Feinstein - Boxer Bill SB1894has serious flaws we need to get corrected

[Mike McKenzie]

Below are the main points and arguments against components of the Feinstein – Boxer Bill SB 1894. All are supported by real science and not Water export Contractors propaganda! We urge your support and for everyone to take action and contact both Senators to ask for them to adopt the requested changes.
Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3841
Barbara Boxer
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-3553

•The California Emergency Drought Relief Act of 2015. While the legislation has admirable provisions that we support to help recover our salmon fisheries, it also has some provisions regarding fisheries dependent upon the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary that are not based on the best available peer reviewed science as they should be. We urge you to correct these deficiencies to avoid doing significant damage to many of estuary’s fisheries held in trust for the public.

•The peer reviewed scientific studies on predation in the estuary have consistently found that that striped bass predation does not impact the population levels of any of the estuary’s fisheries listed under the State and Federal Endangered Species Acts.

•In 2010 the California State Water Resources Control Board, during its hearing on “The Delta Flow Criteria”, appointed a panel of fishery experts to review the impacts causing the collapse of the Bay-Delta estuary’s and its fishery resources. They unanimously agreed that predation by striped bass was an insignificant impact and the lowest of all the stressors affecting the ecosystem.

•In July 2013 California Department of Fish and Wildlife, The Delta Science Program and NOAA’s Natural Marine Fisheries Service convened an independent expert panel of scientists to review fish predation on salmonids in the Bay Delta. They concluded that there was no peer reviewed scientific evidence that predation by fish (including striped bass) was affecting population levels of listed species.

•It was noted that other significant stressors were far more important in addressing the recovery of listed species including ensuring flows and habitat conditions in the estuary and its tributary rivers were appropriate for anadromous fisheries.

•S. 1894 unfortunately requires the eradication of a number of sport fisheries including striped bass, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass and catfish in the estuary. The need for this is not supported by the peer reviewed science. In fact there is no feasible way to eradicate these species in the estuary.

•When fish eradication programs have been attempted in other estuarine ecosystems they have been costly and all have failed miserably.

•Fisheries such as striped bass were intentionally introduced into the estuary by the California Fish & Game Commission in 1879 and have been a part of the Delta ecosystem since then. Their populations flourished alongside salmon and steelhead for a hundred years.

•These fisheries are utilized by recreational anglers as both a source of food and for enjoyment. The population declines of striped bass, salmon and steelhead have cost local, state, and national economies billions of dollars according to a report by the California Department of Fish & Game ("Administrative Report No. 85-03”).

•Destroying valuable public fishery resources that are not causing the fishery declines would not be good legislation and would violate state and federal law.

•Given the limited resources are available to address the really important impacts to the productivity of the estuary and the fishery resources it once sustained, we encourage you to require the significant problems causing the decline of the estuary’s ecosystem to be corrected.

•These impacts are primarily caused by the design and operation of the State and Federal water projects. These projects have created an ecosystem similar to that of a large lake instead of a dynamic estuary with appropriate tidal influences, variability and fresh water inflows.

•Considering the above, it’s no wonder that salmon, steelhead, striped bass, delta smelt and sturgeon that require an estuarine ecosystem have declined to the point where extinction is a very real possibility.

•It is unfortunate that some of the beneficiaries of the state and federal projects have made striped bass and other non-native fish a scape goat so they can play down the importance of the impacts caused by the development and export of the Delta’s water resources. They have tried unsuccessfully to prevail in court, in the state legislature and with the California Fish and Game Commission to destroy the striped bass fishery.

•They have failed because these venues know that it is the impacts caused by the water projects that are killing the estuary and its fisheries. There is no credible peer reviewed science to support their predation impact claims.

•The key to restoring populations of endangered and desirable species and reduce the numbers and impacts of undesirable species is to return the Delta to a dynamic variable estuarine environment. We should be protecting and working on the recovery of the existing fisheries rather than destroying fisheries vital to the Delta’s ecosystem health.

Text of the Bill is here: https://www.congress.gov/114/bills/s...114s1894is.pdf

Here are the requested changes to S.1894 that would make it acceptable to the Sportfishing community..
You can follow from the original text in the link above if you're really into it!

1) Page #27, line #17-18 after section (B) that reads “To reduce predation at the existing state and federal fish salvage systems”. Please add: “(C) Analyze, assess and report on the extent to which Salmon smolts migration through the Delta are impacted by the State and Federal export facilities. The report shall include an estimate of the fish lost in the Delta and those entrained and killed by the State and Federal projects export pumping facilities.”

