“People don’t know where the Sierra is.” ~ Steve Teshara, owner of Sustainable Community Advocates
California Assemblyman Brian Dahle, R-Bieber, has been bringing fellow legislators to the Sierra since taking office in 2013. From visiting Mt. Shasta to Lake Tahoe, the lawmakers — some of whom have never been north of Sacramento — have been getting a taste of what the region has to offer, as well as some of its issues. This past summer he brought eight of the 12 members of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus — all Democrats representing urban areas — to Tahoe. The goal of these visits is to educate his peers on his district, which includes nine counties in the Sierra Nevada and is the largest legislative district in the state. The payoff, he hopes, is to bring more resources and money to the region, which has been overlooked by legislation.
“I want to educate and work with legislators across the aisle. It’s slow, but it’s working,” said Dahle, who has already brought 48 legislators to the Sierra. “Once you get them on the ground, they understand. In another five years we will see some major changes.”
And the region is counting on major changes. While the Sierra makes up a quarter of California geographically, provides the state with more than 60 percent of its developed water supply, and hosts more than 50 million recreation visit days each year, it garners only 1 percent of state funding for natural resources. It also suffers from increasing catastrophic forest fires, declining healthy watersheds, and economic disparity, amongst others. Part of the problem, region leaders say, is how outsiders view the Sierra — a beautiful playground for urban areas — and not as a critical natural resource for the rest of the state.
“The real beneficiaries are the people that are out of the region. There are so many values we provide that are taken for granted,” said Sierra Nevada Conservancy Executive Director Jim Branham. “The Sierra Nevada has been a reliable source [of water] for the Bay Area for a while.”
The idea of resource extraction from the Sierra Nevada is nothing new: Gold miners in the 1850s extracted gold from the region but left mercury in its waters, loggers chopped down forests to provide for the rest of the state, and ice blocks from Boca and Truckee were harvested and shipped to San Francisco. Now, natural resource management of our forests and watersheds are the primary focus, as fires are damaging precious water resources. But many of the region’s issues are overlooked since it is home to some of the most beautiful areas in the country — Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Sequoia National Park, and Kings Canyon, to name a few.
“It is not as obvious to people that there are problems we have to address. We all want to put a smiley face on things; we have done that too much in the past,” Branham said. “We have to be honest about the problems we have because it could be disastrous.”
And many of the problems the region faces revolve around water — drought, declining snowpack, poisoned waterways, and fires damaging watersheds. If the rest of the state does not recognize these issues, then that could spell trouble for the Sierra Nevada.
“So much of the state’s water comes from the Sierra Nevada and people just don’t know that.” ~ Jonathan Kusel, executive director of the
Sierra Institute for Community and Environment
Water is the top resource exported from the Sierra Nevada, according to the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project Report. The region is the primary source of water for the California State Water Project, which delivers water to two-thirds of the state’s population, and stores and distributes to 29 urban and agricultural water suppliers in Northern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley, the Central Coast, and Southern California. The project, which is maintained and operated by the California Department of Water Resources, includes 34 storage facilities, reservoirs, and lakes; 20 pumping plants; four pumping-generating plants; five hydroelectric power plants; and approximately 701 miles of open canals and pipelines. Approximately 25 million Californians and about 750,000 acres of farmland receive water from the State Water Project.
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“Roughly six of every 10 gallons of fresh water used in California come from the Sierra Nevada. Without its cloud-stopping, moisture-wringing peaks, the most productive farmland in America — the Central Valley — would be desert. Without the Sierra, much of California would die of thirst,” wrote reporter Tom Knudson in a 1992 Sacramento Bee five-part series, The Sierra in Peril, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
However, all but one of the Sierra’s 24 major watersheds are impaired, according to Sierra Nevada Alliance’s report, Troubled Waters of the Sierra. Of those watersheds, 11 contain at least one river, stream, or lake that is polluted with metals, nitrogen, phosphorous, mercury, sedimentation/siltation, salinity, chlorides, flow or habitat alterations, or pathogens. Seventy nine percent of the rivers in the region have had stretches periodically closed or public health warnings issued for fishing, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, and 75 percent have had stretches at one time listed as impacted for drinking. Additionally, fires impact the water supply since they are a major contributor to sediment that reduces storage capacity and the amount of water available for urban and agricultural users around the state, according to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.
The Sierra Fund is also working to educate legislators and individuals about the impact mining has had on the region’s watersheds, which has left mercury in the water. While other regions have been recognized for mercury in their waters, the Sierra has yet to receive the same sort of attention by environmental groups and others. But Kerry Morse, Sierra Fund’s program director, says mercury is in the sediment and headwaters in the Sierra, which causes increased levels of mercury in fish. She said no scientific research has been done in mercury levels and fish in the Sierra, so people think it is OK to eat the fish here.
“It is invisible because forests have grown back up and communities have shrunk. People don’t see it anymore,” Morse said of the Sierra’s mercury problem. “It is hard to acknowledge another issue when there are already tons of issues in the state.”
It is precisely this lack of acknowledgment and awareness of issues in the region that leaders point to when discussing why the Sierra does not receive as much funding as other parts of the state. Take water bonds recently approved by state voters. Of the $7 billion appropriated for water projects statewide, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy received $25 million and the California Tahoe Conservancy $15 million, while the California State Coastal Conservancy received hundreds of millions of dollars.
