Westlands
Posted on | November 2, 2009 | No Comments
AS STAGE armies work Sacramento for their pieces of a proposed $9 plus billion water bill and bond, attorney Lloyd G. Carter would have us wipe some tears from our eyes about the plight of Westlands Water District.
Carter, a former UPI and Fresno Bee reporter, now a deputy in the California Attorney General’s office, has a new article on the subject in the Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal.
He writes of Westlands in Reaping Riches from a Wretched Region: “federal irrigation and farm-subsidy policy in the San Luis Unit since the 1960s has exacerbated grinding poverty while enriching a few dozen of the factory farming dynasties to the detriment of the environment, the human population of the region, small growers, and the public fisc. There are few farms under 500 acres. Rule is by the rich. Indeed, in Westlands, which is a public agency, the growers with the most land have the most votes in electing directors to the district‘s board. The late Justice William O. Douglas called this voting control by the big growers a ―corporate political kingdom undreamed of by those who wrote our Constitution.”
Carter concludes, “Now, even with new legislation that will determine the future viability of Westlands’ critical irrigation import infrastructure, it seems inevitable that the political clout of the nation‘s most powerful irrigation district will somehow prevail to perpetuate this culture of social, economic, and natural inequity.”
Thanks to Oregon State University professor Michael Campana, publisher of WaterWired, for directing readers to Carter’s new article. For a lecture by Carter at Oregon State University posted by WaterWired, click here.
UPDATE 11/05/2009: Westlands is happy with the $11.1 billion package of water deals passed by the California State Legislature yesterday. To see how happy, click here.
This post has been updated.
“One earthquake, one flood away from collapse”
Posted on | November 2, 2009 | 1 Comment
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.
Click here to keep reading
Tags: California > chance of rain > Legislation > Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
The week that was, 10/25-31/2009
Posted on | November 1, 2009 | 1 Comment
Salish Sea map by Stefan Freelan. Click on the image for the cartographer's notes.
“What’s in a name?” — Bert Webber, Bellingham, Washington biologist, “State board adds Salish Sea to region’s watery lexicon,” Seattle Times, October 30, 2009
Click here to keep reading The week that was
Los Alamos legacy
Posted on | November 1, 2009 | No Comments
FRANK CLIFFORD, author of “The Backbone of the World,” long-time staff environment editor of the Los Angeles Times and now a freelance writer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reports in today’s Los Angeles Times on a threat from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Rio Grande. From the story:
Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory’s deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven’t contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest. Click here to keep reading.
High good, low bad: Mead in October
Posted on | November 1, 2009 | 3 Comments
Source: University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Digital Collections.
WHEN the Colorado River’s water was divided by treaty in the 1920s, Nevadan negotiators never imagined that Las Vegas would need more than 300,000 acre feet of water a year (compared to Arizona’s 2.8m and California’s 4.4m). The population of Clark County was roughly 2,500. Its largest city, Las Vegas, a railroad town, already had groundwater and native springs, if not the semitropical climate promised in this Chamber of Commerce brochure, date unknown.
The once ebullient springs of Las Vegas are now dry, Clark County is 90% dependent on that 300,000 acre feet of water from Lake Mead, the reservoir containing Colorado River water impounded behind Hoover Dam. The population of greater Las Vegas is roughly two million and cities such as San Diego, Phoenix and Los Angeles also vie for water from water in Lake Mead.
Meanwhile, Mead is shrinking.
Click here for the October 2009 closing elevation of Lake Mead
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Lake Mead > October 2009 elevations
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