News / Results on AB 2336

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From www.restorethedelta.org

It's Fuller vs. Stripers Again


You had to get to the Capitol early on April 13 to get a seat in room 437, where the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee was again going after striped bass as predators in the Delta. Bass fishermen and their supporters had packed the room. Committee Chair Jared Huffman had put this bill (AB 2336) first on the agenda, undoubtedly to allow the room to clear for other matters later.

Of course, Huffman saw this swell of opposition coming (after all, we went through a similar process last fall). He had persuaded author Assemblywoman Jean Fuller to amend the bill. Instead of focusing on striped bass predation, the Delta Independent Science Board will now be instructed to consider "impact of invasive species and non-native species, water quality impairments, and predation on native species." In other words, other stressors besides the flow reductions caused by the water projects.

Funny. We thought the National Research Council committee was already doing that. And the State Water Resources Control Board, which is supposed to be looking at flows but would like to look at stressors instead. And the BDCP, which is already committed to blaming anything but flow reductions for the situation of fish in the Delta. Surely the Delta Independent Science Board itself would have gotten around to this anyway, even without AB 2336. So this piece of political theater was pretty much redundant, as Huffman pretty much admitted.

Despite the many people speaking in opposition to the bill, it passed out of committee. But one opponent made a particularly astute observation: ALL those agricultural crops grown in the San Joaquin Valley, like cotton, almonds and pistachios are nonnative species.

Another worrisome bill also passed out of the committee that day. This was Huffman's own bill, AB 2092, regarding fees for planning and administration for the Delta Stewardship Council. This is where we get right down to the "beneficiary pays" provisions for funding the Stewardship Council. The bill originally required the SWP and CVP contractors to pay for "planning and administrative costs." This sounded reasonable to the Audubon Society, NRDC, and the Nature Conservancy, but a lot of water districts and growers' groups balked. So the bill has been amended to say "specified costs." Whatever that means.

Also amended out of the bill was the part that would have made beneficiaries responsible for paying for the costs of implementing the Plan.