[News] Winnemem Wintu Tribe Sue to Stop Waste Discharge at Mt. Shasta Water Bottling Facility

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/08/winnemem-wintu-tribe-sue-to-stop-waste-discharge-at-mt-shasta-water-bottling-facility/ 



  Winnemem Wintu Tribe Sue to Stop Waste Discharge at Mt. Shasta Water
  Bottling Facility

by Dan Bacher <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/mrnhdyk111/> - May 8, 
2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s a gorgeous warm day in September 2015. Small cascades of cold, 
pristine water rush out of the hillside at Big Springs, the headwaters 
of the Sacramento River, as they converge in a clear and shallow pool 
located in the Mount Shasta City Park.

Adults and children fill their jugs and bottles with the 
crystalline water that takes 50 years to make it from snow and rain on 
Mount Shasta down through the volcanic aquifer to where the torrents 
converge in the park.

The icy water rushes from the hillside to make its way to Lake Siskiyou, 
then Lake Shasta and then to the Delta and the ocean. People from 
throughout the world walk along the creek and hike along shaded trails 
and footpaths that cross through hedges of horsetail fern and willow and 
across small bridges.

As people hike to and relax besides Big Springs, Caleen Sisk, Chief and 
Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and hundreds of 
environmentalists and activists from all over California and Oregon hold 
a rally, the “Water Every Drop Sacred” event, in this scenic park at the 
Sacramento River headwaters. After the rally ends, Sisk and tribal 
members lead a march and protest of 160 people to the plant.

The Tribe is opposed to the planned opening of the plant, closed after 
it was operated by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company and other corporations 
for years, in accordance with its commitment to protect and preserve the 
Headwaters of the river, the Mount Shasta watershed and sacred tribal 
lands. Otsuka Holding Co, a Japanese pharmaceutical conglomerate, owns 
Crystal Geyser.

Move forward to April 28, 2018 and the struggle by the Tribe and local 
environmentalists to save the headwaters of the Sacramento, the largest 
and longest river in California, has entered a new stage, a lawsuit 
against the City of Mount Shasta.

The Winnemem Wintu, who are now leading a campaign to reintroduce 
winter-run Chinook now thriving in New Zealand back to their home on the 
McCloud River, and We Advocate Thorough Environmental Review 
(W.A.T.E.R.) have petitioned the Superior Court of Siskiyou County for a 
Writ of Mandate (Petition) against the City of Mt. Shasta.

The litigation challenges the city’s March 26, 2018, split-vote approval 
of the Industrial Waste Discharge Permit for Crystal Geyser Water 
Company and the city’s conclusion that the project was “adequately 
considered” in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) prepared by 
Siskiyou County, in violation of the California Environmental Quality 
Act (CEQA).

WATER and the tribe argue in the petition that when the city approved 
the permit, it abused its discretionary powers in violation of CEQA by 
relying upon an EIR that “fails to include information necessary for 
informed decision-making and informed public participation, and in 
failing to adopt feasible mitigation measures within its jurisdiction.”

/Winnemem regard Mount Shasta water as a sacred relative/

“The Winnemem Wintu were born from the pristine water of Mount Shasta 
and regard this water as a sacred relative, a living being that is being 
exploited, desecrated and polluted when it is put in a plastic bottle 
and commoditized,” stated Winnemem Wintu Tribal Representatives, Mark 
Miyoshi and Luisa Navejas.

“When we stand up for the life of the water from this mountain that 
flows throughout the tribe’s traditional territory and becomes the 
mighty Sacramento and McCloud Rivers, we are defending the life of all 
free-flowing streams and rivers and ultimately the precious life of our 
great Mother Ocean. All voices matter as the value of water is the value 
of life itself,” they said.

The validity of the EIR has been challenged in a separate case filed 
against Siskiyou County.

“During the county’s administrative review process of the Crystal Geyser 
operations and the EIR, the city itself had submitted well-considered 
and detailed comments strongly objecting to numerous hazards of the 
project including excessive noise, lighting, traffic, improper 
wastewater disposal and possible inadequate ground water supplies,” the 
Tribe and WATER said.

“Subsequently, the city decided to not challenge the EIR in court, but
nonetheless continued to maintain its objections raised in its previous 
comments on the Draft EIR. These valid issues raised by the city, and 
also by many other citizens and experts, were barely addressed and never 
resolved by the county,” the Tribe and WATER continued.

Despite the city’s knowledge that the EIR was potentially insufficient, 
the city conducted minimal reviews during its consideration of the 
wastewater permit, and did not make formal “CEQA Findings” as required 
by CEQA, they argue. Approval of the permit without the required 
Responsible Agency findings thus violated CEQA.

The tribe and WATER further argue that the approved permit, a revision 
of the draft permit evaluated in the EIR, includes additional waste 
streams that were not evaluated in the EIR process.

“Although Crystal Geyser had informed the city of its intention to seek 
the inclusion of additional waste streams long before the completion of 
the Draft EIR by the county, the city took no action as a responsible 
agency to include these known potential waste streams into the EIR’s 
analysis. In addition, the permit allows for significant delay in 
requiring the necessary improvements to the city’s wastewater system, 
and this will result in impacts to the environment,” they said.

