On Sunday April, 7, 2024, friends of Bill Jennings gathered by the Mokelumne River to remember and celebrate his life and achievements.  The following eulogy was delivered by Chris Shutes, Executive Director of California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

Eulogy for Bill Jennings, by Chris Shutes

Good morning, everyone.  Thank you very much for coming. 

We’re gathered here on this cold but sunny Delta morning to remember our friend and colleague Bill Jennings.  

We remember Bill here on the banks of the lower Mokelumne River, a river that Bill and his friends brought from the brink of ruin to become the home of one of the most abundant salmon runs in California.

Bill did not have family, at least that he talked about or kept up with.  He was an only child.  For the last years of her life, Bill’s mother lived close to Bill in Stockton until her death in 2000.  

So in many regards, Bill’s family, such as it was, was drawn from the ranks of players and actors in the world of California fisheries, water policy, and pollution enforcement.  Most all of us here today are part of that world.  Many others who are part of that world sent regrets, remembrances, and best wishes.

Bill was a profoundly moral man, motivated by an overriding sense of justice and acting for the common good.  It is fair to say he was a moral inspiration to many.  He recognized the power of putting people face to face with their own moral poverty.  His experience as a young man in the civil rights movement and draft resistance in Tennessee surely shaped that recognition.

But for all his time and leadership in the realm of moral persuasion, Bill didn’t have much truck with organized religion.  So it’s left to some of his friends and colleagues to remember him today.  

For the few of you who don’t know me, I’m Chris Shutes.  For seventeen years, I worked for Bill and Bill’s organization, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, otherwise known as C-S-P-A, C-Spa, CalSpa, Sispa, or other, depending on the venue and the epoch of initial acquaintance.  At Bill’s direction, I’ve taken over the leadership of CSPA and a majority of its program work.  And thus it’s also fallen to me to preside today, because it is unimaginable that an event to remember Bill would be organized by any entity other than CSPA.

After he became Executive Director of CSPA in 2005, Bill built CSPA into a powerful statewide advocate for fisheries, abundant water in rivers and estuaries, and clean water.  He was tireless.  I think he had a degree from the University of Tennessee in something, but I have no idea what.  It didn’t matter.  Bill was widely read and, for what he spent the last half of his life doing, almost completely self-taught.  Learning by doing, he figured out how different parts of the regulatory world of water work.  He saw how to adapt lessons on one issue and deploy them on another issue.  And another.  And another.  He was relentless.  

Bill’s career as a water advocate really started with the Committee to Save the Mokelumne in the mid-eighties.  Bill and friends formed the Committee in 1987 following the death of almost all the salmon in the Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery, located right downstream of Camanche Dam about thirty miles east of where we are today.  

There were so many problems.  Mine runoff from the old Penn copper mine was leaching into Camanche Reservoir, killing life in the reservoir and downstream.  The hatchery was also seeing die-offs from high water temperatures, lack of oxygen, and simply lack of flow.

So Bill put his own stamp on the term “all-of-the-above” strategy.  He went after East Bay MUD, the owners of Camanche and the land around it, including Penn Mine, at every regulator he could think of.  He brought in a new organization called CSPA to help.

Among his papers, I found a poster that’s 3 by 3½ feet in size. It’s got about two hundred boxes on it, each of which shows a step in the regulatory pathway Bill blazed and followed to save the Mokelumne.  

So here’s a few of the major trailheads: 

• Bill filed a complaint against EBMUD at the State Water Board.
• He filed a public trust lawsuit against EBMUD.
• He filed a complaint at the regional water quality control board over pollution from Penn Mine.
• He filed a complaint with, and thus solicited the support of, the San Joaquin County District Attorney, who went after EBMUD in court.
• He filed a complaint with the US Environmental Protection Agency seeking declaration of Penn Mine as a “point source” of pollution
• He filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and actually got FERC to re-open EBMUD’s hydropower license.

All of these actions led to further regulatory process, and many ended up in court.  A few of you who are here today were there with Bill on one or more of these pathways. 

