Environment

by Dan Bacher

In the most absurd episode yet in the bad action flick that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has starred in since being elected Governor in 2003, the "Fish Terminator" on Saturday morning spouted off about the need for "transparent" government in his weekly radio address.

"Ever since I became Governor, I have pushed to make California government more transparent," Schwarzenegger claimed. "Now, I don’t have to tell you that this is a time of deep recession, all around the world."

"It is more critical than ever that government be held accountable for every dollar it spends, that it live within its means, and that it show total transparency at all levels: at the local level, the state level and the federal level," said Schwarzenegger.

Times-Standard Supports Chesbro's Call for MLPA Delay

by Dan Bacher

In its "Roasts and Toasts" editorial today, the Eureka Times-Standard joined Indian Tribes, fishermen and environmentalists in supporting Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro's call for a six-month delay in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative on the North Coast.

The publication gave a Roast "To Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, which has chosen to make marine reserves -- areas restricted or off limits to fishing and gathering -- a matter of legacy."

"If the Marine Life Protection Act is based on science it should not be subject to political timelines," according to the Times-Standard. "The MLPA was passed in 1999, and there will be no loss if it's not finished by the end of the gubernatorial term. It's irresponsible for the governor to make taking away peoples' right to fish and gather a notch on his belt -- a belt frayed by the precipitous decline in the state's condition during his tenure." (http://www.times-standard.com/editorials/ci_15865645)

Causes of the Russian heat wave and Pakistani floods

The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010 is one of the most intense, widespread, and long-lasting heat waves in world history. Only the European heat wave of 2003, which killed 35,000 - 50,000 people, and the incredible North American heat wave of July 1936, which set all-time extreme highest temperature records in fifteen U.S. states, can compare. All of these heat waves were caused by a highly unusual kink in the jet stream that remained locked in place for over a month.

South Coast MLPA Report Now Ready For Public Review

by Dan Bacher

A Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) is now complete for the Marine Protected Area (MPA) proposals covering California's South Coast Study Region under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. A 45-day public comment and review period began on August 18 and will run through October 4, according to a news release from the California Department of Fish and Game.

"The DEIR analyzes the potential environmental impacts of each of the five MPA proposals currently under consideration for this area, which extends from Point Conception to the California border with Mexico," said Thomas Napoli, Department of Fish and Game spokesman. "The MPA proposals are part of the larger Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process, which will create new MPAs along the length of California's coastline."

Napoli said the DEIR was prepared by the California Fish and Game Commission with assistance from the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) as part of the required environmental review process under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The process began in June with a public scoping phase, during which DFG solicited comments on the range of issues and type of information that should be considered in the DEIR. These comments helped to shape the content of the DEIR released this week.

MLPA Initiative officials and their corporate "environmental" NGO allies tried to bypass the CEQA process in their fervor to fast-track the MLPA in an attempt to greenwash the abysmal environmental legacy of Governor Schwarzenegger, but massive opposition by fishing and conservation groups forced the state of California to comply with the law and begin an environmental review (http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?xid=z03lb1yk59habr).

by Dan Bacher

The Sacramento Bee and several corporate environmental NGOs conducted a desperate, last minute effort to pressure the California Senate to confirm Don Benninghoven, a Schwarzenegger appointee, as a Fish and Game Commissioner.

However, widespread opposition to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative by an unprecedented coalition of fishing groups, Indian Tribes, seaweed harvesters and environmentalists forced the Senate leadership to do the right thing and deny Benninghoven's confirmation. In a big victory for environmental justice, the Senate failed to confirm Benninghoven by Wednesday, August 4.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who chairs the Rules Committee, declined to schedule a confirmation vote because of the massive opposition to Benninghoven's confirmation, combined with his reluctance to confirm long-term appointees chosen by the lame duck Governor.

During the past several months, thousands of recreational anglers and their supporters voiced their concerns about Benninghoven's lack of independence and objectivity as a member of the Fish and Game Commission, especially throughout the process of implementing Schwarzenegger's MLPA Initiative.

"We are so pleased that recreational anglers from across California responded with letters to Senate President Darrell Steinberg decrying Don Benninghoven's bias in the MLPA process," said Bob Fletcher of the Sportfishing Association of California and former Chief Deputy Director of the Department of Fish and Game. "And we are pleased that the State Senate listened to Californians who love to fish and who love the ocean as much as anybody."

In August 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Benninghoven to the Commission at the last minute to vote on a proposal to close areas within California's North Central Coast region to fishing and seaweed gathering. Just prior to his appointment, Mr. Benninghoven had served on the panel that designed the closures, the Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF), a body dominated by oil industry, real estate, marina development and other corrupt corporate interests.