2) Page #31, line #s 1-3. In the title of Section 202 strike “deltas, and other Delta tributaries.” In this section there are no programs mentioned or listed that would be conducted on the Delta and other tributaries. The title of Section 202 should now read as follows: SEC 202. PILOT PROGRAM TO PROTECT NATIVE ANADROMOUS FISH IN THE STANISLAUS RIVER

3) Page #31, lines #4-5 strike “NONNATIVE” (to ensure the potential success of this program, all predators should be removed and relocated). Amended it reads as follows: PREDATOR FISH REMOVAL PROGRAM ON STANISLAUS RIVER

4) Page #31, line #16. Strike “nonnative” and add the following language such that lines #16-17 read: “program to remove and relocate to the Delta in suitable habitat predator fish from the Stanislaus River and record an estimate of the number and species of fish that do and do not survive this relocation.

5) Page #32 lines #3-4. Please amend and add the following language to (B) to read as follows: (B) PARTICIPATION BY NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE AND THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH & WILDLIFE.

6) Page #32 line #9 strike the word “may” and replace with the word “shall” such that it reads as follows: “shall, in conjunction with the director of California Department of Fish and wildlife.”

7) Page #32 lines #11-13 after “Fisheries Service” please add the following language such that it reads as follows: “Fisheries Service and the Department of Fish and Wildlife shall be present in supervising all activities (performed in the field).

Page #36 lines #19-25. In line #20 strike the word “predators,” and add “non-fish competitors (e.g. invasive clams), line #21 strike the words “native” and “listed” such that the amended section now reads: “(A) seek to reduce invasive aquatic vegetation and other non-fish competitors (e.g. invasive clams) which contribute to the decline of pelagic and anadromous species that occupy the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta; and”

9) Page #37 lines #1-5. Line #3 strike largemouth bass and strike entire lines 4 & 5 such that (B) reads as follows: “(B) remove, reduce, or control the effects of species, including Asiatic clams, silversides, gobies, and Brazilian water weed”

Mike McKenzie
Allied Fishing Groups

[STEELIES/26c3]

09-09-2007, 2:51 PM

(excerpted from the Wikipedia)

Feinstein has been in office since 1992

Here's just a portion of her great record......

Corruption scandals and accusations

Between 2001 and 2006[23], Diane Feinstein served as the ranking member of the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, also known as the "MILCON" subcommittee. Feinstein also served as chair of the MILCON subcommittee when the Democrats controlled the Senate in 2001 and 2002.

While on the MILCON subcommitte, Feinstein voted for appropriations worth billions of dollars to firms owned by her husband, Richard C. Blum.[5] This included millions of dollars in contracts awarded to Blum's Perini Corporation to provide goods and services in Iraq and Afghanistan.[24]

As the ranking Democratic, Feinstein would have again become chair of the MILCON subcommittee when the Democratically controlled Senate of the 110th Congress was sworn in on January 4, 2007. However, Feinstein resigned from the subcommittee prior to the new congressional term, forfeiting chairmanship of the MILCON subcommittee to Tim Johnson.[25] Metro Newspapers reported that Feinstein's resignation was attributable to a series of articles, partially funded by the progressive Nation Institute, exposing the potential conflict of interest posed by Feinstein's voting to award contracts to her husband's firms.[26] [27]

In April 2007, Feinstein's office denied any ethical conflict,[28] however, the director of the Project on Government Oversight who has examined evidence assembled by investigative reporter Peter Byrne stated that “the paper trail showing Senator Feinstein’s conflict of interest is irrefutable.”[29][30]

Additional scandal arose when it was revealed that members of Feinstein's Senate staff attempted to purge references to these alleged conflicts of interest from the Wikipedia articles on herself and her husband.[31][32]

Additionally, in 1990, Senator Feinstein failed to disclose that her husband had guaranteed her 1990 campaign loans, which resulted in a US$190,000 fine.[33] This information was also initially deleted from Wikipedia by a Feinstein staffer in 2006.[34][32]

I found it here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Feinstein

[STEELIES/26c3]

and the beat goes on......

I was just thinking about how long this ( ) has been in office and how many times she has been at the scandalous end of the horizon....

It seems her newest bill proposal is her last-ditch (pardon the pun) attempt to empty our delta and line the pockets of her lobbyists.

(FROM 2010)

Feinstein is trying to ram through a massive transfer of public water into the private pockets of a clique of billionaire corporate farmers.

California's Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein showed Californians who she really serves this past Thursday, when news emerged that she was trying to ram through a massive transfer of precious water out of the hands of millions of state residents, and into the private pockets of a clique of billionaire corporate farmers.

