[env-trinity] Fw: Calfed $, Grants $, Regional Plan, MWD Chief steps down, CPR/Water, Federal Updates, CALFED bil Signed by President, Sac Valley transfers & contracts, being 3rd party no party,

[Tom Stokely]

These articles are compiled (with emphasis added) by John Mills, from Jeff Cohen's California Water news. They all have some direct or indirect relation to the Trinity-Klamath system. 

Editorial: Watered-down hopes
For new reservoirs, don't expect subsidies
Sacramento Bee - 10/26/04
California's congressional delegation did something rare and important recently. It managed to agree on legislation to advance water and Delta/river habitat projects in California. As a political achievement, particularly for Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, this is one to relish.

But the political success had its price - or more accurately put, its scaled-down price. There's a lesson here - to be wary of relying so much on Washington - that California's water community is slow to learn.

To get this bill through Congress, Feinstein and Pombo had to shrink this funding bill from an estimated $2.4 billion down to $395 million to be stretched over four years. That is a reduction of more than 80 percent. California's wish list of water and habitat projects, however, has not decreased by 80 percent. If anything, it has grown.

Finance - the mismatch between the supply of subsidies and the demand - is the biggest challenge for Cal-Fed. This is the name given to the state/federal effort to better manage the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and simultaneously make progress on the water needs of humans and fish.

Cal-Fed has been remarkably successful at getting more than a dozen state and federal agencies to co-manage the Delta, and at providing better science. It derived its ambitious list of restoration, reservoir and conveyance projects - with a cost perhaps as much as $30 billion - during the late 1990s, when the federal and state governments were running big surpluses. That's no longer the case.

Cal-Fed is studying whether to build a new generation of reservoirs, but the new federal legislation contains no funds to actually construct any of them. The most ardent proponents of reservoirs seem to be banking on considerable federal help in building them.

That seems more than a little backward in terms of logic. If any given water supply project has merit, whether it is desalination or conservation or a reservoir, shouldn't the water districts that would benefit be lining up to make the investments directly?

Consider the State Water Project. This system of dams and aqueducts was built by the state borrowing the funds and the water districts paying off the debt. This is a reliable method of financing projects. But with future projects, the challenge is identifying who benefits from them (and thus who has to pay off the debt). That may sound simple. But it's not.

Politically, a tempting solution is to find somebody else to pay (as in state or federal subsidies). Neither, however, seems a likely source for all the desired funds, or anything close. The future Cal-Fed projects that will actually be built will be the ones that figure out the financing.





Press Release from the Commissioner's Office 
Contact: Trudy Harlow, (202) 513-0574 or Avra Morgan, (303) 445-2906 
For Release: October 26, 2004 
The Request for Proposals for the Water 2025 Challenge Grant Program for Fiscal Year 2005 is now available online at www.grants.gov (keyword search: Water 2025). Additional information about the Challenge Grant program, including frequently asked questions and answers, is available at www.doi.gov/water2025 <http://www.doi.gov/water2025>. 

The Challenge Grant Program is seeking proposals from irrigation and water districts that want to leverage their money and resources in partnership with Reclamation, to make more efficient use of existing water supplies through water conservation, efficiency and water marketing projects. 

The program is focused on achieving the outcomes identified in Interior Secretary Gale Norton's Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West, particularly through water conservation and efficiency, water markets and collaboration, with an emphasis on projects that can be completed within 24 months and that reduce future water conflicts. 

"The goal of Water 2025 -- and these challenge grants -- is to support realistic, cooperative approaches and tools that have the most likelihood of successfully addressing water challenges in basins where crisis and conflict are preventable," Secretary Norton said. "Water 2025 is focused on local solutions in partnership with local water users." 

The deadline for submitting proposals is January 21, 2005. Selection and award is anticipated by July 1, with implementation beginning in early August, 2005. However, depending on the number and type of proposals received, funding for some proposals selected in Fiscal Year 2005 may be awarded in the beginning of Fiscal Year 2006, to ensure efficient administration of all Challenge Grant projects. 

The Water 2025 Challenge Grants encourage voluntary water banks and other market-based measures, promote the use of new technology for water conservation and efficiency, and remove institutional barriers in order to increase cooperation and collaboration among federal, state, tribal, and private organizations. 

