Legislative Hearing to Discuss South Coast MLPA Initiative

Legislative Hearing to Discuss South Coast MLPA Initiative

by Dan Bacher

Fishermen, environmentalists, Tribal members and the public will have to chance to speak to the Legislature about their concerns regarding the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative on the South Coast during a special hearing at the State Capitol in Sacramento in Room 4202 on Thursday, February 17 from 10 a.m. to noon.

Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro (D-Arcata), the chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, said the hearing will focus exclusively on the South Coast Study Region.

“This is an opportunity for everyone who has an interest in the Marine Life Protection Act on the South Coast to talk to the Legislature,” Chesbro said. “The Joint Fisheries Committee will be meeting its responsibility to provide oversight of the Marine Life Protection Act.”

The hearing will start with brief presentations by staff of the MLPA Initiative and the California Department of Fish and Game. Public testimony will follow.

The hearing follows by a day the Committee’s 38th Annual Fisheries Forum, scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 16, at the State Capitol, also in Room 4202.

The Feb. 16 forum will include an update and public comment on the MLPA statewide.

The Feb. 16 forum and Feb. 17 hearing follow a Jan. 21 hearing the Committee held in Eureka on the MLPA’s North Coast Study Area.

For more information, call Tom Weseloh, Legislative Fisheries Committee consultant, (707) 445-7014, Andrew Bird, Chesbro communications director, (916) 319-2001.

The Marine Life Protection Act was a law signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999 to protect California’s marine life and habitats, marine ecosystems and marine natural heritage. The program is divided into five study areas. The South Coast Study Area starts at Point Conception in Santa Barbara County and stretches south to the border with Mexico.

MLPA critics point out that the MLPA Initiative under Schwarzenegger took water pollution, oil spills and drilling, habitat destruction, corporate aquaculture, military testing, coastal development, wave energy projects and all other human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering off the table in its strange concept of marine protection.

Critics have also charged the MLPA Initiative, funded privately by the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, with the violation of numerous state, federal and international laws. These include the Bagley-Keene Public Meetings Act, the California Public Records Act, the California Administrative Procedure Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

While MLPA advocates claim the initiative is based on "science," the process, has completely excluded Tribal scientists from the Science Advisory Teams that oversee the MLPA (blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/02/07/3020).

Conflicts of interests by MLPA officials have abounded in all five study regions. The MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces that directed the process included an oil industry lobbyist, marina developer, real estate executive and other corporate operatives with numerous conflicts of interest. In fact, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the South Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF)!

However, the violations of law and corruption that underlie the MLPA process are finally being exposed. George Osborn, spokesman for the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), presented a 25 page document documenting illegal private, non-public meetings of Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative officials to the California Fish and Game Commission during its meeting on February 2 in Sacramento.

The PSO, a coalition of national and regional fishing organizations including the Coastside Fishing Club and United Anglers of Southern California, filed suit in San Diego Superior Court in late January, seeking to overturn South Coast and North Central Coast MLPA closures, alleging violations of the State Administrative Procedure Act.

During his brief public testimony, Osborn exposed the corruption and violations of law by the MLPA's Blue Ribbon Task Force (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA).

"After reviewing the documents turned over to us, which previously the BRTF had improperly withheld from the public, we now have evidence, indicating that the public meetings of the BRTF have been an elaborately staged Kabuki performance, choreographed and rehearsed down to the last detail, even to the crafting of motions, in scheduled private meetings held before the so-called public meetings of the BRTF," said Osborn. "Clearly, this has not been the most open and transparent process, as it has so often been described.

In the South Coast MLPA hearing, Osborn will be presenting the same 25 page set of documents that he distributed to the Commission. "We're pleased to have the hearing and we applaud the Chairman for calling it," said Osborn.

To see the entire set of BRTF private meeting documents, go to the San Diego Freedivers website: http://www.sandiegofreedivers.com/MLPABRTFofflinemeetingdocumentation.pdf