Here's how the San Francisco Chronicle described the swindle:

Feinstein wants to attach the proposal as an amendment to a fast-tracked Senate jobs bill. She is pitching the plan as a jobs measure to address the economic calamity in the Central Valley. It would increase farm water allocations from 10 percent last year to 40 percent this year and next, an amount that farmers say is the bare minimum they need.

Bay Area Democrats were livid, accusing Feinstein of concocting the plan in secret, upending fragile water negotiations that Feinstein has supported and pitting California's Central Valley against its coast.

They were right to be upset. The water transfer would decimate Northern California's already fragile ecosystem, threaten endangered species of fish and decrease its scarce drinking water supply.

Water is a sacred issue in California that one day will surely lead to a North-South showdown that could get ugly. Any major change in the state's water policy is so fraught with danger and consequences, that it makes negotiations over how to divide it a long and difficult process. In our imperfect democratic system, this is how we resolve the most difficult problems we face, when different communities have so much at stake. Feinstein apparently decided that democracy wasn't in her interests--or the interests of the rich corporate farmers she serves--so she is trying to circumvent the whole process by sneaking through legislation before anyone can figure it out. For Californians, it was an act of treason, putting the interests of Big Agro above the needs of millions of people who think she represents them. Feinstein was born and raised in San Francisco, where she rose to political prominence; now, she's screwing her hometown region most of all.

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, attacked Feinstein's move: "Best I can see, she's making a decision that jobs in the Bay Area and Northern California and the Peninsula south of San Francisco aren't as important as jobs in the Central Valley [which has a fraction of the Bay Area's population]."

Feinstein's sneakiness has something to do with serving Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire and one of the richest men in California. Resnick owns Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, pesticide manufacturer Suterra and Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming company in America and the largest pistachio and almond producer in the world. Resnick is also the brain behind a little-known water privatization scheme that brought Enron-style deregulation and privatization to California's water market and made him one of the largest, if not the largest, private water brokers in America. He also happens to be friend and major contributor to Feinstein's political career.

Lately he's been putting pressure on the Senator to badger the Obama administration into loosening environmental regulations and releasing more water to California's farmers. Feinstein complied, even handing a letter written by Resnick directly over to the White House. News of this sleazy influence-peddling sparked a closer look at Feinstein's dealings with Resnick:

Wealthy corporate farmer Stewart Resnick has written check after check to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s political campaigns. He’s hosted a party in her honor at his Beverly Hills mansion, and he’s entertained her at his second home in Aspen.

And in September, when Resnick asked Feinstein to weigh in on the side of agribusiness in a drought-fueled environmental dispute over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, this wealthy grower and political donor got quick results, documents show.

Thanks to his generous relationship with Dianne Feinstein, a corporate farmer is successfully crusading against environmental preservation in California.

Feinstein wasn't bothered a bit by the negative press. Anyone who followed her senate career knows she is the queen of insider relationships, marrying politics with big business, and completely in character for a person who married into the world of ruthless businessmen, bankers and corporate sharks.

Her husband of 30 years, Richard Blum, is a classic cutthroat corporate raider who made billions in hostile takeovers, buying up companies, then stripping and selling off their assets and skipping away with the profits. Blum kept some infamous company, including junk bond conman Michael Milken, who was jailed for his crime. Blum has been the subject of several media investigations into how he has profited handsomely from his wife's political power.

In one of the scandals, Feinstein created a law that happened to steer a lot of easy taxpayer money toward her husband's business:

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.

Then there was an even bigger scandal linking Feinstein to war profiteering in Iraq:

As chairperson and ranking member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee from 2001 through the end of 2005, Feinstein supervised the appropriation of billions of dollars a year for specific military construction projects. Two defense contractors whose interests were largely controlled by her husband, financier Richard C. Blum, benefited from decisions made by Feinstein as leader of this powerful subcommittee.

A crooked politician like Feinstein prefers doing deals like this out of the public eye, just like her corporate raider husband, so her attempt to secretly force through an unpopular law onto her constituency is just business as usual. Republicans sneer at her for being a San Francisco liberal, but her actual record shows that she's about as much a liberal as Paul Bremer, privatizing by the closest thing to a decree, while talking up democracy. What's good for the people does not matter. It's all about stripping public wealth and privatizing state assets for maximum profit--so long as it goes to her husband's friends.

Stories like these are why so many progressives are disillusioned with the Democrats and the entire American system.

[Mike McKenzie]

She says that she is retiring at the end of her present term...Probably why she's sold her soul to the water contractors in this last term! No backlash to worry about!

Mike