Badlands Journal

The latest news from the state Department of Water Resources water news service on the Colorado River deal. What is unclear from the story is what changed the position of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to allow the parties to believe they have a deal. But, I doubt it is the fault of the AP reporter. Much of this story is probably still below the surface. What is clear from reports, oral and written, from around Northern California, is that Metropolitan is making small deals with many water agencies up here.   

Four water agencies reach framework on Colorado River deal Associated Press - 9/3/03 By Seth Hettena, staff writer

SAN DIEGO - Four Southern California water agencies have tentatively agreed on a framework for a long-awaited pact to share the waters of the Colorado River, a key lawmaker said Wednesday.

A series of bills that would clear the way for the deal were being hurriedly drafted in Sacramento on Wednesday and House and Senate lawmakers planned to rush them through both chambers before the Legislature adjourns for the year next week.

"It looks like it's coming together," said Joe Canciamilla, a Pittsburg Democrat who chairs the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife.

Only a few weeks ago, Canciamilla announced his intention to draft legislation intended to punish the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the state's largest urban water agency, for holding up the water deal sought by the Bush administration and the six Western states that share the Colorado.

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Badlands Journal Bill Hatch Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003 Wisdom out of Madera County.

Caught between exploding Fresno and Merced (where the University of California would induce enormous growth), Madera County frequently has been forgotten. But it has done some intelligent things. Its commitment to agriculture has led to a greenbelt around the City of Madera that resembles the forward-looking policies of communities on the Central Coast more than the growthomaniac municipalities in the Central Valley. In the decision well-covered below by Charles McCarthy of the Fresno Bee, there is evidence of more local-government intelligence north of Visalia and south of, well, maybe, Chico?

The Madera Canal referred to in the article is the smaller, northern version of the Friant-Kern Canal, that goes south from the Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River through eastern, agricultural Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties.

Water agencies and federal government agencies (Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers) are reported, now and then, to be talking seriously about adding another dam above the Friant, on the San Joaquin.

Rio Mesa housing bid put off Madera County planners withhold approval because of water issues. Fresno Bee - 8/30/03 By Charles McCarthy, staff writer

MADERA RANCHOS -- Water worries -- from drought to flood -- delayed a landowner's bid this week to win Madera County's approval for a 793-acre Rio Mesa subdivision.

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My style of journalism derives from Dikaeopolis, an ordinary Athenian countryman and my political hero. In the interests of full disclosure, I offer an example of his philosophy: But never since my first bath have my brows been as soap stung as they are now, when the Assembly’s scheduled for a regular dawn meeting, and here’s an empty Pnyx: everybody’s gossiping in the market as up and down they dodge the ruddled rope. The presidents aren’t even here. No, they’ll come late, and when they do you can’t imagine how they’’ll shove each other for the front row, streaming down en masse. But they don’t care at all about making peace. O city, city! I am always the very first to come to Assembly and take my seat. Then, in the solitude, I sigh, I yawn, I stretch myself, I fart, I fiddle, scribble, pluck my beard, do sums, while I gaze off to the countryside and pine for peace, loathing the city and yearning for my own deme, that never cried “buy coal,” “buy vinegar,” “buy oil”; it didn'y know the word “buy”; no, it produced everything itself, and the Buy Man was out of sight. So now I’m here, all set to shout, interrupt, revile the speakers, if anyone speaks of anything except peace.” Aristophanes, Archarnians, 425 BC.

Aristophanes won first prize at the Linaean Festival for this work, performed six years after the Pelopponesian War had started, devastating the countryside, and five years after plague had broken out behind Athens’ walls. In this midst of this historic tragedy there was the comedy of Athenian government, pro-war and pro-war contract.

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The following is an accurate summary with comments by a Texas-based psychologist with an interest in the effects of crowding on human behavior of two other articles, one by a nationally known demographer, the other by a California environmentalist with a strong interest in growth in the state.

They correct my population data (gathered mainly from newspapers) in several regards, mainly the inflow and outflow of US-born immigrants to California and recent Mexican immigration.

I put in bold print two conclusions these investigators reached which seem to me to have been perhaps assumptions they started with. Nevertheless, they footnoted their data and have spent much more time than I could with US Census and state demographic data. Approaching the data with the hypothesis that it is Mexican immigration that is causing traffic, water and energy crises has yielded, if not politically correct conclusions, new light on the issue.

These studies leave the reader with questions: Why has Mexican immigration increased as much as the demographers estimate, despite the erection of a steel wall, vast increases of Border Patrol personnel, renaming the INS the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, and passage of the North American Free Trade Alliance?

Why do Mexican citizens come to California in these apparently ever larger numbers, risking repeated arrest, robbery, murder and exploitation on a scale most Californians have not idea or concern about?

This question is not addressed by these demographers.

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