Water Education Foundation
This is just one post in the Perchlorate Category
Click here to view all posts

Coverage wrap-up: Huge public lands bill gets final congressional approval; expands wilderness protection, provides for San Joaquin River Restoration and perchlorate clean-up

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 26, 2009 at 7:49 am

From the Los Angeles Times:

Reporting from Washington — In the largest expansion of wilderness protection in 15 years, Congress today sent President Obama legislation that would conserve a wide swath of the West, including stretches of California from the desert to the Sierra.

The lands bill, which passed the House 285 to 140, is expected to be signed by the president this year. It would give the highest level of federal protection to more than 2 million acres in nine states — prohibiting new roads, the use of motorized or mechanized vehicles, most commercial activities, logging, new structures, new mining claims and new grazing. That is almost as much land as was designated for protection during George W. Bush’s entire presidency.

In California, which currently has 14 million acres of wilderness (second only to Alaska, which has more than 57 million acres), the bill would protect 700,000-plus acres. The measure also would authorize $88 million to fund restoration efforts on the San Joaquin River and provide $61 million toward cleanup of polluted groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley area.

More from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.

From McClatchy Newspapers:

Dubbed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, the bill is stuffed with provisions ranging from designating a Wyoming wild-and-scenic river and honoring Bill Clinton’s birthplace to creating a national institute for the study of caves.

The bill will be expensive, over time. It authorizes projects expected to cost more than $5.5 billion over five years if Congress provides the money, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It also adds an additional $900 million in spending after 2013, the nonpartisan budget office estimates.

Most controversial may be the expansion of federally designated wilderness areas — the highest level of federal protection.

“The federal government already owns 30 percent of the total land area of the United States,” said Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa. “I don’t think we need any more.”

Radanovich and his fellow Republican from California’s San Joaquin Valley, Rep. Devin Nunes, voted against the bill. Nunes insisted the bill’s provision diverting San Joaquin River water from farms to environmental protection “will ensure higher unemployment” in the Valley.

But by including upward of 170 different provisions affecting many different states, Democratic legislative tacticians secured majority support. The omnibus packaging also meant Radanovich ended up voting against a bill that included provisions he authored and still supports, including the Madera County groundwater bank and the San Joaquin River restoration.

Read more from McClatchy Newspapers by clicking here.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

In one of the boldest river restorations in the Western United States, a 63-mile stretch of the San Joaquin River will be transformed from a dusty ditch into a fish-friendly waterway under legislation approved Wednesday that ends a decades-long dispute between farmers and environmentalists. The $400 million project, approved by Congress as part of a landmark wilderness bill, will increase the amount of water released from the Friant Dam near Fresno into the San Joaquin River. The flows are intended to resurrect the river’s salmon fishery, decimated in the years following the dam’s construction in 1942.

The 15,000 farms in the region will receive between 15 and 19 percent less water from the reserves stored behind the dam. Funds from the measure will help water districts offset that loss with new storage facilities and repairs to existing canals.

President Obama is expected to sign the legislation, sponsored by California Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. It seals a settlement reached in 2006 that followed two decades of battles between environmentalists and fishing groups – who filed a lawsuit in 1988 – and agricultural interests.

Both sides praised the bill, which spells out funding for the program and authorizes a timetable for water releases beginning this fall. “After recent dry years and a collapsing salmon fishery, passage of this bill is good news for fisherman, farmers, and the more than 22 million Californians who rely on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for their water supply,” said Monty Schmitt, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the plaintiffs in the 1980s suit.

More from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.

But not everyone is happy, according to Mike Taugher and the Contra Costa Times:

For farmers and a couple of cities, including Fresno, that are served by Friant, the settlement was a way to make the best of a bad situation when a 2004 court decision found that the federal government was illegally depriving the San Joaquin River of water.

Rather than putting their fate in the hands of a judge with the ability to do little more than cut off water supplies to those farmers and cities, they worked out a deal with environmentalists and government agencies.

The settlement means Friant water users give up 15 percent to 20 percent of their water supply by sending it down the river but they also have a chance to get it back. The San Joaquin River flows into the Delta, and massive pumps take water from the Delta back down the San Joaquin Valley. So, in theory, water that is released by Friant down the San Joaquin River could be delivered back to farms through those pumps and canals. “The ability to get this water back was one of the reasons farmers support it,” Jacobsma said, adding that environmental problems in the Delta will make that difficult.

Still, animosity toward the agreement runs strong in places. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, said the agreement would force 300,000 acres of farmland out of production. “The officials responsible will be remembered as architects of the economic and environmental catastrophe that follows,” he predicted.

Read more from the Contra Costa Times by clicking here.

The legislation also provides for providing funds to cleanup perchlorate-contaminated groundwater basins in the San Gabriel Valley:

The Water Quality Authority will use the $50 million increase in federal funds to help remove perchlorate – a chemical in rocket fuel and fireworks – from the aquifer that lies below the San Gabriel Valley and provides drinking water to the area.

The legislation is the first step of a two-step process to get the federal funds. It allows federal funding to be used for the cleanup; lawmakers must still actually budget the funds annually. “Today we have taken a big step forward … each year we are going to have to be back at it … to ensure this happens,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, who cosponsored the original legislation by Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas.

The federal government has already contributed approximately $79 million to the cleanup effort, estimated to cost $1 billion to complete. Additional funds have come from the state and from the parties responsible for the contamination.

Before its dangers were known, the aerospace and defense sectors freely dumped perchlorate. The San Gabriel Valley is one the nation’s largest Superfund sites in part because of this contamination. The chemical has been found to reduce the production of thyroid hormones, which are critical for growth and brain development, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Though the Water Quality Authority does not have the federal dollars in hand, the government’s renewed commitment helps leverage “much more money” from private parties, including those responsible, by bringing them to the negotiating table, Kast said.

Read more from the Whittier Daily News by clicking here.

Sorry, I’m pressed for time this morning, and can’t incorporate everyone this morning; You can hear from Trout Unlimited (IndyBay.org) by clicking here, and from Friends of the River (YubaNet.com) by clicking here.

March 26, 2009 · Filed Under Perchlorate, San Joaquin Valley

Comments

Leave a Reply