[env-trinity] New York Times Trinity Story March 3

[Byron Leydecker]

To the Editor:

Regarding your story today on Interior vigorously pursuing a Trinity River
litigation settlement, the following is a bit of relevant history.

Interior is intensely interested in serving its irrigator constituents at
whatever adverse impacts and costs to others, and to California's dwindling
fishery resources.  So, it pursues a "settlement" of litigation initiated by
the beneficiary of Trinity River water:  Westlands Water District.

Westlands, at 605,000 acres the country's largest irrigator district, will
become a superfund site by 2040 because of selenium and other contaminant
concentrations in the soil and waterlogged land, one could conclude from a
December 2000 United States Geological Survey Report (Open File Report
00-416).  At the same time, since Interior has absolutely no case for any
benefit to the Trinity, good luck.

With 35 percent of Westlands land planted to grossly uneconomic and heavily
taxpayer supported cotton production, one wonders how the public interest is
served by Interior fighting so fiercely for a "settlement."

A "resolution" to Trinity can be found in the
pre-legislative history, the Congressional Record before enactment of the
1955 Trinity Division legislation, that legislation itself, all subsequent
Trinity legislation, the reserved Tribal fishing rights and the Federal
Government's legal trust obligations to Native American Tribes.

Byron Leydecker
Chairman, Friends of Trinity River
Consultant, California Trout, Inc,
PO Box 2327
Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327
415 383 4810 ph
415 519 4810 cell
415 383 9562 fx
bwl3 at comcast.net
bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)
http://www.fotr.org
http://www.caltrout.org

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