Wall Street Journal takes up the rural lawyer shortage, sorta'

Shannon Najmabadi's story in this weekend's Wall Street Journal was headlined, "Courts Come to Order with Judges, Litigants--but No Lawyers."  The dateline is Pittsburg, Kansas, population 20,646, and here's the lede:  

A court day with no lawyers used to be rare for many Kansas judges, but Judge Lori Bolton Fleming now regularly presides over hearings similar to the divorce case she heard in late September.

The man showed up with no lawyer and no paperwork, when he was supposed to bring a completed divorce decree with him. Bolton Fleming pulled out the necessary form and began filling it out.

“What year were you married?” she asked.

Across the U.S., more people are forgoing lawyers in state civil courts. Some can’t afford an attorney, have had bad experiences with them or prefer to take advantage of advice and tools posted online. Unlike criminal defendants, who have a right to a public defender, people appearing in civil court for cases including housing, debt collection or protections from abuse have no such guarantee.

Najmabadi doesn't mention until the next paragraph that his partly--perhaps largely--a rural phenomenon: 

Some rural areas, such as the counties Bolton Fleming oversees, have an added challenge: Few or no lawyers practice nearby. Those who remain can be choosy; they might, for example, limit their acceptance of domestic cases that can be lengthy and emotionally involved.

Najmabadi quotes Judge Bolton Fleming, 

It's just supply and demand--they will take paying clients. 

This is, then, a story about both the market--but in particular the rural market.  It's a story about the rural lawyer shortage--but in disguise.  Nevertheless, the feature is worth a read in its entirety, for the deep dive into what's happening not just in Kansas--and not just in rural places--but more and more across the country as pro se litigants show up to court and judges must figure out how to mete out justice.  

A prior WSJ story about the rural lawyer shortage, this one by Erin Mulvaney, appeared a few months ago.  It discusses the use of paralegals to help alleviate problems associated with the rural lawyer shortage, with a focus on a new Minnesota proposal.  

Going beyond the CALL for rural foster youth

In previous posts, I have addressed the structural barriers to adeqquate rural foster care systems, singling out the shortcomings of generalized child welfare reforms for rural communities and acknowledging the value of previous governmental efforts at rural specific foster care reform. This post turns to the issue of what institutions can do today to prop up these ailing systems with rural children in mind?

An online seach fo current rural child welfare reforms first brought me to "the CALL," which stands for "Children of Arkansas Loved for a Lifetime."

In 2007, Arkansan churchgoers formed the CALL after recognizing the steep barriers to family foster placements, for both the state and potential foster parents. The CALL leverages the pulpit in 45 of Arkansas’s 75 counties to encourage domestic foster adoption, train foster-parents-to-be, and operate offices for county foster care needs. They act as an intermediary between the State and the foster families to break down the bureaucratic, informational, and resource barriers of the foster system.

Between 2007 and 2018, the CALL claims it trained “half of new foster families in [Arkansas] and that families it has trained cared for more than 10,000 children and provided permanent homes for 800.” By all accounts, this is an amazing effort assumed on behalf of the State and Arkansan foster youth.

But this begs the question: should a volunteer group have to shoulder this immense burden?

Moreover, are there reforms that can be established today to set rural child welfare on track? This concern has already been addressed on the blog, from a variety of angles, here, here, and here. 

The unfortunate reality is that most social work programs, including child welfare, continue to be situated in urban areas and social work training focuses on urban issues, which is a chief concern highlighted by social work scholars Joanne Riebschleger, Debra Norris, Barbara Pierce, Debora Pond, and Cristy Cummings in their 2015 article "Preparing Social Work Students for Rural Child Welfare Practice: Emerging Curriculum Competencies." 

Riebschleger et. al. pave a path for not only acquiring but retaining competent rural child welfare workers.

First, rural issues must be infused into the social work curriculum to bring awareness to the field, its needs, and its challenges. Riebschleger et. al shape rural-specific social work education around the “three R’s,” which entail (1) dealing with increased remoteness, (2) working with lower levels of resources, and (3) putting strong emphasis on relationships.

A great deal of rural child welfare work relies on personal knowledge of the community. Riebschleger et. al. describes lack of anonymity as a tool, through proper knowledge, for effective rural child welfare work: the rural social worker can “engage in informal networks, and they can sometimes make use of informal resources and relationship skills to create resources for clients and families.”

Feasible case plans--that provide rural parents opportunities to succeed--rely on the child welfare worker’s knowledge of both the parents and the community’s resources. It is the case worker’s awareness of and reliance on the community that allow them to be effective in rural settings.

In general, Riebschleger et. al. document competencies for rural child welfare workers that confront rural issues and enable the worker to provide effective and sustainable care in rural communities.

Nevertheless, real hurdles that remain. Riebschleger et. al.’s research found child welfare workers identified professional and geographic isolation, inadequate access to formal community services, traversing dual relationships, multiple job roles, and lack of personal anonymity as major barriers to rural child welfare work. Several of Riebschleger et. al.’s suggestions confront such issues and advise structuring child welfare work around them.

Several barriers to choosing rural child welfare work persist, even for competent child welfare workers. Often, a rural child welfare worker may be the only professional trained in trauma-informed practice (tailoring interactions with an individual in recognition of their trauma and avoiding re-traumatization). They end up being relied upon in other capacities and may need to train other community professionals in this practice.

