Should taxpayers be funding wealthy business owners’ legal obligations to protect fish and wildlife?

By Nick Joslin

In the Shasta Valley, salmon are going extinct. Over the last 20 years, the numbers of fish returning from the ocean has continued to drop. In 1991 the state and the Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District (SVRCD) began to approach the issue and worked with willing landowners. The largest landowners in the valley remained unwilling to develop plans that would trade strict enforcement of laws for voluntary measures that would improve conditions for fish. This period of time relied on ranch owners to cooperate with agencies to make changes to ranch plans and water use.

The earliest projects were the easiest projects: keep cows out of river, keep cow manure out of the river, keep fish out of ditches, and keep fish out of pumps. State funding mechanisms were set-up that made it nearly financially impossible for ranchers to not apply for grants. With the programs, the state offered guidance, assistance, and financing to ranchers. Ranchers made meaningful improvements to their fencing, tailwater, and water conveyance systems and the state avoided the need to enforce laws since the ranchers were now “volunteering” to comply with state and federal laws.

These first wave of projects aimed to help fish were very common-sense projects. And they did achieve the results that were desired. Limiting cattle’s access to and preventing their manure from ending up in the stream helped improve water quality. Keeping fish from swimming into the old ditch systems or pumps which often originated directly from the Shasta river and the Little Shasta river, reduced individual mortality events.

But overall returns of salmon to the Shasta river system between 2000 to 2012 continued to plummet.  When coho salmon were federally listed as endangered, ranchers then had to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), which ushered in a new programmatic approach to voluntarism in favor of enforcing the law.

With federal fisheries scientists and state fisheries scientists involved in identifying the best habitat in the valley, work plans were drawn up for these reaches of the river to be “restored” from the damages of antiquated irrigation water systems and overuse of river water.

Enter the Shasta Safe Harbor Agreements (SHAs), which were developed during secret negotiations over an 8-year period and finally approved in the waning months of Trumps presidency. This program continues on the same voluntary premise of prior projects. Ranchers trade their efforts in habitat conservation for the promise of not being prosecuted for killing endangered species in the normal operation of their ranches.

What could be wrong with this situation? First, it resets the baseline for determining actual benefits to the current severely degraded status. Despite the admission that ranching practices are responsible for the current and historic decline in fish numbers, the agreement ignores the current and past harms and works to continue to coax along piecemeal efforts at bringing the fish back from the edge of extirpation. Second, it trades future promises for past liabilities. Lastly, it leaves taxpayers on the hook indefinitely as all participants now rely on taxpayer funding for their private ranch’s compliance with state and federal laws.

There are no more easy fixes in the Shasta river. The next waves of projects are all multi-million-dollar projects. And instead of the wealthy landowners paying for these elaborate schemes themselves, the taxpayers are footing the bill. Were these business owners truly concerned about their own efficiencies, wouldn’t they have long ago made the upgrades themselves?

That’s right, private for-profit business owned by the likes of billionaire Red Emerson of Sierra Pacific Industries, scandal prone Belcampo, and apparently unlawful riparian diverter Lowell Novy will now be seeking millions in grant money that is earmarked for fish, water, and restoration by various state and federal agency funding mechanisms. With volunteer actions paying so well, it’d be hard not take free handouts AND as a bonus, not get prosecuted for your past actions or any future actions in the next 20 years which caused harm to endangered species.

We will be tracking these funding cycles at several agency grant offices while also trying to fight off the final approval of the SHAs by the state of California for not being consistent with state law. It is an uphill battle and in a future article, we will describe the type of work that is required to prove to the state that a project proposal is not worth funding.