Eligible applicants include irrigation and water districts, tribal water authorities, and entities created under state law with water delivery authority, which may include water user associations, water conservancy districts, canal, ditch and reservoir companies, and municipal water authorities. Applicants must also be located in the western United States, as identified in the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902, as amended and supplemented -- specifically, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Those not eligible for funding under the Challenge Grant Program include other state governmental entities, Federal governmental entities, universities, individuals, and other entities without water delivery authority.




Supervisors join forces with Sonoma to develop regional water plan 
Eureka Times-Standard - 10/27/04
By James Tressler, staff writer
Humboldt County has and probably will continue to fight its neighbors across the state over the protection of its water resources, but the county could stand a better chance of getting millions of dollars for water-related projects using a team approach. 

That was the rationale Humboldt County supervisors applied Tuesday in voting unanimously to sign an agreement with the Sonoma County Water Agency to develop a regional water needs plan. Other counties, including Del Norte, Mendocino, Lake and Siskiyou, are also expected to come on board in the coming weeks. 

Starting next year the state will award hundreds of millions of dollars in Proposition 50 monies, which will go toward water projects ranging from coastal protection, sewer and water infrastructure to meet housing needs, safe drinking water and watershed restoration. Because there's a limited amount of money and the state will divide the money between Southern and Northern California -- with the line drawn at Santa Barbara -- the Sonoma agency earlier this year pitched the idea of the North Coast counties joining forces.

Humboldt County has about $27 million in unmet water needs, ranging from watershed restoration projects to sewer and water infrastructure developers say is critical to building new housing subdivisions. The county, working with cities, special districts and fisheries and watershed restoration groups, will immediately identify projects to pursue the first round of grants, some $160 million available in the spring. Meanwhile, they'll also work with the other counties over the next year on a regional list of projects for the next round in 2006. 

Not everyone is excited about the agreement. Dr. Denver Nelson, who serves on the county Fish and Game Commission, reminded the board Tuesday that the county has fought Sonoma County for decades over water diverted from the Eel River. Nelson also argued that the county could avoid spending millions of dollars on watershed restoration if rivers such as the Eel, Trinity and Klamath had adequate flow levels in the first place. 

Chairwoman Jill Geist and 1st District Supervisor Jimmy Smith, both of whom will serve on a subcommittee that will prioritize projects, said they don't think the agreement will hamper the county's ability to continue fighting to restore diverted waters to the Eel River. 

Both also said they see the agreement as a golden opportunity. 

"We need to move beyond the single issue of arguments over the Eel River with Sonoma County," Smith said. "I think this is an opportunity to look at the greater needs of the greater region and spend that time trying to prioritize." 

Lisa Renton, representing the Sonoma County Water Agency, echoed the supervisors' hopes that the regional plan will benefit all parties.

Second District Supervisor Roger Rodoni voiced concerns that the regional plan could translate into more laws that could hamper timber companies and other businesses. 

"I worry about what we're going to give up in this plan," Rodoni said. 

But Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard, who will help the county identify and prioritize local projects, said the county has identified water use as a key element in its general plan, which is being updated. Girard said the board can have some say on how the regional agreement will affect local businesses in which Proposition 50-related projects it chooses to pursue. 

The other counties besides Sonoma and Humboldt are considering the regional agreement, but haven't yet signed on. In Humboldt County, the McKinleyville Community Services District has agreed to be a partner in developing the plan. Other cities and districts are expected to consider the idea soon. #




LOCAL DISTRICTS
MWD Chief Gastelum to Step Down
Los Angeles Times - 10/27/04
By Tony Perry and Jason Felch, staff writers
Ronald Gastelum announced Tuesday that he plans to retire as president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California after five years of guiding the agency through controversy, cutbacks and an ambitious search for water to accommodate the region's growing needs.

Gastelum, 58, said he would leave his $297,000 a year post Dec. 31. He said he had no specific plans for the future.

"It's been a good run, and now it's time to move on," Gastelum said.

MWD board Chairman Phillip Pace praised Gastelum for helping the Los Angeles-based agency face "more factors of uncertainty" than during any time in its 76-year history.

Among those factors are a devastating drought in the Western states and a decision by the federal government to bow to demands from other states to reduce California's overreliance on the Colorado River.

