The 50 participants in a secret meeting deciding the fate of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta on Thursday morning decided to leave rather than to allow four Delta advocates to listen to the proceedings.
Bill Jennings, chairman/executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA); Jim Crenshaw, president of CSPA; Bret Baker, a Delta pear farmer, biologist and Restore the Delta board member; and I disrupted the meeting of Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to protest the closed process.
We arrived at the meeting of “principals” of the BDCP at the Farm Bureau office in Sacramento just as the meeting was getting started. You could feel the tension and sense the surprise by the federal and state agency officials, water agency leaders, corporate agribusiness officials and others gathered there as we walked into the back of the room.
The Department of Water Resources has told legislators that they're not welcome at meetings of signatories to the BDCP, the plan that state water exporters have undertaken to secure their water supplies. Many advocates view the BCDP as a thinly-veiled attempt by the Governor to put in place the plans for a peripheral canal/tunnel before he leaves office.
The meeting facilitator, Betsy, announced our unexpected arrival. “We have guests in the room. Would you please identify yourselves?”
We all introduced ourselves and then the meeting stopped. The facilitator talked to us about the process and why they had to meet in secret so there would be no “attribution” of comments by participants.
“We have had to say no to other people who wanted to come to the meetings,” she stated. “This is not a definite plan we’re coming up with. This is a temporary process to give advice to the permanent process.
We were asked not to report the names of any of the participants or attribute quotes to them. We refused.
She emphasized, “The policy of non-attribution governs everything said in this room. We don’t let anybody from the press come to these meetings since in the past the newspaper has served as the vehicle of negotiations – and we don’t want that to happen.”
Jennings responded that “the state and federal agencies are sending the wrong message here. I have worked on protecting the estuary for 3 decades, but I have no representatives here. The representatives from two Senate offices weren’t allowed here either.”
Baker and Crenshaw agreed with Jennings and myself that we had the right to stay in the meeting. Betsy went back to the group and they said they wanted to take a break to decide how to deal with our presence.
After a long delay, Betsy came back and stated, “The group as a whole has asked you to leave.”
Jennings, after asking under whose authority or jurisdiction we were being asked to leave, said, “Are you prepared to have us arrested?”
Betsy received word from Natural Resources Secretary Lester Snow that rather than having us arrested, they would not continue meeting in that room unless we left. The participants then began leaving from the room, disbanding the meeting.
After the meeting was disrupted, Jennings said, “I’m astounded that four people involved in Delta issues for decades walked into a room and had everybody walk out from continuing the discussion about the future of the Delta.”
“What I’m really disturbed by is the corruption of this public process and how the participants are deciding the fate of the Delta behind closed doors.”
Jim Crenshaw noted, “I find it incredulous that these meetings are not open to public.”
Bret Baker added, “Today I feel like a proud American. I understand the meaning of Margaret Mead’s statement that 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.’”
These meetings have been going forward behind closed doors since August in what Resources Secretary Lester Snow told lawmakers was "a key procedural component of the public BDCP Steering Committee process." Speaking seats at the meeting had been reserved for "principals," representatives of the entities who have financed the planning process.
In an interview last week, Jonas Minton of the Planning and Conservation League told the Central Valley Business Times that exporters had withdrawn from the public BDCP process when confronted with overwhelming scientific evidence that exports from the Bay-Delta would have to be reduced to save the Estuary.
Said Minton, "They've been frantically trying to come up with some kind of agreement that could be signed before this Governor leaves office."
For more information and for action alerts, go to: www.restorethedelta.org.