[env-trinity] Two Rivers Tribune- Siskiyou Sheriff Plays Politics

[Tom Stokely]

I have also attached Sheriff Lopey's letter to the Director of the California Department of Fish and Game that is referenced below in the article.
Tom Stokely, env-trinity list manager
http://www.tworiverstribune.com/2011/09/siskiyou-sheriff-plays-politics/comment-page-1/#comment-61945 
Siskiyou Sheriff Plays Politics


Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey confers with visitors just before a well attended meeting of irrigators in Yreka last week. Lopey warned the crowd not to give up their rights to agencies and pledged that their local elected officials would stand with them. / Photo by Malcolm Terence.
Labor Day Meeting Riles Up Scott Valley Irrigators


By Malcolm Terence, Two Rivers Tribune Contributing Writer


YREKA—Siskiyou County irrigators circled the wagons last week as Sheriff Jon Lopey and other local officials told them not to surrender their constitutional rights or their water rights.

The meeting, which drew nearly 250 people, followed on the heels of lawsuits and increased scrutiny by conservation groups and increased pressure from state and federal agencies.

The controversy has brewed for years because stretches of the Scott and Shasta River systems are dewatered at the expense of fish.

Lopey, who was just elected last November told the crowd gathered outdoors at the fairgrounds that there were a lot of new developments. “We don’t want to wait around,” he warned and laid out a strategy for county government to protect the ranchers from what he characterized as the coercive intrusions of outside agencies.

For a law officer who stated repeatedly that he was not a politician, Lopey did well at holding the crowd but the speaker who got the most attention was Doug Jenner, a Scott Valley rancher, who said he was threatened with possible civil or criminal charges recently by state and federal officials.

Jenner said he first got a phone call from an agent from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) who asked for a meeting but wouldn’t disclose why. The next day Jenner got a call saying there were problems with his irrigation diversion.

Next, the agent came to his door in the company of a state Fish and Game warden and Jenner said the agent “read me my rights” before he would begin any discussion. The reference is to the so-called “Miranda Rights” that a peace officer reads a suspect before gathering evidence.

Jenner also quoted the agent as saying that fish were dying and told Jenner that he would investigate. Then an agency lawyer would decide whether to prosecute.

The rancher said he told the agents that he was keeping all the pools below his diversion hydrated to protect juvenile fish and that he operated under an agreement with state Fish and Game. Jenner also asked them if they had the right to be on his land and the agent responded that he even had the right to cut locks to gain access.

Earlier in the meeting Lopey said the county was demanding more role in the policies and procedures of state and federal agencies in Siskiyou County and cited a legal approach he called “Coordination.”

He even read most of a lengthy letter he’d written to the director of state Fish and Game demanding this right to coordination “for all programs, activities or projects …which impact law enforcement, the economy or social programs.”

One of his specific demands was that his office and local landowners be better advised in advance of entry on to private property or in alterations of water flows. He said this was important because county residents had alleged discourtesy and coercion.

Lopey drew loud applause when he said, “The agencies care more about fish, frogs and birds than they do about the people of Siskiyou County.” He mourned the roll back of what was once a large local timber industry and said that present actions threatened the survival of agriculture.

He linked the economic setbacks to reduced tax revenues which meant less law enforcement and other public services and cited an increase in substance abuse and child and elder abuse in the county.

Another speaker was a local rancher named Scott Murphy who said he’d attended a recent legislative hearing in Sacramento and felt the list of speakers was intentionally stacked against agricultural interests.

He singled out Erica Terence, head of the conservation group Klamath River Keeper, who showed enlarged photos of dead fish at the hearing. He said he warned Ms. Terence that she’d be arrested if she trespassed on his land and she told him she was on a navigable river, which meant access was permissible.

Murphy said he’d tried to research navigability but the results were inconclusive and asked Lopey for his opinion. Lopey answered, “It’s not navigable if you can’t put a boat on it,” and coached landowners that they have a right to file a complaint if people trespass. In answer to one questioner, Sheriff Lopey warned landowners against physically restraining any accused trespasser and suggested instead that they send descriptions, photos or video to his office.

Jim Cook, chair of the County Board of Supervisors, said the county government could declare whether a water course was navigable or not and suggested the county would take action.

Marcia Armstrong, the county supervisor who represents Scott Valley on the board, warned the crowd about a lawsuit that has been filed by the the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) teamed up with the California conservation organization Environmental Law Foundation.

The law suit says that California is one of only two states that does not regulate ground water but leaves regulation of wells, instead, to counties. Siskiyou County has held that its local courts have authority in the case, not Sacramento where it was filed, but the court has turned down a change of venue.

Other speakers warned of other attacks on local agriculture and State Senator Doug LaMalfa said, “I don’t believe the end game is about saving fish. I believe it’s about control of our water.” LaMalfa, before politics, was a rice farmer in Butte County.

Dave Bitts, president of PCFFA, said he missed the Yreka meeting because he is a working fisherman but wrote, “I can understand landowners’ reluctance to have state and federal people on their property. I don’t particularly enjoy being boarded by Fish & Game or the Coast Guard – but it happens, and putting up with it, hopefully amicably, is a condition of doing business for fishermen. I have had the impression that Fish & Game has bent over backwards to work cooperatively with landowners in the Scott and Shasta basins, maybe sometimes too far over from a fishhead’s perspective.”

His livelihood, Bitts said, and that of all commercial fishermen, depends on robust runs of fall Chinook salmon in the ocean. Those runs, in turn, depend on adequate flows of cool water in tributaries of the Klamath, including the Scott and Shasta Rivers.

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