Before a crowd of 400 people waving signs reading ‘Don’t Kill Me’ above swirling, hand-painted salmon, Winnemem Wintu Chief and Spiritual Leader Caleen Sisk declared California’s proposed $25 billion Delta Tunnels a pernicious threat to salmon and tribal rights to consultation.
“During this whole process the tribes have been ignored, and so have our ‘first in time, first in use’ water rights. Our fisheries and our subsistence to water have been totally left out of this study,” Sisk said. “All of the rivers in California are contaminated, and now we’re going to be transporting [water] to the cities without acknowledging we need to clean them up.”
The coalition of tribes, farmers, environmentalists and fishermen gathered in solidarity on December 13 at the State Capitol in Sacramento to protest the recent release of Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build two giant tunnels—40 feet in diameter and 35 miles long—to divert freshwater out of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to three million acres of farmland, much of it industrial agriculture, and to more than 20 million people in central and Southern California. Some have estimated the actual cost of the tunnels will be closer to $54 billion, once interest from the financing is factored in.
State and federal agencies already annually export millions of acre-feet of water out of the delta, and environmentalists and tribal officials say that the delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast, is in a precarious state. Further damaging its delicate balance of salt and freshwater by exporting more water could threaten the existence of many endangered species and fisheries, including Chinook salmon, as far north as Oregon, the plan’s critics say.
“By taking away our water, the tunnels are taking away from our salmon that we feed on and give us life,” said Jessica Lopez, vice chairwoman of the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu, to the crowd.
It’s taking away from our future generations,” she said, noting that her tribe has never been consulted about the tunnels, even though planning began in 2006. “I’m going to do what I can with my tribe to make sure we stop the tunnels.”
About copy0 billion of the project would be allocated to 100,00 acres of habitat restoration to benefit 57 species, including salmon, and state and federal water officials say the plan will achieve “co-equal” goals of conservation and stabilizing California’s water supply, as climate change is expected to cause water shortages in the coming decades.
Many tribal officials agree with environmentalists and oppose the project because they feel that no amount of habitat restoration could counter the damage caused to the Delta fisheries by the lack of water. The project, called the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, also doesn’t state directly just how much water will be taken from the estuary, though each tunnel will have the capacity to transport 9,000 acre-feet of water per second, according to the plan.
Also causing concern and even outrage among tribal officials is that the tribal consultation process on the massive project hasn’t even begun well after the 35,000-page public draft was released. On Dec. 10, the project lead agency, California Department of Water Resources held an initial informational meeting for tribes.
“For some tribes, that meeting was the first time they had ever heard of the tunnels or the BDCP,” Sisk said.
A different iteration of the project, then called the Peripheral Canal, was investigated as far back as 1982, eventually failing to be approved by a public referendum. The current BDCP began the latest proposal in 2006, and the fact that decades have gone by without consultation has caused some tribes to believe that the omission is intentional.
“When they were studying the peripheral canal [in the 1980s], they did surveys and would find signs of human remains and village sites, so they’ve always known that our sites are there,” said Randy Yonemura (Miwok), who has been following the BDCP since its inception.
Several Miwok village sites with burials are likely to be disrupted by the construction, Yonemura said. However, he said, at a December 10 meeting, state Department of Water Resources officials acted as if they were unaware of the project’s potential to damage the Miwok sites.
“It’s a water grab,” Yonemura said. “They don’t ever talk about California Indian rights to water, even though we were all riparian tribes. They know what they’re doing. They’re seeing what they can get away with.”
Though it’s a work in progress, the Department of Water Resources had only completed a new consultation process in November 2012. Thus tribes have a right to be upset about not having a voice in the Delta tunnels, said Anecita Augstinez, the state water agency’s new tribal policy advisor.
Augstinez said she will be spearheading an extensive outreach effort in the coming months to ensure that tribes receive adequate information.
“Consultation is very important, and I do think the commitment and foundation here is strong (at DWR),” she said. “It’s not going to be a situation where we have one meeting and think we’re done.”
However, many tribal officials remain highly skeptical as to whether state officials will seriously consider altering the plan based on their input.
“Even though we have always been here and have never ceded these lands, it’s convenient for them to act as if there are no tribes in the Delta because so many of us are federally unrecognized,” said Don Hankins, a Plains Miwok cultural practitioner and water resources professor. “The landscape has a lot of different layers of meaning to us, and we want to see the delta be what it should: A healthy, resilient ecosystem for future generations. This plan isn’t going to do that.”
Offshore hydraulic fracturing operations off the coast of California use highly toxic chemicals that are often released directly into water along the state’s coast, the Center for Biological Diversity revealed today, calling on the state’s Coastal Commission to halt fracking for oil and gas in state waters.
