02 July 21
RSN’s Budget Is Suffering, and a Few Great Donors Are Helping
We do a lot with a little. It’s part of our DNA. But even for RSN, the current dearth of funding is creating big problems. Big problems meeting a small budget. RSN is back to losing money on a monthly basis. That won’t last long, you can be sure.
Great, dedicated donors are coming through though, and we certainly need and appreciate the effort. Hopefully in July a few more of the people who need and visit RSN regularly will join them. It would really help.
Sincere thanks to all.
Onward.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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02 July 21
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The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania made that point clear on Wednesday when it overturned the 2018 conviction of Bill Cosby for aggravated indecent assault. The court held that the prosecution violated Mr. Cosby’s right against self-incrimination by using statements at trial that he made during earlier depositions in civil litigation. The court then made another big statement: The county prosecutor’s office couldn’t try Mr. Cosby again because of its promise in 2005 not to charge him.
The court’s basis for its decision was a highly unusual 2005 news release by Bruce Castor, when he was district attorney for Montgomery County, Pa. Mr. Castor stated that he chose not to file criminal charges against Mr. Cosby because of “insufficient credible and admissible evidence.” The state Supreme Court held that Mr. Castor’s public statements were binding on his successor, who resuscitated the case in 2015. Using Mr. Cosby’s deposition statements against him, the court said, was a “coercive bait and switch.”
While the release of Mr. Cosby is an affront to Andrea Constand, the victim, as well as to the other women who testified against him and to the public, the court was reaffirming the longstanding notion that due process requires the enforcement of prosecutors’ promises. In Santobello v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court noted that prosecutors’ promises are not limited to the plea context. Any promise a prosecutor makes that induces reliance to the detriment of the defendant may be binding. Here, the court is merely enforcing the promise Mr. Castor made.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference on voting rights at the Department of Justice in Washington, June 25, 2021. (photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
ttorney General Merrick Garland has imposed a moratorium on scheduling federal executions, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday. The department will review its policies and procedures on capital punishment, following a wave of federal executions carried out under the Trump administration.
In a memo to the Justice Department, Garland justified his decision to halt the deeply controversial practice, citing factors including its capricious application and outsized impact on people of color.
"The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely. That obligation has special force in capital cases," Garland said in the memo.
"Serious concerns have been raised about the continued use of the death penalty across the country, including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases," he added. "Those weighty concerns deserve careful study and evaluation by lawmakers."
Under former President Donald Trump, the federal government carried out its first executions in a generation last year, with 13 inmates put to death in Trump's final year in office. That included an unprecedented number of federal killings carried out in the last days of his single-term presidency, bucking a nearly century-and-a-half practice of pausing capital punishments during the presidential exchange of power.
Then-Attorney General William Barr said the executions were being carried out in cases of "staggeringly brutal murders." Civil rights activists had rallied to spare the lives of those on death row. Concerns of how humanely the sentences could be carried out, as well as the recent exonerations of a number of death row inmates, were major factors in the demonstrations to cease state-sanctioned killings.
"The Department must take care to scrupulously maintain our commitment to fairness and humane treatment in the administration of existing federal laws governing capital sentences," Garland said in his memo on Thursday.
President Biden, who nominated Garland to the top law enforcement post, opposes capital punishment. During his campaign, Biden pledged to pass legislation to end the federal death penalty.
Some congressional Democrats have been working on such legislation, but no action has been taken. Some progressives and activists opposed to capital punishment had been expressing frustration that they have not seen more movement on the issue from Biden.
"A moratorium on federal executions is one step in the right direction, but it is not enough," said Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project. "We know the federal death penalty system is marred by racial bias, arbitrariness, over-reaching, and grievous mistakes by defense lawyers and prosecutors that make it broken beyond repair."
Friedman said Biden should commute all federal death sentences, warning that a pause alone "will just leave these intractable issues unremedied and pave the way for another unconscionable bloodbath like we saw last year."
