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Salmon Water Now Video Exposes Corruption in California Water Politics

by Dan Bacher

December 15, 2009 -- SalmonWaterNow.org has just released a superb new video: "Science, Politics, and Salmon," the best documentary I've seen yet on the real reason for the collapse of Central Valley salmon runs - massive water exports from the California Delta to subsidized corporate agribusiness. I encourage everybody concerned about the destruction of California's salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, striped bass and other fisheries by agribusiness and southern California water interests to watch and share this video.
 
"What does it take to get to the truth?" asks the video's producer, Bruce Tokars. "How hard is it to come up with a scientifically sound explanation for the disastrous decline of Pacific salmon?"
 
"The San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Delta have been studied over and over again," emphasizes Tokars. "The science seems pretty clear. Salmon and other species that depend on a healthy mix of salt and fresh water have been seriously hurt by excessive water diversions. Put simply, not enough fresh water is flowing through The Delta and San Francisco Bay because it is being sent to big growers in the Central Valley."
 
Tokar notes that inadequate fresh water flows because of natural drought are made worse by big agriculture’s never-ending demands for more and more water. Water for crops is planted on selenium-filled, drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that never should have been irrigated.
 
"Add politics to the mix and you have a clear path to the decline of salmon and plenty of other species," he says. "This video shows how big money, big agriculture, and political contributions have prostituted the work of government scientists."
 
The information disclosed in the video offers a good counterpoint to the recent report, "California Water Myths," by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), funded by Stephen P. Bechtel, Jr., the Gap's Fisher Family and other corporate interests, that tries to dismiss the key role that sufficient flows of water play must play in the restoration of salmon and other fish populations.
 
The Bechtel-funded report claims that it is a "myth" that "more water will lead to healthy fish populations."
 
"In reality, more water alone is rarely sufficient to restore a fish population," the Bechtel-funded report claims. "Water that has the wrong temperature, nutrients, or sediment may harm fish, and so can water without sufficient habitat. Supporting native fish will require strategies that account for the complexities of aquatic ecosystems."
 
Of course, fish restoration requires a variety of "strategies," including dam removal, habitat restoration, the reduction of pollution and other actions. However, the foundation of any restoration program, before anything else can happen, is the restoration of water flows in a system. The Bechtel-funded scientists that wrote the report seem to forget that "Fish don't swim in promises - they swim in water," as Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations (PCFFA) says.
 
The Bechtel-funded scientists include many of the same U.C. Davis folks who last July recommended the construction of the peripheral canal, an enormously expensive boondoggle that will inevitably lead to increased water exports from northern California and the Delta, as the "solution" to solving the Delta's ecological problems.
 
Ellen Hanak, director of "research" at PPIC and the recent report's co-author, states, "It’s essential to move beyond myth as population growth and climate change put even more pressure on our resources.” However, by dismissing the key role sufficient water flows play in fish restoration, Hanak and the other Bechtel-funded scientists appear to be embracing the myth spread by corporate agribusiness-funded astroturf groups that everything other than water exports is responsible for fish declines.
 
The video features the latest information on "Resnickgate," the huge scandal developing over the corruption of California politics through huge contributions of agribusiness tycoon Stewart Resnick, owner of Paramount Farms in Kern County, to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and other corporate Democrats. The video documents how the "limousine liberal" Resnick, who made millions and millions of dollars selling subsidized water back to the public at enormous profit to himself, has successfully pressured Feinstein to attack protections under the Endangered Species Act for imperiled Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon, the southern resident population of killer whales and Delta smelt.
 
Feinstein, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who collectively have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Resnick for their political campaigns, are also pushing for a peripheral canal and the destruction of the Bay-Delta Estuary in order to benefit Resnick and other rich corporate agribusiness tycoons at the expense of fish, fishermen, coastal communities, California Indian Tribes, Delta family farmers and environmental justice communities.
 
Resnick is one of the biggest, most wasteful "water hogs" in the state. The Beverly Hills billionaire "farms" 120,000 acres, which would use around 480,000 acre-feet of water every year. By comparison, the residential use of the city of Los Angeles is 432,594 acre-feet per year, according to the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP).
 
"That's a single farmer using more water than the entire population of LA!" emphasizes Jerry Neuburger of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. "In addition, he receives it at a taxpayer subsidized rate and has no requirements to conserve. Remember that when you pay your next water bill - and even more when you vote!