The week that was, 9/27-10/03/2009
Posted on | October 4, 2009 | 2 Comments
T*H*E triptych is vast; it’s over 40 feet long when you take the three paintings together. And it is part of an effort by Monet to make a work, and in fact a whole set of works, that surround the viewer with water — with the view of water, the surface of the water, the reflection of the clouds on the water, the lily pads and, at the edges, the shadows of the weeping willow trees by the edge of the water. — amNew York, Sept 29, 2009 on “Monet’s Water Lilies” at the Museum of Modern Art through April 12, 2010
“I applaud Secretary Salazar and the Obama administration for calling upon the National Academy of Sciences for an independent review of the biological studies that put a tiny fish over hard-working Californians,” said Schwarzenegger, ignoring the fact that the studies also address salmon and killer whales. – Contra Costa Times, Sept 30, 2009
“Just get it done as fast as we can.” — US Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA), on her desire to waive the Endangered Species Act to to speed water to Central Valley farmers, San Francisco Chronicle, October 1, 2009
Stupid small fish! Part of the stupid food chain! Small things should never be preserved. You want to save the whales, kill the plankton and the krill and the whales will have more room! — Jon Stewart, the Daily Show, “Where the riled things are,” September 29, 2009
The federal government must compensate two regional water authorities for water diverted to preserve the environment, a federal appeals court ruled this week in a landmark decision that could open the floodgates for agencies who contend the government is taking water from them for fish — Contra Costa Times, October 2, 2009
Claude Monet. Water Lilies. On show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click on the image to be taken to the museum website.
Officials said privately that Mr. Nahai’s stepping down had nothing to do with the [water main] breaks. Through a spokesman, Mr. Nahai declined to be interviewed. Heading the Water and Power Department of a sprawling city in a semidesert is never an easy job, and Mr. Nahai, a former real estate lawyer and Iranian emigre who was educated at some of Britain’s most prestigious schools, often defended the department in his scholarly, British-inflected English. – New York Times, Oct 2, 2009 on the sudden resignation of David Nahai, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Support within Villaraigosa’s office had eroded dramatically, and Brian D’Arcy, the head of the DWP’s powerful employees union, had stopped speaking to him, sources familiar with the situation said … earlier this year, he blamed Nahai for the defeat of Measure B, a solar power ballot measure that was narrowly rejected in March. — Los Angeles Times on the sudden resignation of David Nahai
You can’t help but smile at his silly antics though they spotlight a serious problem: sewer blockages and flooding, half of which are caused by Numptee and his buds putting inappropriate items down the drain. — Thirsty in Suburbia spots an amusing water safety ad from the United Kingdom’s Yorkshire Water
Several piercing blasts from an air horn Wednesday evening heralded the historic release of water from Millerton Lake for the eventual restoration of the San Joaquin River … The goal: to restore an uninterrupted, year-round flow of water to parts of the river that have been mostly dry since Friant Dam was completed in 1944, so that salmon can return. — Fresno Bee, October 2, 2009
“We can’t restore the river solely by removing the dams, but we can’t restore the Klamath without removing the dams.” — Steve Rothert of the environmental group American Rivers interviewed on an agreement to remove four hydro-electric dams on the Klamath River in 2020, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2009
The first phase of the hearing on whether there’s Kern River water available to, um, make a river (only in California does that make sense) happened last week – Lois Henry column, Bakersfield Californian, September 30, 2009
We’ve behaved like a water-rich country when we’re not. — Brian Middleton, author of a study for the Water Research Commission showing that South Africa has overestimated its water supply. – Johannesburg Business Day, September 28, 2009
Last week, Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith announced that he was intentionally violating the city’s strict twice-a-week lawn sprinkling rules. … We stand with Smith. — Torrance Daily Breeze editorial, Sept 29, 2009
Waves of foreclosures and businesses leaving the Inland Empire have also alleviated some of the strain on the basin’s water supply. — Inland Daily Bulletin on the Chino Basin Watermaster’s move to auction off 36,000 acre-feet of water, October 3, 2009
Claude Monet. Water Lilies, Reflections of Weeping Willows. On show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click on the image to be taken to the museum website.
“Right now the aquifer that is contaminated is a little bit shallower than the aquifer the drinking water comes from.” — Lynda Deschambault project manager for the US Environmental Protection Agency, Whittier Daily News, on a Los Angeles County plume of contaminated groundwater that stretches from Whittier to Norwalk
The politics of water in Florida is fairly straightforward. Politicians representing the water-rich north-central region want the water to stay right where it is. Politicians representing the growing cities want the water to go where it’s needed. – The Ledger, Lakeland, Florida, October 3 2009
“The amount of trash reaching the pumps is huge.” — from “Idols choke Capital’s water pumps,” The Hindu, Oct 1, 2009
In late-1997, the state government approved an irrigation project to bring the waters of Pune’s Kukdi River to the Sina Dam in Karjat. A network of small canals was then supposed to bring the dam’s water to Mahijalgaon and neighbouring villages. The day the project was announced, a local lawyer, Kailash Shevade, decided to discard his footwear until it became a reality. Today, Shevade still walks around barefoot. – from “Hung out to dry” in the Hindustan Times, October 2, 2009
“Bottled water is the pet rock of this era. It’s something that people pay for that you can get essentially free.” — Dave Tilford, a spokesman for the Center for a New American Dream, quoted in “Spending smart” in The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania, September 27, 2009
“With climate change, the more heat there is, the more water that is needed and the more water needed, the more energy that is consumed to produce that water and the more energy that is consumed, the more water that is needed and so on,” said Arabian Gulf University (AGU) vice-president and professor for water resources Dr Waleed Zubari – Gulf Daily News, Bahrain
In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to have arrived last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs. But then things got messy. The company disclosed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons, or 4.9 billion liters, of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley’s available water. — New York Times, September 29, 2009
The Utah Medical Association says a proposed agreement to divide water from the Snake Valley aquifer with Nevada could expose the public to carcinogens, radiation and valley fever. — AP / Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 2, 2009
“… the kids in the bungalow next door to us were running up the beach screaming, ‘the water has gone, we have to go’.” — British tourist interviewed about the Samoan tsunami – Daily Telegraph, Oct 2, 2009
This posting has been updated. Jon Stewart’s parody of Sean Hannity in the Central Valley has been added.
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North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
October 4th, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
I guess the moral of the story is that it’s too bad that a full depiction of water must necessarily extend beyond the beauty of its surface.
Or maybe, that try as one might, water is hard to capture in a single, if large, effort?
October 5th, 2009 @ 7:16 pm
[…] a page from Emily Green’s book, I’m trying (again) a sporadic roundup of some of the interesting water things I’ve […]