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Water Resource Policy
The Lompico Watershed Conservancy regularly comments upon public policy decision by important regulatory agencies that include the California State Water Resources Control Board and the Central Coast Water Pollution Control Board among others. We are experts in the subject of pollution discharges from logging operations and how they are, or are not, regulated. If you research this subject you will find our organization name, or that of our board president appearing in various posts from the Timber Industry who apparently object to our involvement in this complex subject. We entered into this field during the long struggle over the Lompico Headwaters logging plan. The Forest Products Industry, like virtually all resource extraction industries continually argues that they have a minimal impact upon water resources. Water resources and air quality are the most fundamental public trust resource. Everyone relies upon them for basic survival and assumes that their government protects the pubic interest by preventing harm to these most basic of shared resources. The prevention of harm is an extremely complex subject. Water pollution control law is based upon the idea that some small amount of pollution might be acceptable but when pollution is uncontrolled it will harm everyone. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act) set up a process called Total Daily Maximum Load (TMDL) that establishes a level of pollution which is acceptable but when this level of pollution is exceeded then the law is violated and the government must take actions to correct the problem. There is no basic right to pollute The law is enforced in very uneven but usually predictable ways. Pesticides contaminating drinking water will cause a very public uproar when they are discovered, and rightly so. Sediment pollution to salmon streams that kills salmon eggs is a measurable problem, but the harm it causes is often ignored for political convenience because only a small segment of society is interested or even aware in the problem. In both cases the law has been violated but in the case of salmon the problem was virtually ignored until the fish were near extinction. After many decades of progressive damage to streams and rivers this issue is thrust onto the "plate" of the regulatory agencies because salmon fisherman are going broke and people who care about wildlife are alarmed that an iconic animal is disappearing. It is hard to undo one hundred years of ineffective public policy and decades of failure to enforce the Clean Water Act. The soil filling the San Lorenzo River came from many sources. It is the epitome of a cumulative impact. If we are going to correct this problem everyone has to take responsibility for it. Was it logging, yes. Was it development, yes. Was it careless road and driveway maintenance, yes. It is still happening, yes, look at a stream near you during the next hard rain. Do you get the picture? The Conservancy has an extensive letter archive. We have just begun to post this archive to this website. |