Badlands Journal

Bringing back the population of the Bald Eagle from 400 to 7,000 breeding pairs in 40 years is a magnificent national achievement that justifies the early environmental struggle to save them. Now, developer attorneys say that without looking into the avian mind, clearly an impossibility according to mouthpieces for growth, builders and wildlife officials will be unable to tell if construction a gated community on the banks of the Potomac will "disturb" nearby nesting Bald eagles or not.

It is important to note that about the time the campaign to save the bald eagle got underway, a similar campaign began to save the Potomac River, said at the time to be "too thick to navigate, too thin to cultivate."

If we were to imagine what was in the minds of Bald eagles soaring over the Potomac near Washington DC and its extensive suburbs, it might go something like this:

Too bad they aren't fish.

2-26-07
Washington Post
Eagles' big moment, diverted by a definition...David A. Fahrenthold
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/25/AR2007022501519_pf.html
What could be one of the proudest moments in U.S. conservation -- the removal of bald eagles from the threatened and endangered species list -- has been delayed again as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service struggles to define a single word: disturb. But what does that mean? Annoy? Frighten? Injure? Kill? The national symbol, having overcome trophy hunting and DDT, now waits on a balky bureaucracy and a seven-letter verb. The issue could have serious effects on development along the eagle-rich Potomac... Now, environmentalists fear the government will settle on a narrow definition of "disturb" -- like one that prohibits only killing birds, injuring them or driving them from their nests. To crown the eagle's comeback, the president announced it would be formally removed from the list. President Clinton said that. In 1999. "By Feb. 16, the bald eagle will be delisted," he said. But that day came and went. Instead, the Fish and Wildlife Service -- now under court order to make a decision one way or the other -- set a new deadline of June 29. One of the holdups is a big fight over a little word. The word is found in the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which will become the primary law about eagles if the birds lose threatened-species protection. It lists all the things one cannot do to the national bird: pursue, shoot, shoot at, poison, wound, kill, capture, trap, collect, molest, disturb. But the Fish and Wildlife Service decided that the last term needed defining before the law could be enforced. Last February, it proposed a definition: A bird would be considered "disturbed," if it was dead, injured or forced to abandon its nest. Since February 2006, the Fish and Wildlife Service has put out two federal-register notices, held two public-comment periods and compiled more than 30 pages of official reports. All to define a word that the American Heritage Dictionary sums up in nine lines. The service has promised to announce a definition next month. And no, it's not worried about defining the word that comes before "disturb" in the eagle law. Schmidt, the migratory-bird director, said it's clear to most people what "molest" means.The dictionary, of course, says it means "disturb."

What's in a word?...Monday, February 26, 2007; B04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/25/AR2007022501466_pf.html
The removal of the bald eagle from the list of threatened and endangered species has been delayed in part because of a debate over the meaning of the word "disturb." The law says eagles should not be disturbed, but different groups have different interpretations:

American Heritage Dictionary To break up or destroy the tranquility or settled state of; to trouble emotionally or mentally; upset. To interfere with; interrupt; to intrude on; inconvenience; to put out of order; disarrange.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service To agitate or bother a bald . . . eagle to the degree that causes injury or death to an eagle (including chicks or eggs) due to interference with normal breeding, feeding or sheltering behavior, or nest abandonment.
Definition would require proof that a particular eagle had been killed, injured or forced to abandon its nest.

Center for Biological Diversity To agitate or bother a bald . . . eagle to the degree that disrupts the normal behavior of the eagle.
Definition includes actions that annoy or frighten the birds but do not harm them physically or drive them from their nests.

National Association of Home Builders A knowing or intentional annoyance or agitation that actually kills or injures a bald . . . eagle by significantly disrupting normal behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding or sheltering.
Definition would cover only instances in which the birds are killed or injured.

The theme of the "old regime" is much discussed on the blogs this week. For the best article on the subject, we refer you to the Tomdispatch.com, Feb. 22, 2007, Was 2006 a Turning-Point Election? On the Road to 2008, by Steve Fraser:

Why Does the Ancien Régime Die?

Rare as they are, one might ask why turning-point elections happen at all. Marking as they do the emergence of a new political order, they are, it seems, brought on by a general crisis in the old order, an impasse or breakdown so severe it can no longer be addressed by the conventional wisdom of the political status quo. The secession of the southern states in 1860 was, of course, such a crisis. So was the Great Depression. So, too, was the convergence of imperial defeat in Vietnam, the overthrow of the racial order of the ancien régime, and the de-industrialization of the American heartland. Secession, depression, defeat, these have been the "big bangs" ushering in new political universes.

System-wide crises prove fatal, first of all, because they exhaust the repertoire of political solutions available (or imaginable) to the ruling circles of the old order. Elites become increasingly defensive and inflexible, so much so that their actions aggravate rather than alleviate the crisis at hand. In the early years of the Great Depression, for example, Andrew Mellon, President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury, suggested that the way out of the cataclysm was to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate." In doing so, he was falling back on the orthodoxy of his robber-baron ancestors and exposing not only the callousness of the old regime, but its incapacity to do anything constructive about the national calamity.

In the general spread of this atrophy, it should come as no surprise that Valley water politics would figure in it. Below, two articles discuss 1) the federal Bureau of Reclamation plan to privatize the San Luis Reservoir by giving it to Westlands Water District and partners; and 2) a plan to link that giveaway to restoring natural flows to the San Joaquin River devised by Rep. Devin Nunes of Visalia.

Members of the Friant Water Users Authority in Nunes' district reached a settlement last year on an 18-year-old lawsuit with environmentalists to restore the water they had been taking from the San Joaquin River, which had caused it to run dry for 50 miles, only to be filled farther downstream by agricultural wastewater. Nunes' opposition to this settlement has been intemperate -- but we are talking about water, so perhaps we should say, adamant, instead.

In any event, the Ancien Regime of Valley Water is relying on bedrock principle in its latest proposals for westside drainage (which poisoned Kesterson Wildlife Refuge), the Friant settlement and restoration of flows to the San Joaquin River: Steal the water!

Badlands editorial staff
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The PCL Insider: News From The Capitol
Feb. 22, 2007
www.pcl.org

LOVE IS SOMETHING IF YOU GIVE IT AWAY - BUREAU OF RECLAMATION OFFERS VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT TO 600 SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY AGRIBUSINESSES

The Federal Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) announced last week that it had developed a new proposal to resolve the toxic water fiasco it created nearly fifty years ago when it began pumping water to agribusinesses in the western San Joaquin Valley.

The solution: (Drum roll please...)

Hand over federal assets and clean-up oversight to wealthy corporations!

(We thought you'd appreciate their logic).

Under USBR's proposal, ownership of the federally-owned San Luis Reservoir and accompanying water delivery facilities would be transferred to the Westlands Water District. Ownership of this Central Valley Project reservoir would mean increased water rights to Northern California rivers.