And there was another series of what one might call softer-path actions, building support, getting the word out, and addressing a bunch of other problems on the Mokelumne River. It was a full-out campaign.  

In the end, Penn Mine was cleaned up.  That really worked.  There was a settlement agreement among EBMUD and two fish agencies that resolved the FERC and water rights processes.  Bill of course didn’t sign that settlement; he wanted more water.  

As I have come to learn, 10-13 years start to finish is about the time horizon for an awful lot of regulatory processes relating to fish and water.  Sometimes, it’s a lot longer.

The outcomes on Mokelumne, I think, shaped much of what became Bill’s preferences in his advocacy.  He liked water quality enforcement because it has clear standards.  Compliance is not ambiguous.  A judge generally decides if a regulator is unwilling.  

From the Mokelumne experience, Bill learned the power of the Clean Water Act.  And he leveraged it to new levels.  At one point he told me that CSPA had prosecuted more citizen enforcement actions under the Clean Water Act than any other non-profit in the country.  Bill initiated that whole line of advocacy at CSPA. 

Bill thought less of stakeholder processes, like hydropower relicensings.  He sat through a lot them in the nineties.  He lost patience and for the most part eventually lost interest.  He happily left those to Chris.

When Bill died, he left a room full of binders and an attic full of boxes with the paper records of his work, mostly before about 2007 when he started keeping most of his work and records on a computer.  Dave Fries and I spent about eight sessions going through Bill’s paper documents, deciding what was appropriate to send to a new Bill Jennings archive at the University of the Pacific.  There were just under 30 boxes of documents from the Mokelumne campaign of the 80’s and 90’s. There were another 40 boxes of other materials.

It was quite an experience going through those papers, most of which had not been reviewed for a long, long time.  There were records of proceedings relating to the permits for wastewater treatment plants of most of the bigger cities that ring the Delta: Sacramento Regional, Stockton, Manteca, Lodi, Modesto, Lathrop, Davis.  For Sac Regional, there were binders for four separate rounds of permitting.

There were also many files from the days before 2005 when Bill was the Deltakeeper, part of San Francisco Baykeeper.  In those files were folders on a series of local industrial facilities, where someone working for Bill had gone to sites, mostly around Stockton, checking stormwater runoffs.  Included there were photos of the facilities and observations about them.  From that era were a lot of write-ups of water quality samples that people working for Bill had collected in the Delta.

Dave and I heard the story from Ernie Mitchell, who lives on the property Bill rented in Stockton, about how Bill had taken the stove out of the kitchen because he wanted the space for water quality testing equipment.  

In various parts of Bill’s files, I found copies of reports by Felix Smith, the US Fish and Wildlife Biologist who blew the whistle on deformed waterfowl at the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge.  Felix did some of the reports for Bill; others, Felix just sent to Bill so Bill would have them.  I pulled all of those reports; eventually, they’ll end up electronically on CSPA’s website. 

The sheer amount of work those binders and files represent is staggering.  Bill was tireless as well as relentless.

I first met Bill in 2006.  John Beuttler, CSPA’s Conservation Director, had recruited me to represent CSPA in a hydropower licensing proceeding on Butte Creek.  Going to meet Bill at a Denny’s in Sacramento, John told me to not say very much, which of course is a hard thing for me to do.  So I talked a bit about my years of volunteer experience with hydropower.  Bill asked me only one question, which I’ll have to paraphrase at bit.  He asked, “Can you kick an adversary where it hurts and still maintain decorum?”  In this case, I complied with Beuttler’s recommendation and answered with one word: “Absolutely.”  Jennings said “Okay” and got up and left.  The whole interview took less than half an hour. 

As well as being colorful, this story illustrates something about Bill’s approach to advocacy.  You fight to win, but you don’t get to be a jerk.  A key point for CSPA came about 6 months later, when CSPA faced a crisis about how to work with whitewater boaters on the Feather River.  Bill listened to the various opinions and then wrote a memo to the CSPA Board and staff, framing the issue as: “I guess the question before us is whether CSPA can play well with others.”  Some folks saw it differently, and left the Board.  One staff member resigned.  All of a sudden, I became a very busy guy.  I guess that’s part of what happens when you do play well with others.   

