Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposal to suspend Endangered Species Act protections for endangered salmon and other wildlife in California’s Sacramento Delta. Senator Feinstein’s proposal would send more water from Northern California’s Trinity and Sacramento Rivers to the Westlands Water District, despite the harm to crashing salmon populations and the people and ecosystems that depend on healthy fisheries.
Feinstein’s attempt to place a “rider” on the pending Senate jobs bill would benefit fabulously wealthy campaign contributors like Hollywood billionaire Stewart Resnick, owner of Paramount Farms and controller of most of the nation’s almond and pistachio crops, at the expense of the already-decimated salmon industry on the West Coast. It would establish a horrible precedent that environmental laws don’t apply when wealthy and powerful interests like the Westlands Water District object.
“Senator Feinstein’s cynical attempt to suspend Endangered Species Act protections for truly imperiled Sacramento River salmon is not only an ecological disaster in the making,” said Scott Greacen, executive director of EPIC. “It would put at risk ten times as many jobs in fishing as it would protect for farmworkers, give the Trinity River’s water to the corporate agribusiness that has been trying to steal it since the 1960s, and establish the horrible precedent that our crucial environmental laws don’t apply to wealthy funders of powerful politicians.”
The good news is that North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson has taken a politically courageous stand for salmon and the salmon fishing industry by co-authoring a very strong letter to Senator Feinstein opposing her rider.
Please call Senator Barbara Boxer’s office in Washington D.C. at 202-224-3553 or in San Francisco at 415-403-0100 and ask her to oppose Feinstein’s water grab.
If you have an extra moment, please call salmon defenders including Mike Thompson’s Washington D.C. office at 202-225-3311 or his Napa District office at 707-226-9898, and thank them for their efforts to defend Northern California’s water and fish.