|
CounterPunch
October
31, 2002
Gag the Messenger,
Kill the Fish
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Last month more than 35,000 salmon died in the
lower Klamath River, smothered by low flows, tepid waters and
political indifference. At the time, Bush officials attributed
the salmon die-off to a freak of nature. "More water wouldn't
have done those fish any good," offered John Keys, head
of the US Bureau of Reclamation.
This remarkable observation was entirely
self-serving. After all, Keys is the one who had ordered Klamath
water diverted from the river and into irrigation ditches for
farmers in southern Oregon.
Now comes proof that Keys was lying.
Not only did the Bush crowd know that increased flows were vital
to the survival of Klamath salmon and steelhead, but they were
told so by their own biologists. Twice.
Michael Kelly is a top biologist with
the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency charged
with protecting sea-going fish, such as salmon and stealhead
trout. Kelly led the team that reviewed the situation on the
Klamath River, which flows from southern Oregon through northern
California. For the past couple of years, irrigators and salmon
defenders have been locked in a pitched battle over how the river's
water should be divided between the potato and alfalfa fields
and the fish.
None of the native fish in the Klamath
River system are doing very good. But the suckerfish and the
coho salmon, both once staples in the diet of the Klamath River
tribes, are teetering on the brink of extinction and both are
afforded protection under the Endangered Species Act. Kelly's
task was to develop a plan that provided enough water to ensure
the survival of the coho.
In April, Kelly's team also reviewed
the Bureau of Reclamation's 10-year plan for allocating the river's
water and concluded that it would place the coho in jeopardy.
Kelly's report soon ended up at the Justice Department, where
Ashcroft's lawyers sent back a stinging rebuke ordering Kelly
to rewrite his biological opinion.
Kelly issued a new opinion two weeks
later, reaching the same conclusion and backing it up with more
science and detailed legal analysis. This too was rejected.
Instead, the Bush administration adopted
the irrigators' plan, hastily developed by the National Academy
of Sciences, which slashed by more than 43 percent the river
flows recommended by the biologists, a clear violation of the
Endangered Species Act.
"Obviously someone at a higher level
order the service to accept this new plan," Kelly says.
When Kelly objected, he was told by his
superiors to shut up and sign off on the irrigator's plan. He
refused. Now Kelly is seeking protection as a whistleblower from
a federal court.
He's wise to seek such protection. Other
federal scientists who have spoken out about the Bush administration's
environmentally hostile maneuvers have not fared well.
Recall Ian Thomas, the former cartographer
at the US Geological Survey who was fired in March of 2001 after
he posted to a website maps showing how caribou calving areas
would be despoiled by Bush's plans to open the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
In March of 2002, Eric Shaeffer, head
of regulatory enforcement at the EPA, resigned in disgust after
the White House kept him from pursuing legal actions against
power plants violating the Clean Air Act and then slashed his
enforcement division's staff by 200 positions, effectively gutting
the agency.
Then there is Jim Martin, the former
Ombudsman at the Environmental Protection Agency, who resigned
in protest after EPA director, Christie Todd Whitman, ordered
his office disbanded and sent FBI agents to seize his files and
equipment. At the time, Martin was investigating the EPA's mishandling
of Superfund sites in New Jersey, a probe that had uncovered
unflattering information about Whitman's (and her husband's)
deals with polluters during her tenure as governor.
The suppression of Kelly's report echoes
similar attacks on federal scientists during the first Bush administration,
when White House chief of staff John Sununu quashed reports from
biologists linking logging in the forests of the Pacific Northwest
to the drastic decline of the northern spotted owl.
Kelly says that in addition to ditching
his report, the Bush administration also prohibited him from
analyzing the risks to coho salmon posed by diverting Klamath
River waters to Oregon farmers, another trouncing of the Endangered
Species Act.
Would more water have saved those salmon?
Sure. The big question is where the water should have come from.
On that point, there's plenty of room for debate and for blame.
The upper Klamath basin irrigators in
Oregon are greedy bullies, on that there's no doubt. But they've
got a point when they say they're not the only drain on the Klamath
River. Indeed, their share of Klamath River water pales when
compared to the amount sucked up by California agribusiness and
the chipmakers of Silicon Valley.