In an analysis sent by letter to the Commission ahead of a meeting this week in Newport Beach, The Center for Biological diversity pulls from data disclosed by oil companies and obtained from government documents that highlights seven risky chemicals used in “hundreds of recently revealed frack jobs in state waters” that directly violate the Coastal Act.
Multiple oil platforms, according to the research, are discharging wastewater directly into the Santa Barbara Channel, according to a government document, and other areas along the California Coast.
The letter states:
In the offshore context, fracking fluid is either discharged into the ocean or transported for onshore underground injection. When disposed of at sea, these chemicals enter the marine ecosystem. The Coastal Commission acknowledges that approximately half of the platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel discharge all or a portion of their wastewater directly to the ocean. This produced wastewater contains all of the chemicals injected originally into the fracked wells, with the addition of toxins gathered from the subsurface environment. These discharges of toxic chemicals directly contravene the requirements of the Coastal Act, which charges the Coastal Commission with the “protection against the spillage of . . . hazardous substances.”
“The Coastal Commission has the right and the responsibility to step in when oil companies use dangerous chemicals to frack California’s ocean waters,” said Emily Jeffers, a Center attorney. “Our beaches, our wildlife and our entire coastal ecosystem are at risk until the state reins in this dangerous practice.”
The research shows that at least one-third of chemicals used in offshore fracking operations “are suspected ecological hazards” and are suspected of “affecting the human developmental and nervous systems.”
The chemicals include X-Cide, which is “classified as a hazardous substance by the federal agency that manages cleanup at Superfund sites.”
“Because the risk of many of the harms from fracking cannot be eliminated, a complete prohibition on fracking is the best way to protect human health and the environment,” the letter states.
A recent report by the Associated Pressshowed that California coastal regulators were unaware until recently that offshore fracking was even occurring.
They do not, however, go so far as to give credence to superstitions that such deaths portend a major earthquake, as Japanese legend has it. Neither do they say that the deaths are due to human activity. Rather, the animals were most likely caught up in a rogue current that dragged them into shallower waters than they are used to surviving in. The second one may even have been dashed to death in the swells, researchers said.
Oarfish number two washed up along Oceanside Harbor on Friday October 17 and measured nearly 14 feet long, which is four feet shorter than the 18-footer that was found in the shallows off Catalina Island on October 13. The smaller one was about to give birth, the San Diego Union Tribune reported.
Since oarfish dive below 3,000 feet, they are rarely seen, especially alive. An exception was the oarfish captured by oil rig video cameras in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of years ago.
The latest oarfish incident was witnessed by between 50 and 75 beachgoers, some of whom called police, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. Officer Mark Bussey responded and snapped a photo before a representative from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) came to measure and retrieve it. It was cut into sections and divvied up for study, the newspaper said.
Milton Love, a research biologist at the Marine Science Institute, told the Los Angeles Times that the deaths are most likely linked. A current probably dragged them both from the still, deep waters they are accustomed to navigating into a turbulent area closer to shore, which they were not adapted for, he said.
The bottom line, though, is that scientists have no idea what killed these creatures, said Russ Vetter, director of the fisheries resource division at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, to the Los Angeles Times. He helped dissect the more recent fish find.
“With a rare event like this, it is a bit troubling, but it’s a total mystery,” he told the newspaper.
The deaths brought Japanese legend to the minds of many. A good 10 of the creatures washed ashore in Japan in 2010, about a year before the March 2011, 8.9-magnitude earthquake that shook the northeastern part of the country and spawned the tidal wave that wiped out thousands of people, the Union Tribune reported.
Scientists cautioned against assuming that potential seismic activity undetected by scientific instruments could be picked up on by marine life. But they did not completely dismiss the idea that deep-sea oil drilling or climate change’s effects on ocean currents could contribute to cause of death in otherwise healthy animals.
“The number of oarfish that beach themselves worldwide in a year is typically either one or zero, so this is unusual,” Love told the Union Tribune. “It’s possible any of those theories are true. I think it’s a little early to say anything.”
San Francisco, Oct. 17 – Governor Jerry Brown of California was slated to receive the Blue Green Alliance’s Right Stuff award for environmentalism in San Francisco this evening but did not show up perhaps because he knew it was going to be protested. Outside of the awards ceremony at the Parc 55 Hotel, people protested including Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network who read the following statement.
Gov. Brown advances a policy harmful to Indigenous Peoples and Mother Earth
Despite being awarded, as I speak, for his supposed environmentalism, Governor Brown is moving ahead with a policy that grabs land, clear-cuts forests, destroys biodiversity, abuses Mother Earth, pimps Father Sky and threatens the cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples.
