Tribal water activists will present short films about threats to Northern California’s rivers from Jerry Brown’s drought plans at Arcata’s D Street Community Center on Friday, May 8, at 6:30 pm.
The films include the Yurok Youth Fish Kill video, Sovereigns Water and the Shasta Dam raise video, according to event organizer Regina Chichizola.
The speakers will explain that Northwestern California water from the Trinity River and Shasta reservoirs are shipped hundreds of miles to benefit California’s agriculture industry, which continues to use 80 percent of California’s water on water intensive crops during the record drought.
“Even though average Californians are being asked to cut their water use, corporate agriculture interests are expanding their acreage in the driest areas of California,” said Chichizola, "and they are planning to destroy Northern California’s rivers and flood sacred sites to keep up their unsustainable water.”
Chichizola noted that almond acreage alone has gone up over 150,000 acres since the drought began, yet Governor Jerry Brown this Wednesday told environmentalists to "Shut Up" in response to criticism over his twin tunnel plans.
The film night will focus on impacts to Northern California’s rivers from water diversions and how politicians and corporate agriculture interests are using the drought to push through new harmful water policy and projects, such as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the Shasta dam raise, and drought legislation, while allowing the state’s aquifers to be drained/
Native speakers will not only highlight how the proposed Shasta dam raise, which threatens over 40 actively used sacred sites of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and how the continued water exports to the Central Valley threaten the Trinity and Klamath River salmon and Tribes, but will also share efforts by Tribal activists and other river and salmon activists to stop what they called the "biggest planned water heist in decades."
The speakers include Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe; Jene McCovey, Yurok Tribe Member; Allie Hostler, Hoopa Valley Tribe Member; Dania Rose Colegrove, Hoopa Valley Tribe Member; Annalia Hillman, Yurok Tribe Member and Will Doolittle, Filmmaker.
Chief Caleen Sisk said the water bond, peripheral tunnels, Shasta Dam raise and other water projects now being planned by the state and federal governments are in in reality "one Big Project" that will destroy salmon, rivers and groundwater supplies.
“It does not make sense that people are separating the water puzzle into individual pieces, such as: the raising of Shasta Dam, Proposition 1, the Delta tunnels, BDCP, Sites Reservoir, Temperance Flat, CALFED, Delta Vision, BDCP, OCAP, the Bay Delta, Trinity/Klamath Rivers, the Sacramento River, the San Joaquin River, and water rights," said Chief Sisk. "It is all one BIG Project."
She emphasized, "These are not separate projects; they are all the same thing that the State is asking us to fund - California water being manipulated for the enrichment of some and the devastation of cultures, environments, and species all in the name of higher profits.”
For more information, call Regina Chichizola: (541) 951-0126