Beyond green
Posted on | August 17, 2009 | 1 Comment
Salvia apiana, or white sage, in August
FROM TODAY’s Los Angeles Times op-ed pages:
YOU KNOW it’s the silly season when a member of the Los Angeles City Council weighs in on the importance of green lawns during a drought, as the 12th District’s Greig Smith did several weeks ago. Yet the council member’s motion, which sought to reduce watering times but increase days of the week when watering could be done, exemplifies the frustration of homeowners across Southern California. “For more than a decade, we have had a policy of greening, not browning Los Angeles,” Smith said.
It’s poignant, this bid to find a water-savvy way to keep Los Angeles green. It cuts straight to the heart of the problem with the way we garden. It’s color. We, in common with Smith, have been taught that green is good and brown is bad. In fact, the opposite is true. In the high heat of summer, brown is good, and green, at least unlikely shows of it, is bad.
Add to that: Tan is good; yellow is good; orange, maroon, gray, aquamarine are all good too, for those are the colors of the buckwheats, sages, manzanitas and deer and canyon grasses of our native chaparral. Those are the colors of our native flora as its spring greens give way to the infinitely more subtle plant palette of California in summertime.
…. To read more from the Los Angeles Times, click here.
Standing tall
Posted on | August 17, 2009 | 3 Comments
Dean Baker stood for this 2007 Las Vegas Sun portrait in the water of Big Springs, Snake Valley, Nevada, part of the Great Basin Carbonate Aquifer system targeted by Las Vegas. For 20 years, Baker has been the face of the opposition to the Las Vegas pipeline project, both for rural Nevada, where he lives, and the neighboring West Desert of central Utah, where he was born and raised. In 2007, at the behest of his childhood neighbors in Utah, Baker joined an Utahan negotiating team tasked by Congress to agree how much water, if any, Utah would consent to Nevada removing from Snake Valley, a basin shared by both states. Patricia Mulroy, Las Vegas water manager and founder of the nearly 300-mile-long pipeline project, decried Baker's appointment as political brinksmanship. However, Utah Director of Natural Resources Mike Styler said at the time of Baker, "He's a courageous person ... He's got to be able to face his neighbors with an agreement that his neighbors may not like." Last week, after a 50/50 split of unallocated water from the valley was announced, the very people who had Baker appointed to the negotiating committee began demanding release of the negotiating meeting records. Baker's response: "I am for the settlement and against the pipeline." He believes that the draft contains monitoring protections and time delays that will produce studies that will convince authorities not to pump in Snake Valley. He will be appearing in Las Vegas on Thursday August 20th to argue his case before the Southern Nevada Water Authority. It will be voting that day on whether or not to pursue the $3.5bn pipeline. See after the jump for the draft agreement, meeting times, places and link to the feed for the Las Vegas vote. Photo: Sam Morris
Click here for dates, times and places to review the draft agreement
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Las Vegas > pipeline > Snake Valley
Cadiz speaks
Posted on | August 14, 2009 | 2 Comments
FIRST, thanks to Aquafornia, the news feed of the Water Education Foundation, for carrying today’s guest commentary from Cadiz Inc General Counsel Scott Slater, and to Mr Slater for taking the time to address questions raised here and in other publications, including the Los Angeles Times, WaterWired and Aguanomics.
Click here to see how Cadiz faced its critics
Tags: Cadiz Inc. > chance of rain > Emily Green > Keith Brackpool > Scott Slater
Notable fountains
Posted on | August 14, 2009 | No Comments
Click here, or on the fountain of your choice, to be taken to day’s splendid piece of Op-Art in the New York Times.
Shock doctrine, Mulroy style
Posted on | August 13, 2009 | No Comments
CRITICS of the Las Vegas pipeline proposed for the Great Basin will find almost every argument they’ve made in 20 years of protesting the project distilled in one witty, furious burst in today’s Aguanomics posting by UC Berkeley natural resources economist David Zetland.
Zetland whipped it out on the news earlier today that Utah has finally complied with Nevadan demands for Great Basin groundwater. This follows a dare last week by Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager Patricia Mulroy (pictured above, click on the photos for captions) to her board to vote against the pipeline.
Mulroy predicted empty hydrants and water once a week if they didn’t come to heel.
Beware of shock doctrine tactics, argues Zetland.
Click here to read more on Zetland and the pipeline
Tags: chance of rain > David Zetland > Emily Green > Las Vegas > Pat Mulroy
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