This policy privatizes the air we breathe. Commodifies the clouds. Buy and sells the atmosphere. Corrupts the Sacred.
This policy is called carbon trading and REDD. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. But REDD really means Reaping profits from Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity. REDD does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at source. And REDD may result in the biggest land grab of the last 500 years.
The State of California is ALREADY using national forests and tree plantations as supposed sponges for its pollution instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at source. The infamous oil giant Shell is using forests in Michigan to offset its refinery in Martinez, California.[i] California is at the vanguard of REDD in the world and posed to do REDD internationally.
REDD is bad for the climate, bad for the environment, bad for Californians, bad for human rights and bad for the economy.
REDD-type and carbon offset projects are already causing human rights violations, land grabs and environmental destruction.[ii] California, you do not want Indigenous Peoples’ blood on your hands. You do not want to be complicit in the Continent Grab of Africa.[iii] Governor Brown, you do not want to contribute to the destruction of the climate by allowing corporate criminals like Shell and Chevron off the hook.[iv] California must not include REDD in its climate law. It is matter of life and death for communities and the climate, and, ultimately, even for Californians.
Photo: The Mending News
Officially, California is telling us there is no date to make a decision about international REDD. However, meanwhile behind the backs of the good People of California, the State of California is charging ahead with this false solution to climate change that will render the planet uninhabitable and threaten YOUR future. The Governor recently returned from China where he talked climate and REDD. Behind your backs, California is negotiating the fine print of REDD risk insurance with oil giant Chevron.[v] Yes, Chevron, California’s biggest polluter, infamous for its destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon and sending 15,000 Californians to the hospital last year after the explosion in its Richmond refinery.
Indigenous Peoples, environmental justice organizations and human rights advocates requested a meeting with Governor Brown to explain our grave global and local concerns with REDD but haven’t received even an acknowledgement of our request. But we are here right now!
REDD is bad for the climate because it lets climate criminals like Shell, Chevron and fracking companies off the hook.
REDD is bad for the environment because it includes clear-cutting, logging and tree plantations which destroy biodiversity.
REDD is bad for Californians because it allows polluters to not reduce their pollution and cause more asthma and cancer.
REDD is bad for human rights. REDD-type projects are already resulting in massive land grabs, violent evictions, forced relocation and carbon slavery.
REDD is bad for the economy because the carbon market is crashing and investing in it is bad business.
Over a century ago, Chief Seattle asked “How can you buy and sell the sky?” Well, that is exactly what California is doing. That is what Governor Jerry Brown is allowing to be done. This does not deserve an award.
Sitting Bull says that ‘the warrior’s task is to take care of the future of humanity.”
The future of humanity is precisely what is at stake.
Do we want more pollution?
Do we want more cancer and asthma?
Do we want more climate change?
Do we want carbon trading?
Do we want REDD?
It is time to defend Mother Earth and Father Sky. Your future depends on it.
By Kate Mather, Tony Perry and Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times
August 9, 2013, 3:15 a.m.
Authorities searching for a missing San Diego County teenager allegedly abducted by a family friend stretched warned that her alleged abductor might be using explosives.
The suspect, James Lee DiMaggio, 40, might have abandoned his blue Nissan Versa and left it booby-trapped with explosives, authorities said, warning people that if they find the vehicle or anywhere he might have stopped, they should stay away.
DiMaggio is an avid outdoorsman, and authorities are also urging people to be on the lookout at campsites and other rural areas where he might be hiding.
Four days into the search for 16-year-old Hannah Anderson, authorities were no closer to finding her or DiMaggio, though numerous tips have poured in to law enforcement agencies in multiple states.
“Basically, the search area is the United States, Canada and Mexico,” said Lt. Glenn Giannantonio of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. “The search area is North America.”
As the search fanned out Thursday, authorities had no confirmed sightings of Anderson or DiMaggio, who is believed to have abducted the teenager Sunday after killing her mother and 8-year-old brother in Boulevard, a rural border town in eastern San Diego County.
An Amber Alert for Hannah Anderson and her brother Ethan was active in four states Thursday, though authorities said it was possible she might have been taken to Texas, or even Canada. Boulevard is about five miles north of the Mexican border, and the FBI was working with Mexican authorities to search for DiMaggio, Giannantonio said.
New details in the case emerged Thursday about the death of Hannah’s mother, 44-year-old Christina Anderson of Lakeside, another community east of San Diego. Anderson died of blunt force trauma and may have been hit with a crowbar, a source close to the investigation said.
Anderson’s body was found in a stand-alone garage near DiMaggio’s burning home, the source said. The body of a child was found in the house. Although the child has not been identified because the body was badly burned and DNA difficult to obtain, family members have said they believe it to be Ethan.