“You can see how regions are valued based on the water bonds. We can conclude that our region did not do well,” Branham said. “It is a wakeup call that our message isn’t resonating with lawmakers.”
While the lack of funding for water is just one of example of how the Sierra Nevada is being shortchanged by state funding, there are other examples that region leaders point to — greenhouse gas reduction funding, transportation, housing, education, and health, to name a few.
“If you look at the Sierra Nevada up and down the region, we don’t get our fair share,” said Steve Frisch, president of the Sierra Business Council.
And while those interviewed cited several reasons for the lack of acknowledgment from the state, one issue was brought up again and again — the population of the Sierra and the fact that it is a rural region in an urbanized state.
“The fact that we are a rural area hurts us.” ~ Patrick Wright, executive director of the California Tahoe Conservancy
In a state with a population of 38.8 million that is largely clustered in cities south of Sacramento, it is difficult for a region of 1.02 million — spread out over 22 counties and 25 million acres — to get noticed by lawmakers who are fixated on issues in their own communities. With such a sparsely populated region dominated by Republicans, it can be hard to get attention from Democrats in urban areas.
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“Funding sources are skewed to urban areas,” said Patrick Wright, executive director of the California Tahoe Conservancy. “It is very difficult to compete in statewide pools.”
How dollars are allocated are based on formulas determined by state agencies. And many of those funds go to disadvantaged communities. Those interviewed say the models to determine impoverished communities in the state are based on factors that affect urban areas. Assemblyman Dahle contends that rural areas just “don’t fit in the formulas,” so the area misses out on much needed funds.
“They developed a methodology which excludes rural areas,” said Jonathan Kusel, executive director of the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment. “There isn’t an interest in including rural areas. Period.”
Looking at the CalEnviroScreen, which set out to determine the most disadvantaged communities in the state two years ago to prioritize funding, it shows that the majority of impoverished communities are in the San Joaquin Valley and in Southern California, with none in the Sierra. Region advocates say this is just not accurate.
“The formula for disadvantaged communities are not set up to help us,” Dahle said.
The screening factors for CalEnviroScreen were based on a set of 19 pollution indicators, including ozone levels, drinking water contamination, toxic releases, and traffic congestion. But the factors looked at are issues that affect urban areas. Population also plays a factor. One indicator looked at how many low-birth-weight babies were born in certain zip codes. However, there is not a single neonatal intensive care unit in the Sierra Nevada region, so low-birth-weight babies born to mothers who live in the region but may be born outside of the area are not counted as Sierra-born babies although they live here. This is just one disparity, among many. Kusel says that CalEnviroScreen “is a real problem” as it is not peer reviewed and is politically-based.
“The scale of measurement doesn’t work for rural regions,” Frisch said. “We have to be more organized, more persistent, and more demanding.”
Since the region is so large geographically and sparsely populated, Frisch and others say part of the solution to getting recognized is to start acting as a region rather than as microcosms within the region. And the key? Collaboration.
“At the end of the day, if you don’t have someone fighting for you, you lose.” ~ Steve Frisch, president of Sierra Business Council
To generate more funding for the area, a stronger political voice in Sacramento is needed, say those interviewed for this story. And while sections of the region may have issues unique to them, it is imperative that the Sierra Nevada work as a whole and identify common interests, leaders say. Some Sierra-wide commonalities include water, natural resources, timber, transportation, and the use of the region as a recreational destination.
“You have to have a political voice before funding will flow,” said Steve Teshara, owner and principle of Sustainable Community Advocates, which organizes initiatives and regional collaboration. Teshara, who is also chair of the Tahoe Transportation District Board, has been active in policy, planning, and legislative advocacy in the Lake Tahoe region for more than 30 years.
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One example of where collaboration has worked is the Trans-Sierra Transportation Coalition, which is comprised of six counties in California — Alpine, Amador, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada, and Sierra — and five in Nevada — Carson, Douglas, Lyon, Storey, and Washoe. The coalition worked to secure federal transportation funding for the area, culminating in funds from the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, which President Obama signed into law Dec. 4, 2015. This was considered a victory for the area, as federal funding — just like state funding — is heavily based on population numbers, so Lake Tahoe’s rural classification left it at a disadvantage for federal support. However, after 10 years of working to change the rules, the bill took into account not only population, but visitor statistics as well.
“This changes the metrics for us,” Carl Hasty, district manager of the Tahoe Transportation District, said in a press release. “The heavy urban use of the Basin did not align with limited transportation funding so critical to the protection and vitality of Lake Tahoe.”
Another recent victory was $8 million secured for the Truckee Railyard Project for affordable housing through the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reeducation Fund. However, out of $130 million allocated to housing projects, the Truckee project was the only rural housing project given money, and the only one north of Sacramento. So while the region is starting to see some benefit, it is not without hard work from leaders within the region.
“We wouldn’t have gotten that if we didn’t fight,” Frisch said of the affordable housing money. “People are putting money where it is demanded. We have not demanded it.”
While the Sierra continues to make itself heard and its issues important to lawmakers, those in charge are hopeful that the region can continue to work together to get the funding and resources that it’s finally due.
“Hopefully we will do better as a region to advocate and communicate as a region,” Branham said. “It will make it easier for us to create a clear message moving forward.”
