Schwarzenegger Easily Wins Cold, Dead Fish Award for 2007!

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Easily Wins 2007 Cold, Dead Fish Award

by Dan Bacher

There is no doubt that 2007 was a rough year for California and West Coast fisheries. We annually “honor” those individuals, government agencies and corporations that went out of their way to destroy our fisheries and erode our fishing rights with the “Cold, Dead Fish” awards.

The year was highlighted by the slowest salmon fishing season on record, the continuing Pelagic Organism Decline in the Delta spurred by state and federal water exports, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement of his campaign for a peripheral canal and more dams, and the tragic fish kill at Prospect Island on Thanksgiving weekend.

We’ll start with Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman who announced the formation of a so-called “Stakeholders Panel” for the Delta Blue Ribbon Task Force on February 15. Unfortunately, the 41-member panel was packed with political hacks, water agency representatives and those responsible for the destruction of the Delta, along with a few environmental NGO representatives. Chrisman completely excluded those impacted most by water exports - recreational anglers and Indian Tribes.

It was only through an action alert circulated by myself and others that Chrisman finally appointed one lone representative of a California Indian Tribe, Gary Mulcahy, governmental affairs director of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and one recreational fishing representative, John Beuttler, conservation director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. For trying to ram this panel through without including all of the stakeholders, Chrisman receives the “Exclude the Stakeholders” award for 2007.

In late April, the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley tribes, fishermen and conservation groups embarked on an historic cross-country pilgrimage to Omaha, Nebraska to plea with Warren Buffett, billionaire and owner of the PacifiCorp Dams, to bring down four outdated and environmentally destructive dams on the Klamath River. For decades, these dams have blocked migration of salmon, steelhead and other species into the headwaters of the Klamath.

The week ended with a big protest on May 5 outside the shareholders meeting of Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway Corporation. In spite of all of the national and international media generated, Buffett refused to meet with the dam opponents, although he did allow two members of the coalition to address questions to Buffett and his partner Charles Munger before 27,000 stakeholders. For his arrogance, insensitivity and refusal to meet directly with coalition representatives, Warren Buffett, the so-called “oracle of Omaha,” gets the “Prophet of Destruction” Award.

The Pelagic Organism Decline (POD) Team, a group of federal and state, scientists studying the collapse of the Delta food chain, attributes the decline to three major reasons: (1) water exports (2) invasive species and toxic chemicals. However, the state water contractors have another idea.

The water contractors formed an organization, the “Coalition for a Sustainable Delta,” that claims the decline is really caused by striped bass. They blame the striped bass for the decline of delta smelt, steelhead, king salmon and other fish in the California Delta in order to divert attention from the state and federal export pumps, even though the striped bass successfully coexisted with native species for over 125 years!

The Coalition on October 25 filed a Notice of Intent to sue the California Fish and Game Commission and Department of Fish and Game for "violating" the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) by “protecting” striped bass through state sport fishing regulations. For this ridiculous lawsuit, the Coalition receives the “Blame the Fish” award.

As if fish kills, the Delta decline and the threat of a new peripheral canal were not enough, the “geniuses” at the Federal Regulatory Commission and Pacific Gas and Electric have proposed developing a “wave energy park” off Noyo Harbor in Mendocino County under a streamlined FERC application process.

This proposal occurs within the context of over 20 applications filed up and down the West Coast. These would use a variety of the technologies, but all would create no fishing zones and are expected to have a dramatic impact on the marine ecosystem.

The proposed study area off Fort Bragg runs from Caspar to Westport, from 20-60 fathoms, encompassing most of the prime recreational salmon and rockfish grounds. For bringing up a proposal like this at a time when fishermen are already besieged by attacks on their fishing rights, PG&E and FERC get the “Fast Track to Hell” award.

Ryan Broddrick, the Director of the California Department of Fish and Game, left the agency on August 31 to work for the Northern California Water Association as its executive director. The examples of public officials going to work with a group or private business often at odds with maintaining healthy fish and wildlife populations have become all to common in recent years. Some would call it corruption or conflict of interest. For accepting a job at the Northern California Water Association, I give Ryan Broddrick the “Revolving Door of Government and Big Ag” award.