Christina Anderson’s dog was also found dead on the property, Giannantonio said.
An arrest warrant for murder has been issued for DiMaggio, and a judge agreed to set bail at $1 million if he is arrested, San Diego County sheriff’s officials said Thursday.
As the Amber Alert widened to Nevada, authorities said DiMaggio might have changed vehicles.
Only a full ban on fracking will do. Regulations can neither prevent nor mitigate the disastrous consequences inherent to fracking. We need to keep the carbon in the ground. Photo: Californians Against Fracking
A year after buying his dream home in Los Angeles, Gary Gless started falling down and breaking bones.
Fourteen years and one thousand doctors visits later, his neuromuscular disorder hasn’t been specifically diagnosed. He survives on painkillers and sleep aids.
Gless’s backyard overlooks the Inglewood Oil Field, the largest urban oil field in the nation. Within the field, gas companies have been secretly fracking in the middle of this community of 300,000 residents for nine years.
Many of Gless’s neighbors also suffer from neurological, auto-immune and respiratory diseases and several types of cancers. Many have died. Homes and swimming pools are cracking.
None of these people will be helped by passage of the only fracking bill still alive in California’s legislature: Senate Bill 4. That’s because the regulations in SB 4 do nothing to actually make fracking safer.
Instead, the flawed bill sets up a process for notification, disclosure, monitoring and permitting and simply calls for future regulations by other agencies and a scientific study.
Telling someone when you’re going to frack, where you’re going to frack and what chemicals you will use, is like a murderer telling you he’s going to shoot you on your front porch at noon tomorrow using an AK-47.
At the end of the day, you’re still dead.
The State of Play
Worse than having no regulations, weak regulations provide political cover to legislators who could otherwise be pressured to vote for a moratorium on the practice.
58% of Californians want a moratorium on fracking. The state Democratic Party, the majority party, passed a resolution calling on legislators to impose a moratorium.
Activists were also able to get two strong moratorium bills introduced in the legislature. Only one made it to the full Assembly.
Worse than having no regulations, weak regulations provide political cover to legislators who could otherwise be pressured to vote for a moratorium on the practice.
Had 18 Democrats voted “yes” instead of abstaining, the bill would have passed. When asked why they didn’t vote for a moratorium, many said they were planning to vote for SB 4 instead.
Passage of this bill will remove the regulatory uncertainty currently surrounding fracking. It will give the green light to Big Oil to frack the Monterey Shale, the largest oil play in the nation holding nearly 2/3rd of all US reserves.
But even the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Fran Pavley, calls this bill a compromise.
“We’re trying to put regulations in place that will address public concerns,” Pavley said in an April interview. “This bill does not place a moratorium on the process. It will go on. I consider this a compromise measure.”
Although industry representatives testified against the bill, they tempered their criticisms. It’s an indication this bill is seen as preferable to those placing a moratorium on fracking.
“I’ve told the oil companies that the public is going to go there if it thinks they have something to hide,” she said, suggesting that lack of legislative action could potentially lead to a ballot initiative to ban fracking in California.
Big Oil also loves the “big fat compromise.”
“It is in our best interest that we have disclosure,” said Western States Petroleum Association’s spokesman Paul Deiro. “To calm the fears that are out there is in our interest, because we believe it’s a safe technology.”
Dissecting the Bill
Fran Pavley is known as an environmental hero for authoring the Global Warming Solutions Act and the Clean Car Regulations.
She accepts no money from Big Oil and is considered by many “the best friend environmentalists have in California.” Platitudes aside, this bill does no favor to the environment or to public health.
While proclaiming to provide full public disclosure of fracking chemicals, exceptions are provided for “proprietary trade secrets.”
As Kathryn Phillips, legislative director of Sierra Club California states, this would be “the first overt statutory recognition in the nation that fracking fluids qualify for trade secret protections. This would set us back, not forward, in our efforts to make sure that fracking in this state does not harm public health and the environment.”
For this reason, Sierra Club opposes this bill, as do Food and Water Watch, Physicians for Social Responsibility and most of the other organizations in the coalition Californians Against Fracking.
Furthermore, we already know the chemicals used in fracking.
They were disclosed to the Pennsylvania Department of the Environment and the US House Energy and Commerce Committee. Of the thousand of possible products frackers use, 650 contain chemicals that are known toxins or carcinogens.
In the Inglewood Oil Field, the operator also released the list of 40 chemicals used. They include benzene, toluene, lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, and formaldehyde, all known carcinogens.
As to the notification, giving someone 30 days notice before doing a frack job is not much comfort. Making matters worse, groundwater monitoring is to be conducted by the oil company, a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house.