USBR would also agree to pardon Westlands for the remaining $490 million debt the District still owes for the construction of their water delivery system – money that has already been spent using taxpayer dollars.

Westlands, nominally a public agency, is the public face of 600 agribusinesses that use federally supplied water to irrigate 600,000 acres of farmland in western Fresno and Kings Counties.

Decades of intensive irrigation on these lands has flushed naturally-occurring toxic chemicals into nearby waterways and deformed large populations of migrating waterfowl. The federal government agreed to provide a solution to this chemical conundrum when it began providing water in the early 1960s, but they have yet to do so.

In return for the sweetheart deal now being proposed, Westlands Water District would relinquish 40,000 acre-feet of their annual water supply from San Luis Reservoir and absolve USBR of their responsibility to resolve the contamination problem. The latest cost estimate to physically engineer a solution is estimated at $2.6 billion. In other words, this forty-year-old environmental disaster would be under the supervision of the corporations, who are entirely reliant on the tainted fields for disposing of their subsidized runoff.

So, again, who benefits from this deal?

Representative Jim Costa (D-Fresno), whose district includes Westlands, believes that taxpayers will be the big winners if the lovers' pact proceeds. "It's not like the Bureau of Reclamation can just walk away from (its obligation to resolve the contamination issue). It's a far better deal for the taxpayers," Costa said in an article in the Contra Costa Times.

Seems almost too good to be true.

Here's what you're not hearing in the USBR proposal: If the federal government remained primarily liable for the clean-up of the contaminated lands, Westlands agribusinesses would still have to repay USBR to fix the toxics problem. So, the agribusinesses wouldn't really assume any new obligations. They would, however, receive ownership of one of the most important water facilities in the federal Central Valley Project, a mammoth public works project ostensibly owned by all U.S. citizens.

This isn't the first time Westlands' reputation has been tarnished for putting profit over ethics.

Last month, after announcing the purchase of 3,000 acres of land along the McCloud River that would be flooded under a USBR proposal to raise Shasta Dam, Westlands General Manager Tom Birmingham acknowledged that their "purpose in buying the property was only to ensure there would be no additional impediments if the Bureau of Reclamation concludes it's feasible to raise the dam."

Birmingham failed to mention that Westlands would be a primary benefactor from a taller Shasta Dam and that taking more water from Lake Shasta through the California Delta to Westlands Water District threatens the ecological health of the largest estuary in the Western Hemisphere. As owners of the San Luis Reservoir, Westlands would have right to more of that water secured by a taller Shasta Dam. San Luis is the main storage facility for Shasta Lake water after it flows southward from the Delta.

"This would be the first time that corporate agribusiness water contractors had water rights to North Delta water. It would certainly be an unprecedented turning point in California water history," points out PCL's Water Program Manager, Mindy McIntyre.

The Bureau of Reclamation is floating the concept paper of this proposal on Capitol Hill over the coming weeks. McIntyre and the rest of the PCL team will be keeping an eagle eye on this Valentine's Day deal. We'll keep you posted!

Fresno Bee
Feb. 21, 2007
Nunes sees one solution to two Valley water problems...Mark Grossi and Michael Doyle
http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/30985.html
The San Joaquin River connects two of California's major water problems now floating in isolation. On Tuesday, a San Joaquin Valley lawmaker suggested merging the two problems into one regional fix. One problem is restoring the river. The other concerns irrigation drainage in a region where the river once flowed. Separate lawsuits have lingered for years. Separate solutions finally are proposed for both. Perhaps, some say, it now makes sense to unify rather than isolate. But others aren't so sure. "There is not much evidence in the history of California water to support the idea that adding two hard issues together makes it easier to solve either one of them," attorney Tom Jensen cautioned Tuesday. "To the contrary." Nunes proposes linking this to the San Joaquin, by applying to river restoration the 100,000 acre-feet of water being given up for the drainage solution. He calls it win-win. Nunes disputes current congressional proposals to restore the San Joaquin River, and his latest offering may quickly fall flat for lack of allies. Most other Valley lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, and George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, support the specific river plan he resists. Moreover, environmentalists who likewise support the river restoration plan are skeptical of a drainage solution transferring the water projects. Others fear losing their best chance at securing a San Joaquin River bill. All of which means that even if Nunes' solution fails, the next question becomes whether he succeeds in provoking discussion about another unified solution.

"It (UC Merced) is not a good neighbor with environmental sensitivities, and it has continued to show us they have no regard for the process ... They have relied on political clout to circumvent environmental rules, and they can only bend the laws so far before the regulatory agencies say no." -- Lydia Miller, president San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center.

2-20-07
San Francisco Chronicle
Merced - UC expansion plans again run up against protected fairy shrimp...Tanya Schevitz
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/20/BAGGBO7I5V1.DTL

Endangered fairy shrimp, those tiny vernal pool dwellers that have bedeviled planners at UC Merced for years, are flexing their protected status again.

The half-inch-long crustaceans are in the path of the campus' long-range development plans and, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, their environmental standing might force the university to expand elsewhere -- possibly 15 miles away.

The campus, which opened in 2005 and is 6 miles from downtown Merced, wants to grow directly to the north and east with new dorms, lecture halls, classroom buildings and other facilities needed to accommodate a projected enrollment of 25,000 students by 2030.

The expansion would involve 910 adjacent acres, including 86 acres of seasonal wetlands over which the Corps of Engineers holds authority to regulate development or reject it outright.

Even more wetlands would be affected by a new residential university community of about 31,000 people planned for next to the campus. UC Merced and private developers want to jointly build the new city on 2,100 acres -- including 40 acres of wetlands -- directly south of the campus. It would include 11,600 homes, with some of the homes sold on the open market and others built as subsidized housing for faculty and staff. Also planned are stores, restaurants and entertainment facilities.

UC Merced officials were warned years ago of the obstacles they would face.

The Corps of Engineers advised them in 2002 -- before the university began building the first phase of the campus on a former golf course to avoid wetlands -- that there was no guarantee it could build the rest of the campus on nearby lands considered environmentally fragile.

"Those impacts are fairly substantial," said Bruce Henderson, senior project manager for the Corps of Engineers. "These (vernal) pools have a lot of creatures covered by the federal and state endangered species acts."

The Army engineers expect to issue a federal environmental impact statement outlining the project and its impacts in about two months. The public will be given 60 days to comment, and a final report and decision are expected by early next year.

Henderson said it was too early to make any judgments on whether UC Merced will win the permits it needs.

"There is a need for the university in the region," Henderson said. "What we are looking to do is take their proposal and avoid and minimize the impacts to the aquatic resources."

UC Merced spokeswoman Patti Waid Istas said that before UC built the first phase of its campus, it got a biological opinion and looked at a similar permitting case in Florida. She said UC officials are optimistic that they will be able to move forward as planned with the next phase.