One solution Riebschleger et. al. posed was for universities to create partnerships with rural organizations and recruit potential social workers from rural areas. Students from rural areas already have an investment in the rural lifestyle and an understanding of the rural social work issues.

Educational institutions should be taking these steps by providing more curricular and clinical opportunities that center around rural issues. Broadening efforts for adequate rural social service workers generally can begin to remedy the persistent lack of services with a stable and competent work force.

In my next post, I hope to identify particular reforms that legal actors, including attorneys, can initiate in the interest of rural child welfare.

California struggles to provide its rural residents with safe drinking water

Last week, a Los Angeles Times story detailed how rural California residents often consume contaminated drinking water, with 400 (or about 25%) of the state's water systems failing to provide safe drinking water to residents.

The article explained how California cannot provide clean water to residents in California's Central Valley. In particular, the article found Kern County's water systems do not function effectively. Almost 80% of the county's water supply (65 systems) have been categorized as failing for three years. 

Kern County is home to around 900,00 residents, of whom 18.5% live in poverty.  The county's economy is primarily based on agriculture and petroleum extraction industries and its median household income is $58,000 is significantly less than California's median household income of $86,000. 

The Central Valley, a vast agricultural region of California and ranks among the United State's most polluted areas, due to heavy vehicle traffic, diesel-burning locomotives, tractors and irrigation pumps, and wood-burning stoves and fireplaces. 

Despite its booming agricultural industry, Central Valley residents are among California's poorest. About 24% of the Valley's population lives below the poverty line. While suburbs like Elk Grove and cities like Fresno sprawl out of the region, the Central Valley's agricultural communities are classified as rural according to CivicWell, a Sacramento-based nonprofit. 

Overall, the region covers more than 20,000 square miles and is home to around 2 million people. For comparison, Los Angeles County covers 4,084 square miles and is home to almost 10 million residents.

According to the American Bar Association, water supplies in farming areas (like the Central Valley) often contain high nitrate levels because the nitrates seep into the groundwater from fertilizer and manure. 

Ingesting too much nitrate can affect how the blood moves oxygen through the bloodstream and can cause methemoglobinemia (also known as blue baby syndrome), which can result in serious injury or death. In adults, high nitrate exposure can potentially lead to an increased risk of cancers like gastric cancer, although there is yet to be a scientific consensus on causation. 

Despite these data, 85% of the communities with nitrate-contaminated drinking water have no treatment systems in place to remove the chemical.

Madison Condon of Boston University School of Law wrote a piece for the American Bar Association and further explained that rural residents are those most likely to face poor water quality and unsafe drinking water: 

All across rural America, small community water systems are failing to protect public health due to a perfect storm of forces. Poor regulation of agricultural waste and other pollutants, shrinking populations, and aging infrastructure all contribute to the increasing incidents of water quality violations dotting the rural landscape.

It is troubling that the Central Valley experiences a lack of clean and safe drinking water, especially because the water used produces 25% of the U.S.'s food and 40% of American fruits and nuts. The region is a major agricultural output not just for California, but for the entire county.  

Water contamination in farming and industrial communities is unfortunately typical. 

In 2017,  environmental lawyer Rob Billot reached a $631 million settlement with chemical corporation DuPont for releasing 7,100 sludge tons of perfluorooctanoic acid (also known as PFOAs or C-8) into a landfill in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The chemicals ended up in the town's waterways, leading to deleterious health effects in the Parkersburg community.  Many residents suffered cancers, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and ulcerative colitis–– all verified scientific effects from exposure to PFOA. A few years after the settlement, Focus Features made a film about the Billot's story called Dark Waters, starring actor and environmental activist Mark Ruffalo. 

Having access to reliable and safe drinking water is not merely a rural phenomenon, and happens in urban settings as well.   

In 2014, Flint, Michigan switched its water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River to save costs without the proper testing. Flint residents complained of a foul-smelling odor and suffered numerous health effects, but they were ignored for years. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission deemed the poor governmental response to the Flint crisis a “result of systemic racism.”

Having access to safe drinking water is essential for our health and wellbeing, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While EPA regulations require federal and state agencies to regulate public water systems, those regulations do not apply to privately owned wells. This can be a problem in rural communities like those in the Central Valley, where most private wells are the source of many landowners' water.

In a 2019 paper posted in Environmental Health, Schaider et al. studied the link between low-income communities and drinking water contamination. They found that: 

Low-income and minority communities often face disproportionately high pollutant exposures. [...] Small water supplies, particularly those that serve low-income and minority communities, may have poorer source water quality due to closer proximity to pollution sources.

Rural residents suffer higher rates of poverty than their urban counterparts. According to Circle of Blue, a nonprofit aimed to educate and inform about the problems plagued by climate change, found that many rural towns have neglected their drinking water systems for decades:

As some rural towns lose population and government funds shrink, some drinking water systems are one failure away from crisis.

With the lack of affordable housing and the rise in housing prices in the Bay Area and Southern California, the Central Valley's population is expected to increase by five million people by the year 2060. Lawmakers, politicians, and policymakers should ensure safe access to drinking water in rural communities, despite the region's low population density.

Regardless of the size of a population cluster in an area, where one's water comes from, and what a town's primary industry is should not impact safe and reliable access to drinking water. 

You read more about water contamination on the blog here and here. You can read more about California's Central Valley here and here.

