Photo: The Run4Salmon prayer journey by the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, one of the complainants in the civil rights complaint against the State Water Resources Control Board, concluded on Aug. 5 with this closing ceremony at Muir Beach. Photo by Dan Bacher.
Washington, D.C. — On August 8, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a decision accepting for investigation a historic civil rights complaint against the State Water Resources Control Board filed by a coalition of Tribes and environmental justice organizations.
The administrative complaint, filed against the Water Board on December 16, 2022, alleges discriminatory mismanagement of water quality in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed.
“The complaint alleges that the Board discriminated on the basis of race, color and national origin, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000(d) et seq., and EPA’s nondiscrimination regulation, at 40 C.F.R. Part 7,” wrote Anhthu Hoang, Acting Director, Office of External Civil Rights Compliance.
“Specifically, the complaint alleges that the Board’s failure to update Bay-Delta water quality standards discriminates against members of Native Tribes and Black, Asian and Latino persons residing in and around the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed, particularly the South Stockton community. Furthermore, the complaint alleges that the Board has intentionally excluded local Native Tribes and Black, Asian and Latino residents from participation in the policymaking process associated with the Bay-Delta Plan,” Hoang wrote.
The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Little Manila Rising, Restore the Delta, and Save California Salmon, represented by the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, filed the complaint.
The complaint was accepted at a critical time for anglers, Tribes and environmental justice communities in the San Francisco Bay-Delta watershed. Recreational and commercial salmon fishing is closed on the ocean in California and most of Oregon this year, due to the collapse of fall-run Chinook salmon on the Sacramento and Klamath River watersheds, spurred by poor water and fishery management by the state and federal governments. Recreational salmon fishing is closed in the Sacramento and Klamath River watersheds and tribal fishing for salmon is severely restricted on the Sacramento and Klamath rivers.
The entire Bay Delta ecosystem is in an unprecedented state of crisis. The Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish species in the Delta, has become virtually extinct in the wild, while winter-run and spring-run Chinook salmon populations have declined dramatically. Thousands of fish, including hundreds of white sturgeon, perished in a […]
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