"If we had had to wait, this region would not have had access to a UC (campus) all this time," said Istas. "We decided that the needs of the valley and the state were too important to delay."

But the uncertainty about its next phase is the latest in a series of challenges to the fledgling campus, UC's first new one since 1965.

The campus hasn't attracted as many freshmen in its second year as hoped. Students complain that the campus is remote and that there isn't much to do. The campus has 1,586 undergraduate and graduate students and three academic buildings. Two other buildings are planned for the core campus, which can accommodate 5,000 students. But the goal is to grow to 25,000 students by 2030.

Adding a 10th UC campus was approved by the UC Board of Regents in 1988, and Merced was chosen in 1995 as the winning site. But the campus has been plagued by controversy about vernal pools and fairy shrimp for years. Environmental concerns forced the university to shift the campus from its preferred site to the old golf course about a mile and a half away with plans to grow on adjacent lands.

"When they did that, they did that with the knowledge of the risk that the final permit might be for something different than what they laid out," said Karen Schwinn, deputy director of the water division at the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, which has a formal advising role in the Army engineers' permitting process.

In its analysis, the Corps of Engineers has included the university's preferred proposal and scaled-down alternatives. Yet another would put the campus expansion about 15 miles away near Livingston.

University officials insist that only the preferred site will do and have taken issue with the Corps' analysis.

"What we find is that the Corps' alternatives would add significant costs to taxpayers and would delay the campus development," Istas said.

And if UC does not get a permit to proceed with its proposed site, the campus may never be developed to its full potential, the university warns.

But federal regulators say UC has not proven that its project is the least environmentally damaging alternative.

"Thus far, we have not been convinced ... that enough justification has been made to fill the waters out there," Schwinn said. "They haven't yet demonstrated that it is necessary to fill the extent of vernal pools they have proposed to construct a viable campus. They need to justify why it is not feasible as they build a campus to consider one of the other sites."

Istas said that in the Central Valley, wetlands are not the only consideration. Farmlands are very important to residents as well. She said the decision must consider a variety of factors.

"It is beyond the impacts to wetlands. It also includes the impacts on economics of the area, land use, property ownership, traffic, air pollution and the public and private need for the university," Istas said. "Sometimes folks are just focusing on the environmental impacts and it is so much more complex than that. ... To keep the campus contiguous would reduce the impacts in the other areas."

She said that as proposed, the project would affect 86 acres of wetlands and 1,400 acres of farm- land. The alternative proposals would impact fewer wetlands but more agricultural lands.

In addition, she said, the university has already purchased 25,000 acres of open space to offset the loss of vernal pools on the proposed campus site. While Istas said that an assessment by the Corps showed that the land would preserve wetlands at a ratio of nearly 3 to 1, a debate continues about the value of that land in comparison to the land that would be destroyed.

Lydia Miller, a longtime opponent of the UC Merced project and president of the San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, is looking forward to the opportunity to comment on the plan when the environmental report on the university comes out.

"It is not a good neighbor with environmental sensitivities, and it has continued to show us they have no regard for the process," she said. "They have relied on political clout to circumvent environmental rules, and they can only bend the laws so far before the regulatory agencies say no."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fairy Shrimp
Branchinecta lynchi

Habitat: Fairy shrimp occupy a variety of vernal pools, seasonal aquatic habitats formed when winter rains fill shallow depressions. The pools persist for several months, gradually evaporating during the spring. Habitat varies from small clear sandstone rock pools to large grassland valley pools.

Reproduction: A single female can produce several hundred cysts (eggs) during one season. The cysts usually remain dormant until the next year's rain, but they can last for a decade. The average time to maturity is 41 days.

Sources: Sacramento Fish & Wildlife Office Species Account; California Department of Pesticide Regulation Endangered Species Project.

Our Hun announced after deadline Friday that he has appointed a Blue Ribbon Task Force to develop a "Delta Vision." Badlands editorial staff predicts this is the beginning of the next campaign for a peripheral canal.

The 41 leaders on the task force are a Who's Who of Usual Suspects, chaired by former state Assemblyman Phil Isenberg. Isenberg, who knows everyone in the world but his world doesn't extend beyond the Sacramento city limits, is an interesting choice. Throughout Willie Brown's long speakership in the Assembly, Isenberg, whatever committee chairs he might be sitting in, was Willie's nuts-and-bolts campaign foreman in election years. Isenberg could actually run an effective statewide campaign for a peripheral canal. It is hard to see than he would have any other interest in the Delta beyond having the levees break downstream from Sacramento.

State Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman made the announcement. A Tulare County rancher and agricultural leader, nobody but Our Hun would have appointed him to this position because Chrisman and south Valley leadership like him are responsible for the air and water quality mess down there. Will the visionary Delta peripheral canal somehow modify the San Joaquin River Agreement, reached between the Friant Water Users Authority (largely a Tulare County group) and the Natural Resources Defense Council?

Reading down the list, we find Tom Birmingham, General Manager and General Counsel of the Westlands Water District. Westlands just bought the 3,000-acre Bollibokka fishing club on the McCloud River, just in case the federal government wants to buy it back to raise the level of the Shasta Dam to flood it out. Tom's deal is real simple: as his west side grower customers are bought out by the government because of selenium, salts and other heavy metals, Westlands can sell more federally subsidized water to the Southern California municipal market and to growing communities in the south Valley for real big profits.

It's hard to fault former members of various committees of CAL-FED on the blue ribbon task force. Although water experts predicted nothing would come of that effort from the beginning, it was certainly hampered by the continual opposition of the former Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, chairman of the former House Resources Committee, now known again as the Natural Resources Committee.

Nor do we develop automatic prejudices against notable officials in the Dickensian world of water politicians based on their names, and so we expect enlightenment on Delta issues from Joan Anderson Dym, Executive Director of the Southern California Water Committee. However, we wonder where former Gov. Gray Davis' great water guru, Keith Brackpool, is hiding.

With Randy Fiorini, President of the Association of California Water Agencies and Director of the Turlock-Modesto Irrigation District, we appear to be wandering in the darkness of Hun Flak. There is no such thing as the T-MID. He appears to be a director of the Turlock Irrigation District. However, ACWA is a well-known promoter of any dam project.

Ditto: Tony Francois, Director of Water Resources for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Tom Hurlbutt, Water Advisor for J.G. Boswell Co., will doubtless have a conservative solution: More water for Boswell; less for the rest.

Zeke Grader, Executive Director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Executive Director of the Institute for Fisheries Resources, is lonely champion of environmental interests among the blue ribbons. Perhaps there are a few others, Jonas Minton for example, but the Hun's Blue Ribbon Task Force is about exploiting water resources and real estate, with a little farming thrown in. It is not about fish, restoration of a Bay or Delta fishery, preservation or enhancement of the Delta and its communities as they are. We believe it is about recycling a 20-year old bad idea: the peripheral canal. Beyond the millions that will be spent, we cannot predict. But, at least, it is a make-work project for politicians and their consultants. Developers will be unable to refuse the temptation; money will flow; the party will go on. See you at Fat's.

