Living Lightly
By
LILLIAN VALLEE
Under
various names, I have praised only you, rivers!
You are milk and honey and love and death and dance.
— Czeslaw Milosz,
“Rivers”
Travelers
leaving Modesto, headed toward San Francisco Bay, follow the westward tilt of
the land and mimic the movement of San Joaquin Valley tributaries like the
Stanislaus and Tuolumne flowing to their rendezvous with the once mighty San
Joaquin River. The eye begins to anticipate the wooded bend in Highway 132, for
here the road crosses the San Joaquin wending its way north to the Delta.
Happiness awaits the alert traveler in the bottomland, for in autumn there are
families of sandhill cranes feeding in the corn and, in spring, an exuberance of
swallows feasting on insects or daubing together mud nests under the bridge.
Drivers whizzing by the lush corridor of oak, willow, box elder, and cottonwood
pay little attention to the river or to the remnant gallery forests along its
banks, yet if they did, they would discover a major pulse of the heartland and
the story of a broken river on the mend.
It
is impossible to explain why one river moves a person to the quick and another
doesn’t, but the San Joaquin — diverted, disrupted, and polluted — is a
river that calls to me with singular force. Even though the river boasts an
illustrious history (not too long ago it was a major transportation artery
crowded with steamers, barges, and spawning Chinook salmon), the San Joaquin is
a river reviled. Many even refuse to call it a river, and it is not uncommon to
hear it referred to it as “dead,” “a sewer,” “an agricultural
drain,” a “ghost river,” or even “the upper colon of San Francisco
Bay.” Since the building of Friant Dam near Fresno, 98% of San Joaquin river
water is impounded and two stretches (totaling roughly 60 miles of the old
riverbed) are completely dry. The river is often used for dumping. It is painful
to be part of a culture capable of turning living water into poison during the
life span of one generation.
Yet
the degradation of the river is just one chapter of a long and rich history.
That history includes grizzlies swimming to the river’s many islands; Pacific
Flyway migratory communities feeding and nesting in a vast network of wetlands
and sloughs; diverse Yokuts tribes poling river waters in tule balsas and
gathering acorns on its terraces; and children plunging into the current (on
horseback!) when the summer heat became too much. Imagine summer picnics under
oaks, blackberry feasts, and salmon responding to winter rains or to what
old-timers called the “June rise,” the river swollen with summer snowmelt.
These stories are as important to reviving the river, to singing it back, as an
awareness of how many acres the river irrigates.
When
scientists tested San Joaquin river water at its source in 1960, it had the
purity of distilled water. “It was a beautiful river that ran clear and cold.
In those days it even had a smell of its own; it was a fresh and inviting
smell,” commented one long-time resident. “While something had to be done to
control the flooding, it’s a damn shame that they had to kill the river in the
process.” Not everyone took the killing in stride, however. In August 2004,
under the leadership of the National Resources Defense Council, a coalition of
13 conservation and fishing groups, including Stanislaus Audobon Society and the
San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, won a sixteen-year lawsuit against the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation, which was found guilty of violating Section 5937 of
California’s Fish and Game Code for building Friant Dam and not providing for
one of its oldest denizens: salmon.
“Restoring
the river will benefit everyone,” said NRDC senior attorney Hal Candee. “It
will benefit downstream farmers who will get cleaner, more reliable irrigation
water. It will benefit the 20 million people in the Bay Area and Southern
California who rely on the delta for clean drinking water. And restoring the
river’s once thriving salmon fishery will help bring back more fishing jobs to
our state.” The courage of this coalition to face powerful interests and
prevail is exemplary: sixteen years in the courts and a vision of the San
Joaquin not just as a piece of elaborate plumbing but as the object of human
health and desire, as “milk and honey and love and death and dance.”
One
May Saturday I crossed the San Joaquin again, this time on my way to the San
Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge, fourteen miles outside of Modesto. Eric
Hopson, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife biologist and manager of the refuge, had
invited volunteers to a morning tree planting to fill in gaps in the riparian
corridor along the river. The word riparian comes from the Latin for riverbank, ripa.
Riparian, or riverine, plant life can be almost jungle-like with dense gallery
forests of tall oaks draped in lianas of wild grapes or cucumber, and with
“savage conglomerations” of snags and thorny plants such as California
blackberry and wild rose in the understory. Riparian plants are among the most
resilient; floods can scour, break, and uproot them, but many can regenerate
themselves from broken bits and pieces. At the refuge, after the late rains, the
muddy edges of the riverbank, fragrant with mugwort, were perfect for sandbar,
black and arroyo willow and cottonwood cuttings, and we got right to work.
