A long list of cutbacks to government programs will directly and negatively affect the people of Siskiyou County.  That list include slashes to Medicaid, National Weather Service/NOAA, Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), Dept. of Education, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Endangered Species Act, Affordable Care Act payments to doctors and hospitals, and support for education programs that address the nursing shortage.  Cutbacks are touted to clean up "waste fraud, and abuse", but regardless of the truth or falsity of that, the question remains:  where does the saved money go?  One well-known place is toward tax cuts largely benefitting the rich and superrich.  But much of those "savings" are also being applied to promote military action, including in places that pose no military threat to the US, like Venezuela.  The US has already begun the attacks with a series of illegal extrajudicial killings of people (now more than 80) on fishing boats, claiming without any public evidence that they are drug-carriers.

A new attack on CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) is in the works. The California Chamber of Commerce announced it had filed paperwork to place a measure on next November’s statewide ballot that would overhaul the law. If passed, this measure would impose a 365-day limit on environmental reviews for a wide range of projects. It would also require courts to rule within 270 days of the filing of CEQA lawsuits challenging those projects. The accelerated timelines created by this measure would strain an already overloaded court system, as well as local governments, and could also result in less rigorous environmental review for some potentially environmentally harmful projects.

Please join your friends, neighbors, and W.A.T.E.R. for a screening of the award-winning documentary, “Plastic People, the Hidden Crisis of Microplastics,” at the Mt. Shasta Library, October 20, 2025 at 7 pm.

Work is proceeding on the South Fork Sacramento (SFS) project, with tree thinning along W. A. Barr Road above the second bridge. Unfortunately, this is in mapped Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) territory and may have a deleterious effect on the resident pair. This species is currently listed as threatened, but is a candidate for listing as endangered, as its population is in steep decline. Overall, NSO territory is extremely fragmented, and it is well understood that logging in their territories may likely cause them to leave, while also opening the forest to their Barred Owl competitors. This action violates the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Recovery Plan for the NSO. A court case seeking to protect the NSO and their territories in the SFS project is currently being adjudicated.

W.A.T.E.R. submitted a comment to the Forest Service, purportedly about proposed recreational facilities in the SFS project, which also discussed this issue.

The Impulse for Authoritarian Government

We have just passed the two hundred and forty-ninth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from the feudal yoke of the English realm, and one man’s rule over all of his subjects.  We are now backsliding from the admittedly imperfect democracy this country had attained after much struggle and bloodshed.  Reactionary forces are currently attempting to return this country to the political state when only rich, white men could move the levers of power, excluding all other citizens from having a say in decisions affecting them, as in the early days of our Republic.

At issue, among many, are attempts to “streamline” the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

May newsletter - Ukraine and WCWC celebration