A vigil for the victims of a shooting in San Jose, California, 27 May 2021. (photo: Amy Osborne/Getty)
oncern over crime has reached the highest point in four years amid a spike in killings in big cities and an uptick in violent crime, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday, and the percentage of Americans who say crime in the United States is “extremely serious” has reached its highest point in two decades.
The poll also finds that a sizable majority believe racial discrimination still exists in the country and say they hope that communities can find solutions to crime beyond putting more police officers on American streets, such as providing economic opportunities to people in low-income communities.
The poll reflects a larger debate — raging in city council chambers, activist circles and even the White House — about whether the nation can mitigate a troubling recent spike in violent crime and still make progress on the police reforms that gained momentum after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer.
A 59 percent majority of Americans believe crime is an “extremely” or “very” serious problem in the U.S., according to the Post-ABC poll, an increase from 51 percent in Gallup polling last fall and the highest level since 2017. The sentiment crosses party lines, though worries are higher among Republicans than Democrats. Anxiety about local crime is far lower but has also grown, with 17 percent saying crime in their area is extremely or very serious, up from 10 percent last fall.
Some activists who have pushed to eliminate systemic racism from the criminal justice system worry that hard-fought gains, and support for innovative approaches, will fade if anxious communities reach instead for what they see as the simplistic remedy of hiring more police.
President Biden laid out an anti-crime strategy in June, focusing on gun crime as part of an effort to stem the rise in homicides. His plan would also allow communities to use coronavirus relief funds to hire police officers or engage in other crime mitigation efforts, though he conceded in his remarks that “there is no one . . . answer that fits everything.”
Americans give Biden negative ratings for how he has handled the issue of crime, according to the poll, with 38 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving, while a sizable 14 percent offer no opinion.
The Post-ABC poll finds a 55 percent majority of Americans who say increasing funding for police departments would reduce violent crime, with views diverging sharply by party and race.
Although the data is not complete, the murder rate appeared to rise last year by double digits in many major cities, according to crime statistics compiled by the FBI, while violent crime in general increased 3 percent.
But it’s unclear whether those numbers are a peak or a prelude. Crime rates historically rise in the summer, when people are more likely to congregate, increasing opportunities for conflict. And no one is certain what effect a year of being cooped up during the pandemic will have as society returns closer to normal.
Despite the clear worries over crime, the poll shows that many Americans have internalized some of the equity concerns, in policing and other matters, that have arisen during the sometimes fractious debate over systemic racism that spilled protesters into American streets over the past year or more.
More than three-quarters of Americans say some people experience discrimination based on their race or ethnicity in the United States, including clear majorities across partisan, racial, age and educational groups.
Yet the public is divided on whether conditions are getting better or worse. Among those who perceive discrimination, 37 percent say the country is making progress while 27 percent say it is losing ground and 34 percent say it is staying the same.
White people who say discrimination exists are more than twice as likely as Black people to say the country is making progress on this issue — 41 percent compared with 18 percent.
Those racial differences persist when people are asked whether the country is making progress on how police interact with Black people. While 17 percent of Black Americans say the country is making progress, that figure is 33 percent for White Americans. A plurality of Black Americans, 45 percent, say the country is “staying the same.”
Last month, bipartisan congressional negotiators conceded that an agreement on police reform legislation remained elusive after nearly four months of intensive talks. The negotiations could also be sidelined as the Senate tries to an infrastructure plan and Biden’s social policy agenda, while the looming midterm elections threaten to make things steadily more fractious.
The crime reduction plan Biden unveiled last month puts the White House at the forefront of a delicate issue that has dogged him and the Democratic Party in the past and carries potential political consequences in the future.
Administration officials have tried to show that Biden is taking concrete steps to reduce crime, even as the Democratic coalition that put him in the White House continues to pull in different directions. Some on the left want to dismantle traditional policing, while others believe slogans like “defund the police” are a big reason Democrats did not do better in 2020 and are concerned that spiking crime will only exacerbate the political fallout of such slogans.