A permit would be denied if it presents “an unreasonable risk.”
Are these considered reasonable risks? If so, what risk would fracking have to pose before this bill would prohibit it?
The bill also directs other agencies to make regulations, failing to specify what those regulations should be.
No regulations can prevent leaks. 6% of wells leak immediately; and 50% leak within 20 years. If the industry could make well casings leak proof, they’d do it. It’s their own valuable product that is lost.
The bill calls for an independent scientific study on the effects of fracking. Originally the bill said that if the study were not completed by January 1, 2015, there would be a moratorium on all new fracking. But Pavley was pressured to remove this moratorium provision from the bill.
Learning from History
Although an independent study sounds better than one conducted by the industry, many “independent” studies are done by firms so entrenched in the oil industry they can’t risk losing future business.
Such is the case with the last two State Department studies on the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Many studies are victims of the political winds of the day. “Gasland Part II,” outlines three EPA studies that proved fracking was contaminating groundwater in Dimock, PA, Pavillion, WY and Parker County, TX.
As soon as President Obama announced in his State of the Union Address that fracking – utilizing American Petroleum Institute talking points – was to be the centerpiece of his national energy policy, those studies were all scuttled within the next year.
Plenty of independent studies already exist, further calling the rationale for the need for “more studies” into question.
Duke University 2011, 2012, and 2013 studies all linked methane contamination of groundwater in Pennsylvania to fracking. Another study from the University of Texas found elevated levels of lead and other heavy minerals close to natural gas extraction sites in Texas.
A Colorado School of Public Health study found fracking increases cancer risk, contributing to serious neurological and respiratory problems in people living near fracked wells.
Fracking’s brief history in the U.S. shows one thing clearly: it creates havoc wherever it goes.
Regulations: Only as Good as the Regulators
In states where there are regulations on fracking, they aren’t enforced either by design, or because agencies are both underfunded and understaffed by state governments often bought and paid for by Big Oil.
Worse, when fracking violates existing regulations, many states simply change the regulations to the benefit of Big Oil.
In Colorado, the Air Quality Control Board is being directed to increase the allowable air pollution because of the air pollution caused by the fracking boom.
If you say that can’t happen here in California, look what’s already happened.
The move was hailed by then State Senator Michael Rubio from Shafter, a community being devastated by fracking.
“We have worked diligently with the governor’s administration to reduce the roadblocks for the oil and gas industries to receive permits,” Rubio said at time.
Five tons of nitrous oxide and two tons of volatile organic compounds were released into a community with the worst air quality in the state. This clearly violated the Air Board’s regulations.
Vintage’s big penalty? $750.
Don’t expect any stronger regulations or enforcement of existing ones to come from Governor Brown. He has already accepted $27,200,the maximum donation allowed, from Occidental Petroleum for his re-election campaign.
Big Oil’s the biggest spender in California politics. The Western States Petroleum Association has already spent $2,308,790 on lobbying efforts in the first half of this year.
Plus, Brown is salivating over the tax revenues he expects from this oil boom.
“One wonders whether there might be the ingredients of a grand bargain – the oil industry is given the green light to develop Monterey shale with some stringent but not crippling regulation, in return for which the state could impose a severance tax on new production that would benefit state and local governments,” Dan Walters pondered in a recent column in the Sacramento Bee.
Ban It
Even if regulations could magically make fracking safe, it uses too much water in a drought prone state. The hundreds of daily diesel truck trips will also cause extensive damage to local roads and increased incidences of asthma and other respiratory diseases.
Fracking causes the industrialization of bucolic landscapes and noise and light pollution. In other states, fracking’s “man camps” are rife with drugs, alcohol, gambling and prostitution. Fracking would also most likely decimate the food and wine industries, which are far more important economically to the state than oil.
Coming full circle, this will prevent California from achieving the 20% reduction in CO2 called for in Pavley’s signature bill, the Global Warming Solutions Act.
Regulations can neither prevent nor mitigate the disastrous consequences inherent to fracking. We need to keep the carbon in the ground.
The Cherokee Nation has sent its elite squad of firefighters to Oregon to help fight wildfires in northern California.
The dozen-member team, the Cherokee Fire Dancers, deployed to the Northwestern state on Tuesday July 23 to “work 16-hour days, hiking up to seven miles per day to cut down timber to create fire breaks to help battle the flames,” the tribe said in a statement.
“It’s a thrill watching a fire as it’s contained and know you’ve helped,” said Danny Maritt, of Tahlequah, who has been a Fire Dancer for 23 years, in the tribe’s statement. “We’re glad we’re out there making a difference.”
Fire Dancers are on call from the U.S. Forestry Department, the tribe said. Their last mission was assisting in cleanup efforts from Superstorm Sandy in New Jersey.
