Environmental Groups File Suit to Overturn New Wilson Policy

Charging that Gov. Pete Wilson is trying to skirt one of California’s major conservation laws, environmentalists filed suit Tuesday seeking to overturn a new policy that exempts emergency activities such as flood prevention and disaster recovery from the state Endangered Species Act.

The 13 environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and National Audubon Society, charge that the Wilson Administration is using the exemption as a broad license to suspend the law without considering the impact on California’s rare animals and plants.

Under the new Wilson policy, construction or other activity can harm an endangered species if the work prevents or repairs damage immediately prior to, during or after a flood, fire, earthquake, riot or other emergency. The usual safeguards required by the California Department of Fish and Game are suspended, which means advance approval and steps to mitigate the environmental damage are not needed.

The Wilson Administration adopted the policy in March after severe flooding along the Pajaro River near Monterey drove people from their homes and destroyed crops. There were complaints that state wildlife officials had blocked levee repairs that might have prevented the damage. Even though no endangered species were involved, the furor captured Wilson’s attention.

Fish and Game officials called the allegations in the lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in San Francisco, unjustified and said the fears of environmentalists were overblown.

Charles Raysbrook, the agency’s acting chief deputy director, said the policy is “a sound, practical way to address the threat and reality of natural disasters. When life and property are placed in jeopardy, government has a fundamental responsibility to minimize those risks to the greatest extent possible.”

“This isn’t something you can use 10 months before an emergency or 10 months afterward,” said Fish and Game spokesman Jeff Weir. “We retain all the authority to go after people who violate the intent and the spirit of the Endangered Species Act.”

Although the emergency provision has reportedly not been used yet by any projects that harmed a species, attorneys for the environmental groups contend that the five-year waiver is too broad and could be abused. They say the Endangered Species Act is flexible enough to help in emergency conditions without a blanket exemption.

“Gov. Wilson’s waiver is another piece of an orchestrated assault on our nation’s environmental laws,” said Victor Sher, president of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

Matt Austin of the California Assn. of Professional Scientists, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the waiver “defies science” and could push some wildlife to extinction.

The exemption applies only to the state Endangered Species Act, not the similar federal law, so it has the most potential effect on about three dozen California species, mostly birds and mammals, that are protected by the state and not the federal government. Species listed as endangered under the national law still receive federal protection during emergencies.

The lawsuit alleges that Wilson’s waiver violates several state laws by extending the policy for years beyond any state of emergency, and that the Administration should have held a hearing and conducted an environmental impact study.