Biden’s negative numbers do not necessarily translate to a Republican advantage on the crime issue, since 35 percent of Americans say they trust the Democrats to do a better job on crime, 36 percent trust Republicans more and 20 percent volunteer that they trust neither party on the issue.
The poll asks whether respondents believe five different policies would reduce violent crime. At the high end, 75 percent say increased funding for economic opportunities in poor communities would reduce crime, while 65 percent say the same for using social workers to help police defuse volatile situations involving people with emotional problems.
A 55 percent majority say more funding for police departments would be effective. About half, 51 percent, say stricter enforcement of gun laws would reduce crime, while a slightly smaller 46 percent say the same of tougher gun laws.
Clear majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe crime would be reduced by funding economic opportunities in poor communities, although partisans disagree on most other approaches.
More than 8 in 10 Democrats and nearly 7 in 10 independents say social workers helping police defuse situations would reduce violent crime, while just over 4 in 10 Republicans agree. And while roughly 8 in 10 Democrats say stricter enforcement of existing gun laws would reduce violent crime, that drops to about half of independents and about one-quarter of Republicans.
Republicans see increasing police funding as the most effective policy mentioned in the poll ― 76 percent say it would reduce violent crime ― while 51 percent of independents and 45 percent of Democrats agree.
Racial differences are also apparent, with 60 percent of White adults saying increased police funding would reduce violent crime, compared with 50 percent of Hispanic adults and 39 percent of Black adults.
Among Black Americans, more than 7 in 10 say violent crime could be reduced by stricter gun laws and stricter enforcement of existing gun laws, and more than 8 in 10 say funding for economic opportunities for poor communities and pairing social workers collaborating with police would be effective.
The Post-ABC poll was conducted June 27-30 among a random national sample of 907 adults, with a margin of sampling error for overall results of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Error margins are larger among subgroups.
Demonstrators rally near the Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., June 24, 2021. (photo: Bryan Olin Dozier/AP)
The justices, in a 6-3 ruling, sided with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Thomas More Law Center in finding that the California attorney general's policy, in place for the past decade, violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and association.
The court's conservatives were in the majority, with its liberal members dissenting, just as they were in the other decision on their final day of rulings for their current nine-month term. In the other case, the court upheld Republican-backed ballot curbs in Arizona in a ruling that makes it earlier for states to enact voting restrictions. read more
Democratic-governed California, the most populous U.S. state, had said the donor information is required as part of the state attorney general's duty to prevent charitable fraud.
"We are left to conclude that the Attorney General's disclosure requirement imposes a widespread burden on donors' associational rights," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling.
The state's interest in "amassing sensitive information for its own convenience is weak," Roberts added.
The Thomas More Law Center is a conservative Catholic legal group. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which funds education and training on conservative issues, is the sister organization of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group - both founded by conservative billionaire businessman Charles Koch and his late brother David.
"Stripping our office of confidential access to donor information - the same information about major donors that charities already provide to the federal government - will make it harder for the state to fight fraud and prevent the misuse of charitable contributions," California's Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta said.
Americans for Prosperity Foundation CEO Emily Seidel said the ruling "protects Americans from being forced to choose between staying safe or speaking up," alluding to her group's concerns that donors could face threats if their identities become public.
'A BULL'S-EYE'
The decision could make it easier for groups to withhold donor identities in other contexts, allowing for the entrenchment of untraceable "dark money" political donations that shield the identity of the donor.
The Supreme Court in the past has been hostile to political campaign finance restrictions - it ruled in 2010 that corporations and other outside groups could spend unlimited funds in elections - but had upheld disclosure requirements.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court has reversed this previous approach.
"Today's analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull's-eye. Regulated entities who wish to avoid their obligations can do so by vaguely waving toward First Amendment 'privacy concerns,'" Sotomayor wrote.
