, HR 1837, the “San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act,” on February 29.

The House voted 246-175 to approve a water grab by powerful corporate agribusiness interests in California’s San Joaquin Valley and reverse decades of laws that protect fish, wildlife and water supplies. The bill will lead to the loss of thousands of jobs in the recreational and commercial fishing industries in the Delta, coastal communities and the Central Valley, adding more economic devastation to communities already ravage by the Wall Street-engineered economic collapse.

“Today’s vote is an enormous victory for the people of California,” proclaimed Representative Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the bill’s author. “With House passage, we are halfway through the legislative process and now can look to the Senate for their response. Will our Senators help restore our property rights and end the death grip of radicals over California’s water supply or will we have to look to others in the Senate to lead the charge?”

In reality, H.R. 1837 will take away 260 billion gallons of water used for saving salmon and other conservation purposes each year and deliver it to wealthy Central Valley water contractors, including the Westlands Water District and Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick, the owner of the massive Paramount Farms in Kern County.

The legislation eliminates badly-needed environmental protections for salmon, Delta smelt and other endangered species in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, and the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. “Unless stopped or changed by the Senate, the legislation would likely result in the extinction of California’s economically valuable salmon runs,” according to a statement from the Center for Biological Diversity.

This job-killer bill nullifies existing water rights to guarantee water for politically connected corporations, ends restoration of the San Joaquin River and prevents revival of its salmon runs, overturns broadly supported water-use agreements, and threatens California’s public water supplies — all to benefit wealthy corporations.

“This was a vote for pure greed and boosting corporate profits for some of the world’s wealthiest agribusinesses, in exchange for sacrificing Central Valley salmon runs and overturning laws that protect water, the environment and ultimately California’s people,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s up to the Senate to stop these water tycoons from trashing environmental protections and flushing decades of salmon restoration efforts and water allocation down the drain.”

Delta advocates were outraged by the passage of the legislation – but hopeful that the bill will be stopped in the Senate.

“In a vote that was almost straight down party lines, HR 1837 passed the Republican controlled House today,” commented Jim Cox, charter boat captain and President of the California Striped Bass Association West Delta Chapter. “This horrible legislation that could well spell the end of the Delta as a viable estuary now must pass the Senate. Let’s hope the same partisan politics will prevail in the Democratic-controlled Senate and end this bill.”

“Congressman Jerry McNerney, Congressman John Garamendi, Congressman Mike Thompson, and Congresswoman Grace Napolitano were heroic in their attempts to defend the Delta from the Congressional led assault on our communities via HR 1837,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. “The bill passed the House of Representatives, so now our California Senators will be taking the lead to protect water rights and the public trust in California. Many, many thanks the good leaders from California who gave it all they had.”

The corporate welfare Republicans in the House voted for the extinction of native Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinoook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, striped bass and southern resident killer whales, which feed upon salmon. They voted for this job-killing legislation in spite of massive opposition to it from the majority of Californians, who fear the loss of thousands of jobs in the recreational and commercial fishing industries and Delta agriculture and tourism if the legislation passes through the Senate.

Southwick and Associates, one of the most prominent outdoor economists in thecountry, estimated that the shut down of ocean and Central Valley river salmon fishing in 2008 and 2009 caused a loss of 23,000 jobs and a $1.4 billion loss to the California economy annually. The same study showed that if the salmon stocks are rebuilt, 94,000 jobs will be created and the economic contribution to the state will be over $5 billion annually, according to a letter from the Golden Gate Salmon Association submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board in February.

A huge, diverse coalition of 190 environmental, environmental justice, tribal and fishing organizations from around the state sent comments in opposition to H.R. 1837 to Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. California Indian Tribes opposing the legislation include the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Karuk Tribe and Modoc Nation. (http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102037578231-135/HR+1837+Opposition+Letter+Final.pdf)

Sixteen Delta-region environmental, business, and municipal organizations also signed a letter to House Speaker John Boehner voicing strong opposition to H.R. 1837 (http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102037578231-134/Signon+Letter+to+Speaker+Boehner+opposing+HR+1837.pdf)

Hopefully, the “water grab for corporations bill,” HR 1837, will be stopped in the Senate. These corporate welfare Republicans, for their first time in their lives, need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get off the federal dole!

And the Congressional Republicans’ masters, the corporate agribusiness welfare bums and Wall Street banksters, need to also pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get real jobs, and wean themselves off welfare from the federal government! Decades of entitlements and subsidies from the taxpayers have made these welfare cheats and bums unable to stand on their own two feet!

At the same time, the Corporate Welfare Democrats in the Brown and Obama administrations are engaged in their own "Delta Destruction Derby" by fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build a peripheral canal or canal designed to increase Delta water exports to corporate agribusiness and southern California. The construction of the canal, like the implementation of the provisions of HR 1837, will lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations.

HR 1837's Job-Killing Provisions

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the legislation will:

• Gut the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, requiring 800,000 acre-feet of water per year currently directed to conservation to be delivered instead to Central Valley water contractors (pp. 18 and 20);

• Eliminate protections for salmon in the San Francisco Bay-Delta and the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers while guaranteeing massive water exports from the Delta to politically connected special interests;

• Invalidate the San Joaquin restoration agreement, a bipartisan, court-approved settlement to restore the San Joaquin that ended 18 years of litigation after the San Joaquin River Restoration Act was approved by Congress in 2009 (p. 25);

• Mandate that the Endangered Species Act be considered "fully met" by the project and require new federal permits that can be no more restrictive on water pumping than a 1994 Bay-Delta standard, ignoring 20 years of federal attempts to secure enough water flow to prevent salmon from going extinct (p. 21);

• Prohibit the Fish and Wildlife Service from distinguishing between naturally spawned and artificially stocked salmon and steelhead for the purposes of Endangered Species Act compliance (pp. 31-32);

• Require the Department of the Interior to approve new water projects and permits within a 45-day window and prohibit the secretary of the Interior from imposing any mitigation for projects harming endangered species, while giving water contracting agencies approval authority (pp. 4-5);

• Preempt the state’s ability to regulate and control the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project for Endangered Species Act conditions, preempting application of the public trust doctrine for state law as well (p. 22);

• Allow privately controlled “joint power authorities,” including those involved in water grabs and privatizing public water (such as the Kern Water Bank) to obtain federal funds to build or expand storage projects — a giveaway of taxpayer money to billionaires such as Stewart Resnick and his Kern Water Bank (p. 24);

• Rob the Fish and Wildlife Service of restoration funding by directing any difference in income from selling agricultural water to municipalities to be kept in a “restoration fund” controlled by water contractors, and for the first time, enable the use of federal funds to construct privately controlled storage facilities (pp. 6, 15 and 31);

• Require the Fish and Wildlife Service to provide water contractors with additional 100 percent replacement of “restoration flows” used for fish and wildlife conservation in the San Joaquin river within a year of enactment and prohibit use of any water not from the San Joaquin for that purpose (pp. 28 and 29);

• Preempt state authority to regulate water quality in the San Joaquin River beyond the flows and mitigation specified in the new bill (p. 24).

For more information, go to: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2012/hr-1837-02-28-2012.html