As I later learned, Bill had another key principle: you do your homework, and you back up what you say.  It’s all right to have a general way of looking at things.  But being more or less right in general does not mean you can skate on particular issues because you’re a good guy.  Bill’s general view was that the answer to any issue should come down to the evidence. 

I never met anyone who believed more in the law than Bill.  It is no surprise that many of you here today are attorneys, and Bill was profoundly grateful for the work each of you did on his behalf.  One of the things that particularly scared Bill was the Trump administration’s concerted effort to change bedrock environmental laws.  Sometimes bedrock isn’t as solid as you thought it was. 

For the first eight years or so that I worked for Bill, I didn’t really talk with him very much.  He made me show up at the Delta flow criteria workshops in 2010, after I had convinced him they were worth the effort despite the fact that they weren’t going to lead to a final decision.  But mostly, I went my way and he went his.  

Bill and I started talking a lot more in 2014 when the big drought hit.  We had to show up at the Water Board four or five times in a few months to defend weak Delta water quality standards from being made weaker still.  Bill recruited me to draft comments and pull multiple materials and documents together, and he decided I was good enough to do that.  Bill was a very good writer, but he was happy to have someone else do the editorial and administrative grunt work.  One of Bill’s first pieces of advice to me about writing was the phrase “simple declarative sentences.”  In the last few years of Bill’s advocacy, it was I who was shortening his sentences and paragraphs.  He, and others, taught me well. 

By the end of 2015, Bill was having problems getting around such that he really didn’t want to come to Sacramento.  So he’d write a speech the night before a Board meeting, send it to me late at night, and ask me to go before the Board and read it.  Now Bill was a wonderful speaker, but a lot of that had to do with his delivery and his persona, and asking me to read his speeches just wasn’t me or him.  So I’d sometimes change things around a little.  And sure enough, as soon as I’d get done, my cell phone would ring and he’d tell me what I didn’t say.  One day I finally told him that if he had to have it as written, he was going to have to come to Sacramento and say it himself.  After that, we reached détente. 

This of course was all before the days of Zoom and Covid.  Bill was glued to the live video of many Water Board meetings, and I showed up to speak at quite a few.  I learned that about the highest praise I could get from Bill was that I did okay.  Then Bill would spend ten minutes talking about the wonderful speeches of Gary Bobker or Doug Obegi. 

After about 2014, Bill and I also started chatting more on the phone.  In part, it was during weekly calls with Bill, our treasurer Cindy, and our webmaster Denise about the CSPA website and such.  Those calls often digressed.  But I also had more calls about current events or basketball or jazz.  After CSPA President Jim Crenshaw died very unexpectedly in late 2019, my calls with Bill became more frequent. 

Bill was going strong on the work front right up to the day of his auto accident in late June, 2021.  He was staying up till 1 or 2 in the morning writing and researching, and sending out emails, to be sure we got everything in our submittals just right. 

With the accident, it all changed.  Overnight, emails went to near zero.  The fight had pretty well gone out of him.  It was shocking.  And it was immensely sad.  Though the immediate injuries did not seem particularly bad, Bill just never got better.  And after a while, he seemed to stop trying to get better.  The isolation from the age of Covid made the situation way, way worse. 

Kathy Keeling and Dave Fries stepped in so much and kept Bill going for so long.  Eventually they just passed the limits of their ability to help.  When Bill went to an assisted living facility in September 2022, he didn’t even take a computer.  He was past the point of wanting to learn more about using his cell phone.  Covid, on top of all his underlying health problems, caught up with Bill that December.  He never made it home from his “temporary” stay in assisted living.  

Bill was a real aficionado of jazz, and had an impressive collection of jazz CDs.  Near the end of his life, he had several jazz stations dialed up on his computer, and he mostly relied on those.  Austin and outlaw country music sometimes speaks to me in the way jazz spoke to Bill, and I have found myself remembering, before and after Bill’s death, the words of a tune from Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard that says, “we’d’ve taken better care of ourselves if we’d know we were going to live this long.”  I wish Bill had taken better care of himself.  I wish he hadn’t lived the last years of his life so often alone. 

