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Conservation Groups Oppose San Luis Drainage Resolution Act
by Dan Bacher
Bill Jennings, chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and Carolee Krieger, President of the California Water Impact Network, on Friday sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein blasting the Proposed San Luis Drainage Resolution Act and Settlement Process. "We unconditionally object to the process and the proposed legislation," their letter states. "The proposal will in no way be sustainable, cost effective, environmentally responsible or successful. It is guaranteed to fail and cost the taxpayers literally hundreds of millions of dollars. The proposal will also enrich a small number of landowners within the San Luis Unit by giving them a perpetual water contract that they can then market to urban areas at an incredible profit, once these untested drainage solutions inevitably fail." The letter then says that the solution to the drainage problem of lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is "massive land retirement in the Western San Joaquin Valley." This proposal occurs at a time when Central Valley salmon populations and California Delta fish, including delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass, threadfin shad and other species, are in an unprecedented state of collapse. Two of the key factors behind the fishery collapses are increases in water exports out of the Delta and declining water quality. The land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, laced with selenium and other toxic salts, should have never been irrigated because of the massive drainage problem. "This drainwater contains extraordinarily elevated concentrations of selenium, boron, chromium, molybdenum, and extremely high concentrations of various salts that disrupt the normal ionic balance of the aquatic system," according to a 1997 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Continued irrigation of these drainage-impaired lands results in a triple whammy for salmon, delta smelt, longfin smelt, striped bass and other fish that migrate through and reside in the California Delta. First, the export of water every year results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of fish, many of them endangered species, that are sucked into the pumps. Second, the loss of fresh water to the Bay-Delta Estuary caused by the pumping results in the destruction of the Delta food chain. Fish and invertebrates need fresh water - and the mixing between salt and fresh water - to survive and thrive. Third, the toxic drainage water from west side agribusiness goes back into the San Joaquin River, resulting in the further contamination of an already stressed and degraded ecosystem. I applaud Bill Jennings and Carolee Krieger for opposing the proposed San Luis Drainage Resolution Act and Settlement Process and standing up to Senator Dianne Feinstein and corporate agribusiness. Photo: Federal biologists seine for fish in agricultural drainage water in Mud Slough. Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.