Rural Disaster Legal Services Fellow sought

This notice about seeking to hire a rural legal fellow went out from Legal Services of Northern California recently: 

Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) announces its inaugural Rural Disaster Legal Services Fellowship - a limited and unique opportunity for a current third-year law student to launch their legal career by providing vital legal services, advocacy and education to the most vulnerable individuals impacted by natural disasters. The fellow will focus on legal services and advocacy that will build resilience and help impacted communities to recover and prepare for future events. The fellow will provide direct legal assistance to individuals impacted by disasters, coordinate with disaster services providers, attend specialized disaster law training, collaborate with leaders in the state and national disaster legal services network, prepare and present community legal education, conduct targeted efforts to reach the most vulnerable communities, and assist in legal response work to current or future disasters throughout LSNC’s service area. 

The fellow will be based in LSNC's Shasta office, located in Redding.  Here's a further description of the 

Under supervision of the Shasta Regional Office Managing Attorney, the fellow will participate in all aspects of advocacy and litigation including, but not limited to: client interviews, factual investigation, legal research, discovery, preparation of legal documents, negotiations, trials, and appellate work in both state and federal courts; appear at administrative hearings; provide legal advice to individual clients, and general legal information to eligible community groups as well as to the public in general. Engagement with the broader statewide and national disaster legal services community, including attendance at specialized training and conferences. Travel throughout LSNC’s service area, to areas impacted by or at risk for significant disaster events is required. Interaction with people who have experienced the impacts of disaster events, including trauma and loss, is a central function of the position.

Read more about the role of legal aid in responding to disasters here.  

The return of California's phantom lake: hubris and hostility as Tulare Lake floods the San Joaquin Valley

More than six months after the historic flooding that threatened the city of Corcoran and inundated farming communities in the lower San Joaquin Valley, Tulare Lake remains. Spurred on by massive precipitation during California’s atmospheric river last winter and unusually deep snowpacks high in the Sierras, Tulare Lake returned for the first time in decades.

Tulare Lake used to be the largest freshwater lake in the West. Fed by the Kaweah, Kern, Kings, and Tule rivers, it covered an area of 690 miles at its peak. As California’s Anglo-American settlers laid down roots in the Central Valley, agricultural use, drainage projects, and new dams emptied the lake. A complex series of levees, dams, and earthworks made the empty lakebed one of the most engineered landscapes of the early 20^th century.

The area is now a thriving agricultural hotspot. Tulare County produced $7.5 billion worth of commodities in 2019. Now, many of those farms are underwater. Flooding has caused over $4 billion in damage across the Central Valley. Homes, crops, and shops have all been destroyed. Fertilizer, industrial chemicals, diesel fuel, and rusting machinery have polluted the water.

Tulare Lake has not gone down without a fight. During extremely wet years, it has returned. The lake returned in 1938, 1955, 1969, 1983 and 1997. Because of this pattern of reappearance, some have called Tulare Lake a “zombie lake,” “ghost lake,” or “phantom lake.”

This year is one such year. At the peak of the flooding in March, Tulare Lake covered approximately 120,000 acres – about the size of Lake Tahoe. As a result of dedicated efforts by state and local officials to drain the lake and redirect its water, it covered only 50,000 acres in September.

Tulare Lake will continue to linger. Some scientists and researchers predict that it won’t recede entirely until 2024. And as climate change continues to result in more extreme weather, this won’t be the last time that Lake Tulare returns with a vengeance.

Tensions ran high as livelihoods were swept away. Farmers fought over whose fields should flood first. Some accused agribusiness barons of intentionally redirecting the water to flood their neighbor’s fields. A special meeting of the county’s board of supervisors was filled with outrage and hostility.

These losses are the result of human hubris and greed. Try as we might, we cannot change the landscape entirely. The land is still low, the earth filled with impermeable clay, and the rivers still feed into the valley. The natural conditions that created Lake Tulare still exist, lying in wait with the immortal patience of a world that existed long before men and will continue to exist long after.

For thousands of years, the Yokuts people lived along the shallow shores of Tulare Lake, which they called Pa’ashi. The lake sustained a vibrant ecosystem, with a rhythmic pattern of expansion and regression during the wet and dry seasons that remain the subject of native songs passed down through the generations. While the farmers and county supervisors mourn losses and struggle to combat the flooding, the Yokuts have celebrated the return of their beloved Pa’ashi. The Tachi Yokut Tribe has asked California to let Pa’ashi stay.

California has a tough choice to make. They can continue to build levees and dams and farm the lakebed, betting against nature that their fields won’t be destroyed again. Or California could encourage communities to relocate, mitigate the damage of future floods, and stop interfering in the natural process.

California could rewild Tulare Lake. The term “rewilding” has a long history, going back to the 1990s when conservationists and scholars Michael Soulé and Reed Noss called for an ambitious, continent-wide program of restoring connected wilderness landscapes large enough to support wide-ranging mammals. Rewilding has since grown into a global conservation movement focused on the restoration of self-regulating natural landscapes. Conservationists Carlos Carroll and Reed F. Noss now argue that rewilding can be used as a potential way to reduce the harm of the climate crisis.

It could be worth a shot. California would avoid future flood losses, the Yokuts would have access to their beloved Pa’ashi once more, and the state would be more climate resilient as a whole. Maybe that would be a more desirable outcome than waiting to restart the cycle of disappearance, development, and destruction again.

You can find more information on Tulare Lake’s resurgence on the blog here and here. You can read more about Tulare County here and here.