The Fire Dancers have traveled back and forth across the United States since 1988 to help suppress wildfires, earning “an outstanding reputation and the respect of wildland management agencies throughout the United States,” the tribe’s website says.
Information on specific fires that the Cherokee team will help with was not available, but there were several fires burning in northern California earlier in the week. Many have been contained, but others, such as the Aspen fire, were still being suppressed. That was at 2,000 acres in hard-to-access territory in the High Sierra Ranger District of the Sierra National Forest, where it was discovered burning on July 23, according to Inciweb. As of late morning on July 25, the fire had burned about 2,000 acres and remained active.
Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation tribal chairman Marshall McKay stands in the tribe’s wheat fields in the Capay Valley. (Courtesy of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation)
Lynn Armitage, Indian Country Today Media Network
Name: Marshall McKay
Title: Tribal chairman of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation
Product: Seka Hills Premium Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
How long in business: First olive trees planted in 2008
Advice for other business owners: “Insist on research, honesty and integrity of the product. It’s essential, and it’s what our tribal values are based on.”
After you build a profitable casino, luxurious hotel and championship golf course, create an award-winning wine label, manage more than 11,000 acres of farm and ranch land—including 300 heads of cattle—and on top of it all, buy back your original tribal lands, what on earth do you do for an encore? RELATED: The Yocha Dehe Return Focus to their Land through an Olive Oil Enterprise—and More
The Capay Valley’s hot Mediterranean-like climate creates prime olive-growing conditions. (Séka Hills website)
“The American consumer is really short-changed when it comes to fresh, virgin olive oil,” says Tribal Chairman Marshall McKay, reflecting on recent studies challenging the purity of many olive oils in the U.S. “So we decided one of our main quests would be to provide that for consumers.”
In 2008, after much research and consulting with the University of California Davis olive center, the Yocha Dehe tribe planted its first olive trees on 80 acres of poor, dry soil—the perfect conditions to grow Arbequina olives, a Spanish variety that prospers in Mediterranean-like climates. And in fall of 2011, they reaped the fruits of their labor.
“We completely sold out of our first year’s production,” says Jim Etters, director of land management for the tribe, who says their olive oil has been described as smooth and buttery, with a hint of grass and black pepper. “It was a strong start and started us on the right foot, helping us develop the market and learn the business.”
The biggest challenge for the tribe was finding a mill where they could process their olives. The nearest facility was two hours away, and for olive oil to be exceptional, it must be milled soon after picking.
So the Yocha Dehe did what any self-sustaining, economically independent tribe would do—they built their own state-of-the-art olive mill, a 14,000-square-foot facility custom-manufactured in Florence, Italy, and among the first of its kind in the U.S., where they process, store and bottle their oil. What sets this mill apart is that it prevents oxygen from ever touching the olives, thereby preserving freshness and flavor. RELATED: Yocha Dehe Olive Oil Attracts the Attention of The New York Times
The new olive mill has been a welcome addition to the Capay Valley, as it is where custom oil for 46 other olive growers is processed and bottled. “The tribe is proud to be able to partner with other local growers in and around the Capay Valley to help build the region’s reputation for world-class olive oil,” says Etters.
Chairman McKay echoes that sentiment. “One of our goals was to bring neighbors together and create agribusiness and a feeling of family in the valley. These olives have really done that for us.”
What’s next for the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation? “We have organic fields that we are nurturing, sustainable beef that we are raising, conservation of lands, restoration and distribution of energy,” McKay shares. “For centuries, we’ve been tenders of the land—farmers, really. And post-Gold Rush, we are still serving that purpose, nourishing and nurturing the land.”
State officials and representatives of some corporate “environmental” NGOs have constantly touted the so-called “marine protected areas” created under the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative as a “science-based” method for bolstering fish and shellfish populations in California.
Yet a recent California Fish and Game Commission decision revealed that traditional fishery management, rather than the marine protected areas supported by the Western States Petroleum Association, Safeway Corporation and other corporate interests under the MLPA Initiative, may be much more effective in addressing fishery declines than the creation of questionable “marine protected areas.”
The Commission on June 26 voted to modify abalone fishery regulations along the northern California coast. By doing this, the Commission effectively admitted that fishing regulations, rather than alleged “marine reserves” that went into effect on the North Central Coast on May 1, 2010 and on the North Coast on December 19, 2012, are the “solution” to reducing pressure on a declining abalone population. The decline was spurred by a die-off that coincided with a local red tide bloom and calm ocean conditions in 2011.
