SACRAMENTO, the United States, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- U.S. federal environmental authorities have decided to investigate whether California's water agency discriminated against Native Americans and other people of color by failing to protect the water quality of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
A coalition of tribes and environmental justice groups in California filed a civil rights complaint to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) late last year against the California State Water Resources Control Board.
The groups accused the state water agency of discriminatory water management practices, which they said had led to the ecological decline of the Bay-Delta.
The EPA accepted the request for investigation, giving California's water board 30 days to respond, according to an EPA letter to the state dated Tuesday.
The EPA was expected to issue its findings within the next six months unless both sides agree to resolve the issue informally, according to the letter posted on the website of Restore the Delta, one of the groups that filed the complaint.
"Recreational users and fishermen who depend on the fish here are particularly affected by harmful algal blooms," said Artie Valencia, community organizer of Restore the Delta, in a statement on Wednesday.
"I see Stockton residents, mostly immigrants and people of color, fishing in Stockton waterways often for sustenance. For fishermen, the fish that once thrived in the Delta become fewer and fewer in number every year," said Valencia.
The groups said the agency "has intentionally excluded local Native Tribes and Black, Asian and Latino residents from participation in the policymaking process associated with the Bay-Delta Plan," according to the EPA letter.
They also charged the board with giving preferential treatment to large agricultural interests and said the delta's deterioration can be linked to the state's historical legacy of racism and oppression of Native people, according to the complaint.
The state water agency has allowed "waterways to descend into ecological crisis, with the resulting environmental burdens falling most heavily on Native tribes and other communities of color," the complaint said.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which flows into San Francisco Bay, is a major water source for much of California, supplying drinking water for almost 27 million people and feeding the state's hulking agriculture industry.
The complaint said California water agency could restore the estuary by releasing more water from the surrounding mountains into the area, but instead it "prevents more than half of that water from reaching the San Francisco Bay every year." ■
