The week that was, 10/4-10/2009
Posted on | October 11, 2009 | 2 Comments
Credit: David M. Carroll, via Yankee Magazine. Click on the image to be taken to Yankee Magazine
With its limited appeal to lovers of swamps and turtles, it’s hard to imagine how David M. Carroll’s beautiful new book, his fifth, will find enough buyers to earn its advance, much less turn a profit. — October 4, 2009 Seattle Times review of David M. Carroll’s “Following the Water — a Hydromancer’s Notebook”
Was it really possible that power of such magnitude — diverting water supplies, building suburbs, playing a central role in the fastest growth any American city has ever seen — could be exercised from the offices of a newspaper publisher? — October 4, 2009 New York Times review of the PBS documentary “Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times”
[Las Vegas] is probably the poster child for the most unsustainable city in the world. — former Las Vegas Sun environment writer Launce Rake interviewed by UC Berkeley water economist David Zetland, October 8, 2009
Visibility dropped to zero in parts of eastern Washington on October 4, 2009, as a large dust storm blew through. — Earth Observatory
The Utah Medical Association has examined the draft Snake Valley water deal, and the doctors’ prognosis is not a happy one. They conclude that putting a giant straw into the aquifer below the valley to pipe water to Las Vegas could kill the plants in the eastern Great Basin, leaving the toxin-laden soils to blow across Utah in great dust storms. That would be dangerous to Utahns’ health. — Salt Lake Tribune, October 7, 2009
…the dead zone off the Northwest is one of the few in the world — and possibly the only one in North America — that could be impossible to reverse. — Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2009
The Governor and legislative leaders have been conducting closed-door negotiations on a major water deal for weeks. I thought I’d offer a layperson’s road map to help analyze a deal whenever it comes together and is made public... –– October 10, 2009, “Recovering Legislator,” San Francisco Chronicle
Lawmakers offered only lukewarm reactions to their meeting with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Saturday, despite the governor’s claim a day earlier that they were on the verge of a historic breakthrough on water. — Associated Press / San Francisco Chronicle, October 10, 2009
“The California Latino Water Coalition, often described as a grassroots group representing the Latino community, was born in a closed-door meeting of Gov. Schwarzenegger and local officials at Selma City Hall on March 21, 2007—and was “suggested” by the governor himself, according to a coalition brochure. — Capitol Weekly via Aquafornia
Arnold Schwarzenegger's breakfast, via Twitter
When I first read the news last spring that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had named S. David Freeman as his deputy mayor for environmental and energy programs, I was sure that H. David Nahai’s tenure as general manager at the city utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, would be short. — op ed by energy consultant Richard Nemec in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2009
The DWP has not been a model of transparency in the current management shuffle. Its oversight board called a special meeting Tuesday to deal with the changes, but held it in a Boyle Heights youth center away from the customary downtown boardroom. Although such meetings are public, they are usually also accessible through a teleconferencing hookup, but there was no such link this time. I would like to have heard the discussion about Nahai’s exit and Freeman’s return. — op ed by energy consultant Richard Nemec in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2009
Fast-moving debris flows generated from recently burned areas are particularly dangerous because they can occur in places where flooding or debris flows have not been observed in the past and can be generated in response to very little rainfall — Emergency Assessment of Postfire Debris-Flow Hazards for the 2009 Station Fire, San Gabriel Mountains, Southern California, US Geological Survey, October 6, 2009
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North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
October 11th, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
HOLY COW!
“The California Latino Water Coalition, often described as a grassroots group representing the Latino community, was born in a closed-door meeting of Gov. Schwarzenegger and local officials at Selma City Hall on March 21, 2007—and was “suggested” by the governor himself, according to a coalition brochure.
October 11th, 2009 @ 10:37 pm
What’s a “hydromancer?” Not sure I want to know! Wonder if they passed that title by the folks in marketing!