Sotomayor said the court struck down the requirement without any evidence that donors would face negative consequences if their identities become public.
University of California, Irvine School of Law election law expert Rick Hasen wrote on his blog that the ruling will make it "much harder to sustain campaign finance disclosure laws going forward."
Democratic congressional leaders fumed. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the decision "jaw-dropping" and said it will make it "much harder to expose the evils of dark money in our political system."
California required charities to provide a copy of the tax form they file with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service listing donors who contribute big amounts of money. Larger groups had to disclose donors who contributed $200,000 or more in any year. That information was not posted online and was kept confidential but some had become public.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 reversed a judge's ruling in favor of the groups, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in March. read more
Some congressional Democrats had urged conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was part of the majority in the ruling, not to participate in the case because Americans for Prosperity spent money last year to support her Senate confirmation to the court.
The two groups that challenged California's mandate were backed by nonprofit organizations spanning the ideological spectrum. Liberal groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, had urged a narrower ruling against California.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. (photo: AP)
The White House believes countries need to move together to prevent firms from taking advantage of weak tax rules
The agreement announced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris showcased the president’s preference for patient diplomacy rather than the unilateral moves favored by his predecessor.
Potentially the most significant change in global tax rules in 100 years, the accord is designed to stop countries from competing to lure corporations by offering lower tax rates and to help governments fund their operations at a time of soaring pandemic-related expenses. Biden administration officials also describe the tax plan as a partial remedy for the offshoring of manufacturing jobs that have hollowed out American factory towns and fueled populist resentments.
The president called the deal an example of the “foreign policy for the middle class” that he had promised to deliver, though Republicans were quick to object, and numerous details remain for negotiators to resolve.
“Multinational corporations will no longer be able to pit countries against one another in a bid to push tax rates down and protect their profits at the expense of public revenue,” Biden said. “They will no longer be able to avoid paying their fair share by hiding profits generated in the United States, or any other country, in lower-tax jurisdictions. This will level the playing field and make America more competitive.”
The agreement announced Thursday also includes for the first time provisions for taxing the U.S. giants of the Internet economy, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. In return, European countries that had instituted their own digital taxes are to remove them, though the OECD statement lacked a timetable for action.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen called the agreement “a historic day for economic diplomacy” and said it represented one of the administration’s core foreign policy goals.
“For decades, the United States has participated in a self-defeating international tax competition, lowering our corporate tax rates only to watch other nations lower theirs in response. The result was a global race to the bottom,” she wrote on Twitter.
“Today’s agreement by 130 countries representing more than 90% of global GDP is a clear sign: the race to the bottom is one step closer to coming to an end,” she said in the tweet.
The deal was notable for the inclusion of countries that had been skeptical, including China, Russia and India, tax experts said.
Still, a great deal of work remains before a global minimum tax will become a reality. Participating countries must hammer out agreement on numerous details, bringing into alignment national tax systems that differ in important respects.
“It is a very, very broad-brush document. Now we have to work to get the details,” said Catherine Schultz, vice president for tax and fiscal policy at the Business Roundtable.
Every country will not be required to adopt the same 15 percent corporate tax rate. But if a country maintains a lower rate, the United States would be able to impose a compensatory levy on companies headquartered there, achieving the same objective.
The agreement on taxing the profits of Internet companies even where they lack a traditional brick-and-mortar presence seems especially complex. The levy applies to multinational corporations with annual sales of more than 20 billion euros or roughly $24 billion and before-tax profit margins above 10 percent.
“It requires an unprecedented degree of cooperation and coordination among countries, not just in the design of rules but in their application, permanently,” said Barbara Angus, global tax policy leader for Ernst & Young. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”
A handful of countries did not sign on to the blueprint, including Ireland, a nation that has used its 12.5 percent corporate tax rate to attract U.S. technology and pharmaceutical companies over the past half-century. Likewise, Hungary and Estonia abstained, further complicating prospects for full European Union endorsement.