Rising evictions in rural America during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

This past summer, while doing eviction defense work for a legal aid in Los Angeles, I often heard the statistic—90% of landlords have legal representation, while only 10% of tenants do. This statistic, however, only accounts for metropolitan areas where the data is collected. In rural areas, where there is a lack of legal access, representation for both tenants and landlords is likely to be much lower. 

The lack of legal access in rural areas stems from a shortage of lawyers and the underfunding of legal aid organizations. These factors coupled with the lack of affordable housing have fueled the rise of rural evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. 

Rural areas face some of the highest eviction rates in the country. According to research by Cornell University, evictions in many rural counties now exceed pre-pandemic rates. During the pandemic, there was an influx of people moving from cities to rural areas as work increasingly became remote and rural living became more appealing. The added pressure on rural housing markets caused the supply of low-income rentals to decrease and the number of evictions to skyrocket. 

Rural tenants have increasingly been unable to keep up with their rent, and as the affordable housing supply decreases, the need for legal representation is becoming more important. Tenants oftentimes are not informed of their rights and the protections in place. Without legal representation, most tenants lose their cases and are evicted. This drives locals to leave for more affordable towns, or often to become housing insecure as evidenced by the increase in rural homelessness in recent years. 

On the other hand, many rural tenants have been reluctant to use eviction protections or fight their evictions. Brett Thompson, executive director for East River Legal Services in South Dakota, said, "We've developed a culture where people don't tend to avail themselves of protections afforded to them. This isn't a new problem. It's a problem that's been magnified by the pandemic and reaching a crisis point because of the pandemic." In South Dakota when there was a national eviction moratorium in place, people tended to move elsewhere when they received an eviction notice rather than fight for their right to stay. 

One key hurdle in providing support for rural tenants is the lack of data collected in rural areas. Most statistics on evictions in states come from data collected from cities and metropolitan areas. State governments therefore overlook the scope of the problem in rural areas and are unable to make fully informed decisions. For instance, California passed eviction protections during the pandemic, however, the only way to use these protections was to assert them as defenses in court in response to an unlawful detainer action. Considering the lack of legal access and low level of legal representation in rural areas, many tenants were not equipped to fight their evictions and use these protections.  

While moving forward, it is necessary to be mindful of rural areas when discussing the lack of affordable housing and the rise in evictions. States need to begin with making more inclusive decisions where data from rural areas is collected and considered. We further need to advocate for greater tenant protections which include rent caps, just-cause eviction protections, and a right to counsel. Lastly, there needs to be a push for increased funding for legal aids operating in rural areas—rural places need lawyers. Maybe then will rural attitudes toward seeking legal assistance begin to shift. 

Read more about the lack of legal access in rural America here and here. 

The changing lawscape: Impact of recent legislation on rural Californians

California, known for its diverse landscapes and vibrant urban centers, is also home to a significant rural population— 4.9% of California's population is rural. Recently, the California Assembly passed several bills that will have disparate impacts on rural Californians.

On September 12, the California Assembly passed SB-244, a Right to Repair Act, with a 50-0 vote. SB-244 will require device manufacturers to allow consumers to bypass digital locks, which have previously prevented consumers from accessing and fixing a device's software. SB-244 will also make repair manuals publicly available and require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers. Parts and materials for electronic or appliance products costing between $50-$99.99 will be kept by manufacturers for three years, while manufacturers will keep parts and materials for products costing $100 or more for seven years.

SB-244 is good news for those in rural areas. Repair is critical for local economies and rural areas, which generally house independent repair shops rather than authorized Toyota and John Deere dealers. Over the past two decades, as tractors have become more advanced with GPS, 360-degree cameras, and smartphone controls, manufacturers have limited farmers’ repair options to authorized dealers. Right-to-repair legislation seeks to safeguard consumers from anti-competitive practices by ensuring they have the freedom to repair products themselves or choose independent repair services. Read more about the ongoing “right to repair” battle and its disproportionate impact on rural America here and here. 

Meanwhile, California lawmakers have voted to restrict the use of hand-counted election ballots by local governments, which is aimed at addressing a  situation that has arisen in Shasta County. The new law, AB 969, permits hand counting only in specific situations: regularly scheduled elections with fewer than 1,000 registered voters and special elections with fewer than 5,000 eligible voters. 

This move comes after Shasta County, with approximately 112,000 voters, canceled its contract with Dominion Voting Systems. The county made that decision based on unfounded fraud claims pushed by former President Donald Trump and his supporters. Read more about Northern California’s election disputes and insurrection plans here, here and here. 

Shasta County officials, including County Clerk Cathy Darling Allen, supported the bill as a "commonsense protection for all California voters." However, County Board of Supervisors Chair Patrick Henry Jones has vowed to sue if the bill is signed. Jones argues that state officials cannot ensure the security of voting machines.

In other news, after years of unsuccessful attempts, the California Legislature has finally passed AB-28, which aims to impose an 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition sales. Funds generated will be used to support gun violence prevention efforts. This legislation, sponsored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, a Democrat from Woodland Hills (greater Los Angeles), is modeled after a similar federal tax used for wildlife conservation. The annual revenue from this tax is estimated at around $160 million, which will be allocated to violence intervention programs, school safety enhancements, and law enforcement actions to seize firearms from individuals prohibited from owning them. 

