April 16, 2009 - Delta farmers have filed a groundbreaking lawsuit charging that everyone involved with the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, a thinly disguised process to build a peripheral canal and increase water exports out of the California Delta, is violating numerous environmental laws protecting fish and wildlife and requiring adequate public input.
The lawsuit by the South Delta Water Agency and Central Delta Water Agency charges that state and federal government agency officials and non-governmental organizations have violated numerous provisions of the Natural Community Conservation Planning Act (NCPA), California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), NEPA, and the Bagley Keene Open Meeting Act.
The lawsuit takes place as Central Valley Chinook salmon, delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other species have crashed to record low population levels, due to massive water exports out of the California Delta and Central Valley dam operations.
Defendants include Mike Chrisman, the California Secretary of Resources, Lester Snow, the Director of the Department of Water Resources, Don Koch, the Director of Fish and Game, Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District and officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Reclamation. The California Farm Bureau, Nature Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense, American Rivers, Natural Heritage Institute and the Bay Institute are also listed as defendants.
Dante Nomellini, lawyer for the Central Delta Water Agency, and John Herrick, attorney for the South Delta Water Agency, charge that combining federal and state environmental processes through combined CEQA/NEPA "scoping" meetings in 2008 was "procedurely flawed" and "inadequate."
The complaint documents how the process has excluded proper public input and transparency, as required under the Bagley Keene Open Meeting Act and other laws. "There is not even a draft BDCP plan that the public can review to provide input," said Nomellini.
Nomellini also contends that the promotion of "co-equal goals" of "ecological restoration" and "water supply" violates the state's Natural Community Conservation Planning Act (NCCPA). The primary objective of the NCCP program, broader in its orientation than the California and Federal Endangered Species Acts, is "to conserve natural communities at the ecosystem scale while accommodating compatible land use," according to the DFG.
"How can government officials promote a plan that declares water supply and ecological protection as co-equal goals?" asked Dante Nomellini. "We believe that these coequal goals violate the act. Protection of endangered species comes first - it is not a coequal goal!"
Nomellini views the plan as a process that excludes required public input and violates regulatory procedures in order to push through a canal proposal that would be devastating to Delta fish and farms.
"We think that the BDCP is a charade for promoting the peripheral canal," said Nomellini. "It is clear that this plan will destroy the Delta estuary, including both farms and fish that need fresh water flows to be healthy."
I applaud the farmers for joining with fishing groups, Delta residents, California Indian Tribes and grassroots environmentalists in opposition to the BDCP's push to build a peripheral canal. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's BDCP and Delta Vision processes are nothing other than cynical attempts to cloak the plan to build the peripheral canal and destroy the California Delta with a veneer of deceptive "green" eco-babble.
These two processes stress the "co-equal goals" of "ecosystem restoration" and "water supply" when they really will only result in a gigantic water grab to serve corporate agribusiness on the San Joaquin Valley's west side and southern California.
Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, describes the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan process as "essentially a massive hydrologic modification of the Delta masquerading as a habitat conservation plan."
"BDCP is essentially an end run around the Endangered Species Act," he emphasized. "It promises take permits, fifty-year guarantees and no surprises in an incredibly complex and degraded estuary while refusing to address how much water the Delta needs to maintain ecosystem integrity or to analyze the costs and benefits of various reduced or zero export scenarios."
The canal and increased water exports will only exacerbate the imperiled state of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations. Let's hope that the lawsuit by the Delta farmers, as well as numerous lawsuits and complaints by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and other groups, stop the insane campaign by the Governor and Senator Diane Feinstein to destroy California Delta farms and fish in order to to build a canal to export more water to corporate agribusiness.
