Tag: Endangered species act

Feb 18 2010

Hill: Reid Lacks Jobs Bill Cloture Vote

Yesterday, I reported on the incredulous national reaction fellow Democrats had to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D, CA) proposed amendment to the upcoming Jobs Bill, the one where she wanted to suspend the Endangered Species Act protections to migrating baby salmon and Delta smelt in the Sacramento & San Joaquin River Delta, with the excuse that increased water pumping out of the Delta to her billionaire water broker donors would “increase jobs.”

This ignored the fact that the salmon fishing season has been suspended the past 2 years on the CA coast and may be heading for a 3rd year of cancelation because of the collapse and crash of the salmon population.

Story here:

DiFi Does a Pombo on Salmon, Jobs Bill Amend Guts EndSpecAct

I found a letter from CA Assemblyperson, Chair of the “Water, Parks, & Wildlife Committee,” Jared Huffman, to Mark Corwin, Director of the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR) from 1 week ago, Feb 10th.  In it, Chairman Huffman asks why the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR)  is flouting the CA Endangered Species Act (CESA) with regards to Judge Oliver Wanger’s opinion Feb 5, 2010, that Delta water pumping extraction must decrease to protect Delta Smelt and migrating salmon.  In 2008 and 2009, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service said that if water agencies such as CVP + SWP pumped high amounts of water out of the Delta at certain times, it was going to drive Federally listed endangered fish in the Delta to extinction. (state rules need to comply with Federal listings)  In the summer of 2009 the Dept of Water Resources requested rules clarification, then turned around and started attacking the new rules in court.  

 

Huffman  to DWR:

{{{   On August 3, 2009, (the CA)  Dept Water Resources (DWR) filed legal papers in support of a motion

by its water contractors seeking to invalidate the biological opinion – even though the effect would

be to invalidate DWR’s own CA Endangered Species Act coverage for the SWP pumps.

Then DWR took aim at the salmon biological opinion.  Last week, detection of salmon triggered an

obligation under the salmon biological opinion for the SWP/CVP pumps to reduce reverse flows in Middle

and Old Rivers.  State and federal water contractors went to court seeking to overturn the heavily peer

reviewed salmon biological opinion and replace it with a previously invalidated Bush-era opinion.  

Now, detection of smelt has triggered protections under the delta smelt biological opinion. As you know, a limitation on reverse flow to protect delta smelt would also meet your requirements to protect salmon and longfin smelt.  Monday, Central Valley Project contractors filed for a Temporary Restraining Order on the delta smelt protections.  And Dept of Water Resources, fully informed as to the deference the court gave its last letter, filed another “non-opposition” letter yesterday.

Having actively worked to create these problems, please explain how DWR intends to fix them.  }}}

 

______________

a pdf download of Huffman’s letter to the DWR is here:  

http://www.lloydgcarter.com/fi…

I expanded some of the acronyms above, so it would read more easily

I’m quoting this to to help illustrate the breadth of the problem Senator Feinstein created with so many levels of both state and Federal water and fisheries law, when she decided to play Top Water Distributress of the SacJoaquin Delta. The state of CA was trying to work this out with the Federal government, and she meddled to make a favor to Kerns County water brokers, and Westlake Mutual Water Company and billionaire donor Stewart Resnik, so they could sell a bigger water allotment to the highest bidder in Southern CA.  And this is going to be tacked on to a JOBS Bill.

Congress has had this week off because of President’s day. They had the previous week off because of 2 massive snowstorms.  So they’ve had plenty of time to interact people who are either mad at them or wish to purchase their influence.

Today, The Hill is reporting that Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid doesn’t have the cloture votes to even begin debate on the jobs bill.  

Feb 17 2010

DiFi Does a Pombo on Salmon, Jobs Bill Amend Guts EndSpecAct

Dianne Feinstein is doing a Pombo on the Endangered Species Act, with an Amendment to gut it in an upcoming Democratic “Bipartisanship Enhanced” jobs bill.  

Like Salmon ?  Too bad !  McClintock’s in on it, too.

Hey, this even makes the Kansas City Star.  Everything’s up to date in Kansas City.   Dead silence at a certain other “Democratic” blog.

http://www.kansascity.com/400/…      Feinstein plan would loosen Endangered Species Act to pump more water    2/11/2010

Yes, our northern CA based Sen. DiFi thinks Billionaire Business Water Brokers in Kern County of Southern CA Who Donate To Her Campaign Are More Important Than Salmon.  So Does Tom McClintock.  

She intends to put an amendment that says we can ignore the Endangered Species Act, onto the upcoming jobs bill to let more water be pumped out of the Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta.   Why does this matter ?  Because at certain times of the year, the nursery fish need the water to swim and feed in.   And the West Coast salmon runs are at the brink of going away. Forever.


