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By Patrick Porgans - Planetary SolutionariesWhile Californians are being held captive waiting for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to adopt a budget, already more than 80 days late, costing “We the People” $52 million a day; more than $4 billion to date, they are also throwing $100s of millions down the drain and compounding California’s government-induced water crisis.
Within the past decade California has been besieged by a water supply crisis, a budget crisis, a credit-rating crisis, a jobs crisis, an education crisis, a health care crises and a water quality crisis. The water quality crisis was identified as a potential crisis in the 1950s, and has contributed to the pollution of a significant length of the 330 mile San Joaquin River. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 215.4 miles of the river are on the 303(d) list, (the latest EPA approved list is from 2006), adding to demise of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The primary sources of the water quality crisis is from toxic salt discharge from lands irrigated by subsidized water delivered by the federal Central Valley Project to contractors “farming” on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Millions of acre-feet of water are exported from the project’s Delta pumping plants which transport salt to and from those lands. All of this is being done as the government declares its intent to “save the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary” while sanctioning its demise. Common sense dictates that it is not possible to continue sanctioning the dumping of hundreds of tons of toxic salts into the San Joaquin River and the Bay-Delta Estuary annually and expect it to survive. Read more ... http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/?q=node/8239
