California Department of Fish and Game
use of public money to perpetrate a fraud

Letter to Mr. Neil Manji, California Dept. of Fish and Game from Mark Baird, Vice President Scott Valley Protect Our Water

Mr Neil Manji
Director Region 1
601 Locust St.
Redding, CA 96001

March 22, 2013

RE: POW participation in Normandeau Project.

CC:   Director Charles Bonham,  Senator J. Nielsen,   Assemblyman B. Dalhe, 

Congressman D. LaMalfa, Congressman T. McClintock,  Governor J. Brown,  Sheriff Jon Lopey,  District Attorney K. Andrus,  KSYC News

Dear Mr. Manji,

In November and December of 2012, six public workshops were held in Siskiyou County in order to justify the development of instream flow studies of the Scott and Shasta Rivers.  These meetings were conducted by Normandeau and Associates at a cost to the taxpayers of approximately 200,000 dollars. 

First of all, your Department has retained Normandeau, using public monies, under false pretenses.  Your Department announced at the first Public meeting that CDFG was required to study flow under Public Resources Code 10000 -10005.  Since both the Scott and Shasta are fully adjudicated watersheds and no further water rights are possible, you have knowingly and willingly misstated the facts and the requirements for your project. The ten thousand codes are meant to be used when some one has applied for an additional water right. No further rights are possible in a fully adjudicated system.

Use of public money to perpetrate a fraud is poor judgment on your part,  as well as a misuse of public funds.  This may possibly be a crime.

Second, your Department claims the reason for this project, is that low flow in the above mentioned rivers is the reason for the continued decline and possible extinction of the Coho Salmon, a threatened species.  This claim is simply not true.  Odd that Fish and Game would choose to tell a lie which is so easily verified.  However, since by all accounts, even the Department's own statistics,  this is a record year for Salmon returns and next year is likely to be as good or better, one can  only wonder what the true motives of CDFG are.  Certainly telling the truth and dealing honestly with people are not among those motives.  Once again, deliberately telling falsehoods to the public in order to achieve and end is poor ethic at best, and at worst is also a crime.

We can only surmise from the process, the end, which Normandeau hoped to achieve, on behalf of CDFG, was to marginalize property owners, water right owners, and taxpayers in order to construct a group of so called “stakeholders” who would agree with the end agenda of CDFG.  We also surmise from your behavior that your agenda is once again to insinuate your Department into Surface Water rights.  You have been sued twice already for much the same thing.  You have lost both times.  Does your department have so little regard for the people you are supposed to serve that the waste of taxpayers money means nothing to you?

POW and others who attended your meetings were shocked to see your political bar graph, upon which property owners were shown to be near to the bottom of the list of importance in your “stakeholders” chart. 

The Delphic technique, which Normandeau employes is typically used to identify political opposition to a given project and not for true scientific research.  We the people are insulted by the behavior of you,  your Department and of Normandeau.  It is so typical of CDFG to give groups who are never impacted by the consequences of your action more priority than those who are your obvious targets.  KS Wild and Center for Biological Diversity are not more important than the people who own the property in question.  These groups have nothing to lose by your lack of judgment and your poor ethics.  We property owners, on the other hand, have everything to lose and yet you do not consider the impact to people at all.  You also refuse to acknowledge Ocean Conditions, over fishing, tribal take or any of the impacts which may affect the fish, you claim, are near to extinction.

In Closing,  no we will not participate in your illegal and fraudulent project.  No, we will not cooperate with you or Normandeau in any way except incident to gathering evidence with which you, your Department and Normandeau may incriminate yourselves.  We will not give you access to our property or to our equipment.  In short we will never cooperate in any way with liars and criminals.  We will not do this because, what you are doing is wrong and no possible good can come to our members from any cooperation we give you.  Cooperation to CDFG means you want to take something which you have no right to take.  We will fight you with all the means at our disposal to ensure that we maintain our Constitutional Right to property and the liberty to use our property to better the lives of our families.  Mr Manji, you admitted to me in front of witnesses that you are willing to spend whatever monies are necessary to maintain even a small population of Coho in recognition that the Scott and Shasta are the Southern fringe of their range.

Your own Fish and Game Bulletin No 34 shows us that all of the money and all of your wasted time and effort and not done one single thing to change a coastal spawning fish into some thing that it is not.  Shame on the Department of Fish and Game for wasting the hard earned money of California Taxpayers at a time when we have no such funds to waste. Shame on Normandeau for helping to to attempt to perpetrate this fraud.  I suggest that you review your oath of office.  You may also be interested to review Title 18 sections 241 and 242 of the US Code as well as Title 42 Section 1983.  While you are at it, Article 1 section 1 of the Constitution of California may be of interest.

Sincerely,

Mark Baird

Vice President Scott Valley Protect Our Water

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