{{{  “This came as a bit of a shock that she did this,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif.

He represents California’s North Coast, which has been hurt by two years of bans on commercial salmon fishing stemming from collapsing salmon stocks.

“If this were to go through, it would have a devastating impact on Northern California and other jobs and other economies in the state,” Thompson said.  }}}

 

Where the hell have you been, Blue Dog Rep. Thompson ?   Didn’t you notice the real reason so many people up here in northern CA 04  DIDN’T WANT Carpetbagging Tom MCCLINTOCK of Southern CA pimping for these Southern CAL business sharks to take water out of Norcal and kill off our agriculture and wildlife ?    He’s running the exact same playbook that former Republican Rep. John Doolittle ran with Dick Cheney and the suckerfish up in the Klamoth river drainage.  

Nov 20 2008

Endangered Species Act may become extinct tomorrow

Texas Chainsaw DeciderWhile the Bush administration is certainly in its last throes, their officials still have a significant amount of damage left to inflict on our country.

Furthering the Republicans war against science, the Bush administration is near finalizing a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act that will fundamentally change the way threatened plants and animals have been protected in the U.S. since December 1973.

“The Bush administration wants to make it easier for drilling, mining and major construction projects to go ahead without a full scientific assessment,” BBC news reports. The changes will effect any project a federal agency would fund, build, or authorize that might potentially impact an endangered plant or animal.

For nearly 35 years, “the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service have reviewed any federal plans that could potentially protect endangered animals or plants. Under the administration’s proposed rule, these independent scientific reviews would no longer be required if the agency in question determined that its activities would not hurt the imperiled species,” the Washington Post reports.

Sep 11 2007

News from the Northwest

Also posted at Truth & Progress


The Copper Salmon Wilderness

Oregon’s 4th district congressman Peter DeFazio and Senator Ron Wyden have introduced bills to create the 13,700-acre Copper Salmon Wilderness in southwestern Oregon.

Hallelujah.

This one’s for you, LoE:

“Now that the Republicans no longer control the Congress, there’s a possibility of doing a meritorious wilderness bill,” DeFazio said Monday. He said former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who was the gatekeeper for wilderness bills before he lost re-election last year, “hated wilderness with a passion.”

The proposal is enthusiastically supported by virtually every local official, the local chamber of commerce, Governor Kulongoski, and hunting and fishing groups. And for good reason. The area is home to one of the most productive salmon spawning grounds in North America. Its loss would be yet another blow to both the commercial and sport fisheries.

Friends of Elk River presents the case:

What would the Copper Salmon Wilderness protect?
 

  • the headwaters of the Elk, Sixes and South Fork Coquille Rivers

  • eighteen miles of streams used for spawning and rearing by Coho salmon and coastal cutthroat trout, both listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), as well as Chinook salmon, steelhead, resident rainbow trout and lampreys

  • critical habitat for spotted owls and marbled murrelets, both listed under the ESA

  • one of the last large stands of old-growth Port-Orford-cedar that remains free of the deadly Phytophthora lateralis root disease

  • a wildlife corridor extending from the Grassy Knob Wilderness near the coast to the Wild Rogue Wilderness, the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and south through the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion to the Yolla Bolly Wilderness

In effect, the adjacent 17,200-acre Grassy Knob Wilderness is being doubled. Click on the map above to expand it and see the location.

The bills are not yet available at THOMAS. When they are, Wyden’s will be S. 2034 and DeFazio’s H.R. 3513.

Sep 07 2007

Elkhorn, Staghorn, and Foghorn Leghorn

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Not sure if there’s really a “Foghorn Leghorn” coral, but the other two appear to have just paved a path for the few remaining penguins and the polar bears.  The Christian Science Monitor reports: New tool to fight global warming: Endangered Species Act?  A recent deal to protect the habitat of endangered coral may offer US environmentalists new leverage.

The elkhorn and staghorn coral won protected status under the ESA in May 2006. But it took a second legal battle to win a preservation of the corals’ “critical habitat,” part of last week’s settlement between environmentalists and the US fisheries service.

The act’s leverage will grow, environmentalists say, as climate change becomes recognized as a factor in species’ decline. The number of species-recovery plans that cite global warming as a damaging factor has gone from zero as recently as 1990 to 141 today – with most of the growth since 2000.

While that’s still just 9 percent of the 1,494 species listed at one time or another, the increase suggests that a large group of species still awaiting listing will have global warming cited as a major cause in their decline. The polar bear, 12 species of penguins, and the Kittlitz’s Murrelet, an Alaskan bird that nests on the edges of glaciers, are all candidates, Mr. Suckling says.

Note: You may recall Mr. Suckling’s work from melvin’s writing recently about a mother of a lawsuit v. Interior ahead.  Rest up Mr. Suckling!