They said the city failed to evaluate these impacts and failed to 
prepare supplemental CEQA documentation in order to support its decision 
to approve the permit.

The tribe and WATER further allege that the EIR is “faulty” because 
Siskiyou County failed to complete required A.B. 52 consultation with 
the Winnemem Wintu tribe. As a result, the EIR cannot support the city’s 
conclusions in its role as a responsible agency.

Finally, the tribe and WATER assert in the petition the city failed to 
make formal CEQA findings, and the one-sentence statement in the 
resolution adopted to approve the permit was insufficient to be 
considered the “CEQA findings” to support the city’s approval.

W.A.T.E.R. representative Geneva Omann stated, “If this bottling plant 
is going to be operating here, we want ALL of its effluent to go to the 
city wastewater treatment plant, but at the very least, the permitting 
and operations of the bottling plant and the wastewater treatment plant 
must be in compliance with CEQA. Currently they are not.”

She also said, “We are challenging the permit approval to ensure the 
wastewater treatment plant, the environment, the Winnemem Wintu’s 
traditional cultural resources, and city residents are all protected 
from potential adverse effects of the bottling plant.”

“We are proud to stand with our brothers and sisters of the Winnemem 
Wintu in defending Water and our community,” she concluded.

/Tribe, fishing groups have also filed lawsuit against Delta Tunnels/

This is not the only lawsuit that the Winnemem Wintu has filed over the 
past year. ON August 17, 2017, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, North Coast 
Rivers Alliance (NCRA), Institute for Fisheries Resources (IFR), Pacific 
Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) and the San 
Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association filed suit against the California 
Department of Water Resources (DWR) in Sacramento Superior Court to 
overturn DWR’s approval of the Delta Tunnels, also know as the 
California WaterFix Project.

”The Winnemem Wintu Tribe has lived on the banks of the McCloud River 
for thousands of years and our culture is centered on protection and 
careful, sustainable use of its salmon,” said Caleen Sisk, Chief of the 
Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “Our salmon were stolen from us when Shasta Dam 
was built in 1944.”

”Since that dark time, we have worked tirelessly to restore this vital 
salmon run through construction of a fishway around Shasta Dam 
connecting the Sacramento River to its upper tributaries including the 
McCloud River.  The Twin Tunnels and its companion proposal to raise 
Shasta Dam by 18 feet would push the remaining salmon runs toward 
extinction and inundate our ancestral and sacred homeland along the 
McCloud River,” Chief Sisk stated.

Chief Sisk is currently running for Assembly District 1 as a Democrat in 
the June 5 election. For more information, go to: 
http://www.caleen4assembly.com <http://www.caleen4assembly.com/>

The Trump and Brown administrations and project proponents claim the 
tunnels would fulfill the “coequal goals” of water supply reliability 
and ecosystem restoration, but opponents point out that project would 
create no new water while hastening the extinction of winter-run Chinook 
salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green 
sturgeon and other imperiled fish species

The project would also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on 
the Trinity and Klamath rivers that have played a central role in the 
culture, religion and livelihood of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley 
Tribes for thousands of years.

The tunnels would divert 9,000 cubic feet per second of water from the 
Sacramento River near Clarksburg and transport it 35 miles via two 
tunnels 40-feet in diameter for export to San Joaquin Valley 
agribusiness interests and Southern California, according to lawsuit 
documents. The project would divert approximately 6.5 million acre-feet 
of water per year, a quantity sufficient to flood the entire state of 
Rhode Island under nearly 7 feet of water.

/Run4Salmon Set for September 15 to September 30/

Then coming up from September 15 to September 30, the Winnemen Wintu 
will be sponsoring their #Run4Salmon 
<https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/run4salmon?source=feed_text>2018.

”This will be the third year of our prayerful journey upstream to walk, 
ride, run, and paddle as we continue the work to bring our salmon home,” 
according to the Tribe. “We just got back from Aotearoa (New Zealand) 
from releasing our salmon fingerlings into the streams there and we are 
excited to return to Aotearoa this summer to work on collecting DNA 
samples from the Chinook returning home to spawn and move forward with 
our historical restoration project! We are all in this together. The 
journey continues until our salmon are restored and our sacred sites are 
protected!”

For more information about the Run4Salmon, go to: 
http://www.run4salmon.org <http://www.run4salmon.org/>

For more information about the Delta Tunnels Lawsuit, go to: 
www.counterpunch.org/… 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/22/winnemem-wintu-fishing-groups-sue-to-block-ecosystem-killing-delta-tunnels/>

For more information about the lawsuit against Mt. Shasta City, contact:

Geneva Omann, Secretary, Board of Directors
We Advocate Thorough Environmental Review,
530-918-8805, mountshastawater at gmail.com <mailto:mountshastawater at gmail.com>

Mark Miyoshi, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer
Luisa Navejas, Mt. Shasta District Representative and Water Advisor
WInnemem Wintu Tribe
530-926-4408

/*Dan Bacher* is an environmental journalist in Sacramento. He can be 
reached at: Dan Bacher danielbacher at fishsniffer.com./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20180508/5b3e41d7/attachment.htm>