Statement in Response to Governor Schwarzenegger Issuing Executive Order to Direct Financial Aid to Central Valley

(Mendota, CA, June 19, 2009) We applaud Governor Schwarzenegger for issuing an executive order to direct much needed financial aid to those in need in the Central Valley. We wholeheartedly support getting economic relief to those in the Valley and throughout California that are in urgent need of food and shelter. Relief should also be directed to salmon fishermen along the California coast, whose industry has been shut down for two years as a result the state’s ecosystem collapse.

To blame the Central Valley’s unemployment problems on a court decision that reinforces regulations designed to protect fisheries on the brink of extinction is to misdiagnose the problem. In reality, unemployment in the Central Valley has historically been high even in non-drought years and is currently exacerbated by the worldwide recession and precipitous decline in housing construction. No doubt the drought plays a role, but its role has been greatly exaggerated. Even if the pumps that divert water from the Delta to the Central Valley and Southern California were run at full capacity, and drove certain species into extinction, the Valley’s problems would not be solved.

Efforts to dismantle the recently released Biological Opinion and court decisions for salmon and Delta Smelt will only prolong and fuel the decades-long conflicts that have plagued water management in California and derail the promising planning efforts underway to develop a comprehensive water supply and ecosystem plan that can assure a reliable water supply and healthy ecosystems for future generations of Californians.

We are encouraged by the latest reports out of the Department of Water Resources and Central Valley Project showing that water supply in most parts of the valley will be in excess of 80 percent of average levels. Central Valley Project deliveries to the Westlands Water District, for example, were forecast to be zero as recently as March. The district now expects to use 86 percent of average annual supplies this year.

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Environmental Defense Fund, a leading national nonprofit organization, represents more than 500,000 members nationwide and 100,000 in California. Since 1967, Environmental Defense Fund has linked science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems. For more information, visit www.edf.org.

The Bay Institute was founded in 1981 by pioneers of a new advocacy approach that viewed the entire Bay-Delta ecosystem as a single, interdependent watershed. They claimed that environmental reform benefiting the Bay must recognize the importance of events in the farthest reaches of the watershed just as urgently as those along the Bay shoreline, and that reduced freshwater flow was the biggest factor in the decline of the estuary’s fish and wildlife resources. For more information, visit www.bay.org.