Surprise, Surprise, The Dept. of Fish and Game wants more water!

The California Department held its “Community Outreach” meeting at the Fort Jones Community Center. As is typical for this agency, the meeting did not go as they had planned.

First on the agenda, I will use Liz’s description, Fishey 101. Where the mama and papa fish find a good spot with the right gravel and they make babies. Some of our membership have been in on this battle for over ten years and I am positive they appreciated the basic biology course.

Two state employees gave out legal advice without a license. “Don’t worry, I am not a lawyer, but helping us is a beneficial use of your water. Using it on your own property will not be a beneficial use if CDFG has anything to say about it.

They refused to hear public comment. Instead they used the Delphic or Alinsky technique of breaking into small groups in case anyone wanted to know more about the reproductive process. CDFG has used its own brand of reproductive with reckless abandon in this water shed to usurp our property rights and water rights and so not many people stayed to ask questions.

The reality of the matter is that CDFG is never satisfied with its statutory access to water. They tried to prove a claim during the Scott River Adjudication in order to gain a legal water right for fish and the Superior court denied the claim, stating that CDFG had no right to water within the Adjudication. CDFG has attempted to extort the water using “Color of Authority”. CDFG has attempted to take the water using a permit process which constituted an underground regulation.

CDFG has stolen water and lied about doing it with fish bypass flows far in excess of CDFG Code 6022.

So at long last they thought they would ask for water, which seasonal low stream flows prevented them from stealing.

Our problem (the water right owners) is very complex. How does a person deal honorably with an agency which has no honor or integrity?

This issue clearly does not have anything to do with science or a fish which is in trouble.

CDFG has never wanted to hear the truth.

They only want truth which helps accomplish an agenda.

They have the Answer as they see it and only want to hear questions which lead to that answer.

Our problem is that the answer does not include agriculture in the Scott or Klamath Watershed. What does it matter if a fish lives when no one will be left to see it?

Let us speculate that just this once the CDFG was sincere and really wanted to ask for water. Three people in the audience proposed solutions to the problem which required give and take.

In all three areas CDFG was consistent! CDFG wants your water but will NOT help you give it to them with any regulatory relief, or compensation of any kind. No one likes a one way contract. That is not the definition of a contract at all.

Sounds more like benign extortion, with a smile, to me.

The Constitution was designed and written to protect us from the good intentions of well meaning despots.

The Bill of Rights and the California Constitution Article One protects us from Government theft of the right to property and its use.

The rule of law is what this nation was built upon and not government by the stakeholder committees.

There may be some truth in environmental concern. We will never know until this agency and all of the other agencies spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars doing absolutely nothing in the Shasta and Scott Watershed are brought to task.

I was looking at the fish counts between 1920 and 1932 last night, while I tried to see some light in this situation. Coho Salmon have never been in this watershed in large numbers.

Fish and Game bulletin number 34, describes the first plantings in 1895 and where the stock came from. This is CDFG’s own report. The counts are fairly consistent at around a couple hundred fish a year at the Klamathon Racks.

About the same as now.

Remember the Pacific Decadal Cycle keeps the fish north in colder water until surface sea temperatures cool in the Pacific off of the coast of California. There have never been a lot of Coho in the Klamath and the few that do come up the river make it or they do not just as God intends for all fish who can lay in excess of 3000 eggs per Spawning.

If the tribes and CDFG would quit killing the vast majority of the Coho before they are counted, we would have a very different dynamic in the Klamath Basin as a whole.

Back to the Question which plagues all of us.

How do we deal honestly with people have no scruples and have a lot of “restoration money” riding on the outcome of their agenda?

We can continue to expose the truth. We can continue to resist the attacks upon our property and our liberty to use our property as we see fit.

We must not fail, our land, our way of life and our Constitution demand that we do not fail.

I will not submit.

I will not give my Constitutional Rights away in the name of environmentalism or for any other reason.

I will defend my Constitutional Rights with all of the resources at my command.