Each of the 130 nations, including the United States, also must convert its endorsement of Thursday’s five-page plan into the nitty-gritty detail of legislation that will rewrite individual tax codes.
The OECD statement said the two-pronged accord would reallocate the right to tax $100 billion in digital companies’ profits from their home nations to countries where they earn money even if they lack a physical presence there. The deal also sets a minimum corporate profits tax of “at least 15 percent,” which is expected to raise $150 billion annually, according to the OECD.
The tax overhaul comes after several decades that saw policymakers lighten the tax burden on big business.
Since 1980, the global average corporate tax rate, weighted by the size of each economy, has dropped from more than 46 percent to 26 percent, according to the nonprofit Tax Foundation. While good news for corporations and investors, the decline has made it harder for governments to fund popular benefits and other programs.
President Donald Trump complained that other countries were using low tax rates to steal U.S. jobs, and Republicans in 2017 passed legislation reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
Biden has proposed raising the rate to 28 percent to free individual taxpayers from more of the cost of expanding government programs. He also has proposed a 15 percent minimum corporate tax rate to prevent companies from using exemptions and deductions to effectively eliminate their tax liabilities.
In the United States, annual revenue from corporate taxes relative to the size of the economy is now less than a quarter as large as in 1967, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The burden-sharing issue has grown only more acute as the coronavirus swept the globe. Governments worldwide spent a collective $16 trillion over the past year to fight the pandemic’s health and economic ills, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“This historic package will ensure that large multinational companies pay their fair share of tax everywhere,” OECD Secretary General Mathias Cormann said. “This package does not eliminate tax competition, as it should not, but it does set multilaterally agreed limitations on it. It also accommodates the various interests across the negotiating table, including those of small economies and developing jurisdictions. It is in everyone’s interest that we reach a final agreement among all Inclusive Framework Members as scheduled later this year.”
The global minimum tax is an essential element of the president’s plan to raise the corporate tax rate at home, by minimizing the incentive to move offshore to escape tax collectors. But early reaction from some prominent Republicans to the OECD statement was sharply negative.
“This is a dangerous economic surrender that sends U.S. jobs overseas, undermines our economy and strips away our U.S. tax base,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (Tex.), the senior Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
Implementing the sweeping proposal would present its own challenges. Administering the new tax on digital companies would require “coordination between the IRS and other tax authorities on a day-to-day basis that we’ve never seen before,” said Angus, a former chief tax counsel for the Ways and Means panel.
Negotiators aim to reach a final deal by the end of October, when the Group of 20 leaders are scheduled to meet in Rome, with implementation to start in 2023.
Israel has hit sites in Gaza with airstrikes after incendiary balloons were sent over the border. (photo: Mohammed Abed/Getty)
Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Israeli-blockaded Gaza, said the strikes hit training sites
srael hit Islamist militant sites in Gaza with airstrikes on Friday in retaliation for incendiary balloon launches from the Palestinian enclave, in the latest unrest since a ceasefire ended May’s conflict.
Security sources with Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Israeli-blockaded Gaza, said the strikes hit training sites. There were no injuries reported.
A statement from Israel’s army said: “In response to the arson balloons fired towards Israeli territory today, (military) fighter jets struck ... a weapons manufacturing site belonging to the Hamas terror organisation.”
On Thursday, Israel’s fire service said incendiary balloon launches from Gaza had sparked four minor fires in the southern Eshkol region, on the Gaza border.
The blazes were “small and not dangerous” and were quickly brought under control, a statement from the fire service said. “A fire investigator ... determined that all the fires were caused by incendiary balloons (from Gaza),” the statement said.
Eleven days of deadly fighting between Israel and Hamas, as well as other Palestinian armed groups based in the enclave, ended on 21 May with a ceasefire declaration.
There was no immediate indication as to which Gaza-based group was responsible for the balloon launch.