Steve LaMar, Chair of both the Water Resources Subcommittee and the Flood Taskforce for the Building Industry Association, represents interests that would probably welcome a flood and the reconstruction projects to follow, a la Katrina. Build on a flood plain once, rebuild after the next flood. It just makes good dollars and cents. How would the BIA come down on a peripheral canal? Developers would approve a canal that would take flood pressure off the Delta. They could fill up the whole flood-plagued area with gated communities and ranchettes surrounded by brackish, stagnant sloughs unfit for a carp. Vista de la Ultima Carpa Estates!

David Shabazian, Senior Planner, Sacramento Area Council of Governments; project manager of SACOG's intelligent-transportation systems integrating regional systems with Caltrans, appears to represent smart growth and perhaps believes he does. Actually, all he represents is northern California's most successful regional lobby for federal highway funds -- with a lot of pretensions thrown in to confuse the public. The proof his SACOG's pudding is Roseville.

Adding a van Loben Sels to the task force adds a touch of history. The family had a dairy on the Delta, wiped out before most of the now-crumbling levees were built. A witness to that event once described the view of an entire herd of dairy cows floating down a flooding river, feet up, c. 1905.

But, with the appointment of Steve Johnson, Director of Strategic Initiatives for The Nature Conservancy, California Chapter; and member of the CALFED Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee, we leave the realm of possibility and enter the realm of corporate eco-sleeze. UC Merced is still digging itself out from under the famous conservation easements Johnson purchased for it, using state funds but not adhering to state easement standards. The Nature Conservancy's ace environmental slut boy's collaborator, Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, is reported trying to get a off-shore job in the administration of a Hawaian university, while the Merced public wonders when the state is going to begin to call the UC Merced easement mess by its name: fraud against California taxpayers. In this activity, Johnson and the Chancellor were enabled at every step by Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, in the state Assembly at the time before advancing to Congress. Other participants in the deal were former Gov. Gray Davis and numerous officials in the state Department of Resources. Throughout the process of siting the greatest growth-inducing project in the history of Merced, both the law and the endangered species it is meant to protect were the victims and the tools of a "win-win, public-private partnership" that enriched a few large landowners at the expense of state taxpayers and while appearing to satisfy some of the natural resources mitigation for the UC project, built in the middle of the densest fields of vernal pools in the state, probably in the nation. However, by definition, this is really not what happened, because as all right-thinking, educated people know, the University of California is always right and good. Our Hun might regard Johnson as just the man to handle the mitigation for the environmental impacts of a peripheral canal, particularly since it would doubtless pass through vernal pool territory. Unfortunately, a peripheral canal doesn't enjoy the high, if unreflective public opinion enjoyed by UC. On the other hand, water in California is related to life and wealth; while UC is associated with weapons of mass destruction and escalating tuition.

To end on an upbeat note, however, we notice that there is a member of the task force with a background in environmental economics, Spreck Rosekrans, Senior Analyst for Environmental Defense, specializing in land, water and wildlife and electric utility issues. A UC math graduate, Rosenkrans may be able to crunch a few numbers with the boys and girls from the "real world" of finance and real estate. Who knows, maybe "inevitable growth" is prohibitively expensive.

There are key people missing from the Blue Ribbon Task Force. They are missing because they are effective advocates for the Delta ecology, they know what they are talking about, they have extensive records, and they file lawsuits to protect the Delta rather than to plunder it.

Older Californians hark back to the day when such task forces and commissions seemed to work better. Some are even aged enough to remember when the Public Utilities Commission was an effective agency. It may be a problem of scale. Our state Legislature, for example, was designed to adequately represent about 10-15 million people. Now it badly represents 37 million people with a term-limited Legislature of the same size. Meanwhile, lobbyists are neither termed nor limited in number. But maybe when we reach 50 million people, things will all even out if we get that technological black box that will restore representative government. Democracy is just another business, isn't it?

Badlands editorial staff
------------

Notes:

News Release from Resources Agency: 41 Member Delta Vision Stakeholder Panel Named
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 13:42:30 -0800
From: "Parker, Annie"

41 Member Delta Vision Stakeholder Panel Named

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Delta Vision" plan moved another step forward today as Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman named appointments to a 41-member Delta Stakeholders Group.

This panel will represent Delta interests, provide assistance and make recommendations to a Blue Ribbon Task Force appointed by the Governor last week, on ideas and innovations that will lead to a sustainable Delta. Former Assemblyman and past Sacramento Mayor Phil Isenberg will serve as chairman of the Blue Ribbon Task Force.

"The Governor's Delta Vision process depends upon a wide array of stakeholders and the wealth of knowledge and depth of experience they bring to the table," said Chrisman.

In creating Delta Vision, the Governor clearly stated its purpose: to provide a sustainable management program for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta, a unique natural resource of local, state, and national significance. Delta Vision was established by and Executive Order in September 2006.

The Delta, formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, has long been a center of controversy as both the largest estuary on the West Coast and hub of the state's water system. In addition, the 57 islands and waterways of the Delta are traversed by a major portion of Northern California infrastructure, including hundreds of gas lines, six highways, five high voltage lines and three railroads.

"We recognize the competing demands upon Delta interests as we work toward a sustainable management plan," Chrisman said. "But we need to develop a common vision that we'll be able to implement and this group will play an integral role in helping us reach that goal."

Named to the stakeholder group are:

Juan Acosta, Director of Government Affairs for BNSF Railroad (California/Nevada); currently serves on the Regional Rail Steering Committee (Bay Area) and participates in the Air Resources Board's Goods Movement Advisory Committee.

Blanca Banuelos, Attorney for the California Rural Legal Assistance Program.

Linda Bendsen, Member of the Delta Protection Commission's Recreation Citizens Advisory Committee and board member of Recreational Boaters of California.

Tom Birmingham, General Manager and General Counsel of the Westlands Water District.

Gary Bobker, Program Director at the Bay Institute, member of the CALFED Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee and co-chair of CALFED's Ecosystem Restoration Subcommittee.

Christopher Cabaldon, Mayor of West Sacramento; serves on the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the Delta Protection Commission and the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

John Cain, Director of Restoration Programs for the Natural Heritage Institute.

Steve Chappell, Executive Director of the Suisun Resource Conservation District.

Lenore Clark, Vice-chair of the state Boating and Waterways Commission and Vice-President (North) of Recreational Boaters of California.

Marci Coglianese, Member of the CALFED Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee; former mayor and council member of the City of Rio Vista, and former member of the Delta Protection Commission and Solana Land Trust.

Gilbert Cosio, Principal Engineer, MBK Engineers.

Debbie Davis, Legislative analyst for the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water.

Joan Anderson Dym, Executive Director of the Southern California Water Committee.