Under Gastelum, the MWD was a party to a historic agreement divvying up Colorado River water. The agency also enhanced conservation and recycling efforts, launched desalination and storage programs, and tried to make peace with its largest and unhappiest member agency, the San Diego County Water Authority.

Water officials from Washington to El Centro said Gastelum brought a civility to the bitter arena of California water disputes. As water wholesaler to local agencies serving 17 million people in six counties, the MWD is central in nearly any discussion of water in California.

Bennett Raley, the top official in the Bush administration on Western water matters, said Gastelum would be remembered for helping prepare Southern California for a cutback in water from the Colorado River and helping Nevada and California end their decades of squabbling.

Steve Hall, executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies, said Gastelum's temperament was different in the high-stakes world of water where feuds are common and interagency grudges are slow to die.

"He didn't have any ideology," Hall said. "He just wanted to find practical solutions."

But Tom Graff, regional director of the California branch of Environmental Defense, said many environmentalists were alarmed that under Gastelum, the MWD had increased its water purchases from Northern California.

"As a person, he was a competent and cagey leader," Graff said. "He did tilt to the L.A. view of things instead of the Orange County-San Diego view of things." Graff defined the latter view as a preference for local water projects rather than seeking water from Northern California.#




Panel supports many parts of California government overhaul
Associated Press - 10/21/04
By Ben Fox, staff writer
IRVINE - A proposal to reform California's government by privatizing some functions and eliminating others won a qualified endorsement from the group charged with collecting public testimony on the massive overhaul.

The bipartisan California Performance Review Commission ended a series of public hearings Wednesday at the University of California, Irvine with a draft report agreeing with many of the changes proposed by a team organized by the governor to eliminate government waste.

But the 21-member commission also urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reject some proposals, including elimination of the Air Resources Board, a requirement that public university students do volunteer service or moving game wardens and park rangers into a new homeland security agency.

The commission's report is vague at points to reflect the consensus of a diverse commission on the 1,200 recommendations for streamlining California's bureaucracy - including many that have prompted sharp criticism and could result in the loss of thousands of state and local government jobs.

Schwarzenegger has not spelled out which of the recommendations, some of which require legislative approval, he will pursue. A spokeswoman, Ashley Snee, said he would most likely seek reforms separately rather than all at once.

Chon Gutierrez, the co-chairman of Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review study, which came up with the proposals, said about 30 of the recommendations will be altered because of factual errors uncovered during the public hearings. The rest will be sent to the governor's office for consideration, he said.

Commission member J.J. Jelincic, the president of the California State Employees Association, said his union, which represents more than 100,000 workers, will fight against mass privatization of government services and other elements that he said reflect the influence of business lobbyists.

"The draft report is vague enough that it's something I can at least live with even if I don't agree with all of it," Jelincic said. "The biggest problem continues to be that there is a real underlying assumption that public employees can't do the job and they need to contract it out."

In its report, the commission said it agrees with the governor and the California Performance Review team that the state's government needs to adopt improved technology and reorganize aspects of the bureaucracy.

It also agreed that the state should evaluate the state's more than 100 boards and commissions, though the public testimony convinced them to keep the Air Resources Board and the regional water quality control boards.

The commission disagreed with a suggestion from former Gov. George Deukmejian that the state create a Citizen Oversight Commission over the troubled prison system. Commissioners also rejected outright a proposal to require public university students to perform volunteer service.

Earlier, Jelincic sharply criticized the closed-door process used by the governor's team to draft the performance review proposals, and he called for the Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate allegations that business groups influenced the 2,700-page document.

"To be blunt, there is no excuse for allowing people or organizations with a blatant conflict-of-interest to play a dominant role in shaping public policy for their own advantage," he wrote in a letter to the commission.

Schwarzenegger launched the reorganization effort in January, calling the state bureaucracy a "mastodon frozen in time" that needed to be reviewed from top to bottom to eliminate waste and duplication. The administration said the recommendations would save $32 billion over five years, but the state's Legislative Analyst put the savings at $10 billion to $15 billion.#




STATE AGENCIES / WATER BOARDS
Spare some state boards, panel urges the governor
Sacramento Bee - 10/21/04
Staff report
A commission assembled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to gauge public reaction to a 2,500-page plan to overhaul state government is urging the governor to scrap some of the California Performance Review's recommendations and spare the California Air Resources Board and regional water quality control boards from elimination.

