Salmon Water Now! Video Covers The Salmon Summit

The Salmon Summit was a huge success and now you can see it in this new Salmon Water Now! video. This is the first of a few videos that will feature what happened at Fort Mason in San Francisco on April 1st. Future videos will show the panel discussions and media coverage. The video is only available on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/10663392

Salmon Summit: Listen to Us! from Bruce Tokars on Vimeo.

The Salmon Summit: Listen to Us!

by Dan Bacher

Commercial salmon fishermen, recreational anglers and business owners who have been devastated by more than two years of no salmon fishing came from throughout California and Oregon on a beautiful spring day to participate in the Salmon Summit at Fort Mason in San Francisco on April 1. More than 500 men, women, and children showed up to demand that the state and federal governments take action to restore collapsing populations of salmon, according to Bruce Tokars of Salmon Water Now!

"They came to tell representatives from Congress and Sacramento that it is time to make what is wrong, right again," said Tokars."The message was clear: Junior water rights holders on the West side of the Central Valley must be stopped from taking river and Delta water needed by salmon."

The once robust runs of fall, winter and spring run Chinook salmon are on the edge of extinction because of abysmal water management and the political pressures of Westlands Water District, agribusiness tycoon Stewart Resnick, owner of Paramount Farms, and their powerful friends in Congress and Sacramento.

"The Salmon Summit's overflow crowd came to say it is way past time for salmon to get the water they need to spawn and ensure that they have healthy rivers and a healthy Delta so the fish can reproduce and get out to sea to live their lives," said Tokars.

Over the past year, corporate agribusiness, Southern California water agencies and water privateers have launched unprecedented attacks on the federal plans (biological opinions) protecting Delta smelt, Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and southern resident killer whales.

These corporate water interests are collaborating with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Central Valley Representatives and California Legislators to build a peripheral canal and new dams and to pass an $11.1 billion water bond in November. The peripheral canal/tunnel fiasco would cost anywhere from $23 billion to $53.8 billion at a time of unprecedented economic crisis in California - and is likely to push Central Valley salmon and Delta fish species over the edge of extinction.

The battle to restore Central Valley salmon populations is a conflict between the people and a handful of greedy corporate agribusiness owners. Unfortunately, servants of agribusiness such as Representative Jim Costa (D-Fresno) are falsely portraying the conflict as one between "radical environmentalists and family farmers," even though there is no basis whatsoever to this bizarre contention.

To see the forces that we're up against, read Costa's blistering missive on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=60623 "We have stood up to the bully tactics of extreme environmentalists whose agenda ignores our families and our futures," claimed Costa, who appears to be competing with agribusiness puppet Representative Devin Nunes (R-Visalia) in his histrionic rhetoric. "We've made progress. More water will flow to our Valley and George Miller doesn't like it."

This is the first of several videos documenting this historic event. I urge you to watch this excellent video and circulate the web link widely.

Here is the link to the new video: http://www.vimeo.com/10663392

For more information, go to Salmon Water Now!, http://www.salmonwaternow.org