The failure of the state and federal fishing agencies to do their job protecting our fish and environmental resources in recent decades would require a library of books to cover it. However, one of the most obscene fishery disasters I have ever witnessed when the Bureau of Reclamation, given the green light by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and Department of Fish and Game, engineered one of the worst fish kills in California history in November.

Tens of thousands of striped bass and other species perished when the Bureau authorized a contractor to do a levee repair at the island. Not only did the agencies allow the fish kill take place, but the DFG rebuffed efforts by a group of over 100 volunteers, headed by Bob McDaris and Jeff Nash, to do a fish rescue. After 10 days, the Bureau procured the permits for the volunteers to go out to the island, but the DFG did everything they could to discourage the rescue.

For the complete regulatory breakdown leading to the fish kill, followed by a failure to stop the fish kill while it was in progress, all four agencies receive the “Big, Smelly, Rotting Pile of Fish” award for 2007.

Representative Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, on July 31 convened an oversight hearing in Washington D.C. on the role that Vice President Dick Cheney may have played in Klamath River Basin decisions leading to the Klamath fish kill of 2002.

As reported in the Washington Post article, “Leaving No Tracks,” by Jo Becker and Barton Gellman on June 27, Cheney's intervention in the development of a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River resulted in a September 2002 die-off of an estimated 68,000 adult salmon in the lower Klamath. Unfortunately, Cheney, the key witness in the hearing, refused to testify before the committee. For his failure to show, Cheney is bestowed the “Klamath Salmon Killer” award.

Atlhough a lot of people, organizations, agencies did “stellar” jobs in destroying our fisheries, one man has surpassed every one else in his goal to take away our fishing rights and destroy the California Delta and other fisheries – Governor Arnold “Fish Terminator” Schwarzenegger. While the mainstream media portrays Schwarzenegger as the “Green Governor” for his grandstanding about climate change at the United Nations and elsewhere, his administration has been an unparalleled disaster for fish and the environment. Among some of his many attacks on our fisheries are the following examples:

• Under his “leadership,” the Delta fishery has declined to the lowest levels as state water exports have risen dramatically. Four pelagic (open water) species, delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass, and threadfin shad, continue to hover near the edge of extinction.

• His appointees on the Central Valley Water Control Board have consistently voted against holding agricultural polluters to the same standards that industry and municipalities are required to observe.

• He has made the DFG into an agency joined at the hip with the Department of Water Resources (DWR), the agency responsible for much of the destruction of Delta and Central Valley fisheries.

• His abysmal leadership resulted in the state opting to appeal a decision by Alameda County Court Judge Frank Roesch requiring the DFG to get in incidental take permit from DWR for killing Delta smelt, winter run chinook and spring run chinook in the Delta pumps.

• While doing everything he can to serve corporate agribusiness in the destruction of Central Valley and Delta fisheries, Schwarzenegger has fast-tracked the MLPA process, resulting in the creation of draconian no fishing zones on the Central Coast that went into effect on September 20. This was done even though huge de-facto no fishing zones instituted by PFMC regulations are already in place.

These are all disasters in and of themselves, but it is Schwarzenegger’s decision to build the peripheral canal and new dams to export more Delta water south the crown jewel of his “environmental” policy that has most outraged anglers and conservationists.

Since June 14, 2007, Schwarzenegger has relentlessly campaigned for the canal and the Temperance Flats and Sites reservoirs to expand the capacity of the Delta pumping infrastructure. On September 11, Schwarzenegger convened a special legislative session to push his $9 billion water bond proposal to build a peripheral canal and more dams.

Fortunately, strong opposition to his proposal by a wide ranging coalition of environmental, fishing and farming groups and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe – and their support for the more environmentally sane water bond sponsored by Senate Pro Temp Don Perata - has prevented Schwarzenegger to date from ramming his “bailout for water contractors” bond measure through the State Legislature.

For all of his efforts to destroy California fisheries, Schwarzenegger, the worst governor for fish and the environment in California history, receives the highly “coveted” “Cold, Dead Fish” Award for 2007!