So remember Bill Jennings and the amazing work he did.  Remember his kindness and the profoundness of his concern and his love for humanity, for this earth, for the natural world, and for this Delta.  Remember his dedication and his dauntless work ethic.  And take care of yourselves and each other.  

The most important thing to Bill was that his life’s work in CSPA would continue.  It will continue, and it will continue to cover the breadth of work Bill directed.  It is also making sure there are people to follow who have the knowledge and skills to make it even more effective than it has been to date.

Thank you everyone.  Please stay and talk.  It’s a smallish but very interesting group of people gathered here today.  Those include CSPA staff Sarah Vardaro and Angelina Cook.  They also include CSPA Treasurer Cindy Charles and CSPA webmaster Denise Zitnik.  And they include CSPA Board members Richard Izmirian, Dave Fries, Deirdre des Jardins, and Richard McHenry, as well as Mike Jackson.  Please introduce yourselves to these people as you find them.  

I hope today brings you strong and warm memories of Bill.  Bill would probably say that it was okay, but that my description of some of Bill’s actions and adventures would have been better if Gary Bobker had done it. 

Merced River, Yosemite Valley, Oct. 2022 / Dead Lower Merced River  Aug. 2022

The Merced River, the iconic wild and scenic river flowing out of Yosemite National Park, died in the summer of 2022 upstream of its confluence with the San Joaquin River.  The river was completely dewatered from July 7 to October 7.

It was dead for 3 months over a nearly 5-mile stretch.  It could not offer fishing, swimming or any other water-based recreation in the hot summer months.  In the early fall, the Chinook salmon were unable to migrate on schedule to the Merced to spawn, and total fish return numbers for the year were dismal.  Their migratory route, the river, had been transformed into a dry wash used as a raceway for off-highway vehicles.

This wasn’t the first time the Merced River died, but hopefully it will be the last time.  The California State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board or Board) must do its job and take action now to ensure year-round minimum flows for the river.

On January 8, 2024, CSPA joined Friends of the River in sending a joint letter to the State Water Board urging it to adopt permanent minimum flow regulations on the Merced River to prevent this disaster from ever happening again.  Our letter was in support of letters that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) sent to the Board in the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023.

These letters alerted the Water Board of the severity of the dewatering and included the following key points:

• Requiring flows for only a portion of the year is not adequate. (Note: The approved 2018 Bay-Delta Plan Amendment only has required minimum flows from Feb. – June, none for the hot, dry months of summary/fall. In addition, the Plan has yet to be implemented).  Year-round flows are needed to assure base flows over the dry season.  NMFS recommended interim base flows in the lower river derived from the California Environmental Flows Framework (CEFF) until future studies can refine necessary flows.
• Permanent minimum flows in the Merced River are needed to provide a migration corridor for federally-listed Central Valley steelhead and for spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon.  The Merced River needs to be connected to the San Joaquin River with enough water depth for fish to pass upstream to the spawning grounds.
• The Board should immediately expand necessary monitoring, evaluation,
  and reporting of water diversions to ensure compliance with existing water rights in the Merced River watershed.
• The Basin Plan for Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins identifies the beneficial uses of the Merced River from McSwain Reservoir to the San Joaquin River as: recreation, including fishing, canoeing and rafting; warm and cold freshwater habitat; migration; spawning; and wildlife habitat.  All these beneficial uses require flowing water in the stream.
• Flows at the confluence of the Merced River are essential for an overall functioning ecosystem and riparian habitat in this major watershed.

In response to these letters, Board staff met with NMFS and CDFW staff for a discussion in early 2023.  So far, the Board has yet to propose any solutions.