The Commission voted to reduce the annual limit to 18 abalone (previously 24), with no more than nine taken from Sonoma and Marin counties. Other changes to abalone regulations included a coast-wide start time for the fishing day of 8 a.m. and a closure at Ft. Ross in Sonoma County.
The changes were proposed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and then adopted by the Commission.
“The new management measures we’ve adopted today will help ensure that the red abalone remains abundant on the North Coast and the popular recreational fishery there continues to thrive,” said Commission President Michael Sutton. “Our job is to keep wildlife populations in California healthy and not wait for a crisis to take action.”
Jim Martin, the West Coast Regional Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance and representative of the Sonoma County Abalone Network (SCAN), responded, “Apparently Fish and Wildlife believes that traditional fishery management is more effective than marine protected areas in rebuilding fishery stocks – and that reductions in harvest are more effective than closing down areas.”
Martin noted that the abalone decline – caused by a die-off and not overharvesting – occurred in 2011. SCAN immediately supported a temporary closure at the Fort Ross index site to help the population to recover.
“They extended this temporary closure to a year round one,” said Martin. “We supported both that closure and an 8 am start time to help enforcement, as well as reduced bag limit south of Mendocino County.”
However, the abalone fishermen felt the reduction of the bag limit from 24 to 18 was “completely unnecessary.”
“What they really did was reduced the allowable recreational catch from 280,000 to 190,000 abalone, over a 30 percent reduction. And the Abalone Recovery and Management Plan only called for a 25 percent reduction,” said Martin.
In the course of discussing the regulations, Martin and other fishermen asked the Department to quantify the benefits of marine protected areas to the fishery.
The MPAs were touted by MLPA officials, including Ron LeValley, the Co-Chair of the MLPA Initiative Science Advisory team now being investigated by federal authorities for conspiracy with two others to embezzle nearly $1 million from the Yurok Tribe, because of the “benefits” they would provide by bolstering abalone and fish populations. (http://www.times-standard.com/… )
“The CDFW refused to quantify the benefits because they said it would take too long,” said Martin. “We believe there should be some benefit to quantify these benefits based on science.”
“The whole selling point of these MPAs is that they would make fish and shellfish populations more abundant,” said Martin. “The first test of that theory turned to be based on false promises.”
Martin emphasized, “We don’t think these marine protected areas benefit abalone at all. If they benefit abalone, give us some numbers. Instead they turned to traditional management to deal with a situation wasn’t harvest related.”
The CDFW press release announcing the regulations confirms Martin’s contention that the Department effectively admitted that the marine protected areas weren’t benefiting the abalone at all.
“Northern California red abalone are managed adaptively by the Commission, using traditional management measures coupled with fishery independent surveys to maintain the catch at sustainable levels, as prescribed by the Abalone Recovery and Management Plan (ARMP). Ongoing data surveys by the Department of Fish and Wildlife detected the effects of a recent abalone die-off along the Sonoma coast,” the Department stated.
“The declines in abalone density triggered the changes to management measures, because the densities dropped below levels that are prescribed in the ARMP for management action,” the release continued.
“The new regulations are intended to provide an opportunity for abalone populations in Sonoma and Marin to increase, and to help Mendocino County maintain a productive fishery. The set start time for the fishing day will also aid enforcement,” the DFW said.
Not mentioned anywhere in the news release are the “glorious” new marine protected areas, created under an allegedly “open, transparent and inclusive” process, that were supposed to bolster the populations of abalone and other species.
The release also didn’t mention the reasons for the abalone die-off and how to prevent a similar situation from taking place in the future.
Background: MLPA Initiative based on terminally flawed “science”
The “science” that the MLPA Initiative is based on is very questionable, leading tribal biologists, independent scientists, fishing groups and grassroots environmentalists to challenge its assumptions, methodology and conclusions.
The Northern California Tribal Chairman’s Association, including the Chairs of the Elk Valley Rancheria, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Smith River Rancheria, Trinidad Rancheria, and Yurok Tribe, believes the science behind the MLPA Initiative developed by Schwarzenegger’s Science Advisory Team is “incomplete and terminally flawed.” (http://yubanet.com/…)
The Yurok Tribe said it has attempted on numerous occasions to address the scientific inadequacies with the MLPA science developed under the Schwarzenegger administration by adding “more robust protocols” into the equation, but was denied every time.
For example, the MLPA Science Advisory Team in August 2010 turned down a request by the Yurok Tribe to make a presentation to the panel. Among other data, the Tribe was going to present data of test results from other marine reserves regarding mussels.