No on 18: Repeal, Don’t Delay the Water Bond

by Dan Bacher

The No on Proposition 18 campaign on Friday announced its opposition to A.B. 1265, a Schwarzenegger administration backed bill to postpone the $11.14 billion pork-filled water bond from this November's ballot to 2012. The Legislature will vote on postponement on Monday, August 9.
The announcement was made the day after Food & Watch Watch released a ground-breaking report revealing who's really behind the water bond.

The bill, pushed by agribusiness interests, southern water California agencies, oil companies and corporate water privatizers, is sponsored by Assemblywoman Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) and Asssemblyman Kevin Jeffries (R-Lake Elsinore).

"A vote for A.B. 1265 is a vote for the water bond," said Jim Metropulos of the Sierra Club California. "Legislators should do what's right for California and vote down this attempt to delay the measure - not try to hoodwink voters by postponing it for two years."

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from whats really required to tackle the climate crisis. If youve heard about Cap & Trade, but arent sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.

The New York Times (last month) and Washington Post (yesterday) published stories claiming that the FDA may soon allow for the sale of genetically modified salmon. Please see below for Food & Water Watch's take on the controversial practice.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 3, 2010

Genetically Modified Salmon Present a Number of Risks to Consumer Health and Environment

Statement from Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch

Washington, D.C. – As rumors swirl that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may allow the sale of genetically modified (GM) salmon to consumers, flaws in the review process surrounding this controversial disruption to the natural food chain are coming into focus. The FDA, which has been tasked with overseeing the public’s health, could approve the divisive science experiment as early as this fall — a decision that consumers strongly oppose. If approved, the salmon would represent the first genetically modified animal sold as food to unsuspecting consumers (currently, there are no labeling requirements in place to assist consumers in identifying and avoiding GM foods).

Unfortunately, many in the aquaculture industry seek to genetically engineer fish to speed up production of their product. In this case, the company lobbying the FDA for approval, AquaBounty Technologies, wants to combine salmon genes that control growth hormone with a gene from another fish, the ocean pout. The ocean pout gene would keep the growth hormone in production, effectively creating mutant salmon that grow at twice the normal rate.

Unfortunately, the FDA’s tests (historically used to determine if a non-GM food was safe) were created before GM products became a reality and are insufficient in determining the long-term, unforeseen consequences of the GM salmon in question. Put simply, these dated tests cannot determine the salmon’s full allergenicity and toxicity.

Group Initiates Lawsuit To Stop Corps of Engineers from Stripping Levees

by Dan Bacher

One of the most stupid things I have ever seen the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers do is strip trees, brush and other vegetation from the levees of the Sacramento River and other Central Valley rivers and sloughs.

My late father Al, a civil engineer, always told me how destructive this policy of channelization was to the rivers, riparian corridors and fish and wildlife of the Central Valley and Delta.

Finally, an organization has found the courage to challenge the Corps' new policy to resume the destruction of riparian corridors that my father so adamantly opposed. The Center for Biological Diversity today sent a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the new policy that would require stripping levees of vegetation that provides important habitat for imperiled fish, birds and other species in California.

"The Corps already has a nationwide policy requiring removal of trees and other vegetation from levees; now it wants to cancel all exceptions to that policy and require all levees to be cleared without evaluating the impacts on endangered species or their habitats in California," according to a statement from the Center.

“Levee safety can be achieved without a scorched-earth policy that will destroy habitat for struggling species like salmon, steelhead trout, and willow flycatchers,” said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate at the Center. “The Corps has failed to consult with federal wildlife agencies about the impacts of vegetation-free zones on California’s endangered species. It’s left too little time for levee operators to get new variances.”

Schwarzenegger's MLPA Initiative: A Question of Bad Public Policy

by Dan Bacher

Proponents of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative constantly gush in generic terms how the controversial process is "open, transparent and inclusive." Anybody who criticizes any aspect of the privately funded initiative is blasted for being against "ocean protection."

However, what many critics of the MLPA Initiative are actually opposed to is the parody of marine protection that Schwarzenegger's initiative has become. Many supporters of comprehensive ocean protection point out that the intent of the law, signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, has been continually violated under a privately funded process filled with numerous conflicts of interest and violations of state, federal and international laws.

The MLPA, as implemented on the South, Central, North Central and North Coasts of California, has completely taken oil drilling, water pollution, wave energy projects, corporate aquaculture, habitat destruction and all other human uses of the ocean off the table other than fishing and gathering. The law, as now implemented, would do nothing to stop an ecological catastrophe like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from devastating the California coast.

What type of marine protection is this?

One of my favorite lines is:

"And all this from a guy whose exceptional health status when he came to America was due to socialized medicine."