While the California Performance Review Commission has yet to formally forward its recommendations to Schwarzenegger, commissioners discussed their thoughts Wednesday in Irvine at the last of eight public hearings on the report.

In a telephone interview after the hearing, commission co-chairman Bill Hauck said the boards regulating the automobile industry and water quality are nationally respected and give the public access to environmental decision-making.

The CPR recommends eliminating 1,153 paid and unpaid posts on 117 boards and commissions, and transferring functions to a consolidated system of agencies under the executive branch. Hauck said some boards may be unnecessary, but that commissioners are concerned that eliminating all of them could limit the public's ability to know what's going on and to have input into government.

"We don't want to make it more difficult for people to access the decision-making process in state government," Hauck said.

Reducing boards and commissions would save an estimated $34 million a year in a state with a $105 billion budget.#



EPA Issues Updated Guidelines for Water Reuse 

EPA's Office of Water and Office of Research and Development, in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID), have approved and are now distributing a 2004 Guidelines for Water Reuse Manual (EPA625-R-04/018), which recommend water reuse guidelines, along with supporting information, to help water and wastewater utilities and regulatory agencies, particularly in the U.S.  "This updated toolkit will help water managers advance water conservation and sustainability efforts at home and abroad," said Benjamin Grumbles, Acting Assistant Administrator for Water.  The document updates the 1992 Guidelines document by incorporating information on water reuse that has been developed since the 1992 document was issued, including expanded coverage of water reuse issues and practices in other countries.  It was developed via an EPA Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Camp Dresser McKee and an Interagency Agreement with U.S. AID, along with extensive contributions by many volunteers.

The updated Guidelines document is being distributed (in both printed and CD formats) by EPA's Office of Research and Development/Technology Transfer Program as one of their Manuals of Practice.  Copies of the updated manual can be ordered via the website www.epa.gov/ttbnrmrl and has been posted in pdf form at http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/pubs/625r04108/625r04108.pdf . For further information contact Robert Bastian at 202 564 0653.



Stormwater Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination Manual Now Available 

The Center for Watershed Protection and the University of Alabama, under a grant from EPA, have produced a comprehensive manual for municipalities that must develop and implement programs to find and correct illicit discharges to their storm sewer systems.  The new manual includes detailed information on creating and managing a program, and a comprehensive guide to field and lab protocols.  The new manual and supporting materials can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.cwp.org/idde_verify.html





Secretary Norton Praises President's Signing of Landmark CALFED Legislation 
News release, U.S. Department of Interior - 10/26/04
WASHINGTON - Interior Secretary Gale Norton today praised President Bush's signing of landmark legislation that authorizes $389 million for a major environmental initiative to restore California's critical Bay-Delta estuary while also addressing the needs of urban and agricultural waters users. 

The president signed the Water Supply Reliability and Environmental Improvement Act, popularly known as CALFED, on Oct. 25, 2004. The legislation provides federal authorization for a long-term collaborative plan for environmental restoration and enhancement of the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary. The initiative also calls for making needed improvements in statewide water supplies, flood control and water quality. 

"This landmark legislation represents the culmination of a strong bipartisan effort by the California Congressional delegation to secure California's water future," Norton said. "As the largest and most comprehensive water-management plan in the nation, the CALFED program is a national model of collaborative resource management. The Department of the Interior affirms its commitment to working with the State of California and water and environmental interests to address California's water needs." 

"I want to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of Chairman Richard Pombo, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Chairman Pete Domenici, and Rep. Ken Calvert in working to craft this bill," Norton continued, "and for working so hard with the many stakeholder interests in California that support this program. With the President's signature, the CALFED family can now take on the most challenging phase in its decade long history -- implementation." 

CALFED is a partnership of 24 California and federal agencies and representatives of California's environmental, urban and agricultural communities that is built on the common recognition that their missions and interests can be accomplished best through collaboration and cooperation. 

CALFED agencies have spent $1 billion over the last decade to significantly improve the ecological health of the Bay-Delta watershed by restoring and protecting habitat and enhancing the environment for fisheries and wetlands. The CALFED Program includes actions to recover species listed under the state and federal endangered species acts. The newly signed legislation ensures that CALFED will continue species and ecosystem restoration using the best available science. 

