Regulatory impacts on the human environment

Mike Dunbar of the Modesto Bee, other local news sources in your region, as well as local water agency managers and board members are all rightfully expressing their frustration and disbelief with the State Water Resources Control Board’s (SWRCB) proposed river flow standards. I can understand and share their angst and frustration because it’s stunningly reminiscent of this retired delta water warrior’s experiences dealing with salmon and delta smelt issues and litigation years ago.

For many years I was involved in and later monitored numerous federal litigations including some “interesting” cases involving federal regulatory mandates for salmon and delta smelt. Most noteworthy was a 2010 ruling by Judge Oliver Wanger regarding the scientific basis and human impacts of regulatory actions to protect salmon and delta smelt that exposed systematic problems, patterns of behavior and hidden agendas associated with many state and federal regulatory actions.

In his final ruling Judge Wanger repeatedly found “the regulatory actions restricting delta water supplies to be arbitrary, capricious, lacking in scientific foundation and not based on the best available science.” Sound familiar?

In other findings Wanger stopped just short of citing a senior U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service member for preparing the delta smelt Biological Opinion in “bad faith” – purposefully predisposed to a particular conclusion. But most significantly, and potentially precedent setting in your SWRCB battle, Wanger found the federal agency’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documentation failed to assess and balance the catastrophic impacts to the human environment, a fact the federal defendants didn’t even try to rebut.

Admittedly the SWRCB is a state agency but they must comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that largely mimics the federal NEPA laws. And the parallels to and the human impacts from the SWRCB proposed actions are quite stunning. Quoting Judge Wanger’s 2010 finding of facts; the “destruction of family and entity businesses, social disruption and dislocation, increased property crimes and intra-family crimes of violence, adverse effects on schools and increased unemployment as well as adverse impacts to natural resources including groundwater and air quality”.

One could ask – and should ask – how the no-science, bad-science and arbitrary and capricious actions and human impacts resulting from regulatory actions, including the current SWRCB proposal, are allowed to occur. The answer is shockingly simple; self-serving hidden agendas. For so-called “scientists” and regulatory agency staff foretelling doom (the impending extinction of a species), overstating evidence and espousing unsupported theory as fact yields media exposure, notoriety, professional stature and job security. And if you don’t believe that’s happening with the SWRCB action you’re kidding yourself. Dig deep enough and you’ll find it.

The SWRCB must be forced to balance the catastrophic impacts of their proposed flow standards on the human environment. And to bring about fundamental changes to the no-science and bad-science methodologies they are obviously relying on.