Who Are the Real Radicals in the Klamath and Bay Delta Politics?

March 16, 2011

Jim Bradley
Senior Director of Government Relations

Now most people want their elected officials faced with a difficult problem to sit down with all sides and, despite all their differences, work out a compromise. A "winner take all" approach may feel great when you're the winner, but it's not so good when you're having your "all" taken.

But let's face it, when it comes to the complex politics of water in California and in the Klamath River Basin, compromise isn't easy.

After all, they don't call them the Water Wars for nothing. It's only been recently that we've started to see some détente in these conflicts that in some cases literally go back generations.

That's what makes the recent actions by the House of Representatives so bizarre.

First there was the rider added to a funding bill by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) which would block implementation of the Klamath River Settlement Agreement.

You may recall that last year more than 40 parties, ranging from environmental groups like American Rivers, irrigators, Native American tribes, small farmers, the states of California and Oregon, and PacifiCorp all signed an historic agreement to remove the dams on the Klamath, restore the river, improve the conditions for all the parties, and keep electric rates low for small farmers while ending decades of legislation.

Call me crazy, but when all the parties to a dispute, after decades of litigation, grudgingly come to the table and sign an agreement, shouldn't Congress applaud? Or if they can't manage that, at least get out of the way?

Next there was the rider added by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) that would overturn the San Joaquin River Settlement Agreement, a settlement negotiated by the Bush Administration with all of the parties, from all ends of the spectrum, that ended eighteen years of litigation.

Rep Nunes' rider would also set aside the scientific studies on the Delta smelt and salmon populations in the Bay Delta and instead substitute Rep. Nunes' opinion that we shouldn't worry about protecting the fish. Aside from the obvious, that we're trumping scientists' carefully determined studies with one Congressman's opinions, what else is the problem here?

Well, to remove those opinions would mean that the fish would no longer need to be protected by the Endangered Species Act. Therefore there would be no need for something called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, or the BDCP. Now I know what you're thinking: can't we live without another acronym?

Well, the BDCP is a group of people who for years only faced each other in court sitting around a table and trying to solve the water crisis in the Bay Delta. It's environmental groups, like American Rivers, but it's also state and federal agencies, irrigators and farmers, large municipal water providers, and salmon fishermen all of whom are setting aside decades of mutual distrust and dislike to sit down together and try to work out a deal to protect the Delta that everyone in the room depends on.

Now the BDCP isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But doesn't it seem better than spending the next decade fighting in court?

Or as the Sacramento Bee put it in a recent editorial: We want cooperation among competing interests on difficult water issues, not renewed water wars. And as Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) recently said: These are complex problems, and they require nuanced solutions. These [riders] do nothing to help us."

Now Reps. Nunes and McClintock call us radical environmentalists, but we're the ones sitting down with people on all sides of the issues, trying to work out the best compromise possible.

They're the ones deliberately trying to blow up negotiations and settlements.

Who are the real radicals here?