Volunteers
were given heart by the Hopson family. Eric’s mother and daughter planted
cuttings. At 11:30, Brenda Hopson, Eric’s wife, brought everyone hot food. We
wolfed down cashew chili with guacamole, corn bread, a fresh green salad,
cookies and watermelon while Eric’s dad, a geologist, identified a floating
rock that had somehow made its way down from the Coast Ranges. A Western pond
turtle, surveying the activity from a snag in the river, seemed content that
people were doing what they could to restore a riverine community.
Sources:
Elna Bakker, An Island Called California;
Gene Rose, San Joaquin: A River Betrayed;
NRDC Media press release; Eric Hopson and Lee Eastman, U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service.
ACTION:
The San Joaquin needs your songs and labor. Contact Eric Hopson, 587-5532, for
individual and group volunteer restoration/clean-up activities.
Lillian Vallee is a Professor of Literature and Language Arts at Modesto Junior College.
By LEE
RYAN MILLER
On May 11, four environmental activists spoke to more than one hundred students at CSU Stanislaus about environmental threats and environmental opportunities.
The event was sponsored by the CSU Stanislaus Democrats Club, under the direction of club president Sara Ross. The speakers were Teresa De Anda of Californians for Pesticide Reform, Spreck Rosekrans of Environmental Defense, Michael J. Painter of Californians for Western Wilderness, and Steve Burke of Protect Our Water.
Teresa De Anda, the daughter of farm workers, shocked the audience with stories of hundreds of poor Californians sickened by pesticide drift since the late 1990s and the callous response of local officials. She described several incidents in which dozens of people living near cultivated fields were sickened when clouds of pesticides drifted over their homes. They suffered burning eyes, coughing, and vomiting. In several of the incidents, claimed De Anda, emergency personnel refused to respond to calls for assistance. In one case, they set up a roadblock to prevent the evacuation of affected residents.
De Anda was instrumental in convincing the state legislature to pass SB 391 in 2004. According to De Anda, this legislation requires the establishment of protocols for local emergency personnel to follow in pesticide drift incidents. It also makes those responsible for the incidents liable for paying the medical bills of those affected by the drift.
Spreck Rosekrans, a senior analyst for Environmental Defense, focused on water projects and ecosystem restoration, Rosekrans discussed the prospects for restoring the Hetch Hetchy Valley, currently under water due to a dam.
Prior to the construction of the dam in the early 20th century, according to Rosekrans, the valley was a scenic area rivaling the Yosemite Valley. Environmental Defense has produced a plan entitled “Paradise Regained” for removing the dam and restoring the valley’s ecosystem. The plan describes ways to make up for the loss of water storage and hydroelectric power provided by the dam. The cost estimates of restoration range from $0.5 billion to $1.6 billion.
Rosekrans described the peculiar politics surrounding the issue. Removal of the dam was first proposed by a Reagan Administration official in the 1980s and was successfully opposed by then San Francisco mayor, Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein, a Democrat, is now a U.S. Senator.
Michael J. Painter, San Francisco coordinator for Californians for Western Wilderness, highlighted the negative effects of the Bush Administration energy policies on the environment. He claimed that oil and gas companies are making record profits and have no need for massive subsidies provided by government policy.
Painter also denounced the government for eliminating tax breaks for hybrid automobiles but retaining them for SUVs. In addition, he criticized Bush Administration efforts to allow oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to repeal the “roadless area” designation on some federal lands.
Steve Burke , spokesman for Protect Our Water and co-founder of the San Joaquin Valley Conservancy, had a more philosophical focus. He described himself as a recovering addict, and drew parallels to American society’s “addiction” to consumption. Burke claimed that Americans continue to over-consume despite knowing the consequences (polluted air and water, global warming, etc.); like addicts we are “in denial” about the effects of our actions.
Burke said that the effects of our actions are particularly acute in the Central Valley, where air pollution is a serious problem. According to Burke, one-sixth of all school children in our region must use an inhaler and one-half of all school absences are due to asthma.
Burke ended on a hopeful note, encouraging students to become activists: “Activism is the antidote to despair.” The other three speakers echoed this message. Many students pledged to write to the congressional representatives on environmental issues.
Lee Ryan Miller
teaches political science at California State University, Stanislaus.
