For Biotech Cowboys, Its No Ride Into The Sunset
Summary
Now Yednock and Frazer’s actions have put them at odds with the farmers in the southern part of the valley, who immediately protested three years ago when the newcomers applied to pump far more water than what was flowing out of the spring.“It was low end,” says Moyle, an alfalfa farmer and member of the Diamond Natural Resources Protection & Conservation Association, which was founded in 2010 (and was fighting a molybdenum mine’s claims for water before Yednock and Frazer came along).Still, Yednock has brought other skills from his professional life to bear: amassing disparate but related threads of research into a single program; hiring personnel; and making a case based on what he believed to be the best scientific argument—even if others don’t see it that way.Like the ranches that form a patchwork over much of the nearby land, the oyster farm in the park’s estuary was supposed to have its 40-year lease renewed in perpetuity as part of the original master agreement for the national seashore.He unearthed what he saw as a series of mischaracterizations and other problems that led him to argue in an amicus curae brief about what he considered blatant misconduct by the NPS—including the alteration of data in an independent consultant’s report that didn’t support the park service’s agenda.