There have been multiple flare-ups since the ceasefire, including a series of balloon launches last month. Israel has responded with airstrikes. Following an exchange of fire on 18 June, Israeli army chief ordered forces to be ready “for a variety of scenarios including a resumption of hostilities”.
The conflict killed 260 Palestinians including some fighters, according to Gaza authorities. In Israel, 13 people were killed, including a soldier, by rockets fired from Gaza, the police and army said.
Israel has maintained a crippling blockade on Gaza since 2007, the year Hamas took power, which the government says is necessary to contain armed groups in the enclave.
Migratory birds at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. (photo: Dan Dzurisin/CC)
xtreme drought conditions gripping the West have stirred familiar struggles over water in the Klamath Basin, which straddles the Oregon-California border. Even in a good year, there’s often not enough water to keep ecosystems healthy and farms green — and this year is anything but good.
For the past two decades critics have simplistically reduced water woes in the basin to “fish vs. farms” in the battle for an increasingly scarce resource. This year, which is expected to be the lowest water year on record, it’s clear there aren’t any winners.
The Bureau of Reclamation, a Department of the Interior agency that oversees water resources in the West, has already shut the tap on irrigation water for farms in the area in order to maintain water levels in Klamath Lake needed to protect endangered suckers. It also halted releases into the Klamath River that help keep fish healthy. Following that, high temperatures and low flows fed an outbreak of the parasite Ceratonova shasta, causing a massive die-off of hundreds of thousands of juvenile salmon this past spring.
And another dire casualty hovers in the wings — birds.
Millions of birds migrate through the basin each year, relying on a complex of wildlife refuges that are quickly running dry. Last year drought conditions forced too many birds into too small a space, and 60,000 perished of avian botulism that spread quickly in close quarters.
Experts predict this year will be worse, and the problems could extend south to California’s Central Valley. Both places are critical stops on the Pacific Flyway, used by more than 320 bird species to feed and rest as they travel up and down the west coasts of North and South America.
Both the Klamath Basin and Central Valley will have limited water this year.
“We’re really concerned for what’s going to happen this fall and winter when birds are coming through the Central Valley and other drought-stricken parts of the Pacific Flyway, like the Klamath where habitat is extremely limited,” says Rachel Zwillinger, water policy advisor for Defenders of Wildlife. Water-supply reductions are creating concerns about inadequate food supplies and overcrowding on the small remaining areas of habitat.
“And then once you start to see that overcrowding, it creates serious concerns about outbreaks of disease,” she says.
Adding to the tragedy is that this is largely a crisis of our own making.
The Big Dry
At the turn of 19th century, 350,000 acres of wetlands, lakes and marshes stretched across the Klamath Basin. Two years later President Theodore Roosevelt signed the National Reclamation Act, and the agency now known as the Bureau of Reclamation began draining water, building canals, and converting soggy ground into something firm and farmable.
In all, about 80% of the historic wetlands dried up. The diverted water fed the Klamath Project, which the agency uses to supply irrigation water to farms. In one concession to nature Roosevelt created the country’s first waterfowl refuge at Lower Klamath Lake. Five more wildlife refuges in the basin were added over the years, but only two still contain critical wetland habitat today: Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife refuges.
Unfortunately those remaining wetlands were cut off from natural water flows and weren’t allotted their own dedicated supply of water. Instead the refuges rely on agricultural runoff or excess water supplied by Klamath Project farmers.
Since the Bureau of Reclamation has shut off irrigation water for those famers this year, runoff flowing to the refuges will be vastly reduced, and there’s little chance of surplus becoming available later.
Jeff Volberg, director of water law and policy for California Waterfowl, fears more disease outbreaks of avian botulism will be on the way.
“The only way to stop that outbreak is with more water to flush the system and by getting out there and collecting dead and injured birds as quickly as possible,” says Meghan Hertel, director of land and water conservation for Audubon California, who was at the refuge last year during that grisly process.