Bob Ferguson, Vice-Chair of the South Delta Water Agency and Vice-Chair of the Delta Protection Commission; owner of Ferguson Farms.

Randy Fiorini, President of the Association of California Water Agencies and Director of the Turlock-Modesto Irrigation District.

Tony Francois, Director of Water Resources for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Bill Gaines, President, California Outdoor Heritage Alliance.

Henry Gardner, Executive Director, Association of Bay Area Governments; former City Manager for City of Oakland; and former consultant on municipal management, public financing, capital projects and new business development.

Greg Gartrell, Assistant General Manager, Contra Costa Water District; and member of CALFED Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee

Zeke Grader, Executive Director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Executive Director of the Institute for Fisheries Resources.

David Guy, General Manager of the Northern California Water Association and member of the CALFED Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee.

Tom Hurlbutt, Water Advisor for J.G. Boswell Co.

Steve Johnson, Director of Strategic Initiatives for The Nature Conservancy, California Chapter; and member of the CALFED Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee.

Jeff Kaspar, Deputy Director of Properties and Environmental, Port of Stockton.

Jeff Kightlinger, General Manager, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Steve LaMar, Chair of both the Water Resources Subcommittee and the Flood Taskforce for the Building Industry Association.

Mike McGowan, Yolo County Supervisor; Chair of the Delta Protection Commission and Chair of the Port of Sacramento

Jonas Minton, Senior Project Manager for the Planning and Conservation League; former Deputy Director of the California Department of Water Resources and former executive director of the Sacramento Water Forum.

Anson Moran, General Manager of the Delta Wetlands Project and former manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

Barry Nelson, Senior Policy Analyst, Natural Resource Defense Council; formerly Executive Director of Save the Bay in Oakland.

Valerie Nera, Policy Advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce, specializing in water supply and conveyance, agricultural land use and labor, balanced resource development, private property rights protection and federal environmental laws.

Spreck Rosekrans, Senior Analyst for Environmental Defense, specializing in land, water and wildlife and electric utility issues.

Rudolph Rosen, Director, Ducks Unlimited Western Regional Office

Diane Ross-Leech, Manager of Environmental Support and Services, Pacific Gas & Electric Co.; member of Santa Clara Valley Habitat Conservation Plan Stakeholders Group.

David Shabazian, Senior Planner, Sacramento Area Council of Governments; project manager of SACOG's intelligent-transportation systems integrating regional systems with Caltrans.

Kerry Sullivan, Director of San Joaquin County Planning and Community Development; serves on the San Joaquin Council of Governments’ Habitat Technical Advisory Committee.

Topper van Loben Sels, Member of the Delta Protection Commission and the Delta Citizens Municipal Advisory Committee.

Mark Wilson, Chair of Wilson Farms and Wilson Vineyards.

Jim Wunderman, President and CEO, Bay Area Council; serves on the boards of the Bay Area Economic Forum, the Bay Center and the California Center for Regional Leadership.

Greg Zlotnick, Board Member, Santa Clara Valley Water Agency and Association of California Water Agencies; Vice-Chair of Bay Area Water Forum.

Tom Zuckerman, Co-Counsel, Central Delta Water Agency and member of the CALFED Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee.

1-28-07
San Francisco Chronicle
Land sale fuels fear of higher dam at Shasta
Greg Lucas, Tom Stienstra, Chronicle Staff Writers
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/01/28/MNG1UNQDNH1.DTL
The Fresno-based Westlands Water District -- already the largest agricultural user of Northern California water -- has spent nearly $35 million to purchase 3,000 acres of land on the McCloud River to make it easier to one day raise Shasta Dam. The land acquired by Westlands would be sold to the federal government and inundated if officials and lawmakers decided to raise the dam.
Located on the property is the private Bollibokka fishing club, built in 1904 by the founders of Hills Brothers Coffee, and 26 Winnemem Wintu Indian villages with burial grounds. The Indians worry that their access to sacred sites could be blocked by Westlands...

Greed makes for a debased ideology. I know we Americans pride ourselves on being pragmatic and above ideology, but the last six years should have shown us the limitations of that pretense. It isn't that we don't need ideology, but greed is the wrong basis. Self-interest, reflectively considered, is better. None of us planning to live our lives in the Valley have any reflective self-interest in the current, cynical state of air pollution politics. Yet the ideology of greed proclaims that we must grow and grow and grow and build more highways to accommodate the increased traffic from the growth. Greed compels us to believe "growth is inevitable." Greed forces us to believe there is nothing we can do, no policies we can create, that can stand in the way of the developers' bulldozer blade.

Greed is a liar and believing greed makes liars of us all. Growth is not "inevitable." A glance at American economic history, or the history of any other Western industrial society, will show that growth booms and growth busts, just like the recent speculative housing boom in the Valley. Growth is in fact killing the planet. Corporate business responds by buying science to cast doubt on the reality of global warming. Perhaps money ought not be the final arbiter of absolutely every public policy, but as long as business owns government, money remains the final arbiter.

Wal-Mart spokesman Keith Morris said his company is "absolutely aware" of residents' concerns about how the distribution center would affect Merced's air. He said Wal-Mart agreed to expand the project's environmental review to help better address those concerns.

That extra analysis added $38,695 to the environmental report's $344,655 price and delayed it by a few months.

"It delays the project, but if it gives everybody a comfort level that these things have been thoroughly evaluated, then it's absolutely the right thing to do," Morris said.

Nowhere locally is this cynicism of money clearer than in the world of San Joaquin Valley air pollution politics. Entering the maze of agencies involved in so-called regulation of our breathing problems is guaranteed to drive a public spirited soul concerned with elemental health and safety issues to a state of gibbering idiocy, at which point she would achieve intellectual unity with agency administrators who make their livings in this particular amusement park.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for monitoring mobile emission sources – trucks and cars that account for 80 percent of the air quality problem. The EPA has recently announced gasoline should use less benzene. This decision was the result of a lawsuit.

The state Air Resources Board and the regional boards like San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, are responsible for stationary emission sources. They look dimly upon farmers’ pumps and other stationary motors but somehow miss the impact of milk trucks. When bond money is generated, CARB has a hand in its distribution. The big plan for the Valley is to use bond money to pay for less polluting cars and trucks. It’s a win-win, public-private partnership!

Then come the CAGs and COGs, countywide or regional associations of the incorporated land-use authorities. These groups, made up almost exclusively of developer-bought local elected officials, are morphodite institutions, combining an alleged concern for air quality with real greed for transportation growth. Given that nothing beyond a speculative investment boom is more growth-inducing than more highways and expressways, the COGs and CAGs are nothing but regional lobbyists for federal highway funds, agencies involved with making sure air pollution issues are safely filed where the sun don’t shine. Lately, they have been peddling – with indifferent success – the idea that local citizens, actually the victims of speculative housing development, ought to pony up more sales taxes so that the local COG or CAG can get its proposals for more new roads and wider highways to the top of the stack at the state Department of Transportation, where the proposals must go before they go to the Federal Highway Authority, the Grandmother of All Pork Barrels. Although Merced has been a national leader in overpriced homes, speculative investment and now falling real estate prices and foreclosures, the people of the county have rejected three such invitations from their CAG to pony up an annual bribe for CalTrans.