Critics of the new law argue that businesses may pass the cost onto customers, which will have a disproportionate impact on rural Californians, who participate in sport shooting, hunting, or using firearms for personal protection. This extra financial burden could discourage firearm owners from maintaining their guns or participating in hunting or competitive shooting. Read more posts on hunting and ammunition bans here, here and here. 

To remedy the disproportionate effects the guns and ammunition law might have on rural Californians, the state might consider “rural proofing.” Rural proofing is a practice where lawmakers consider rural community circumstances and needs when developing and implementing policies.

A “rural proofing” approach involves considering factors like rural spatiality, access to essential services, compliance costs, and the potential disproportionate impact on rural communities when creating laws. Rural proofing in California could help mitigate negative consequences of laws on rural areas, foster trust between the government and rural populations, and provide a voice for rural communities in the legislative process. In essence, rural proofing offers a constructive avenue for lawmakers to consider rural communities' unique needs and traditions in their decision-making processes. Read more about rural proofing here. 

Tribal co-management of U.S. National Parks (Part II): Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve

 N.B. The Hoonah Indian Association are an Alaska Native Village in Hoonah, Alaska. They are a majority Tlingit Alaska Native People. Glacier Bay has been the home of the Huna Tlingit since time immemorial. I will use the spelling "Hoonah" when referring to the political entity and the city of Hoonah, but the spelling "Huna" when referring to the people, since that is how they prefer it. 

Glacier Bay (Photo: Christopher Michael, Wikimedia Commons)

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is located in southern Alaska, west of Juneau and not far from the Canadian border. It is the homeland of the Huna Tlingit people, and can only be accessed by plane or by boat. The National Park Service (NPS) operates a lodge and park ranger service in Bartlett Cove, 10 miles from the small town of Gustavus, the closest town to the park. Most visitors to Glacier Bay come via cruise ship, where they can take in the views from the safety of a floating hotel. Hiking trails are only available near Bartlett Cove, but sea kayaking, boating, and rafting are popular ways to access the park.

Glacier Bay is currently co-managed with the Hoonah Indian Association, a federally-recognized Alaska Native Village whose community has been the steward of the land within Glacier Bay National Park for centuries. The Hoonah Indian Association are a largely Tlignit community in Hoonah, across the sound from Gustavus. Tlingit people lived on and cultivated the land in Glacier Bay National Park until the "little ice age," a period of global cooling lasting from approximately 1300 to 1850. During the little ice age, the glaciers stretched south, covering the land and filling the bay. The Tlingit communities moved south as well, taking up residence in their current villages. As the glaciers began to retreat in the late 19th century, archeologists and geologists began to petition for the protection of the bay because of what could be learned from the melting permafrost. 

John Muir visited Glacier Bay many times, and he frequently wrote about it. He was fascinated by the insight that the retreating glaciers could provide into the development of the Sierra Nevadas, particularly Yosemite Valley. Muir's visit and writings on the area generated popular and scientific interest. Glacier Bay became particularly important to glacial geologists. In response to gold prospecting and increased tourism, these scientists, with the support of Muir, campaigned to make Glacier Bay a National Monument. 

Glacier Bay National Monument was created by presidential declaration in 1925, not long before Canyon de Chelly (see Part I, here). As compared to the Najavo Nation, the Tlingit were in a much poorer negotiating position during the campaign for federal protection. The Navajo Nation was able to negotiate with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Park Service to preserve their rights to Canyon de Chelly because they had a treaty agreement with the United States that gave them ownership over land, including Canyon de Chelly. 

The Tlingit were in a different situation. Russia ceded Alaska to the United States in 1897. The treaty between Russia and the U.S. for the transfer of Alaska and the Organic Act of 1884 recognized Native claims to the land. By 1897 the United States was no longer making treaties. The Dawes Act of 1887 made treaty-protected reservation land alienable by assigning private title to individual Tribal members. The Huna Tlingit were allotted land in Hoonah and organized into the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) in 1912, alongside other nearby peoples.

When Glacier Bay was designated a National Monument in 1925, the Tlingit were barely consulted. There was already fairly limited communication between the NPS and the Tlingit villages. Most of the land surrounding Hoonah was already under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, which had done little to disrupt daily life at that point. The majority of Tlingit and ANB activism in that period was focused on labor organizing, since most Tlingit men worked for fisheries and canneries. For the first few years, the NPS did little to interfere with Tlingit hunting and trapping in the park.

But, in the 1930s the Alaskan Brown Bear became a fixture of the national imagination. Conservationists wanted to create a bear sanctuary in Alaska where they could increase bear populations so that tourists could see them from their boats. They proposed expanding the size of the Glacier Bay National Monument to include land that could be used for a bear sanctuary. Over renewed protest from the mining industry, President Roosevelt expanded the National Monument in 1939, again without consultation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) or the ANB.  In reaction to the expansion, the BIA, the ANB, and the NPS reached an agreement giving the Tlingit the privilege to hunt and trap in the park for subsistence. The agreement was informal, and not recorded. Non-Huna Tlingit did not have permission to hunt in the park.

Throughout this period, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was paying a bounty for seals. Though the Tlingit were ostensibly only allowed to hunt for subsistence, data suggests that they also redeemed seals for money, some of which were likely hunted in the park. Huna Tlingit people began complaining because they were being excluded from the Park by white residents under the guise of NPS policy. In 1946, the NPS, BIA, and ANB reached a new agreement. It recognized three rights: that the Huna Tlingit would be allowed to carry firearms while in the park, that they would be permitted to hunt hair seals within 100 ft of the waterline, and that the agreement would be re-negotiated in 1950.

