SURPRISE!!! "No Surprises" Is Back !!!
(Update Sept 20: Bill failed to get a vote because it didn't have a hearing. It will be skulking around until January when they may try to pass it quietly. Please tell your friends!)
Sept 11, 2001
Our magnificent Condors, Sea Otters, Orchids, Wolverines and Marbled Murrelets need your immediate help!
URGENT: The California Legislature is about to ram through a last-minute bill to protect developers whose profits are threatened by endangered species.
This bill has had NO public review, and will not even have a hearing in the Natural Resources Committee. Instead, it will be decided THIS WEEK by the pro-business Water,Parks and Wildlife Committee, which is stacked with radical agricultural and development sympathizers.
IT IS UP TO US TO STOP THIS TRAVESTY!
GRASSROOTS OPPOSITION AND PUBLIC OUTRAGE IS THE ONLY THING THAT STANDS BETWEEN THE ESA AND SPECIES EXTINCTION!
SB 107 would be the nation's first "No Surprises" law legalizing the developers' dream of "capping" the amount of mitigation required for projects which destroy endangered species and their habitat, even if species continue to spiral toward extinction!
Under SB 107, developers will be exempt from mitigation even if new endangered species get listed, as long as they participate in an NCCP plan, which is basically a way to legally side-step the Endangered Species protection.
Governor Davis apparently still doesn't have enough campaign money so he's trying to help his developer friends with an early Christmas present. Davis got his henchmen (and women) at the Department of Fish and Game to push this bill giving developers -
a License To Kill Imperiled species.
Can you hear developers drooling to do this in other states?
So lets give Gov. Davis his own "No Surprises" Party.
DO WHAT: California's Sea Otters, Orchids, Pelicans, Sequoia Redwoods and Condors are respectfully requesting that you Please call your California AssemblyPerson TODAY and say -
* Please Do all you can to Stop Bill SB-107 - the "No Suprises" bill.
* Please VOTE AGAINST GIVING SB-107 A RULE WAIVER.
Then write them a follow up fax and include a "Thank you."
Yes, it is cheaper to call your legislator's local office, but this is hell week in Sacramento and your message may never get there in time. The Bill Waiver may be heard Monday! Please call your local Assembly office (in the Pacific Bell Phone Book under "California; Assembly") and ask for their Sacramento phone number.
Lastly, please consider emailing this to a friend.
Thank you sincerely,
David Dilworth, 831/624-6500; wceln(at)juno.com
(Sunday Sept 9, 2001 - 5:30pm)
* Even though the Bill's final language has not been made public, Sierra Club is almost certain to oppose any "No Suprises" bill as their 1997 policy on Endangered species requires.
* * * Why the heck should you believe David Dilworth?
As an professional Environmental Science and Law Consultant from Carmel California, David Dilworth has helped dozens of environmental groups win more than four hundred environmental victories since 1992 (107 in 2000 alone) including protecting thousands of acres of wild lands, and creating water conservation and noise regulation laws.
He has helped stop approval of the $300 million salmon-migration-killing Carmel Valley Dam, numerous subdivisions, shopping centers and golf courses on special wildlife habitat, and thwarted Cal-Trans bulldozers straining at their leash to pave a $120 million dollar Hatton Canyon Freeway though an endangered forest. He has helped stop the federal registration of a pesticide deadly to birds and was instrumental in killing a bill to weaken California's Endangered Species Act in the mid 1990s. He is a former board member of Save America's Forests and one of the 5 founders of the John Muir Sierrans.
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