Mark Baird

Vice President Scott Valley Protect Our Water

Plan to attend our

Summit on the Scott River

on August 23rd

Fort Jones Community Center

1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

We will give one more try to explain our positions

and our concerns to the agencies

who would like to see our way of life disappear.

 

I don’t know about each of you but last night’s meeting left me with more questions than answers.

I didn’t get to ask my questions last night, but there probably isn’t any point.

I still want to know:

Why won’t any agencies, especially the DFG, do a limiting factors analysis to actually determine the issues in the watershed that would make the biggest gains for Coho and watershed rehabilitative health? I suspect they don’t want to know the answer.

Why are they pleading for water at this time of the year? I don’t think that keeping all the remaining irrigation water in the river will mean a hill of beans difference in connecting disconnected pools as described last night.

Why don’t they just move the fish upstream into cold clean water as nature has designed this system? I just can’t logically figure out the strategy here. Maybe there is none.

I thought the meeting was unorganized, poorly thought out and poorly staffed with educated officials making the presentations.

I hope no one takes the expert opinion of the Fish Biologist regarding water rights and the continued use of water.

I’m not a lawyer — but know he was flat wrong on irrigation originating on Federal Public Land.

The Federal agencies issue Special Use Permits for the conveyance structures, pipes, ditches etc.

If these are not used for a five-year period the federal government considers them abandoned. To re-issue requires proof of continued use of the water right and full NEPA analysis including ESA consultation. This is near impossible in this watershed with the fish and the appeals and litigation from River Keeper etc. that would ensue.

Again, this meeting left me scratching my head.

Ray A. Haupt

By Liz Bowen

As president of Scott Valley Protect Our Water, I was asked what I thought of the meeting last night with the California Dept. of Fish and Game. I will post several comments, concerns and observations throughout the day. So please check back. I have been so busy with these water problems that I must tend to my garden for a few hours. I did get the 20 pounds of cabbage cut up, in the crock and making into sauerkraut yesterday — between meetings.

OH, MY GOODNESS! is my first comment.

Compared to last year’s meetings, where Mark Stopher demanded and threatened $25,000 in fines and possible jail time if we didn’t capitulate to DFG’s Permits, last night was a step in the right direction — attitude wise. Curtis Milliron, Joe Croteau and Neil Manji were non-threatening, firm, but pleasant. Too bad we have went down this road of dis-trust for so long.

I was asked by a news reporter (Greenie) if POW would give any water for the fish. I didn’t say yes or no and it is because POW has a mission statement; we are an ad-hoc group; and we do not dictate how POW supporters should deal with their land or government agencies.

So for the record, this is POW’s stand:

First and foremost: We say “NO” to those regulations, which destroy our Constitutional Rights. Water Rights and Property Rights cannot be infringed upon.

Second: Each individual has the right to choose for himself or herself what is best for his or her land.

DFG effectively used the Delphi Technique to maintain control of the meeting. (More about that later.) So here is the statement Mark Baird, vice president of POW, wanted to say and was only allowed to make part of the statement, which had to be turned into a QUESTION, during the very short Question and Answer Period. (I didn’t know we were expected to play Jeopardy!)

Statement by Mark Baird

I cannot now and will never cooperate with the California Department of Fish and Game in any program, process or proposal. This agency by its conduct has proven it self an entity which cannot be trusted in any manner or form and I see no change which is forth coming. This Agency has readily used lies and extortion to accomplish its agenda. This agency continues to do so to this day. This agency has been stealing water all season and now wishes to ask for what they are not able to steal.

If the California Department of Fish and Game would get a signed and witnessed statement from the Govorner of the State of California which will swear to the inalienability of our rights to property including our rigthts to water as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the California Constitution Article 1 Section 1, we citizens, property and water right owners would be willing to talk about all of the imagined and manufactured ills of this watershed. As long as this agency is willing to use lies, deciet and extortion to achieve its agenda, we will refuse to cooperate.

We will not give up our Constitutional rights to property or its use to the agencies who are supposed to serve us.

We do not give up our soverignty to the agencies who are supposed to serve us.

The people are not playthings for every government social and environmental cause drummed up to restrict the rights or actions of the people.