Huna Tlingit park usage was renegotiated every few years until 1966. By then, park officials were becoming more and more concerned with the health of the seal populations and the aesthetic violence of seal hunting. Visitors to the parks didn't like to see any vestige of hunting, particularly carcasses. For tourists and park officials, the hunting disrupted the purpose of the park. They had no problem with "traditional" hunting, which they believed left no trace and did not involve firearms. 

Park Service officials argued that the Tlingit were hunting beyond the health of the seal population, estimating that 1,200 seals were taken from the park of a total population of only approximately 4,000 in any given year. However, when more accurate data estimated that the seal population in the park was more likely between 7,000 and 8,000 seals, the conservation argument lost ground. 

The NPS then argued that since the Tlingit community no longer needed the seals for survival, so they shouldn't have unrestricted rights to hunt seals in the park. A park biologist went so far as to say that "These alleged hide hunters, entering the bay in large boats, sometimes killing 200 seals on a single trip, were trying to 'outdo the whites in their resource-rape.'"

This argument was based on the takes of two Tlingit hunters, George Dalton and James Austin. Huna Tlingit hunters consider neither the use of firearms or hunting for money to be non-traditional. Sealing had always been part of their life, and tools had always changed with technology. Ironically (and revealingly), the NPS later cited the same two men as the last true subsistence hunters in those waters.

NPS action on sealing was prompted by a series of legal issues. In 1947, the Tlingit and Haida Tribes filed suit against the United States, alleging an illegal take of more than 17 million acres in six designated areas in southeastern Alaska, including Glacier Bay. In 1959, the U.S. Court of Claims found for the Tribes, but remanded the case for further hearings on relief (177 F.Supp. 452). In 1968, the same court approved $7.5 million dollars in damages to the Tribes (389 F.2d 778). The rulings acknowledged the Tlingit and Haida's native title to the land comprising Glacier Bay but resolved their claims by compensating them for the land. 

For the NPS, the resolution of the Tlingit and Haida native claim to Glacier Bay potentially affirmed the NPS's right to modify the hunting privilege and exclude Tlingit hunters from the park. Additionally, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) terminated Native title to the rest of Alaska, vesting land rights to most of that land in the State of Alaska.

Then, the Marine Mammals Protection Act (MMPA) was passed in 1972. The MMPA provided an exception for Alaska Native hunting that allowed them to hunt in National Parks for subsistence and cultural activities. Advocates for the sealing ban in Glacier Bay realized they had to act before an exception under the MMPA was granted to the Huna Tlingit. 

On April 4, 1974, the Chief Park Ranger informed the Mayor of Hoonah that the NPS would be enforcing a general ban on the killing of wildlife in National Parks in Glacier Bay. The NPS did not provide any written notice or allow for comment. Between 1974 and 1992, no permits were granted to Tlingit hunters. Glacier Bay National Monument became a National Park and Preserve in 1980.

In 1992, the Tlingit staged a protest and entered into negotiations with the NPS. By 1997, the NPS agreed to build a Tribal House in Glacier Bay, a space in the park where Tlingit people could establish cultural practices. The project was stalled for lack of funding until 2013. The Tribal House, Xunaa Shuká Hít, was dedicated in 2016. 

In July, 2014 President Barack Obama signed the Huna Tlingit Traditional Gull Egg Use Act, which allows Tlingit people to resume harvesting gull eggs in Glacier Bay once the NPS established harvesting regulations. The NPS now has an agreement with the Hoonah Indian Association to harvest eggs in the park, and works with cruise lines to have the Hoonah Indian Association provide guide and cultural interpretation services. 

Sealing in the park is still banned. 

The majority of the history in this post is based on information found in Land Reborn: A History of Administration and Visitor Use in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, available online here. Chapters 1-6 and 10 are especially relevant.

Is this the end of an era? Live sheep exports expected to conclude in Australia (Part 2)

Picture this: You live in rolling paddocks of greenery with room to graze and freely roam. You live in family groups and have easy access to food, water and fresh air. You are looked after. There comes a day where, without warning, this is all taken away. You and your family are herded into a truck and are transported away from the last glimpse of comfort and freedom you'll ever have. 

More than a week later, you and your family are separated while being packed into a ship with thousands of others who are also riddled with stress from separation. There is no sunlight, no room to move and you are living on top of your own waste. One slip or injury could prevent you from reaching food and water, or risk you being unintentionally crushed to death by those around you. 

You exist in a permanent state of anxiety and terror. You have no idea what will happen next. 

You arrive on dry land, relieved to take in fresh air once again. The freedom is short lived before your legs are tied together and you're dragged along on your back before being thrown into the boot of a car. It's dark. The air is thin. You can barely move. You're being sent to a death that is slow, filled with pain and completely undignified. 

***

Now picture this: you live in remote Western Australia and you own thousands of sheep that have no worth. They need to be watered, fed, shorn and have their health tended to. You have shearers begging you for work that you can't afford to give them. They have families they need to provide for. You also have a family that needs to be fed, children that need an education and bills that need to be paid. You are living below the poverty line in the middle of desolate country. With nothing else near by to supplement your income, you now face the reality of having to pack your life up into boxes and move away from everything you know. You need to find work so you can look after your family and afford the bare minimum, but all you've ever known is being a sheep farmer. So, now what?