On December 5, 2022, Merced Irrigation District (Merced ID) submitted a letter to the Board in response to NMFS’s October 27, 2022 letter.  Merced ID outlined its compliance with its regulatory flow requirements at compliance points on the river.   It found “flow losses in the lower river downstream” from Shaffer Bridge.  Merced ID also wrote it is aware that a number of unauthorized and unpermitted diversions have contributed to reduced flows and drier river conditions downstream of Merced ID’s diversions and in the areas described in NMFS’s letter.  Merced ID wrote that it has repeatedly requested that the State Board take action to regulate and limit those unauthorized diversions, including appointing Merced ID as watermaster for the lower river.  Merced ID requested that the Board take charge of investigating possible illegal diversions.

Another example of the Board’s failure to take action is illustrated in a 2016 water rights complaint made by the Stevinson Water District  (SWD), which is located at and around the confluence of the Merced and San Joaquin Rivers.  SWD wrote that the Merced was “a practically dead river,” and that flows were zero at Stevinson according to the CDEC water gauge.  The letter requested immediate investigation of unlawful diversions. The Board’s much-delayed response, after a five year wait, was a letter dated July 23, 2021.  The Board stated, “During the previous drought the Division’s resources were overwhelmed, and we were unable to process your complaint.  It is impractical for staff now to investigate alleged violations from the previous drought… For this reason, the Division [of Water Rights] is exercising discretion and will take no further action on this complaint.”

CSPA agrees that there is a need for more robust monitoring of any and all diversions on the lower Merced River.  The issue does not stop at unauthorized diversions.  The State Water Board must also prevent authorized diversions from cumulatively drying up the river.  It is well-settled law that “no party can acquire a vested right to appropriate water in a manner harmful to public trust interests and the state has ‘an affirmative duty’ to take the public trust into account in regulating water use by protecting public trust uses whenever feasible.” (Light vs. State Water Board).  It is also well-settled law that “no one can have a protectible interest in the unreasonable use of water.” Id.

Several mechanisms come to mind.  A responsible entity is one: to shut down unauthorized diversions, to curtail diversions in order of priority, and to limit riparian diversions to natural flow and the flows released by Merced ID to meet the adjudicated Cowell Agreement.  Another potential mechanism is the water quality certification for the Merced River Project relicensing: requiring enough flow at Shaffer Bridge to keep the river watered to the confluence with the San Joaquin.  The flows required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission aren’t doing the job now, and as proposed, likely won’t do the job under a new FERC license either.

CSPA urges the State Water Board take action now to prevent future dewatering.  It remains an unaddressed, unregulated, and unenforced problem.  With no consequences or enforcement during past dewatering events, it was no surprise the dewatering occurred again during California’s latest extended drought.  The lower Merced River needs permanent protections requiring year-round base flows as well as enforcement of water rights.

 Further Background:

The New York Times published an article on January 18, 2023 about the Merced River dewatering which called into question the State Water Board’s ability to manage water supplies.

For additional photos, maps, flow data, and salmon return information about the Merced River dewatering in 2022, go to the California Department of Fish & Game’s Case Study: Lower Merced River Disconnect:

The California Data Exchange  water gage at Stevinson on the Merced River near the confluence with the San Joaquin River provides current and historical flow information.

In 2021, the Central Coast Regional Water Board (Regional Board) adopted Agricultural Order 4.0. This order contained measures to reduce nitrate pollution in groundwater caused by the agricultural sector. Specifically, Order 4.0 set numeric limits to regulate the amount of chemical nitrate fertilizers growers could use in their fields.

In September 2023, the State Water Resources Control Board (State Board) issued Order WQ 2023-0081, which repealed Order 4.0’s numeric limits. At the same time, the State Board upheld Order 4.0’s omission of protections for rivers, streams, and riparian habitats. This decision will have statewide impacts because the State Board asserted that all its decisions on groundwater pollution are “precedential.”

In response, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) joined a lawsuit filed by a diverse coalition of environmental justice and environmental advocacy groups to challenge the State Board’s decision.

The coalition consists of rural Latino community and farmworker groups, recreational and commercial fishing groups, and environmental advocacy groups. In addition to CSPA, the coalition includes the San Jerardo Cooperative, Comité De Salinas, Monterey Coastkeeper, Pacific Coast Federation Of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute For Fisheries Resources, California Coastkeeper, The Otter Project, and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper. This coalition is diverse because the impacts of nitrate pollution on human communities and ecosystems are far-reaching.