Apparently it was good enough for him and the citizens of his country, but he does not think it is good enough for Californians.
--Bill

Go Ahead-- Blame the Governor
by Sheila Kuehl

A Lame Duck Governor Fabricates A Hoped-For Legacy

After more than six years of carving up and flushing what used to be referred to as the California Dream, the Governor has looked around at the wreckage and decided to float the story that it wasn't his doing. Many have obediently picked up the narrative and amplified it through the press and online. The story, as set out, for instance, in the New York Times, goes: the Governor is a real independent, neither a rabid left-wing Democrat nor a salivating Tea Partier and, therefore, no one loves him any more. Somehow, even as he stands in the rubble of California, Arnold has spun this to be a good thing, when, instead, he is an embodiment of what Texas gadfly Jim Hightower meant when he said, "There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

NYT lauds the Gov. for tackling issues that have "bedeviled lawmakers for centuries". They conveniently skip, however, that announcing you are taking something on and getting anything done are two different things. He has, incredibly, managed to paint himself as the hapless victim of a stubborn legislature, when the opposite is true.

Assembly Speaker John Pérez Is on the Wrong Side of History
By Dan Bacher

In a historic protest on July 21, over 300 members of California Indian Tribes and their allies peacefully took control of a Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Blue Ribbon Task Force meeting in Fort Bragg to protest the violation of indigenous gathering and fishing rights under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s controversial MLPA Initiative.

Over 60 immigrant workers from the sea urchin industry, many from indigenous communities in central and southern Mexico that were forced to come to the U.S. after they were driven off their land under NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), marched side by side with members of the Yurok, Tolowa, Cahto, Kashia Pomo, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Maidu, Hopi, Navajo and other tribes. Besides them were recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, seaweed harvesters, environmentalists and sea urchin divers and local political candidates.

No single action demonstrated the illegitimacy of the MLPA fiasco more than when Schwarzenegger appointed Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, as the chair of the MLPA Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast last year. In essence, Big Oil took control of so-called “marine protection” on the South Coast when Schwarzenegger chose the oil industry’s head lobbyist to lead the process.

MLPA Chair praises oil industry’s 'safety record' as CEQA review begins

By Dan Bacher

The environmental review process has begun for the South Coast Study Region Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) developed under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection (MLPA) Initative, a privatized process overseen by an oil industry lobbyist who has praised the industry's "safety record" as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil gusher continues to devastate marine life and fishing communities in the Gulf of Mexico.

On June 29, the California Fish and Game Commission and Department of Fish and Game (DFG) together issued a Notice of Preparation (NOP) for the project, according to a DFG news release. This initiates the “scoping phase,” during which interested members of the public are invited to help identify the range of issues and type of information to be considered in the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), that will be prepared in the coming months.

Klamath River Restoration Begins - Scoping Meetings Scheduled July 7-15

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : July 7, 2010

Media Contacts:
Craig Tucker, Karuk Tribe: 916 207-8294
Steve Rothert, American Rivers: 530 277-0448
Chuck Bonham, Trout Unlimited: 510 917-8572
Karl Scronce, Upper Klamath Water Users Assoc.: 541 281-2053
Mark Rockwell, N. CA Council, Federation of Fly Fishers: 530 432-0100
Glen Spain, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations: 541 689-2000
Curtis Knight, California Trout: 530 859-1872
Greg Addington, Klamath Water Users Assoc.: 541-892-1409
Jeff Mitchell, Councilman, Klamath Tribes - 541-891-5971

KLAMATH RESTORATION BEGINS
-Federal Agencies Initiate Environmental Review of Plan to Restore Rivers, Farms, and Communities
-Agreements Create Jobs, Keep Utility Bills Lower, and Bring New Economic Opportunities

Sacramento, CA – This week the economic and environmental review process of the pending Klamath Restoration Agreements begin with a series of public scoping meetings in the Klamath Basin. For many basin residents this signals the preliminary steps of an ambitious locally driven effort to restore the Klamath Basin’s fish and farm economies.

Related: Wild Horses Shot To Death Near Calif.-Nev. Border

I'm pulling these quotes out from the body of the article to highlight them

"I just think it's terrible," said Linda Hay, a 60-year resident of Susanville who has been trekking into the backcountry for decades to gaze at the mustangs, mares and foals. "I think they do need to be controlled some way, but I don't think this is the way to do it."

[...]

"BLM isn't actually managing the horses with any scientific methods," said Jesica Johnston, a graduate student at California State University, Sacramento, who has studied the herd and advocates changes in the nation's policy. "They have some arbitrary numbers they're trying to achieve."

Proposed roundup of wild horses criticized