One word for 2016 and hereafter

Another Human being for Peace

Farmers Try Political Force to Twist Open California’s Taps

Few in agriculture have shaped the debate over water more than the
several hundred owners of an arid finger of farmland west of Fresno.
By MICHAEL WINES and JENNIFER MEDINADEC. 30, 2015 NYT

FIVE POINTS, Calif. — The message that Maria L. Gutierrez gave legislators on Capitol Hill was anguished and blunt: California’s historic drought had not merely left farmland idle. It had destroyed Latino farm workers’ jobs, shuttered Latino businesses and thrown Latino families on the street. Yet Congress had turned a deaf ear to their pleas for more water to revive farming and farm labor.

So Latinos — the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group, she noted pointedly — were sending a warning that politicians could not ignore.

“We created an organization that’s called El Agua Es Asunto de Todos — Water Is Everybody’s Business — so the Latino voice can be heard,” Ms. Gutierrez, who described herself as an El Agua volunteer, said in October 2013 at the meeting with lawmakers. “Don’t devastate our economy. Don’t take our jobs away.”

The group has since blanketed California with demands for more water on Spanish-language television, on the Internet, even on yard signs. But for whom it speaks is another matter: El Agua is bankrolled by more than $1.1 million from the Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest agricultural irrigation contractor, a state entity created at the behest of — and largely controlled by — some of California’s wealthiest and most politically influential farmers.

For almost five decades, Westlands has brought its farmers a torrent of water from the reservoirs and aqueducts of the federal Central Valley Project, the vast public work that irrigates half of California agriculture. Drought has reduced that torrent to drops, and El Agua is one part of Westlands’ wide-ranging effort to open the spigots again.

California has more than 81,000 farms, and farmers claim four-fifths of all the water its citizens consume. But no one in agriculture has shaped the debate over water more — or swung their elbows wider — than the few hundred owners of an arid, Rhode Island-size finger of farmland west of Fresno.

A water utility on paper, Westlands in practice is a formidable political force, a $100 million-a-year agency with five lobbying firms under contract in Washington and Sacramento, a staff peppered with former federal and congressional powers, a separate political action committee representing farmers and a government-and-public-relations budget that topped $950,000 last year. It is a financier and leading force for a band of 29 water districts that spent at least another $270,000 on lobbying last year. Its nine directors and their relatives gave at least $430,000 to federal candidates and the Republican Party in the last two election cycles, and the farmers’ political action committee gave more than $315,000 more. Continue reading the main story
 

Why Is California Giving More Water to Golf Courses Than Wildlife?

Environment

By Jonny Bonner / Courthouse News

September 21, 2015

 

Golf courses get 25-year water contracts while a wildlife preserve that shelters millions of birds and dozens of protected species get a 1-year contract. Read more… http://www.alternet.org/environment/lawsuit-claims-socal-giving-more-water-golf-courses-wildlife-

California water officials cancel plan to construct emergency drought barriers in North Delta

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact person: For additional information email Patrick Porgans at pp@planetarysolutionaries.org
17 April 2915

Steamboat Slough and Sutter Slough have been removed as sites for two of three barriers, which came under strong public opposition from members of C.A.R.E.S, Delta farmers and others.

Planetary Solutionaries, one of a number of opponents of the emergency drought barriers anywhere in the Delta, was informed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has decided not to dam up Steamboat Slough and Sutter Slough; however, DWR officials plan to go ahead with the one proposed for West False River. The barrier would be essentially a pile of basketball-size rocks across a 750-foot-wide channel that still allows water flow upstream and downstream, depending on the tides. DWR, operator of the State Water Project, is seeking multiple permits from various agencies to accelerate installation. For additional information from DWR officials, contact Nancy Vogel, Public Affairs Director, (916) 651-7512 Nancy.Vogel@water.ca.gov

According to documentation submitted to the Corps, by the Department, the Emergency Drought Barriers project, proposed for Sutter Slough, Steamboat Slough, and False River would result in permanent impacts to waters of the United States. Temporary fill would be installed starting May and removed in November. Critics claimed that there are no funds earmarked to remove the barriers and that they could cause irreparable damage to Delta farmlands, caused by an increase in saltier water. Planetary Solutionaries raised concerns about the need and justification for the barriers, and the impacts that they present to threatened salmonid and pelagic aquatic species already listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Department officials claim that the overall project purpose is to prevent the intrusion of saltwater into the Delta. They believe there is a need to reduce the water supply risk for delta and upstream users.

