Fight environmental injustice and support the Winnemem Wintu Tribe

the Winnemem Wintu unveiled  a mural Saturday, November 26th in San Francisco.

The Winnemem Wintu tribe was in San Francisco to unveil a Mission District mural that honors the campaign against the proposed heightening of Shasta Dam, and the Winnemem struggle to protect cultural, historic and natural resources.  The mural, created by Evan Bissell and Claude Moller, depicts Winnemem Wintu tribal members at the ceremonial war dance on Shasta Dam, which was held one year ago. The unveiling is took place during Thanksgiving weekend to highlight threats to the Winnemem and the struggles to protect California resources and cultural heritage.  The mural is on Clarion Alley, San Francisco, 1 block South of 17th near Valencia.

The Winnemem Wintu tribe brought its Warriors to San Francisco and the dying delta, to attend the mural unveiling.  “We sing to water,” says Caleen Sisk-Franco, Spiritual and Tribal Leader for the Winnemem.  “We have to give the river a voice.  We have to give the fish a voice.  The sacred places need to be protected,” said Sisk-Franco. War Dancers will be in full regalia dancing and praying for their survival in the face of Delta ecosystem crashes and the potential dam raise. Read below for more information on the dam raise and its' devastating impacts on the Winnemem Wintu.

Oppose the Shasta Dam Raise!

The US Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) is soliciting public input through the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) on the proposal to raise Shasta Dam on the Sacramento and McCloud Rivers.

The proposal is the latest in a long line of attacks on the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. The Bureau is proposing to raise the dam by adding nearly 19 feet of concrete on top of the current structure, thus enlarging the reservoir behind the dam. The dam raise would flood several of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe’s sacred sites and commit cultural genocide in the name of unsustainable water management.

By flooding sites such as Puberty Rock, where young Winnemem women come of age, the Bureau of Reclamation would add onto the burden of environmental injustices the Tribe faces today. The Winnemem have already paid a hefty price for California’s destructive use of dams. The Winnemem Wintu lost 90 percent of their ancestral land when the Shasta Dam was originally built. Promises made to to create a tribal cementary held in trust and to replace the lands lost were never fulfilled. Additionally, the Tribe’s traditional food source, salmon, were decimated by the construction of the dam.

The Bureau of Reclamation has capitalized on the fact that the Winnemem Wintu are not a federally recognized Tribe. The Tribe is not treated as its own sovereign nation, and has thus been left out of the Bureau investigation process. Even after 4 years of meeting with Bureau officials, the first documents put out in the NEPA process make no mention of the tribe and the potential losses they face.

The public scoping process is the first phase of public participation under the NEPA guidelines. Tell the Bureau to extend the comment period and to  fully address the immense cultural and biological genocide that this project means. 

Send comments by December 7th to:

Mr. Louis Moore
wmoore@mp.usbr.gov
Bureau of Reclamation
2800 Cottage Way
Sacramento, CA 95825

For sample letters and more information, visit http://www.ejcw.org/our_work/Winnememwintu.htm

What does the Bureau of Reclamation say?

The Bureau says raising Shasta Dam would increase a reliable supply of water and retain more cold water for salmon.

What do the facts say?

The dam raise will produce a fairly small amount of expensive water that will go to wasteful agricultural practices in the Central Valley. The enlarged reservoir would only reliably provide less than 146,000 acre feet of water annually. In comparison, if farmers producing low-value alfalfa in California were to conserve a mere five percent of the water they consume, nearly one million acre feet of water would be saved.

The only way to help fish on the rivers is use the existing cold water behind the dam for salmon runs, not for subisidized water contracts.

The Bureau cannot create more water, only nature can regulate how much flows from Sierra snowmelt into the reservoir behind Shasta Dam. When the existing reservoir only completely filled three out of 20 years, why do we need more storage space? 

What is the bottom line?

The Winnemem Wintu are paying with their culture for the benefit of wealthy agricultural corporations and California’s unsustainable water management practices. Profits, rather than efficient water use, are the main motivation for the dam expansion.

Hidden costs of water development

While the Winnemem Wintu Tribe fights for their survival, the Bureau of Reclamation has been busy signing federal contracts with large agricultural corporations to deliver amounts of water that the state CANNOT deliver – unless there are more storage projects like the Shasta Dam enlargement.

Do not be fooled - the Bureau of Reclamation is not fulfilling the needs of residents in California, they are creating a need for water deliveries to a few large, wealthy agribusinesses.

A recent report by the Environmental Working Group found that Californian taxpayers spend about $416 million dollars subsidizing water for agriculture through the Central Valley Project, which the Shasta Dam is part of. And who recieves this gift? The mere top 10 percent of agricultural corporations control 67 percent of all the water flowing through the Central Valley Project.

Water from the dam raise would cost more than $220 per acre foot (one acre foot is 325,850 gallons of water), which is well beyond the rate affordable to most farmers. But with federal contracts in place, the recipients will be able to sell the water rates to the biggest buyers in water these days – deverlopers in the Central Valley and suburban Los Angeles. Why should taxpayers foot the bill for water contractors to make millions on selling water rights?

These are the hidden costs of raising the Shasta Dam – the loss of entire people, the Winnemem Wintu, and locking California into another 25 years of unsustainable water management.

More information on the Shasta Dam raise

At 602 feet high and storing 4.5 million acre feet of water, the Shasta Dam and Reservoir is already the eighth highest dam in the U.S. and the largest reservoir in California. But the Bureau wants to raise the dam by up to 18.5 feet and increase it reservoir size by up to 22%!

When the dam was built in 1945, the Central Valley Indian Lands Acquisition act was signed. The Bureau of Reclamation negotiated with the Winnemem Wintu, but never listed them as a federally recognized tribe. This has prevented the Tribe from being fully incorporated into the dam raise investigation.

Does taking water out of rivers to help fish really make sense? In fact, the Bureau of Reclamation is asking taxpayers to pay for their mistakes. The reason there is not enough cold water for salmon downstream is because the Bureau keeps selling the cold water to federal agribusiness contractors.

The nearly 19 foot raise would cost more than $483 million, but this estimate does not include interest, environmental mitigation costs, annual operating costs, or cost overruns common to virtually all Bureau projects.

The reservoir enlargement will drown several miles of the upper Sacramento, McCloud, and Pit Rivers, require the relocation or modification or more than 600 structures. It would drown miles of trout habitat.

The dam raise actually violates state law by flooding sections of the McCloud River that are protected under California’s Wild & Scenic Rivers Act.

For more information on the event, contact:

Gary Hayward Slaughter Mulcahy, tribal liaison (916) 214-8493

Evan Bissell, muralist (415) 686-2079

Mark Franco, Headman of Kerekmet Village (530) 275-2737

For more information on the Winnemem Wintu's struggle, visit:

www.winnememwintu.us OR http://www.ejcw.org/our_work/Winnememwintu.htm

Environmental Justice Coalition for Water

654 13th Street

Oakland CA 94612

(510) 286-8400

www.ejcw.org