Local political genius, Merced City Councilman Bill Spriggs, was the manager of the latest effort, which failed by more than the primary campaign did for the CalTrans bribe. Spriggs reportedly stomped his feet and yelled as newly elected state Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, for not supporting his road-bribe campaign. Galgiani, in an unexpectedly close race, went with the voters rather than the Temper-Tantrum Spriggs, who noted that his sales-tax campaign got more votes in Merced County than Galgiani did. Galgiani didn't need more votes than the CalTrans bribe initiative to win. She needed enough to win. Spriggs lost.

Beyond the COG/CAG level, we now have regional planning partnerships and blueprints. One of the co-chairs of the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley is Stockton developer Fritz Grupe. Grupe recently pulled out of a deal to build 3,000 homes from Riverbank to McHenry Ave. last week, and now disputes he owes Riverbank the price of an updated general plan. Was that decision caused by the slump in housing prices or by how working on a partnership for growth from Stockton to Bakersfield has somehow sensitized the developer to the impacts of growth?

All Valley leadership is now marching to a unified theme: We must accept the designation of “severe non-attainment” of air quality goals. Although last year we achieved real parity with Los Angeles as the worst air pollution zone in the nation, this year we will achieve official recognition of this feat. By accepting the lowest standard in the nation, previously achieved only by Los Angeles, the lower the standards we will have to meet and put the date forward. This means that we will be eligible for the immediate future for federal highway funds to build more expressways and wider highways to induce more growth to further lower air quality standards. But, do not think that government is being stupid here. Government knows exactly what it is doing and for whom it is doing it. It only boggles the minds of people concerned about global warming, public health and safety, open space, the future of agriculture and habitat for endangered species.

Although Money buys enormous propaganda campaigns to promote its moral pretensions, It has no values at all beyond its own multiplication.

This was as far as we could get with our analysis of air pollution politics in the San Joaquin Valley. There are further levels. Boards, commissions, and other bodies – all appointed by politicians owned by developers – exist and overlay like fancy new GIS maps the actually elected local officials responsible for land-use decisions in California. Government’s approach to air pollution in the Valley is that whenever one agency gets a little too much heat – whenever the public appears that it might focus on one or a set of regulators to the point of actually achieving some air pollution control – government applies another layer of bureaucratic smog.

Two recent developments are noteworthy. First, UC Merced is ambitiously planning a medical school because, according to its website, the San Joaquin Valley offers a living research laboratory of the effects of air pollution. Cool! Secondly, political consultants are popping up to fleece the boggled citizenry with various schemes for campaigns to make it all better. These efforts seem to rely heavily on the latest principles of public relations. Actually, however, people in the San Joaquin Valley are already aware of air pollution.

The way environmental law and regulation is set up at the federal and state levels, lawsuits remains almost the only way to contest bad decisions by land-use authorities and state and federal regulators. There are several ways to learn this. First, the public can read the bought science in the environmental reviews for the projects, and the subsequent briefs and judicial decisions where legal action is sought against the projects. These are all public documents and this is an area that can be studied and has been successfully studied and analyzed by members of the public. They are creations of the human mind that can be understood by the human mind. Secondly, one can observe the amount of bullying done by politicians. They are at once in the pay of the developers so must approve the projects. On the other hand, they have to manage the public, which they do, more and more frequently as time goes on and the environment gets worse, by intimidation. Third, the public is free to notice that local land-use authorities are now universally indemnified by developers against any legal expenses arising from court challenge to their developments. Fourth, there are the ceaseless efforts to politically and legally strip the environmental laws and regulations of their force. The Pomboza (Rep. Dennis Cardoza and former Rep. RichPAC Pombo) launched a notable effort to gut the Endangered Species Act last year. It cost Pombo his seat because environmentalists, when seriously provoked, are capable of effective political retaliation. But, developer attorneys work ceaselessly to erode existing law and regulation. Not content with constant attacks on environmental law, they also erode First Amendment rights and state government codes – all to get that next project in to profit a developer and finance, insurance and real estate interests behind the developer.

Periodically, physicians appear, unflanked by public health officials, make their dire pronouncements, and disappear, absorbed back into their mysterious and awesome guild. Even doctors think the air pollution is getting pretty bad, the newspapers dutifully report. There must be something to it.

The public is vastly superior in numbers, but disorganized compared with developers with their clear, simple profit motive in mind and bought elected officials with the same simple goal. However, the public could focus its energy immediately on a campaign to stop growth until adequate general plans are written and to stop forever the extremely corrupt practice of developer indemnification of legal expenses to land-use authorities that approve utterly environmentally irresponsible projects. If land-use authorities were made financially responsible for the legal consequences of their decisions, they might be more careful. If forced by the voters to make a real new general plan instead of one more consultant special cooked up in the usual backroom by the usual suspects, the process might focus their attention on the mess they have created and called “inevitable growth.”

San Joaquin Valley air pollution is going to get worse because nobody appears at the moment willing to fight it publicly beyond the odd press release, the occasional workshop, and the rare lawsuit. To appear to stand against “inevitable growth,” even in the midst of the worst real estate bust in Valley history, for a livable environment, and to cease making common cause with our own gravediggers, is too much for the Headless Chicken Set. And that is why we have air pollution policy and regulation in the Valley that has been designed by the State and National Win-Win Public-Private Consortium of Developers and Headless Chickens.

It’s a hard thing to explain to a kid with asthma, but the consortium no doubt has a grant to development literature for children.

Bill Hatch
----------------

Notes:

Coalition Statement on Merced County Planning Process

We call for a moratorium on County General Plan amendments, variances, minor sub-divisions changes to existing projects, zoning changes, and annexations of unincorporated county land by municipal jurisdictions, MOU’s and developments with private interests and state agencies, until a new County general Plan is formulated by a fully authorized public process – and approved locally and by the appropriate state and federal agencies.
The continual process of piecemealing development through amendments, willfully ignoring the cumulative impacts to infrastructure and resources, for the benefit of a small cabal of public and private special interests, is illegal and reprehensible conduct on the by elected and appointed officials of local land-use authorities.
We also call for a permanent moratorium on indemnification of all local land-use jurisdictions by private and public-funded developers.
Indemnification is the widespread, corrupt practice in which developers agree to pay for all legal costs arising from lawsuits that may be brought against their projects approved by the land-use authority — city or county. Without having to answer to the public for the financial consequences of decisions made on behalf of special interests, local land-use authorities can be counted on to continue unimpeded their real policy: unmitigated sprawl, agricultural land and natural resource destruction, constant increases in utility rates, layering of school and transportation bonds on top of property taxes, and the steady erosion of the county’s infrastructure.
Adopted 2006