And there are other concerns. In 2020, also a drought year, ducklings born at the refuges were stranded away from the water as the wetlands dried up over the season.
“You’d have ducklings walking a couple of miles to get to water,” says Volberg. “You lose a lot of ducks that way.”
Some birds also molt while at the refuge and remain grounded until they regrow their flight feathers. Leaving to find areas with more water isn’t an option for them. That leads to more crowding and more disease.
“It’s a perfect storm of everything going wrong,” he says. “You’re taking this historically huge lake and marsh complex and turning it into a desert. It’s a very tragic circumstance.”
More of the Same
California has a history of reclamation akin to Oregon’s.
The Central Valley used to be a vast network of wetlands with rivers that overtopped their banks in winter and recharged the marshes. “But once we dammed the rivers and created levies, we cut off the historic wetlands from their water sources,” says Zwillinger.
Today the Central Valley is the agricultural heart of the state, but just 5% of the historic wetlands there remain. Unlike in Oregon, federal, state and private refuges in the valley have a guaranteed entitlement to water under the Central Valley Improvement Project Act, passed in 1992.
The remaining wetlands are now managed much the way a farm would be, except the food grown is for birds.
“It’s very strategic when we put water on the landscape and when we take it off,” says Ric Ortega, the general manager of the Grassland Water District, which solely delivers water for habitat purposes for Central Valley refuges.
“We’re trying to germinate specific grasses that are high in amino acids and protein, but that are also readily decomposable, which causes an invertebrate bloom,” he says. “So there’s actually a fair amount of planning.”
This year the planning will be extra tough.
Although the wetlands have a guaranteed water supply, they’re not guaranteed to get all of it. Five of the region’s 19 refuges still lack the physical infrastructure necessary to deliver water.
The others can also see cutbacks.
In years when flows into Lake Shasta in Northern California fall below a critical threshold, the federal government can short the refuges 25% of what’s known as their “level 2” water supply, which makes up about two thirds of their total allocation. The other third, known as “level 4,” is acquired by the Bureau of Reclamation from willing sellers on the open market.
This year the refuges will be shorted their 25%, and Ortega says they’re anticipating that Reclamation won’t be able to provide much, if any, of their level 4 supply either. He estimates that they’ll have only half their contracted water supply.
If you add that to the historic deficit, the picture is grim.
“In years like this, you can think of only 2.5% of historic wetlands being available for these 10 million birds that are coming our way, whether we like it or not,” says Ortega. “The boreal and the Canadian prairies are healthy and have been for the last couple of years. So we’re expecting lots of birds, a large hatch, to come in. The stars are aligning in a bad way.”
Managing for Shortage
In anticipation of that surge, refuge managers in the Central Valley will operate much like farmers and allow some of the land to go fallow.
“What that does is it not only shrinks the wetted footprint of the wetland habitat spatially, but it also shrinks that in time,” says Ortega. Being able to put less water on the land means it will also go dry more quickly.
“It’s an especially constraining and difficult situation given the Klamath is dry, so there’s really no stopover site there,” he says.
Early migrants may start to arrive in July, but the largest numbers congregate in late November and early December. Typically wetland managers in the region would begin putting water on the landscape in mid- to-late August and have it fully inundated by the end of September or early October.
“For this year, we will probably start putting water on the landscape in a big way in October,” says Ortega. “We have to be strategic about when we flood and ensure that we’ve got adequate water to maintain that footprint through the overwintering period. Ideally we can maintain it into late March and April. But that may not be in the cards if the winter is dry.”
Even if most birds won’t arrive for months, a lack of water in the summer also means that there’s likely to be inadequate food for hungry travelers later in the year. And because there are so few wetlands remaining, birds use agricultural land as surrogate habitat, says Hertel.
That’s especially true at in the Sacramento Valley, at the north end of the Central Valley. Waterfowl get about half of their diet from the area’s rice fields in the fall and winter. After harvest, rice farmers usually flood their fields to help with decomposition of the rice stalks, which attracts insects and creates food for birds.
