East Bay Bias for Wild & Scenic

On 5/29/14 the East Bay Express, a weekly newspaper, published an editorial disguised as an article about the Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River. It can be found at: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/ebmud-may-block-wild-and-scenic-status-for-the-mokelumne/Content?oid=3933737. Following that article they posted a letter by Katherine Evatt, president of the Foothill Conservancy, which can be found here http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/letters-for-the-week-of-june-11/Content?oid=3950898

They refused to post my letter which was written in the vague hope of appealing to an imagined vestigial populist sentiment among Bay Area liberals. It follows with two slight changes:

The Other Side of the Wild & Scenic Mokelumne Story

Amador County is barely hanging on. The County budget and reserve funds are shrinking as the roads deteriorate, schools are closing, religious congregations have gone under, empty buildings abound, homeowners associations lack enough members to provide essential services, the Forest Service constantly inhibits public use that negatively affects the tourist industry and whole families, a new phenomenon here, are fed by food banks. Now it appears that our benevolent state legislature wants to take way our water rights in five different and significant ways according to a director of the Amador Water Agency. A biomass plant, expanded gold mining and other possible developments that would use water and employ people are now absolutely precluded by the Wild & Scenic designation on parts of the Mokelumne River. Our State Senator, Tom Berryhill, says that local opposition is six to one against this designation.

Yet Robert Gammon, in his “EBMUD May Block Wild and Scenic Status for the Mokelumne” on 5/29/14 dismisses our struggle for survival and presents the local opposition as “...dominated by conservative Republicans who ...tend to oppose all environmental regulations.” His statement regarding Calaveras County’s economic dependence upon river related recreation seems to me, a long term area resident, as utterly preposterous. He further describes protecting “...a section of pristine river” while ignoring the fact that the river’s flows, including the white water rafting opportunities, are completely controlled by scheduled dam releases.

Friends of the River and the Foothill Conservancy (often referred to as the Foothill Conspiracy) have shared over $200,000 in grant money from the Rose and Tides Foundation to push this designation through. Those of us who live here are often overwhelmed by their resources and imported staff. This  has not surprisingly bred resentment.

The Amador Water Agency, Jackson Valley Irrigation District, Calaveras County Water District,  Calaveras-Amador Mokelumne River Authority, California Farm Bureau and the Amador County Board of Supervisors have all opposed the Wild & Scenic designation. Only the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors, as Mr. Gammon correctly stated, supported Wild & Scenic. This one endorsement seemed sufficient for Loni Hancock to sponsor the bill. And this vote of support was at the insistence of one supervisor, the former Foothill Conservancy executive director.

Some of the other Calaveras supervisors have publically reconsidered their support and some supporters have lost their reelection campaigns. Here in Amador County one candidate supporting Wild & Scenic was defeated and in the other race the two of the three candidates who opposed Wild & Scenic received 65% of the vote.

Also the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors vote was taken without consultation with the Calaveras-Amador Mokelumne River Authority in probable violation of their legal agreement and could even possibly nullify the legitimacy of their vote. But Mr. Gammon trivializes our “stakeholder rights” as merely part of an EBMUD “poison pill” scheme. Those of us who live in Amador and Calaveras Counties still believe that we have rights and that our local democratically elected civic bodies are supposed to get in the way some times. Is it surprising that top down proposals launched from far away are unpopular here?

Mark Bennett, Amador County