“The data would have shown that there was not a statistical difference in the diversity of species from the harvested and un-harvested areas,” wrote John Corbett, Yurok Tribe Senior Attorney, in a letter to the Science Advisory Team on January 12, 2011. “The presentation would have encompassed the work of Smith, J.R. Gong and RF Ambrose, 2008, ‘The Impacts of Human Visitation on Mussel Bed Communities along the California Coast: Are Regulatory Marine Reserves Effective in Protecting these Communities.’” (http://yubanet.com/…)
No Tribal scientists were allowed to serve on the MLPA Science Advisory Team, in spite of the fact that the Yurok and other North Coast Indian Tribes have large natural resources and fisheries departments staffed with many fishery biologists and other scientists.
On the day of the historic direct action protest by a coalition of over 50 Tribes and their allies in Fort Bragg in July 2010, Frankie Joe Myers, Yurok Tribal member and Coastal Justice Coalition activist, exposed the refusal to incorporate Tribal science that underlies the fake “science” of the MLPA process.
“The whole process is inherently flawed by institutionalized racism,” said Myers. “It doesn’t recognize Tribes as political entities, or Tribal biologists as legitimate scientists.” (http://klamathjustice.blogspot.com/…)
To make matters even worse, the Del Norte County District Attorney arrested Ron LeValley, Co-Chair of the MLPA Science Advisory Team, in February 2012 for conspiracy with two others, Roland Raymond and Sean McAlllister, to embezzle nearly $1 million from the Yurok Tribe.
In January, District Attorney Jon Alexander said the state case was dismissed without prejudice against Raymond, LeValley and McAllister to “allow the case to move forward through the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” according to the Eureka Times-Standard. (http://www.times-standard.com/…)
Wouldn’t it have been prudent for the Natural Resources Agency and Department of Fish and Wildlife to have postponed the implementation of the alleged North Coast “marine protected areas” until this case had been resolved in the courts – and when the legitimacy of the “science” of the MLPA Initiative was already facing severe criticism from well-respected scientists?
The Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) is a landmark law, signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, designed to create a network of marine protected areas off the California Coast. However, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004 created the privately-funded MLPA “Initiative” to “implement” the law, effectively eviscerating the MLPA.
The “marine protected areas” created under the MLPA Initiative fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, water pollution, military testing, wave and wind energy projects, corporate aquaculture and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering. These areas are not “marine protected areas” in any real sense, but are just “no fishing” zones.
The MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces that oversaw the implementation of “marine protected areas” included a big oil lobbyist, marina developer, real estate executive and other individuals with numerous conflicts of interest. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, served on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Coast and North Central Coast.
Reheis-Boyd, a relentless advocate for offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the Keystone XL Pipeline and the weakening of environmental laws, also chaired the South Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task that developed the MPAs that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2012.
The MLPA Initiative operated through a controversial private/public partnership funded by the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. The Schwarzenegger administration, under intense criticism by grassroots environmentalists, fishermen and Tribal members, authorized the implementation of marine protected areas under the initiative through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the foundation and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
This undated photo from NOAA Fisheries Service shows a species of Pacific krill. Millions of the inch-long shrimp-like animals have been washing up on beaches between Eureka, Calif., and Newport, Ore., and scientists don’t exactly know why. Strong winds may have pushed them ashore while they were mating near the surface, or they may have run into an area of low oxygen.AP Photo/NOAA, Jaime Gomez Gutierrez
GRANTS PASS — Millions of krill— a tiny shrimp-like animal that is a cornerstone of the ocean food web — have been washing up on beaches in southern Oregon and Northern California for the past few weeks.
Scientists are not sure why.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationoceanographer Bill Peterson says they may have been blown into the surf by strong winds while mating near the surface, and then been dashed on the beach.
The species is Thysanoessa spinifera. They are about an inch long and live in shallower water along the Continental Shelf. They have been seen in swaths 5 feet wide, stretching for miles on beaches from Eureka, Calif., to Newport, Ore. Some were still alive.
“There has definitely been something going on,” Peterson said from Newport. “People have sent us specimens. In both cases, the females had just been fertilized. That suggests they were involved, maybe, in a mating swarm. But we’ve had a lot of onshore wind the last two weeks. If they were on the surface for some reason and the wind blows them toward the beach and they are trapped in the surf, that is the end of them.”
Or, they may have fallen victim to low levels of oxygen in the water, said Joe Tyburczy, a scientist with California Sea Grant Extension in Eureka. A recent ocean survey showed lower than normal oxygen levels in some locations. If the krill went to the surface to get oxygen, they could have been blown on shore, he said.
For some reason, people did not see gulls and other sea birds eating them, he added.
Peterson said low oxygen conditions, known as hypoxia, are a less likely explanation because they normally occur later in the summer.
The mass strandings are unusual, but not unheard of, Peterson added. There is no way to tell yet whether this represents a significant threat to a source of food for salmon, rockfish, ling cod and even whales.
