CSPA Fall 2023 Newsletter: Save the Date Memorial for Bill Jennings, CSPA Sues the State Water Board over Agricultural Pollution & Lead-Lined Cable in Lake Tahoe Go on Trial

The Fall 2023 Edition of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance Newsletter is out now. Below is the introduction to the newsletter by Chris Shutes, CSPA’s  Executive Director.

From the Desk of Chris Shutes: 

It’s been a very busy year at CSPA. Our hydropower program remains a national leader.  We are in the midst of four water rights proceedings, with more on the way. Our water quality enforcement program is strong. We are increasing activities to protect groundwater quality and to protect rivers from excessive diversions for groundwater recharge.

From Mount Shasta to Fresno, and from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, CSPA is active and effective in regulatory processes to protect fisheries, aquatic habitat, and water quality.

CSPA turned 40 in 2023. Very sadly, we lost our longtime leader Bill Jennings just before reaching our milestone birthday. Many people have asked about a memorial for Bill. We are asking you to save the date of April 7, 2024 for a Bill Jennings memorial. As part of our transition, we have closed our Stockton office, but our hearts are still there. So are 60 boxes of Bill Jennings’s paper documents that we delivered in September to the University of the Pacific, which is creating a Bill Jennings archive that will be available to the public.

Thanks to generous support from a funder, CSPA is now recruiting an Administrative Assistant and Advocate Trainee to help organize and maintain CSPA and its many programs. Additionally, Angelina Cook has joined CSPA as our Restoration Associate. She is working on the removal of dams on Battle Creek and on flows and related issues on the Scott and Shasta rivers. She is also learning the ropes of water rights protests and processes.

During our transition, we have been unable to post to the website on some of our important efforts. It has been all we could manage to do all the work! This newsletter highlights some of our recent actions. We hope to have more capacity to blog on topics of the day, and to report on more of our work in the next year, with the following actions coming up:

• Hearings on the Bay-Delta Plan to determine flows into San Francisco Bay and in the Central Valley rivers that flow into it;
• Water rights hearings for the massive proposed Sites Reservoir;
• Water rights protests of the proposed tunnel to divert water under the Delta
  Comments on new Endangered Species Act protections for the Delta and much of the Central Valley;
• Our extensive work over the past three years on legislation to enact the largest reform of the Federal Power Act since 1920;
• Our efforts to accelerate dam removal on the Eel River and Battle Creek, and to end regulatory purgatory on Butte Creek and protect its salmon;
• Our water quality enforcement actions large and small, including major efforts to protect Lake Tahoe.