In a press release written by Burt Wilson of Public Water News Service, the North Delta CARES Action Committee has exposed the clear-cut racial injustice of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels.
Amazingly, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan's combined Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) was not printed in any language other than English, in spite of the fact that 25% of the Delta community will not be able to express themselves either for or against the environmentally destructive dual tunnels that are proposed for the Delta!
“We are in the public comment period of this 40,000-page document, yet only people who speak and understand English are able to make a comment on it," said Anna Swenson, one of the organizers of the North Delta CARES Action Committee.
This is in spite of the fact that Chapter 28 of the BDCP’s EIR/EIS acknowledges that there are large numbers of non-English speakers on the Delta. Headed “Environmental Justice,” the chapter’s Section 28.2.1.3 talks about the high number of Hispanics in Delta communities (Clarksburg is named).
It also talks about the large number of low income, non-English-speaking people who also live in these communities. Besides Spanish-speaking inhabitants, the list includes: Tagalong, Vietnamese, and Chinese (Mandarin).
“Even so,” Swensen adds, “you only have to go to City Data.com to learn who speaks what in our community. Just walk around and you’ll discover that Hmong, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese-speaking persons, among others, are also present. They are also residents who cannot read English proficiently and are unable to comment in the BDCP process. They’re just being plain ignored!”
Unfortunately, this de-facto exclusion of non-English speakers is not the only example of outright racism in the BDCP process. Indian Tribes have been marginalized and excluded in the process that is designed in conjunction with the federal plan to raise Shasta Dam.
The dam raise will flood many of the remaining sacred sites of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, including Puberty Rock. The construction of the tunnels will also result in the extinction of Central Valley Chinook salmon and other fish that are sacred to indigenous cultures.
Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, summed up the danger that the peripheral tunnels pose to California's fish, people and rivers.
"The common people will pay for the peripheral tunnels and a few people will make millions," emphasized Sisk. "It will turn a once pristine water way into a sewer pipe. It will be all bad for the fish, the ocean and the people of California."
She also said, "One might ponder the thought that flooding cultural sites of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe is beyond 'racism'…it might be called 'Cultural Genocide'! How many Winnemem Wintu are expected to survive the flooding of sacred sites supporting the traditions and cultural customs a second time! As it stands now, the lands were stolen from the Winnemem Wintu, as the 1941 Act of Congress still waits to be fulfilled!"
Tribal rights have also been violated in the parallel process to the Bay Delta Conservation Plan pushed by the Brown administration - the corrupt Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create alleged "marine protected areas" on the California Coast. As of this date, the Yurok Tribe and other Indian Tribes are illegally barred from practicing their traditional gathering and fishing rights in state marine reserves created under the MLPA Initiative.
In addition, the MLPA Science Advisory Team for the North Coast refused to allow Yurok Tribe scientists to present studies that challenged the terminally flawed "science" and false assumptions that drove the MLPA Initiative scam. In one of the biggest scandals on the North Coast in recent years, Ron LeValley, the Co-Chair of the MLPA Science Advisory Team, will be sentenced on May 20 on federal charges of conspiracy to embezzle nearly $1 million from the Yurok Tribe.
“Whether it is their intention or not, what the Marine Life Protection Act does to tribes is it systematically decimates our ability to be who we are,” Frankie Joe Myers, a member of the Yurok Tribe and Coastal Justice, said in July 2010 at a peaceful takeover of an MLPA Initiative meeting by Tribes and their allies in Fort Bragg. “That is the definition of cultural genocide.”
Below is the press release:
Delta CARES Action Committee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MAY 12, 2014
CLARKSBURG COMMUNITY SEEKS ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE FROM BDCP
by Burt Wilson
There’s nothing stronger than an honest-to-goodness grass roots movement out to right a wrong—especially when that wrong is a clear-cut injustice concerning racial inequality.
Such a movement began recently in Clarksburg where Anna Swenson, one of the organizers of the North Delta CARES Action Committee, a community group opposed to the proposed dual tunnels of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), discovered that that BDCP’s combined Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) was not printed in any language other than English.
“We are in the public comment period of this 40,000-page document, yet only people who speak and understand English are able to make a comment on it. That means about 25% of our community will not be able to express themselves either for or against the dual tunnels that are proposed for the Delta. Expand that to the whole Delta area and you have thousands of non-English-speaking citizens who are denied comment on this immense project and that’s wrong,” Swenson said.
Swenson’s cause was developed from her reading of Chapter 28 of the BDCP’s EIR/EIS. Headed “Environmental Justice,” the chapter’s Section 28.2.1.3 talks about the high number of Hispanics in Delta communities (Clarksburg is named). It also talks about the large number of low income, non-English-speaking people who also live in these communities. Besides Spanish-speaking inhabitants, the list includes: Tagalong, Vietnamese, and Chinese (Mandarin).
“Even so,” Swensen adds, “you only have to go to City Data.com to learn who speaks what in our community. Just walk around and you’ll discover that Hmong, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese-speaking persons, among others, are also present. They are also residents who cannot read English proficiently and are unable to comment in the BDCP process. They’re just being plain ignored!”
She also points out that only two BDCP documents on two pages, front and back, are available in Spanish and that even though the BDCP webpage translates to Spanish, the entire BDCP plan does not. “That leaves them some 40,000 pages short of important information about the largest municipal project ever proposed,” she says.
The hotline advertised as a community resource by the BDCP has not even been usable let alone a known source of information according to Swensen. She adds, “There has been no visible information distributed to these populations. And to merely have a person who speaks Spanish at a public meeting does not meet the criteria of Environmental Justice for non-English speaking persons.”
To help rectify what Swenson calls an “Environmental Injustice,” (using the BDCP’s own words against them), she has been organizing “comment writing parties” in Clarksburg. The South Delta citizen’s group “Restore the Delta,” also picked up on this idea and is planning a comment party of their own on May 13th in the Stockton area.
Party participants are given official BDCP “comment cards” and instructed on how to write a comment, using the BDCP guidelines. No one is told what to say, but as the party proceeds and the people listen to an explanation of the problems, they develop their own language in order to personalize their comments.
Swenson is asking the BDCP to print up the prevailing EIR/EIS document in the languages from the BDCP list—which was a result of the BDCP’s own research in these areas. She also wants the other identified languages provided with translated plans and that an additional 120-day comment period be restarted to provide time for non-English-speaking residents to read and respond to the impacts of the BDCP dual tunnels project.
“The BDCP is guilty of neglect of their own principles,” says Swenson. “We want to see them live up to their promise of “Environmental Justice” for all people in the Delta. “It’s the morally right thing to do.”
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BURT WILSON (916-402-5031) is a freelance writer who has been commenting on Delta issues for the past eight years! Reach him also at bwilson5404@sbcglobal.net
ANNA SWENSEN can be reached at Phone: (530)570-9641