Article from Greenwire.
BY: JENNIFER YACHNIN
01/04/2023 01:30 PM EST
GREENWIRE | Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in December quietly reversed a Trump-era decision to minimize fees that California irrigators must pay for environmental restoration, more than 18 months after the Biden administration first indicated it would do so.
In a Dec. 15 memorandum obtained by California sportfishing advocates, Haaland declared that an eleventh-hour Trump administration policy ending payment requirements for the Central Valley Project Improvement Act “has no further force or effect.”
Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had issued that policy on the final day of the Trump administration in 2021, declaring that the federal water project’s restoration and mitigation requirements had been “completed” (Greenwire, July 1, 2021).
That decision slashed millions of dollars in payments that water contractors, including the Westlands Water District, had been required to pay in exchange for receiving flows from Central Valley Project, which moves water from California’s wetter north to farmland in its drier south.
The Interior Department declined to comment on the memorandum, which Haaland addressed to Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Shannon Estenoz and Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo.
Haaland pointed to a June 2021 memo written by Interior Deputy Solicitor for Water Resources Daniel Cordalis that rescinded the Trump administration policy, writing that the previous officials had failed to coordinate with the Fish and Wildlife Service for being an “impediment” to the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
“The CVPIA is an invaluable authority that puts fish and wildlife purposes on par with other CVP project purposes,” Haaland wrote, referring to both the 1992 law and the federal water project.
She added: “The CVPIA gives Reclamation the tools necessary to do the important work of restoring the fish and wildlife resources of the Trinity River and the Central Valley. I am therefore rescinding any advice or direction that may fall short of expressing the Department of the Interior’s commitment to the protection of the fish, wildlife, and habitat affected by CVP operations.”
The letter concluded by stating that the Bureau of Reclamation “shall continue to collect the full mitigation and restoration charges from water and power contracts.”
Both the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, which published the memorandum Tuesday, praised Interior’s decision as a win for waterfowl, salmon and other fish and wildlife.
“We applaud Secretary Haaland’s blunt rejection of Mr. Bernhardt’s deception and his sneak attack on California’s salmon and ducks,” said Chris Shutes, acting executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
Bernhardt has previously defended his decision on the CVPIA, stating that “the determination I made is firmly grounded in the text of the act and the factual record” (Greenwire, July 1, 2021).