The legislation also will drive forward state and federal efforts to modernize California's water-management infrastructure. CALFED is pursuing the construction of new water storage reservoirs, groundwater storage programs, water recycling and conservation programs.

The CALFED program contains many elements to assist Southern California in reducing its use of water from the Colorado River, which will cause water and environmental benefits to ripple up the Colorado River basin to the other six states that rely on the river.

"CALFED's great strength is its requirement of balanced progress toward the primary objectives of ecosystem restoration, water supply and reliability, water quality, and levee system integrity," Norton said. "This legislation reinforces this goal by mandating continuous progress across all program elements." #



TRANSFERS / SACRAMENTO VALLEY
Water transfers protested 
Marysville Appeal-Democrat - 10/26/04
By Harold Kruger, staff writer
Citing the threat of water exports from the Sacramento Valley, environmental and other groups are protesting the Bureau of Reclamation's plan to renew Sacramento River settlement contracts for 40 years.

"As proposed, these contracts will encourage water exports which in turn will lead to fewer working farms, lower reservoirs, less boating and fishing recreation, and dry wells," said Michael Jackson, co-chair of the Sacramento Valley Environmental Water Caucus.

A hearing is scheduled Wednesday in Willows.

There are up to 145 contracts for about 1.8 million acre-feet of base supply per year and approximately 380,000 acre-feet of Central Valley Project water per year. 

CVP water users in Shasta, Tehama, Butte, Glenn, Colusa, Sutter, Yolo and Sacramento counties are affected.

The Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District is the largest Sacramento Valley CVP contractor at 825,000 acre-feet.

"To ensure that we have the flexibility we'll need to contend with future land use decisions or droughts here in our valley, we should limit the life and amount of these contracts," Jackson said.

The contract renewals are governed by the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act, which allows individual farmers to sell the water that they don't use to grow crops.

The Natural Resources Defense Council contended that the Bureau of Reclamation's own files showed that all but two of the water districts would receive allocations for more water than they have historically used, totaling several hundred thousand acre-feet of water annually. 

"Southern California developers are eager for us to export more water to promote more sprawl," said John Merz, co-chair of the Sacramento Valley Environmental Water Caucus. "At the same time, San Joaquin Valley corporate farms want more Sacramento Valley water because recent court decisions in favor of the public trust now require that enough water be left in rivers such as the Trinity and San Joaquin to support their fishery."

Groundwater pumping is not covered in the contracts and there are no clauses prohibiting a farmer from selling their contract water and replacing it with well water.

In the last drought, farmers in the valley used groundwater to replace the surface water that they exported.

"It is not fair to other farmers or to anyone with a well to allow water exports without true groundwater protection laws," said Lynn Barris, a farmer and member of Valley Water Protection Association. "Water districts should only be allowed to use the public's water in the amounts that their farmers need after they have implemented water conservation practices. And they shouldn't be allowed to sell the water they take from our rivers and replace it with additional groundwater pumping."

Fishing clubs, river protection organizations, state and national conservation groups, local business owners and others will provide details of their concerns at the Willows hearing.#





Being a 3rd Party is No Party
CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT / WESTLANDS / ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUE
Comment: No place to call home on west side 
Fresno Bee - 10/26/04
By Bill McEwen, staff columnist
When growers, lawyers and federal officials negotiated a complicated $140 million deal that retired thousands of acres of poisoned farmland in Westlands Water District, everybody walked away with something. 

Except farmworkers.

Their reward for working land that has fed and clothed millions of people? 

Eviction.

"As land retirement takes place, you see the result," says west Fresno County grower Ed O'Neill, whose 5,700-acre ranch is leaving production. "People who have lived on farms their whole lives end up jobless and homeless the same day." O'Neill isn't talking about migrant pickers who follow the crops from region to region. The people he's talking about are foremen, tractor drivers, irrigators and other hands who've lived in rancher-supplied housing for decades.

Somehow, during all of the negotiations plotting the future of Westlands, no one remembered to figure out where farmworkers would live when land was retired.

That has Dora Reyes wondering where her family of nine will move. Her husband has worked 25 years for a ranch that has a row of 10 mustard-colored stucco houses at San Diego and Adams avenues.