San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center
Protect Our Water
Central Valley Safe Environment Network
Merced River Valley Association
Planada Association
Le Grand Association
Communities for Land, Air & Water
Planada Community Development Co.
Central Valley Food & Farmland Coalition
Merced Group of Sierra Club
Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge
VernalPools.Org
California Native Plant Society
Stevinson Citizen’s Group
San Bruno Mountain Watch
San Joaquin Valley Chapter of Community Alliance with Family Farmers

CENTRAL VALLEY SAFE ENVIRONMENT NETWORK
MISSION STATEMENT
Central Valley Safe Environment Network is a coalition of organizations and individuals throughout the San Joaquin Valley that is committed to the concept of “Eco-Justice” — the ecological defense of the natural resources and the people. To that end it is committed to the stewardship, and protection of the resources of the greater San Joaquin Valley, including air and water quality, the preservation of agricultural land, and the protection of wildlife and its habitat. In serving as a community resource and being action-oriented, CVSEN desires to continue to assure there will be a safe food chain, efficient use of natural resources and a healthy environment. CVSEN is also committed to public education regarding these various issues and it is committed to ensuring governmental compliance with federal and state law. CVSEN is composed of farmers, ranchers, city dwellers, environmentalists, ethnic, political, and religious groups, and other stakeholders.
P.O. Box 64, Merced, CA 95341

2-16-07
3,000 homes in Riverbank halted...Eve Hightower
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/13300327p-13929010c.html
A developer that had hoped to build a 3,000-home community on more than 850 acres northwest of Riverbank no longer is interested....Grupe, a Stockton-based developer, had agreements to buy the acreage to build an upscale community called The Bridges, so Riverbank would stretch almost to McHenry Avenue. Grupe also is no longer interested in paying for the city's general plan update. It already was paying toward a promised $400,000; the entire plan was expected to cost $500,000.
"Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I thought Grupe was going to pay for it whether they built or not," Mayor Chris Crifasi said at a City Council meeting this week. Grupe pulled out last week, citing concerns about a slowdown in the housing market... This is not the first time that Grupe offered to pay for an overdue general plan that involved expanding city boundaries to include land Grupe was interested in developing. Grupe also helped pay for Waterford's update as the plan explores allowing development in an area where the company is interested in building a 350-acre subdivision called Lake Pointe.

Valley hit hard by falloff in home sales, prices...Martin Crutsinger
http://www.modbee.com/business/story/13300373p-13929057c.html
The slump in housing deepened in the final three months of last year with sales falling in 40 states and median home prices dropping in nearly half the metropolitan areas surveyed. While some economists said they believed the worst may be over for housing, others predicted more price declines to come until near-record levels of unsold homes are reduced. The National Association of Realtors said the states with the biggest declines in sales from October through December compared with the same period in 2005 were: Nevada, down 36.1 percent; Florida, down 30.8 percent; Arizona, down 26.9 percent; and California, down 21.3 percent. Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, predicted that home prices in many parts of the country would continue to be under pressure for the rest of this year as the market works through still large inventories of unsold homes. "We are seeing the declines concentrated in the industrial Midwest, where the job market is a mess due to the layoffs in the auto industry, and in markets such as Florida and California" where a heavy influx of speculators had bid up prices, Zandi said.

Vacant and costly...J.N. Sbranti
http://www.modbee.com/business/story/13300377p-13929065c.html
Record numbers of homes are sitting vacant awaiting buyers in the United States. That's about 62 percent more than usual, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The glut of vacant houses is readily apparent throughout the Northern San Joaquin Valley, as bank foreclosures and former rental homes flood the for-sale market. Stanislaus and Merced counties, in fact, have among the highest foreclosure rates in California, according to the January 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report from RealtyTrac.com. Stanislaus County had 355 homes in mortgage default and facing possible foreclosure in January. That means about one in 425 homes are in the process of being taken over by lenders. The situation is worse in Merced County, where 189 homes — or one in 362 existing homes — were in default in January. Porter said foreclosure rates tend to go up when the real estate market slumps because homeowners can't sell fast enough or get the price they need to save their homes from default. That combination of a slow sales market, weak rental market, soaring foreclosure rate and excess new home construction created the glut of vacant homes for sale, Porter said.

2-15-07
Merced Sun-Star
Two doctors voice opposition to Wal-Mart plan...Leslie Albrecht
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/13296668p-13925833c.html
Dr. John Holmes, a Merced orthopedic surgeon, and Dr. Bob Vizzard, a Stockton emergency room physician, charged that fumes from diesel trucks driving to and from Wal-Mart's warehouse facility would damage Merced's already poor air quality and trigger asthma attacks and premature deaths. Consultants are studying the project's possible environmental impacts now; it won't go before the City Council for a vote until at least August, said Planning Manager Kim Espinosa. Holmes said measures to lessen the facility's impacts on air quality weren't sufficient. He accused the San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District of acting irresponsibly by working with Wal-Mart to lessen possible air quality damage. "How can you allow a polluting project in here when you can't even control or mitigate the pollution that you already have?" said Holmes, who was also a vocal opponent of the Riverside Motorsports Park. "It's obvious this is inappropriate." In August 2006, the air district requested that the environmental impact report on the proposed distribution center include what's called a human health risk assessment... When the draft of the environmental report is released, the public will have 45 days to submit comments on the document. After consultants prepare written responses to each comment, the Planning Commission will vote on whether to recommend certification of the environmental report and on whether to approve the project. That vote probably won't happen until late summer. After the Planning Commission's vote, the City Council will issue the final decision on the project, Espinosa said

