Hasta la vista, 60 Minutes

WaterWired and Aquafornia both have last night’s 60 Minutes report on California water embedded for your viewing pleasure. Be warned, WaterWired links back here. Those instantly overtaken by boredom whenever a speech (tv program, headline, fill in the blank) opens with the threadbare Twain quote “whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting,” be further warned: Lesley Stahl opens with it.

Beyond the cliches, the esteemed news magazine offers a decent potted version of our water woes. An empty promise of a free drink to anyone who counts how many times Stahl called the Delta smelt “tiny.”

On the subject of size, a couple of minutes, far fewer than 60, of checking crop output would have taken the enormity out of what the program suggests is a looming almond crisis says On the public record. That and a half-way energetic intern might have put a question mark over the

The Resnick touch

THE National Academy of Sciences today announced the constitution of an expert committee to review protections afforded fish covered by the Endangered Species Act in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, including Chinook salmon, Delta smelt and green sturgeon.

The assembling of these learned souls at the behest of US Senator Dianne Feinstein and California’s billionaire farming couple Lynda and Stewart Resnick brought to mind an incident that perfectly describes the reach of the Resnicks into institutions that we the people might fondly imagine to be incorruptible.

“One earthquake, one flood away from collapse”

THE SACRAMENTO-San Joaquin River Delta is “one earthquake, one flood away from collapse,” said the California Senate speaker pro Tem as he opened legislative hearings last week on a compromise package of water bills. In case listeners didn’t care, Darrell Steinberg added to a legislature convened in an extraordinary session precisely to deal with the delta, “24m people could lose their drinking water.”

Powerful language, except in California extreme warnings are old hat. Delta levees have been crumbling for a quarter of a century, and repeated alerts to the clear and present danger, such as the USGS subsidence map, left, have not broken the deadlock between legislators representing fisheries, Delta residents, Central Valley farmers, and Southern Californian cities over how to manage the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of the US.

Latterly, a governor top-loading delta fixes with demands for $3bn worth of new dams has only deepened divides.

“The governor should back off”

Photo: NASA Earth Observatory

WHILE the post-Zell Los Angeles Times news side has had only spotty coverage of the most important water legislation in a quarter of a century moving through the state legislature this year, the paper’s editorial pages have followed it diligently. (For an account of rolling news coverage across the press, click here).

The subject at the heart of the legislation is the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, source of water for two out of three Californians and the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of North America.

Today’s editorial in the Times gives credit to the much maligned legislature and looks at arguments over how to pay for an estimated $12bn worth of water infrastructure upgrades.

Their bottom line: “The governor should back off and allow lawmakers the additional week or two to craft a package that will work.” To read

“Just get it done” – Expediency over extinction

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THE US DEPARTMENT of Interior yesterday bowed to pressure from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and other California legislators to submit key federal protections afforded to endangered fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for review by the National Academy of Sciences.
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The clear hope is that the academy will discredit opinions from federal scientists in the Department of Interior and US Chamber of Commerce that have led to cuts in water deliveries to Central Valley farmers.
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Whether or not the National Academy ultimately contradicts conclusions of federal scientists used in enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, the San Francisco Chronicle today quotes Feinstein as demanding that the Endangered Species Act itself be waived in order to increase water deliveries to
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