***

I can't argue that both sides of the coin in this circumstance don't have extremely justified reasons for protection. The welfare of animals should never be discredited and devalued simply because they aren't human. However, what I can argue, is there are people trying to make legislative decisions on an agricultural industry that they have little-to-no knowledge about. These decisions are being made in a politically motivated fashion, and the fallout for the rural population and local economy is going to be extremely harmful. 

In an article by the Australian Financial Review, it is believed that the value of Western Australian sheep is already beginning to decline, with an estimated loss of $21 million from 300,000 sheep to the Wagin economy alone. This loss also has an impact on the Australian government, which misses out on $5 million in tax revenue. 

Phillip Bright, a farmer and the Wagin Shire president, has also made the estimate that across the 15 million sheep across the entirety of Western Australian will come in at a $900 million loss. To put this into perspective, that value is almost the same as the GDP of Vanuatu. 

Western Australian rural families, small town communities and shearers need the live sheep export industry. This is their lifeline. This is their livelihood. It's what they live for. As Sarah Smarsh eloquently portrayed in her essay on 'What Growing Up on a Farm Taught Me About Humility', farming families are commonly perceived as being at the bottom of the food chain - despite the fact they significantly contribute to local economies, they receive little to no consideration when decisions that will directly impact them arise. You can read an exert of Sarah's essay on a previous blog post here.

What came as a surprise to me (as a result of my own unreasonable and naive assumption), is that in no way shape or form are sheep farmers endorsing the treatment that has been broadcast across the nation. There is no denial on their behalf that the attitude towards animal welfare has been completely neglected and that there are practical ways this can be addressed. 

These farmers weren't aware of the conditions their livestock were facing once they had left the safety of their stations. A fourth-generation farmer, Emily Stretch, was also shocked when seeing the undercover footage:

It horrified every single farmer I know, including myself. I can feel myself tearing up thinking about it ... I would never send my sheep to go on a ship overseas if I believed it was still happening. 

The reality is, you can introduce, implement and reform laws that have the intention and practicality of protecting livestock. But, there is no possible legislative avenue that will ensure the financial stability and wellbeing of the rural individuals and families that make up Western Australia's live sheep export industry. 

Regardless of any framework the Australian government can put in place to phase out the live sheep export industry, there is no possibility of a successful transition. 

The Australian government needs to know that their actions are going to have devastating consequences. They are making a conscious decision to disrupt and destroy the lives of rural communities that already exist as a low priority. A conscious decision to remove hundreds of millions of dollars from an already struggling economy. A conscious decision to prioritise politics over the people - and this is where the true suffering will occur. 

This post is the second part to a two-part series. You can access part one here. 

Rural responses to corporate utility disasters (Part II): Dam removal lessons from the Klamath

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the August 10 PG&E canal failure that sent millions of pounds of sediment into Butte Creek, a Sacramento River tributary, threatening the spring-run chinook and overall ecosystem health. (You can read my first post about the incident and initial community response here.) I left off wondering how rural community members might reclaim land and power (of both the political and electric varieties) from PG&E and I decided to go looking for ideas based on strategies already employed by rural communities in other places.

Big, investor-owned utilities overlooking rural people and land is nothing new. In the 1930s, while most cities and towns had been electrified, only 10 percent of rural America had been. Utility companies hesitated to extend services to sparsely populated places because they doubted they’d receive a return on investment. More recently, rural California communities have borne the brunt of utility-caused wildfires and rolling blackouts. Utility-owned dams and diversions have caused massive fish kills and other ecosystem impacts in the places rural people call home.

The Butte Creek Canyon community is no exception; the 2018 Camp Fire swept through much of the canyon, diversions and low water flow caused a tragic 2021 fish kill, and now, the 2023 canal breach has further damaged the ecosystem and threatened this year’s salmon. The area has also suffered a number of blackouts; the ones from 2017-19 are documented on this interactive map.

When I began researching how other communities have responded to big utility oversights, I thought perhaps I’d find a blueprint from another rural community that could apply to Butte Creek Canyon. Though I didn’t find anyone who had dealt with the exact combination of dam removal and local energy control (if you know of any, please let me know in the comments), I did find two projects that could serve as inspiration to canyon residents: the Klamath dam removal project and the Blue Lake Rancheria low-carbon microgrid project.

Based on what I’ve learned so far about energy, dams and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), I'll explore how adapting strategies from these projects could benefit the Butte Creek Canyon community over my next two posts.

Let’s begin with the Klamath dam removal project. For a more detailed history and background of the Klamath dams and subsequent removal campaign, you can check out this timeline, listen to this episode of Future Ecologies and read this past blog post. In brief, four dams, Copco 1, Copco 2, Big Bend and Iron Gate were constructed along the Klamath River between 1918 and 1962. The dams prevent(ed) salmon from reaching the Klamath’s upper waters, where they historically spawned. In 2002, diversions for irrigation during a drought year resulted in low water flows and the death of as many as 68,000 salmon. Though the Karuk, Yurok and Klamath tribes opposed the dams since they were constructed, the historic fish kill was the catalyst for a 20-year campaign to remove the dams.

The first and smallest dam, Copco 2, was removed this summer. The remaining three are slated to come down by the end of 2024, according to this CalTrout article. The removal of these four dams constitutes the largest dam removal in U.S. history, so how did it happen? As it turns out, via a corporation.