But this year water cutbacks mean that rice farmers will likely use all their water to grow rice, or will sell it to other eager buyers, and won’t have any to flood fields later in the year. About 100,000 acres are also likely to be fallowed — another hit for migratory birds.
“If it doesn’t rain, that’s 50% of ducks’ diet gone in fall and winter,” says Hertel.
And it’s not just birds who rely on the refuges.
“These places are incredibly diverse,” says Ortega. In the Central Valley that includes minks, river otters, beavers, Tule elk, deer, bobcats, mountain lions and 300 species of bird. The wetlands also support threatened and endangered species like the giant garter snake, tri-colored blackbirds and western pond turtles. In the Klamath Basin, the area is also home to the largest wintering population of bald eagles in the lower 48.
Finding Solutions
With a potential crisis looming, what’s to be done?
Unfortunately there are no easy solutions when it comes to water in the West. Increasingly hot and dry conditions spurred by climate change — also a crisis of our own making — puts pressure on water systems that are already strained.
For the past century we’ve watered farms and grown cities while pulling more and more water out of watersheds. The bill for that is now coming due.
“In the Klamath, the system is overextended,” says Hertel. “You have tribes with very valid concerns about fish extinction — fish that are essential and core to their community and way of life. You have farmers who have had farms up there for 100 years who are going out of business and are worried about their families and their communities. And then you have the refuge, which is supposed to be this jewel of our Pacific Flyway system, receiving very little water and having massive die-offs.”
It’s a similar situation in California with thirsty farms, expanding cities, overtaxed watersheds and endangered species in the Delta — the linchpin of the state’s water-conveyance system.
But experts say there are both short and long-term solutions that could help. The first would be to get water to the refuges as quickly as possible.
In the Klamath, Volberg says, “We feel the most appropriate thing would be for the refuge to have its own dedicated supply from outside of the basin.” California Waterfowl has been raising money from private funders to buy water rights from willing sellers upstream. They’re hoping to acquire 30,000 acre-feet of water rights that upstream irrigators would leave in the river for the refuge downstream. “That would only really provide about one third of the water that the refuge really needs, but it’s a whole lot better than no water at all,” he says.
Buying the water is just the first hurdle. They’re awaiting approval for the water rights transfer from the Oregon Department of Water Resources. If that comes through, they’ll then need Reclamation to open the headgates to allow the water out of the river. That part may be trickier.
A certain level of water must remain in the top part of the system, Upper Klamath Lake, to protect two species of endangered suckers important to the Klamath Tribes. And water is needed downstream in the Klamath River to also protect endangered salmon vital to tribes such as the Yurok, Hoopa Valley and Karuk.
There’s also the other matter of anti-federalists threatening to forcibly turn on irrigation water for farmers.
Despite all that, Volberg hopes they’ll be able to pull off the water transfer this year and in the long run work with state and federal agencies to secure that 30,000 acre-feet permanently. But that will come with a price tag of $50 to $60 million, he says.
In the Central Valley, Ortega says federal and state resources are welcome, too. And the money can be used to stretch limited resources further. “We can rehabilitate groundwater wells and lift pumps and develop recirculation systems and do better monitoring,” he says.
Hertel says we’ll also need policy and infrastructure that can better help us manage limited water supplies in the future.
“This isn’t just a drought,” she says. “This is how water is operating in California under climate change. We need to be thinking about and preparing for drought every year.”
Ortega says we also need to better understand the value of wetlands — and not just for the benefits to birds and other wildlife. “These wetlands are really the kidneys of society,” he says. “They strip away harmful contaminants, provide flood control and slow down the flow of water to replenish groundwater.”
And that groundwater is the sole source of water for communities in the Central Valley, many of which are disadvantaged.
“There’s definitely an environmental justice element to all this,” he says. “We have to be mindful of water quality and all of the other benefits that wetlands provide.”
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