January 2006

SRCAF Ignores Landowner Concerns

Local Interests Draw 'Line in the Sand'

At its most recent Board Meeting in January, the Sacramento River Conservation Area Forum (SRCAF) made obvious the reason for such distrust by landowners. Colusa County SRCAF landowner representative, Ben Carter, and Colusa County public interest representative, Supervisor Gary Evans, called on the SRCAF Board to take action to address the stalled landowner assurances effort. Specifically, they requested that the land acquisition and ecosystem restoration projects be put on hold until policies could be finalized to protect property owners and communities along the river. However, the SRCAF Board elected to ignore the concerns expressed by these Board Members, the City and County of Colusa, the Glenn, Butte, and Colusa County Farm Bureaus, and the Family Water Alliance, instead opting to proceed with business as usual. To date, business as usual has been the routine approval of multi-million dollar acquisition and restoration projects, while farmers and property right advocates attend numerous time consuming meetings, with little or no action to further policies to mitigate the impacts of these projects on flood control, water supply, regulatory, economic and cross boundary issues.

The SRCAF, a non-profit organization that was started in 2000, arose out of legislation that sunset in 1989 (SB 1086). It was designed to address restoration on the Sacramento River, as well as landowner and public concerns. The SRCAF Handbook states: "Too often, restoration is attempted piecemeal, or is carried out in ways that do not take human activities into account. In the SB 1086 Program, the principles which provide the foundation for all restoration work are rooted in the fact that riparian habitat is closely linked to the river ecosystem and human activities." These principles include: Ecosystem management, flood management, voluntary participation, local concerns, bank protection, and information and education. To date, it has been all about restoration, with human activities taking a backseat.

Several well attended town hall meetings throughout the Sacramento Valley illustrated community concerns regarding the impacts of restoration on the flood control system, neighboring landowners, agriculture, local economies, and the tax base as private farm land fell into public hands. Five years ago, in response to the public’s demand that a resolution be provided to address these impacts, a Landowner Assurances Committee (LAC) of the SRCAF was formed to create a Good Neighbor Policy.

Ben Carter, a Colusa County farmer, who was recently appointed as Chairman of the California Reclamation Board, was selected to head up the LAC to work to address the community concerns. Yet after five years of volunteer time, during which he and several interests from throughout the region, including FWA, tirelessly worked to seek solutions — little has changed. It became clear that landowner concerns must be put on equal footing with the environmental restoration projects, which have proceeded at an alarming rate. Most disturbingly, these projects are paid for with taxpayer dollars, using money from bonds that were overwhelmingly defeated in most rural counties where the projects are occurring. Basically, we are being forced to pay for projects that we don’t support, and that are causing us harm!

On December 13, 2005, Mr. Carter addressed his concerns before the Colusa County Board of Supervisors, outlining his frustration with the SRCAF process and lack of progress in addressing landowner and public concerns. Mr. Carter discussed that after 20 years of effort, thousands of pages of documentation, and thousands of hours of meetings, tangible progress toward solutions was not evident. He stated: "The Good Neighbor Policy now languishes, a victim of excuses from the State and Federal agencies that range from, ‘that doesn’t fit our policy’ or ‘that’s against the law’ to ‘we don’t have money or staff time to pursue that’. I have come to the conclusion that these excuses translate into nobody in government has the guts to follow through on their commitments to the people, and even worse, the agencies that signed on to the SRCAF concepts never really intended to implement them." He continued, "How many billions of taxpayer dollars have been allocated and continue to be allocated for acquiring land and restoring habitat along the Sacramento River in the last twenty years? And yet how many thousands of dollars have been spent reaching solutions of local concerns?" In urging the Colusa Board to take action on the Resolution, Carter concluded: "We need to get the attention of the agencies so they step up and address landowner concerns. After 5 years, this Board (the SRCAF) owes that to the local stakeholders."

In response to the concerns expressed by Mr. Carter, Family Water Alliance, the Colusa County Farm Bureau, and several concerned citizens from throughout the community; and upon a motion made by Supervisor Evans, the Colusa County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a Resolution directing County representatives on the SRCAF Board to exercise their veto power over any and all Colusa County sited restoration projects that come before the SRCAF. Further, the Resolution requested a cessation of funding from CALFED, the CA Department of Fish and Game, the CA Wildlife Conservation Board, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for all restoration projects within the County until such time as the policies set forth in the Good Neighbor Policy are adopted and implemented.

During the meeting, the Colusa County Board of Supervisors made clear their opinion that the SRCAF is not accomplishing its stated mission. Board Chairman, Dave Womble, commented that the SRCAF likes to stall, "It is their tactic to wear people down." Supervisor Christy Scofield stated, ". . . We’ll draw the line in the sand."

Shortly thereafter, the City of Colusa unanimously passed their own resolution supporting the County’s position.

At the January SRCAF Board Meeting, the SCRAF was made aware of the position of the County and City of Colusa. This sentiment was further supported by letters from Glenn, Butte, and Colusa County Farm Bureaus, as well as by testimony from Family Water Alliance – each of these groups’ Boards unanimously voted that no more restoration should take place until landowner assurances were established. Yet, to the chagrin of the largest crowd to attend an SRCAF Board meeting in years, they refused to hear the voice of the public. Commentary from Diana Jacobs of CA Department Fish and Game, and other Board Members, continuously mischaracterized the request, painting it as recommendation to push away from the table. Instead, the Board voted down the proposal, electing to initiate a new Landowner Assurances Committee of only SRCAF Board Members, severing the participation of the public that had dedicated hundreds of hours to this effort. A disturbing development since the SRCAF proclaims to be an open and public forum. It is predicted that this will merely result in a lot more process, little progress, lots of meetings, and at best, an extremely watered down, toothless version of the currently drafted policies – an unacceptable result.

Ironically, a dialogue was precisely the action requested, as was often stated during the discussion by proponents of the action trying to correct the misperceptions being fostered at the meeting. Projects have been implemented for years with no safeguards in place, and several conflicts have arisen as a product of this poor planning. Yet, landowner assurances have continuously stalled due to excuses and a lack of political will to create a level playing field by the resource agencies. Instead of a forum working to integrate restoration and human activities as the SRCAF purports, it has served as a facilitator of restoration, silencing local opposition, and giving the misperception of public support for these restoration projects to CALFED and other funding agencies.

Former State Senator Jim Nielsen, the author of SB 1086, the legislation that led to the creation of the SRCAF, recently shared his view on what has become of his vision: "The Forum over years has yielded lots of verbiage, but insufficient ‘line in the sand’ stands for private property in my opinion. Consensus is what I always envisioned, but not one sided consensus."

Jeff Sutton, FWA Executive Director stated: "After five years of concentrated effort to address landowner assurances within the SRCAF, and almost 20 years of dialogue on this issue since SB 1086 passed, it has become crystal clear that the process promoted by the SRCAF is not working to protect local landowners and public concerns".

"Family Water Alliance has been at the table working to implement policies that would minimize and mitigate these impacts, however, our efforts have been met with opposition, gamesmanship, and delays by the SRCAF, the state and federal resource agencies, and environmental organizations that have profited greatly from these projects. We have put the cart before the horse here, the rules were never established or the fences built that would enable these conflicting land uses to be good neighbors. As such, restoration proceeds ahead at a rapid pace, while landowner assurances have been relegated to an afterthought, with little time or monetary resources being dedicated to local concerns. The negative impacts that come with these programs must be minimized and mitigated, rural agricultural communities in Northern California cannot continue to bear the entire burden of these efforts."

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