The Governor’s Office on May 2 announced the appointment of Nancy Vogel, 51, of Sacramento, to director of the Governor’s Water Portfolio Program at the California Natural Resources Agency.
The appointment took two days after Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to “prepare a water resilience portfolio” for California.
The order seeks to “broaden California’s approach on water as the state faces a range of existing challenges, including unsafe drinking water, major flood risks that threaten public safety, severely depleted groundwater aquifers, agricultural communities coping with uncertain water supplies and native fish populations threatened with extinction.”
Promoting the Water Portfolio program is nothing new for Vogel, since she has been promoting the Delta Tunnel or Tunnels as part of the Water Portfolio program at least since 2014.
In a letter to the Chico Enterprise Record responding to an editorial regarding Sites Reservoir, Vogel stated, “As the assistant director of public affairs at the Department of Water Resources, I think it’s important to reiterate that a Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is just one part of California’s overall water portfolio, aimed at complementing existing and planned efforts to manage the state’s water needs in the face of climate change and growth.” (https://www.chicoer.com/2014/04/05/letter-delta-tunnels-are-just-one-part-of-water-solution/)
Prior to her appointment, served as director of communications at the controversial Resources Legacy Fund since 2017.
The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation was the funder of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create “marine protected areas” in California. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to “marine protected areas” in Southern California.
The fund’s website proclaims, “The Resources Legacy Fund Partnered with California to protect nearly 17 percent of the state’s offshore waters.”
However, the website fails to mention that the so-called “marine protected areas” fail to protect the ocean from offshore oil and gas drilling, environmentally destructive energy projects, military testing, pollution by corporations and cities and all human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering.
In 2014, I called Zeke Grader, the long time executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations who passed away in September 2015, about a bill sponsored by Senator Hannah Beth Jackson to protect a “marine protected area”, the Vandenberg State Marine Reserve, from oil drilling, due to loopholes in both the California Coastal Sanctuary Act and the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative.
Grader, who supported the bill, pointed out how the very need for the bill “highlights what a failure the MLPA Initiative was.”
“If these are true marine protected areas, they why are we allowing drilling and other insults to the ocean in them?” asked Grader. “The whole MLPA Initiative was a phony process that provided an opportunity for Big Green and government bureaucrats to write press releases claiming these were ‘protected areas’ when in reality the fishermen and Tribes got screwed. We should have bans on oil drilling in all of the marine protected areas.”
The Resources Legacy Fund that Vogel served as communications director for continues to be a sponsor of the controversial “marine protected area” program: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...
In addition, Vogel was deputy secretary for communications at the California Natural Resources Agency from 2015 to 2017 and assistant director for communications at the Department of Water Resources from 2012 to 2015.
She frequently served as a spokesperson to promote Governor Jerry Brown’s Delta Tunnels project to export Northern California water to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies. Fishermen, tribal leaders, conservationists and environmental justice advocates considered the twin tunnels to be potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in the state’s history.
Vogel was a principal consultant for the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes from 2008 to 2012. She was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times from 2000 to 2008 and for the Sacramento Bee from 1991 to 2000.
Vogel has been a member of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation Board of Directors since 2018. She earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. This position does not require Senate confirmation and the compensation is $150,000. Vogel is a Democrat.
For more information on the Newsom’s Water Portfolio program and Newsom’s announcement to withdraw the permits for the Delta Tunnels and to begin the steps for the planning and permitting of a one Delta Tunnel project, go here: www.dailykos.com/...