"If I could find a place today, I'd move," Reyes says.

Westlands originally said it would retire 200,000 acres. Now it envisions 100,000 retired, leaving 470,000 in production. The district predicts that because of improved water reliability and supply, it will add 3,047 jobs by 2020. 

But housing is scarce in west-side communities such as Firebaugh and Mendota.

"If you walk down the main streets, you have one view of town," says Firebaugh City Manager Jose Antonio Ramirez. "But if you walk down the alleys, you see the other side. People are living wherever they can - in garages, in sheds - because there's not enough housing."

Westlands says some evicted families have received $3,000 in relocation money from ranch owners. The district started working with state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, and Fresno County officials this month to see that farmworkers on retired land don't become homeless. The California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation also is involved.

Florez says he hopes to have a relocation plan by the end of November, and Fresno County Supervisor Phil Larson says housing will be available.

"Right now, we know of 20 families on the Murietta Farm who will have to vacate by August of 2005," Larson says. "If they stay in the area, we are going to find housing for them, but they will have to pay for it."

With Florez as their watchdog, the displaced families likely will receive relocation money and find new places to live. Many of them will find work on nearby farms. 

But a bigger question remains: Why doesn't Fresno County allow farmworkers to live in subdivisions close to the land they work? Westlands has a bright economic future in the long term and will need workers for years to come.

Yet the county has turned down a proposal by the nonprofit Westside Housing and Economic Network for a subdivision near Westside Elementary School in Five Points. The Habitat for Humanity project, which included land and houses donated by O'Neill, had qualified for two federal grants and a private grant.

The county rejected the offer, saying its general plan required growth to be directed toward cities. In addition, Larson says the land where the subdivision would have gone has water problems.

The county needs to focus on the bigger picture.

Approving rural west-side subdivisions isn't the same as caving into corporate developers and allowing leapfrog sprawl outside Fresno or Clovis. A few rural subdivisions won't stretch public services too thin or spur a land rush in Mendota, Firebaugh and Huron.

Farmworkers should be able to live close to their work instead of driving 50 to 100 miles daily on dangerous, two-lane roads. They should have the opportunity to buy homes.

"The days of the farm labor camps are over because of the regulatory cost," O'Neill says. "There's less housing for farmworkers, and they must drive long distances from town to get to work. They work long, hard hours and are not in shape to be driving those long distances."

You'd think that Fresno County - which touts agriculture as its marquee industry - would want to set the standard for treating farmworkers.

You'd think the county would want to find innovative ways to help workers and agriculture succeed.

You'd think the county would listen to Albert Miller, a Westside Housing and Economic Network board member.

"The farmworker is a segment of society that no one wants to recognize," Miller says. "But without them in the fields, there are no fields."

Right now, the county has the opportunity to address the problem of the west side's rapidly dwindling housing stock for farmworkers.

First, it should team with Westlands to save the homes on retired land instead of seeing them demolished or destroyed by vandals. Many of these homes are clean and sturdy. They should remain occupied or be moved to where they can be lived in again.

Second, the county should reconsider its position on rural, self-help subdivisions, such as the one proposed in Five Points. 

Saying no is easy. It takes leadership and ingenuity to solve this complicated problem. #




Hydropower 

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PROPOSES RESTRICTING APPEALS ON DAMS 

The Bush administration has proposed giving dam owners the exclusive right to appeal Interior Department rulings about the way dams should be licensed and operated, which would prevent states, Indian tribes and environmental groups from making their own appeals.

The proposal is similar to language in stalled energy legislation. 

Most privately owned dams were constructed and granted their 30-to-50-year federal licenses before federal environmental laws required protection for fish and other river life. Licenses for more than half of the nation's privately owned dams are to come up for renewal in the next 15 years.

Lynn Scarlett, assistant interior secretary for policy, management and budget, who approved the proposed rule, said dam owners "would be facing an extremely high cost and very uncertain benefits. Giving them some ability to voice their concern and present alternatives seemed appropriate."

The proposal has drawn criticism from Democrats in Congress, the attorneys general of several states, Indian tribes, environmental groups and some high-level officials and scientists in the Interior Department.  Within the agency, some attorneys have said the appeals proposal is unconstitutional because it violates due process and equal protection guarantees. 












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