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New state law desgined to protect fish arouses Medocino supervisor’s suspicions

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 8, 2008 at 5:14 pm

From the Ukiah Daily Journal:

Tuesday’s Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meeting saw several boardmembers, sitting as the Mendocino County Water Agency, release their collective venom regarding the water rights as outlined in AB 2121. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September 2004 and seeks to regulate stream flows ostensibly to protect various species of wildlife. The item was placed on the board’s agenda to address the deadline for public comment on the policy.

The new law is called “Draft Policy for Maintaining Instream Flows in Northern California Coastal Streams”, and the comment period has been extended to May 1st. This will allow enough time to review the six to seven hundred pages of documents. The policy focuses on measures to protect native fish populations, especially the salmon. The policy applies to several northern California rivers and streams, but specifically not to the Eel River.

Several supervisors, though, saw the purpose behind the legislation much differently.

“It smacks of backroom deals,” said 2nd District Supervisor Jim Wattenburger. “I believe that you need to be aggressive. This is a very draconian effort by Southern California legislators to divert water for themselves. This is very poorly thought out. This is not a very public, transparent piece of legislation.”

Third District Supervisor John Pinches said he didn’t see the intent of the law as having anything to do with wildlife preservation. “To me this is not about saving fish,” he said. “If it was about fish they wouldn’t have exempted the Eel River. This is government at its worst. I think we need to take early action to oppose it.”

Sanford said the best defense the county has against the implementation of the policy is in the legal aspects of it rather than the more scientific. “As far as a strategy here, I don’t see a lot of room in arguing the technical issues here,” he said. “This is a document that has been prepared and then peer reviewed. The county has more credibility on the land use side. My real concern is that from a land-use perspective, what does this mean in terms of land values? What happens when you make people more aggressive about finding groundwater? That’s an angle that we should exploit.

To read the full text of this article from the Ukiah Daily Journal, click here.

February 8, 2008 · Filed Under Water Rights

Comments

One Response to “New state law desgined to protect fish arouses Medocino supervisor’s suspicions”

WaterSource on February 9th, 2008 6:13 am

Minimum Stream Flows are far reaching and can be devastating to future changes for everyone !

Evidently, THERE IS NO WATER PROBLEM IN CALIFORNIA !

Otherwise, SOUTHERN CA & the MWD would investigate a NEW SOURCE that has been GUARANTEED to yield ONE MILLION ACRE FEET of FRESH WATER each year without damage to the environment or the water rights of anyone, anywhere !

CA chose long ago to have pity parties, wring their hands in despair and proclaim, “woe is us” rather than communicate with someone who can lead CA to a legitimate NEW SOURCE.

Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst) waterrdw@yahoo.com

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