Friends of the Shasta River

We monitor for harmful projects throughout the Shasta and Scott watersheds and are able to speak the inconvenient truths about the current nature of state and federal funding of "restoration" projects. We are not beholden to funding that would hinder our ability to present factual rebuttals to bad projects or get funding denied.

There has been a concerning shift to support and fund bad projects, with known harmful effects, by big budget conservation groups just to keep their high overhead operations solvent. We operate at true grass roots level and would never let any financial obligations cloud our judgement or diminish our core mission to recover the ecosystems of the Shasta and Scott rivers.

Our analyses of irrigation infrastructure projects continues to show how projects can be portrayed as beneficial by dishonest project proponents. With many of these projects, the devil is in the details. Our experience allows us to dive deeply into project details and offer substantive comments that would allow project to mitigate or eliminate harmful effects.

We have continued to educate state agencies about our findings and this has led to several agencies taking steps to prevent funding harmful irrigation infrastructure projects under the guise of "flow enhancement" or "restoration".

Our work has supported state level rule-making processes to develop regulations to mandate in-stream flows on the Shasta and Scott rivers. Our victory in a federal civil Endangered Species Act lawsuit is forcing the federal agencies tasked with protecting endangered coho to actually do their job and make agricultural users share the river with all other users including the endangered Coho salmon! It also forces federal agencies to consider what the Safe Harbor Program was designed to do. This means the National Marine Fisheries Service must complete an EIS and a new Biologic Opinion associated with incidental takes permits. Importantly, the public, state and federal agencies, and tribes will get another chance to submit comments about the harmful irrigation infrastructure projects that used to be considered "safe harbor" projects.

We remain engaged in groundwater issues in the Shasta and Scott basins. Under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), these basins are supposed to become "sustainable" and we are continuing to push for a reduction in groundwater use based on scientific information. Groundwater use should be based on real-life conditions with adaptive management of the resource that can react to changing conditions in order to preserve surface water flows. 

We have remained concerned about the money spent in both watersheds that has not provided the promised results. Taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars and fish remain very close to a complete collapse. 

It is not enough to simply look busy throwing money around and hoping that no additional harms are created by upgrading massive irrigation infrastructure. Taking more water during any time of the year can harm the aquatic ecosystem. There are currently not equitable considerations being made when projects are developed and funded and this risks that we continue losing ground on recovery. Project proponents have become dishonest about the benefit of infrastructure projects. Massive overspending and over-promising has left a number of high budget projects unraveling and unable to provide the benefit that the promised. Sometimes, bad projects just need to be thrown out entirely and we are the voice saying enough is enough! 

We do not believe that taxpayers should be on the hook for these boondoggles and in some cases, the money should be returned!

We advocate for the equitable use of water in the Shasta and Scott Rivers. We support agricultural uses of water, but also urge reasonable approaches that assure that some cold, clean water is left in the river so that fish have a chance to recover from centuries of over use to grow cattle and their feed. We support all beneficial uses and that includes the public trust and the rights of tribal nations to have access to clean water and fish.

With your donation, we promise to always fight for the Shasta and Scott rivers!