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Tuesday, the California Dept. of Fish
and Game (CDFG) will finally provide the Siskiyou County
Board of Supervisors with a briefing on the Draft
Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the proposed
watershed-wide 1602 streambed alteration permit and
programmatic coho incidental take permits (ITP)
for the Scott and
Shasta
Valleys. Unfortunately, the briefing
will occur on the same day that comments are due.
Recently, I attended a meeting on
the permits and DEIR held by the Siskiyou County Farm
Bureau. Bill Krum from the Siskiyou Resource Conservation
District (RCD) gave a timeline on how the permits came to
be. About 7 years ago, the coho were listed by the State of
California as a
Threatened/Endangered species. The listing was challenged in
court, but the case was lost at the Superior Court and
Appellate Court levels. The California Supreme Court
declined to hear the case. The listing stood.
Because many farming activities were
perceived as having a risk of killing a fish, (prohibited
under the California Endangered Species Act,) there appeared
to be a need for an incidental take permit (ITP)
to continue to farm and ranch without risk of possible
prosecution. A programmatic group permit with one California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process appeared to be the
cheapest and most convenient option to offer local
agricultural landowners. Otherwise, every ranch or farm at
risk would have to go through the very expensive process to
obtain their own individual ITP.
It was decided that such a programmatic
ITP could be held by either the County or the
RCD. The County declined because: (1) It didn’t want to
incorporate the permit into its regulatory, permitting and
enforcement programs; and (2) the County wanted to retain
its standing as a separate government with land use planning
authority and not become a party to the permit.
Both RCD Boards in the Scott and
Shasta
Valleys did not want to take on the
permit. Their mission is to assist people in the area of
natural resources. They did, however, see a need to help
bring people into compliance with the law, while keeping
agriculture viable in the two valleys. So they finally “bit
the bullet” and took the lead to make the application. This
is the first time in the State of
California that a large group permit
held by an RCD has been attempted.
In the meanwhile, local groups were
meeting with state and federal agencies to come up with a
Recovery Plan for the coho. Recommendations by the SSRT
(Shasta and Scott Recovery Team) to the State Fish and Game
Commission were made contingent upon proceeding with a
programmatic
ITP. In the meanwhile, under a new
interpretation of the State Fish and Game Code 1602
provisions, CDFG asserted that anyone substantially
diverting water from a stream would need a permit. So, the
RCD incorporated a watershed-wide 1602 permit along with the
ITP process.
The comment period on the DEIR is now
closing. The CDFG will review and respond to the comments in
the final
EIR expected to come out in March.
Agricultural landowners will then need to make a choice
whether they wish to: (1) Meet the legal requirements on
their own; (2) Participate under the RCD permits; or (3) Do
neither and respond to any consequences from the CDFG. It
also should be noted that anyone who signs up under the RCD
program may chose to withdraw at any time, with the
understanding that they will lose the protections offered by
the program if they no longer participate. Under the
program, participants will be responsible for the costs of
avoiding and mitigating their own individual impacts and
implementing the program’s best management practices, but
the RCD will be responsible for directing larger scale
watershed projects to mitigate cumulative impacts on the
fish. These large projects will be dependent upon the
receipt of grant funding to meet the costs.. |