The Department applied for a permit from the Corps, which stated that water quality conditions in the Delta are declining due to the severe drought conditions and have already approached human health criteria at many locations in the South Delta and as far south as the State Water Project and Central Valley Project intake pumps that export millions of acre-feet of water from the Delta. (One acre-foot of water is enough water to cover on acre of land in one foot of water.)

The Corps is preparing to issue a new Public Notice apprising interested parties of the Department’s decision and the site of the new proposed location of the emergency drought barrier. The process will be subject to federal ESA and Clean Water Act review. #

Additional information can be obtained from the Corps Public Information Office (916) 557-5100, refer to Project SPK-2014-00187, Emergency Drought Barriers, the applicant is the Department of Water Resources.

 

California permitted oilfield discharge in protected water

 By ELLEN KNICKMEYER February 5, 2015 6:23 PM

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) —
Regulators in California, the country's third-largest oil-producing state, have authorized oil companies to inject production fluids and waste into what are now federally protected aquifers more than 2,500 times, risking contamination of underground water supplies that could be used for drinking water or irrigation, state records show.

While the permits go back decades, an Associated Press analysis found that nearly half of those injection wells — 46 percent — were approved or began injections in the last four years under Gov. Jerry Brown, who has pushed state oil and gas regulators to speed up the permitting process. That happened despite growing warnings from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 2011 that state regulators were out of compliance with federal laws meant to protect underground drinking-water stores from oilfield contamination.

In California, "we need a big course correction. We need to get the system back in compliance," said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the EPA. "Californians expect their water is not being polluted by oil producers ... This poses that very real danger." http://news.yahoo.com/california-permitted-oilfield-discharge-protected-water-175027791.html;_ylt=A86.J7_.yddU2FoAFioPxQt.

Future of $7.5 Billion Water Bond Expenditure Unknown

If you, like 3.5 million Californians, voted “yes” on the $7.5 billion water bond last year, you should start paying attention to how Gov. Jerry Brown is planning to spend the bond money.

It may not be on building new dams to store water for future dry years like he assured voters, farmers and legislators before the election. 

The governor recently divulged how he wants to spend the first $532 million: restoring streams, rivers and watersheds, water recycling projects, upgrading drinking water treatment plants, rebates for people buying water-efficient appliances and, finally, groundwater management and cleanup.

Something seems to be missing from this list. [Note: Yes, something is missing, who is getting all the money.] FYI: Read more…

California Let Oil Companies Contaminate Water, Report Says

'If there are wells having a direct impact on drinking water, we need to shut them down now'. California state regulators allowed oil companies to dispose of wastewater in clean groundwater supplies for years, according to a new report.

The San Francisco Chronicle, citing a review of state data, reports that oil companies built more than 170 waste-disposal wells feeding into bodies of groundwater that could otherwise have been used for drinking or irrigation during one of the area’s worst droughts in centuries. The wells are primarily located in the state’s agricultural Central Valley region, which was particularly devastated by the drought.

“If there are wells having a direct impact on drinking water, we need to shut them down now,” said Jared Bluemnfeld, regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. “Safe drinking water is only going to become more in demand.”

The Brown administration allowed oil companies to inject toxic wastewater into underground drinking water aquifers in the Central Valley, the Chron$ reports. The situation is being made worse by the fact that Central Valley residents and farmers are increasingly pumping water out of the ground for drinking and agricultural uses because of the drought. The wastewater injections have been going on for years.