The rich are different

“HIGH net worth individuals, non-profit organizations and corporations often have different needs when it comes to their philanthropy,” begins the “What We Do” section of the Andy Spahn & Associates website.

Indeed. The rich are different. Few appreciate how different so acutely as the Universal City-based lobbyist Spahn. On Thursday June 25th, the former Dreamworks executive will be hosting a fundraiser for Darrell Steinberg, President pro Tempore of the California State Senate. It’s a bring your own wallet affair. A gift of $1,000 qualifies a guest as a “supporter,” of $3,900 a “friend,” and $7,800 a “co-chair.” 

This being in California, nearly half of the “co-chairs” listed on the invitation are key figures in water.

There are Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the Beverly Hills billionaires and Central Valley land owners who the Contra Costa Times reports have gleaned approximately 20 cents of every dollar of a roughly $200m environmental water …

Cadiz, Inc boondoggle is back

CALIFORNIA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed plans by private speculator Cadiz, Inc to tap Mojave ground water, reports the Los Angeles Business Journal. The Cadiz plan, according to a statement from the governor, “will sustainably recover more than one million acre feet of water that would otherwise be lost to evaporation and make it available to help provide a reliable source of water for Southern California.”

The Cadiz project proposes storing Colorado River Water in a Mojave aquifer in wet years and pumping it to Southern Californian communities in dry ones. Among its problems are that it involves taking out far more water from the desert than naturally refills every year and that, cost-wise, experts say it’s a boondoggle.

The Cadiz self-styled “dry year supply project” is best known, however, as a synonym for croneyism. As a succession of Los Angeles Times stories during the last nine …

NOAA moves to avert fish extinction in Bay Delta. “What is at stake here is not just the survival of species but the health of entire ecosystems and the economies that depend on them.”

NOAA Press release 
NOAA Biological Opinion 
Best of press & reactions from environmentalists, Central Valley farmers and Governor Schwarzenegger: Aquafornia
FROM THE NOAA RELEASE: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  released the final draft of a revised Bay-Delta biological opinion today that finds the water pumping operations in California’s Central Valley by the federal Bureau of Reclamation jeopardize the continued existence of several threatened and endangered species under the jurisdiction of NOAA’s Fisheries Service.
Federal biologists and hydrologists concluded that current water pumping operations in the Federal Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project should be changed to ensure survival of winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, the southern population of North American green sturgeon and Southern Resident killer whales, which rely on Chinook salmon runs for food.

Two independent peer review panels were conducted to ensure the opinion is solidly grounded in the
…

California, Nevada, Texas Red on Seasonal Drought Outlook

Issued June 4, 2009 by the National Weather Service

…

Weekly Drought Map

…

« go back — keep looking »

  • After the lawn


  • As you were saying: Comments

  • As I was saying: Recent posts

  • Garden blogs


  • Contact

    Emily Green by e-mail at emily.green [at] mac.com

  • Categories