Don't scapegoat valley's farmers

Napa Valley Register (www.napanews.com) Friday, September 13, 2002

By Stuart Smith

We should all be concerned that the board of supervisors is choosing "streamside setbacks" as the first item that they deal with as they begin their review of the Conservation Ordinance. This was the most controversial of all the subjects studied by the Watershed Task Force, and after two years of heated debate, the Watershed Task Force could not reach a consensus.
As a Task Force member, it has always been my opinion that streamside setbacks should be one of the last issues dealt with by our county leaders because it is, as the WTF members quickly discovered, the most difficult and contentious. Why? Because it involves the greatest of expenses -- the confiscation of private property.

I've estimated that this proposed ordinance will cost Napa Valley farmers well over $100 million in lost property value, and will likely not lead to the restoration of the native fisheries in the Napa River.
We should all be proud that the Napa River is cleaner and healthier today than it was 30 years ago, and realize that successful long-term restoration of the Napa River fisheries should include all citizens of Napa County -- not just Napa farmers. While the real cause of the Napa River fisheries' (and all other West Cost rivers') decline may be difficult if not impossible to pinpoint, restoration may be equally difficult/impossible because there may be just too many of us already living in this Valley.
Since 1970 Napa County's population has increased by 66 percent to 128,000. Water that once ran into the Napa River and supported and nourished our fish population is now being impounded behind dams so that we may use that water for our cities, our homes and our businesses.
Additionally, we all need to realize that every existing roof, driveway, sidewalk, road to our home or our place of work -- even that parking lot -- creates what is called an "impermeable surface" that sheets rainwater immediately to the gutter and then into the storm drain which then dumps directly into our creeks and rivers. Where once the water slowly moved through the soil and into the river, it now flashes off immediately from our communities and creates high water levels that scour the beds, or redds as they called, and impairs the ability of the native fish to successfully spawn.
How many years ago was your home, apartment or place of work an agricultural field that absorbed all the rain as it fell to earth?

And if these two issues were not enough to deal with, what do we do about the warm water exotic fish species such as smallmouth and largemouth bass and striped sea bass which have invaded our river systems and prey on the juvenile salmonids? These exotic fish species have become permanent residents, not all that dissimilar to us, and it is a fact that we must recognize and deal with when we discuss restoration of the Napa River fisheries.

In case you're thinking that as a Napa farmer I'm trying to deflect my own responsibility in this issue, let me remind you that for the past 10 years people have pointed at us, and with a shrill voice, claimed that we, as Napa farmers, were the cause of the fish decline because we were filling the Napa River with sediment. Recently, an independent, third-party scientific investigation, funded and managed by both Federal and State agencies, issued the Draft Report of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) study, which states, in part, "Therefore, turbidity probably did not pose a significant limitation to feeding by steelhead during the period studied S< This suggests that there is not a permanently elevated chronic source of sediment causing deleterious turbidity levels."
It seems to me there are few simple solutions when the problem has been 150 years in the making. Until all of us recognize our part in creating this problem and are willing to do our share of the restoration as an entire community, we should not single out farmers as the scapegoats and make them pay for something that we are all responsible for creating. So as Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."