Many Central Coast growers use more nitrate than their crops need.  When growers use fertilizers on their crops, nitrate not absorbed by crops can enter groundwater and surface water.

In response to the State Board’s decision, the coalition filed a petition for writ of mandate with the Superior Court. The petition states that “growers currently apply on average 340 more pounds of fertilizer nitrate than their crops take up and that is removed through harvest. In other words, the average grower discharges 340 pounds of nitrate into groundwater per acre, per year.”

High nitrate levels in drinking water cannot be removed by filtration. When people drink water with high nitrate levels, it exposes them to a higher risk of cancer, thyroid disease, vision problems, and skin rashes. When pregnant women and infants drink water with high nitrate levels, it can cause the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, which affects the body’s ability to produce oxygen. This condition can be fatal to fetuses and infants.

The San Jerardo Cooperative provides housing to low-income farmworkers. For almost 30 years, the community of San Jerardo has been “chasing clean water.”  Horacio Amezquita is the community’s general manager. In a 2019 CalMatters commentary, Amezquita wrote, “Since 1990, the people of San Jerardo have drilled one well after another, only to see each closed as a result of agricultural contamination including nitrates and pesticides.”

In 2012 the Regional Board adopted the first Agricultural Order that required growers and landowners to test wells for nitrate pollution. Angela Schroeter of the Regional Board reported that 26% of domestic wells tested were above the safe level for nitrate, and 10% of those were three times higher than the safe level.

The 2012 Order did not include any enforceable measures to reduce pollution. Communities affected were provided with funding for bottled water until new wells were dug. The expense for these new wells was reflected in water rate increases.

The coalition’s petition states that “San Jerardo residents now pay approximately four times as much for water as before the water contamination, even after factoring in assistance provided by state and federal government.”

Since 2012, nitrate pollution in Central Coast groundwater and surface water has become worse. Testing and voluntary measures were not enough to compel growers to reduce the amount of nitrate fertilizer they used on their crops.

In California, and particularly in the Central Coast Region, Latinos and other people of color are less likely than white people to have access to safe drinking water and healthy waterways for fishing and recreation.  In November 2021, the State Board passed a resolution to address policies that have led to this inequity.

In the resolution, the State Board said, “race is strongly correlated with more severe pollution burdens. However, until recently, few of the Water Boards’ policies, programs, or plans expressly considered or addressed racial inequities.”

The State Board’s decision to omit enforceable nitrate limits and protections for streams, rivers, fish, and wildlife is a continuation of this inequity.

The State Board’s failure to effectively regulate the agricultural sector’s pollution of groundwater, rivers, and streams also has far-reaching ecological impacts. A diverse cross-section of California’s population will feel these impacts.

Nitrate pollution in rivers and streams causes an overgrowth of harmful algae, making the water toxic to humans and animals. In a recent interview, Ted Morton of the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper said, “Although finding that surface waters were being contaminated by nitrates and pesticides, the Central Coast Regional Board’s Ag Order 4.0 did not include additional requirements for use of vegetated buffers between the edge of fields and nearby rivers, streams, and creeks that can reduce nitrate and pesticide pollution and provide habitat for wildlife.”

In a press release announcing their lawsuit, the coalition challenged the State Board’s decision to uphold Order 4.0’s lack of “buffers that would protect streams, rivers and wetlands from toxic pesticides while providing critical habitat to Central Coast fisheries, including threatened Steelhead.”

The petition filed by the coalition also contests the State Board’s assertion that no regional board in California has the power to adopt numeric limits to regulate the agricultural sector’s use of nitrate fertilizer. Despite “detailed factual findings in the Regional Board record,” the State Board delayed action pending review by an “expert panel.”  This will impede efforts to reduce nitrate pollution across the state.

Clean rivers, streams, and wetlands are necessary to support fish and wildlife. Clean waterways also help to deliver uncontaminated water essential for human survival. Despite their different perspectives and membership bases, every group in the coalition has reached the same conclusion — nitrate pollution must stop.