The Trinity River, which slices through
steep canyons in northern California, is the Klamath River's
biggest tributary.
The Oregon irrigators rightly contend
that the water from Klamath Lake is warmer and thus less useful
for salmon than the frigid waters of the Trinity.
Yet, more than 90 percent of the Trinity's
annual flow never reaches the Klamath, at the confluence of the
two rivers thirty miles from the Pacific Ocean. Instead, it is
captured behind 540-foot tall Trinity Dam and redirected southward
through the Clear Creek tunnel under the Trinity Alps Mountains
into the Sacramento River. This is just the beginning of the
Trinity's torturous 400-mile route to the Southland, through
the Delta-Mendota Canal, the California Aqueduct and finally
onto the fields of the Westlands Water District in the Central
Valley. The whole scheme represents an evil masterpiece of geo-political
plumbing.
At 605,000 acres, the Westlands District
is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and perhaps even more
powerful politically. It is the largest irrigation district in
the nation, the most profitable and the most lavishly subsidized.
It is also one of the most polluted. When the Trinity's water
finally filters out of the cotton, lettuce and tomato fields
of the Westlands, it emerges laden with pesticides and highly
poisonous selenium into San Joaquin River, then into the marshes
of the San Francisco Bay delta.
The giant farms of the Westlands Water
District have laid claims to more than 1.15 million-acre feet
of water Trinity/Klamath river system. That's nearly twice as
much as the Oregon farmers. These California farms generate about
$3 billion in sales. But they also enjoy at least a billion dollars
in direct federal subsidies.
Of course, the Westlands is not by nature
farming country. It's essentially desert and savanna-parched,
dusty and hot-and depends entirely upon imported water, which
the district guards ruthlessly through an army of lawyers, lobbyists
and politicians.
In 2000, Clinton's Interior Secretary
Bruce Babbitt, who now lobbies for the California water company
Cadiz Inc., made a timid attempt to increase flows down in the
Trinity by a meager 20 percent. Even this approach was met with
fierce resistance from the Westlands farmers, who persuaded a
federal judge to slap an injunction on the plan. Babbitt backed
down. And the Bush administration says they're hands are tied
by the courts, even if they wanted to do something-- which, of
course, they don't.
And the so fish have paid the price.
In the entire Klamath/Trinity basin, less than 20 percent of
the original salmon spawning habitat remains in anything approaching
a viable condition. The coho population is has been decimated.
In fact, decimated is an understatment: the coho population has
plumetted by more than 90 percent since the 1950s.
An initial tally of the dead salmon from
September's die-off shows that more than half of the fish were
headed for the Trinity River to spawn. The death toll of 35,000
(which federal biologists now admit is "conservative")
amounts to about a third of the river's annual run.
With so much at stake, it's distressing
to see how little of a fight the environmental movement has put
up, not only to save the Klamath salmon but also to defend what
remains of the Endangered Species Act, as the Bush crowd rips
its teeth out one by one. Yes, the Sierra Club and others flailed
away at the Oregon farmers. But they are easy targets. There
aren't many of them and they live in a rural, Republican district
with little political muscle. But they've said precious little
about the grave situation on the Trinity. The enviros have no
doubt gagged themselves in order not to irritate Democratic politicians
in California who are in bed with Big Ag.
In the end, if the salmon have any kind
of chance it resides with people like Michael Kelly, who put
their careers on the line to save the river, and the tribes of
the Klamath basin, who haven't stopped fighting for their treaty
rights in the last 100 years.
"We are the people behind the fish,"
says Troy Fletcher of the Yurok Tribe.
At least the salmon don't stand alone.
Yesterday's
Features
David Krieger
We Can
Stop This War Before It Begins
Dr. Susan Block
Sex and
Fear:
a Halloween Greeting
Michael S. Ladah
Sharon's
Wall
Linda S. Heard
North Korean
Nuke Admission Undermines US War Stance
David Vest
Back Off
or I'll Snap!
Deb Reich
Beyond the Onion of Blame:
Parallel Sovereignty for Israel/Palestine
Phyllis Pollack
Keith
Richards LA Surprise
CounterPunch Wire
NAS Withholds Key Info on Moscow
Theater Gassing
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|