Huge scam in California: Fake "wetland restorations" may have stolen millions

Environmentalists and leftist judges have forced hundred of millions of dollars to be spent to save a vanishing fish called the delta smelt.  Or at least that was what they said they were gonna do.

Much of this money was spent on so-called wetland restoration projects.  But new evidence reveals that many of these alleged projects did nothing: projects were reported as "completed" when in fact nothing was done.

This was discovered after the EPA and the state of California sued the owner of a 50-acre island in Suisun Bay (or "marsh," depending on your politics).  

Point Buckler Island was home to a duck-hunting club.  The almost-flat island was often flooded by extreme tides, so previous owners had built a levee to prevent that. By 2014 the old levee was dilapidated, so the new owner of the island (John Sweeney) repaired it.

That repair triggered a huge legal shitstorm from multiple gruberment agencies—including the California Water Board, the EPA and DOJ, which eventually fined Sweeney $39 million for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act.

In preparing his defense, Sweeney discovered that "official databases"--funded by the corrupt EPA--claimed his island as a “completed tidal restoration project."  But in his frequent trips to the island Sweeney had never seen any evidence of "restoration work" on the island.  As you might guess, that piqued his curiosity.

Then the light went on: If an "official database" claimed his island as a "completed tidal restoration project," that project would have been funded by grants.  If nothing was actually done, where did that grant money actually *go*?

More significantly, if the EPA database was falsely claiming this for his island, how many other projects claiming to have “restored” wetlands were similarly faked?

A key to this...um..."discrepancy" is an EPA-funded database called EcoAtlas, operated by the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) and "Calfed."

Here we see problem #1: when the EPA funds *anything*, look for waste and fraud because of the incestuous relationship between the leftist bureaucrats running that agency and the people they give hundreds of millions of dollars to every year.

EcoAtlas was run by a guy named Stuart Siegel.  In 2004, under Siegel's direction, projects like Point Buckler Island and Chipps Island—both privately owned by Sweeney—appeared in that database as "finished wetland restorations," shown as
“construction completed.”

But emails produced thru the legal "discovery process" revealed what Sweeney already knew: that those entries were pure fiction.  The source of the "data" was supposed to be permits required by the Clean Water Act.  But no such documents have been found.

Probably just a clerical error, eh?  But it happened repeatedly.

Shocked, Sweeney confronted the "Estuary Institute" with proof that his land was shown as "completed wetlands restoration" when in fact nothing had been done.

Under pressure of the "discovery process"--where false statements are perjury--the Institute admitted that no source documents existed for more than 1,000 acres, including Point Buckler and Chipps Island.

Since there has clearly been no work done on at least Sweeney's two small islands, the question is why would anyone fake that?  To answer that we need to look at the history of the "delta smelt."

The amount of utter horseshit published about that two-inch fish is astonishing.

Wiki (yeah, I know, horseshit) wails about its decline with this masterpiece:
>>Today large areas of historic delta smelt habitat have become unsuitable for some life stages of it, *though key environmental characteristics (temperature, salinity, water depth) of these areas have not changed.*>>

Wait...if the "key environmental characteristics" haven't changed, what makes the EPA and eco-nuts (redundancy alert) think humans had anything to do with the smelt's declining numbers, eh?

Don't bother asking, cuz in the "minds" of leftists ANY change in animal abundances was caused by humans.  Certainly many are, but many aren't.

Here's Wiki again:
>>Delta smelt disappeared from the southern portion of their historic habitat in the late 1970s, which coincides with substantial increases in the amounts of water exported from the delta.  Water export operations likely have a great effect on the distribution, abundance, and genetic diversity of delta smelt.>>

"Water export operations," y'say? And yet earlier in the Wiki piece the leftists claimed there hadn't been any changes to "temperature, salinity or water depth."  Hmmm...  

Once Sweeney publicized the fake database entries, the California Water Board, EPA and DOJ hit back hard.  In 2016 they fined him $39 million for repairing the levee on his wholly-owned island--*and* demanded a *fish restoration plan* to offset his alleged “violations.”

Sweeney says the EPA assessed the huge $39 million fine because bureaucrats and corrupt state agencies wanted to force him to settle the case to keep it from going to trial, to cover up the false claims that thousands of acres of "wetlands" had been "restored"--at a cost of millions--when in fact no restoration may have been done.  

Despite the eco's being given--and apparently spending--hundreds of millions of dollars, the delta smelt has essentially disappeared from Suisun bay.  So what was all that money spent on?

In 2021, after years of legal battles, a decision by yet another appeals court stole Sweeney's islands and left him bankrupt.
Now the final chapter of Point Buckler’s saga may be unfolding on the courthouse steps in Fairfield, California, as a court has ordered the island sold at foreclosure, with the proceeds to be paid toward the massive fine.

Yesterday (January 22, 2025) was the day ordered by the court for the sale of the island.

Sweeney correctly calls the sale a “government land grab.”

So what caused the smelt to vanish? Since the key metrics of the water in the bay haven't changed, that doesn't seem to be the cause.  So what was?  No one knows.  But one thing the enviros are *absolutely sure of* is that whatever it was, it was caused by human activity.  Had to be, right?

See, one of the core beliefs of the enviros is that "nature never changes."  Before humans arrived, the planet never changed.

Oh yeah, you bet.

Source.

https://dailymuck.com/fake-restorations-killed-californias-delta-smelt/