Update on the Delta

This is an action alert for anyone who cares about future water supplies in California. Tracy Representative Richard Pombo will have his Resources Committee visiting Stockon on Monday, Feb. 27th at 8:00 AM. The announced purpose is an oversight hearing on the decline of fish populations in the Bay / Delta. The Resources Committee Media Advisory is just now on line...they did not even get the HTML title right yet.

The witness list has yet to be announced. I did make sure that Dan Bacher at The Fish Sniffer got a copy of the hearing notice. If anyone should be there and on the witness list, it is Dan: and then Dr. Jeffrey Mount from UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. So, I alerted Dr. Mount and the Center also.

The Resources Committee has a habit of setting up their "witness list" so that they only hear what they want. In this case, we need to make sure that there are a significant number of knowledgable people in the audience to make sure that they hear the true facts. In previous instances, when grassroot organizations were going to be actively present, the hearings have been cancelled or moved to Washington. But, this is Pombo's home district and moving it would not look good. I hope that his primary opponent, Pete McCloskey, makes it to the hearing.

This is not just about endangered species (the delta smelt) but also about the livlihood a an entire region with 1000 miles of navigable waterways, a high number of sports fishers and a number of active sports organizations who consider themselves to be true environmentalists.

If any of you know of environmental organizations or sportsman organizations that have a presence in the Centeral Valley, make sure that they know about this.