After years of negotiating and coalition-building, as well as political setbacks, the tribes and other stakeholders formed a not-for-profit corporation, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), to obtain the dam licenses and oversee removal. PacifiCorp, the utility that owned the dams, had acknowledged that the dams were no longer economical but was reticent to take on the liabilities of dam removal. KRRC negotiated a license transfer agreement and, with FERC approval, took ownership of the dams in 2021. To make the transfer possible, the states of California and Oregon agreed to serve as co-licensees.

The story of the Butte Creek Canyon dams has many parallels to the Klamath River, albeit on a smaller scale. Both are stories of Indigenous people, salmon, old dams, and corporate utility neglect. Butte Creek sits on the ancestral homelands of the Mechoopda people. Every spring, the river and its people welcome one of the last wild populations of Central Valley spring-run chinook salmon, but the salmon have been threatened by a hydroelectric project. And, like PacifiCorp did for the Klamath dams, PG&E has conceded that its DeSabla-Centerville hydroelectric project, of which the failed canal and Centerville Dam are a part of, doesn’t make economical sense. Yet it has not seriously pursued decommissioning and removing the project.

PG&E did attempt to withdraw from the project in 2017, but the FERC denied permission to do so until a notice period had been held to allow the public an opportunity to express interest in acquiring the license. PG&E then continued to apply for annual licenses to operate the project. The utility has recently applied to transfer the project to its subsidiary, Pacific Generation, according to an action alert from advocacy group Friends of Butte Creek.

Friends of Butte Creek is encouraging advocates to write to the FERC, urging them to disallow the transfer and require PG&E decommission the project and remove the Centerville dam, or to alternatively require Pacific Generation to do so after a transfer. I agree that PG&E should absolutely take responsibility for its actions and remove the outdated and harmful infrastructure on its own.

However, if that effort fails, I wonder if a not-for-profit corporation created by canyon residents, tribal members and conservation groups like CalTrout might succeed in an endeavor similar to the KRRC. By creating a non-profit to obtain the hydroelectric project licenses and remove the harmful infrastructure, community stakeholders could forge coalitions, protect the environment, return agency to rural communities and save the Butte Creek salmon.

In my next post of the series, I’ll write about how an entity like this could also provide safer, more reliable energy, taking cues from municipal power districts and tribal microgrid projects.

School choice in Texas... It's not over yet

Texans' love for their public schools was tested this past legislative session. In April 2023, the Texas State Senate passed a bill that would provide families with a $8,000 credit they could use to send their kids to private schools or put towards homeschooling expenses. This school voucher movement has gained enormous traction recently, particularly in conservative states, as parents and politicians "battle public schools over books in the libraries, the teaching of race and racism and transgender issues." 

Texas is not alone in this movement. More than 12 states have currently adopted some form of voucher program. Across the border in Oklahoma, the state board of education is discussing the approval of the first religious charter school in the United States. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1, expanding school choice options by eliminating financial eligibility restrictions and the enrollment cap. 

While the school voucher proposal in Texas failed in May 2023, it is likely not the end of the road for the Texas school choice movement. As recently as September 23, 2023, Texas Senator Ted Cruz stated that the domestic issue he cares most about is school choice. Additionally, a Texas House committee recently proposed a "path forward" for the movement on a smaller scale that prioritizes "high-need" students. 

The voucher bill failed partly due to the alliance between Democrats and rural Republicans in the Texas State House. Historically, this coalition of House Democrats and rural Republican representatives voted together to ensure funding for Texas public schools. Despite this longstanding alliance, the future of the school voucher program in Texas remains uncertain. As such, it is worthwhile to address the impact the school choice movement may have on rural districts in Texas. 

Texans' support for public schools is deep-rooted, particularly in rural districts, as these public schools are not only some of the biggest local employers but are also commonly the center of community life. Texas has more schools in rural areas than any other state (more than 2,000 campuses) and employs a Task Force "charged with identifying current challenges and best practices for rural school districts statewide." 

According to The Heritage Foundation, some of the highest levels of support for education savings accounts (another term for school vouchers) in Texas came from rural counties. It is worth noting, this news source is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. The poll numbers that The Heritage Foundation is reporting are not necessarily lies. But Graydon Hicks III, a superintendent in Fort Davis, a rural community in Texas, thinks some of the rural "support" for the bill arose from the complicated language of the bill itself.

Previous blog posts discussed Fort Davis, Hicks, and the school choice movement in depth. You can read them here and here.

Hicks is struggling to keep Fort Davis' lights on. The school district doesn't have an art teacher, a cafeteria, a librarian, bus routes, or a track. Given that Fort Davis cannot afford to hire security, Hicks and 11 others carry firearms in place of a security guard. Fort Davis' district only has 184 students enrolled from pre-K to 12th grade. Since every student who leaves the school represents a more significant proportion of revenue compared to larger urban schools, Fort Davis is particularly vulnerable to the school voucher system. 

In addition to Fort Davis, those in Robert Lee, Texas, are concerned about the school voucher movement. The school is already struggling with a "razor-thin" budget that is heavily reliant on revenue from attendance numbers. Given that there are only around 18 students per grade, any drop in enrollment "can force rural schools like Robert Lee to make hard decisions."

While the House Bill failed during the regular session, some Texas lawmakers are committed to creating a school voucher program one way or another. It is safe to say that the battle of school choice laws is not over in Texas.