Fresno Bee
Vanishing farmland...Editorial
http://www.fresnobee.com/274/story/29995.html
Farming is the foundation of the Valley's economy, and a constant refrain hereabouts is that we need to save productive farmland from urban development. We're not doing a very good job of living up to those sentiments, though. A study just released by the state shows just how badly our deeds contradict our words: Urbanization of farmland in the Valley increased to an unprecedented pace in recent years, to the point that between 2002 and 2004, some 26 acres a day were being removed from farming and dedicated to other purposes. Fresno County led the state during that period in the pace of urbanization of its farmland. Other Valley counties posted significant losses. There are many reasons for this. Growth continues at a rapid rate, and people need homes and employment centers. Land is worth considerably more for development than it fetches as farm land. Some farmers can't wait to sell their land and cash in; others do so reluctantly -- but they do it, because the money is very seductive. Some are pushed out; they want to continue farming, but adjacent development brings pressure to get out of agriculture... The boom in housing construction in recent years accelerated the turnover of productive farm lands to urban uses. Los Angeles and Orange counties were once mighty producers of food, but there aren't even any commercial orange groves left in Orange County. Silicon Valley used to be a rich agricultural area; now the only things grown there are high-tech companies and expensive homes. That may be the fate of the Valley as well. But surely something important will be lost: There is no place on earth so well-suited to agriculture than the Valley. And the ramifications of losing all that domestic food production include an increased reliance on imports from other countries, with many attendant risks. There are ways to stop the loss of ag lands. Conservation easements and similar tools let farmers sell development rights, often in perpetuity, and remain in farming. Better planning could reduce the friction between urbanizing communities and surrounding farm operations. And cities like Fresno could start building up instead of out to accommodate population growth. But each of these solutions requires the will to employ them. And that's not much in evidence among elected officials and the special interests they often serve. So we may go on bemoaning the loss of the Valley's precious farm land -- and doing very little to slow or stop it. At least until we decide whether we really believe what we say.
2-14-07
Fresno Bee
State says San Joaquin Valley farmland being lost to development...AP
http://dwb.fresnobee.com/state_wire/business/story/13294092p-13923622c.html
In just two years, more than 18,800 acres of farmland in several San Joaquin Valley counties became subdivisions, shopping malls or other developments, setting a new state record for loss of farmland, according to newly released state data. A healthy real estate and construction market spurred farmers in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Tulare and Merced counties to sell 18,801 acres between June 2002 and June 2004, said Molly Penberth, manager of the Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program of the California Department of Conservation. Preliminary data from the program that tracks land development, found roughly 26 acres of farmland were removed from production each day in the two-year period...

Modesto Bee
Firm donated to backers of supervisors...Garth Stapley
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/13293157p-13922748c.html
A company in hot competition for Stanislaus County supervisors' approval of a large development project recently gave $33,000 to groups trying to influence the campaigns of two supervisors. PCCP West Park LLC contributed $28,364 to an Elverta group that produced mailers attacking the opponent of Supervisor Jeff Grover before his November re-election. West Park also donated $5,000 to a group that slammed Supervisor Dick Monteith. Tuesday, West Park pitched its multimillion-dollar development plan for the Crows Landing Air Facility to supervisors, including Grover and Monteith.
Air facility proposals take wing at Board of Supervisors meeting...Tim Moran
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/13293167p-13922767c.html
Opinions voiced Tuesday on the two proposals to develop the 1,528-acre former naval air base were varied...Texas-based Hillwood Inc. and Sacramento-based PCCP West Park LLC, each gave an hour synopsis at the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors meeting of how they wanted to develop the base. West Park plan sparks most comment... Official: Continue working together...Supervisors questioned the developers on farmland mitigation, potential housing development and any expectation of local government money. Both developers said they had no plans for housing outside of incorporated cities and also said they had no need for local subsidy. Kamilos said he favors farmland mitigation and will provide farmland easements to replace developed farmland on an acre-for-acre basis. Magness said he didn't think the board should require farmland mitigation on a military base redevelopment project, but said Hillwood will comply with whatever the board decides. The Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on the matter at its Feb. 27 meeting.

Fresno Bee
Explosive growth paves over farmland...Sanford Nax
http://www.fresnobee.com/170/story/29764.html
The urbanization of farmland in the central San Joaquin Valley sped up between 2002 and 2004, with an equivalent of 26 acres converted to nonagricultural uses each day, according to newly released data. The amount of ag land in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Tulare and Merced counties converted to other uses in 2002-04 was a record -- and reflected an increase of 4,000 acres over the previous two-year period of 2000-02, the state reported. Fresno County lost more irrigated farmland in those two years than any other county in the state, closely followed by Kern County, said Molly Penberth, manager of the Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program of the California Department of Conservation. Forty-three percent of the 18,801 acres removed from farm use in those five counties was in Fresno County, the No. 1 agriculture county in production value in the nation. The report, to be released in the next few months... The state also noted that Merced County's urbanized area grew by 1,852 acres from 2002 to 2004.

2-10-07
Washington Post
New EPA rules for gasoline limit benzene, a carcinogen...Juliet Eilperin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020902055.html
The Environmental Protection Agency issued rules yesterday that will dramatically cut toxic fumes from cars and trucks over the next 25 years...regulations, which will reduce the amount of cancer-causing benzene in gasoline and set tighter emission standards for autos in cold temperatures and for fuel containers, will help reduce toxic emissions from passenger cars by 80 percent from 1999 levels by 2030. Among air pollutants, benzene -- which naturally occurs in crude oil and is increased through refining to boost gasoline's octane rating -- poses the second-biggest cancer risk to Americans, after diesel emissions. Environmentalists, who had successfully sued EPA for failing to issue a benzene ruling by 2004, hailed yesterday's move but questioned the decision to allow refineries to trade emission credits.

New York Times
E.P.A. limits the benzene in gasoline by 2011...Felicity Barringer
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/washington/10benzene.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The Environmental Protection Agency is requiring significant reductions in the amount of cancer-causing benzene and other toxic hydrocarbon gases in gasoline and released into the air during storage and use, under a rule released Friday. The final rule, issued under a court-ordered deadline set after environmental groups filed suit about two years ago, provides more uniform reductions around the country than the agency had originally proposed. The rule puts a ceiling on the total benzene content of any gasoline produced after 2011...rule limits opportunities for those refineries that are not meeting the benzene limit to meet their obligation by buying credits from other refineries whose gasoline more than meets the standard. In addition to the new benzene limits for gasoline, the new rule also orders cuts for benzene levels in tailpipe emissions and pungent benzene vapors escaping from gasoline cans. The agency estimated that the new rule, called the Mobile Source Air Toxics rule, would result in 33,000 tons of reductions by 2015... “Cars and trucks put out a whole toxic soup of pollutants,” Emily Figdor of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, one of the two groups that sued the agency, said in an interview. “The administration is going after one of them. Benzene poses a whole host of health risks. It’s a good thing that they strengthened the standard.” California’s current standard for benzene is already below the new national standard, so that state’s 13 refineries are not affected. Marti Sinclair of the Sierra Club, which was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, it was too much. “We are happy that E.P.A. has addressed this important public health issue at last,”...“It is disappointing that E.P.A. would undermine its own program by adopting this dangerous trading scheme.”

For Immediate Release: February 8, 2007
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=821
EPA LIBRARY SYSTEM CONTINUES TO IMPLODE — Union Charges EPA with Unfair Labor Practice for Refusing to Consult on Closures
Washington, DC — Despite public pledges of cooperation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is refusing to consult with its own employees about the effects of past or schedule of future library closures, according to an unfair labor practices complaint released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In the face of growing congressional opposition, EPA continues to shutter libraries and make collections unavailable both to its own staff and the public.
The unfair labor practice complaint was filed on Monday, February 5, 2007 by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National Council of EPA Locals, Council 238 before the Federal Labor Relations Authority. The complaint centers on the closure of the EPA Regional Library in Chicago and charges that EPA has refused to bargain on the impacts this action has on scientists and other specialists. The complaint asks for intervention to force EPA to enter binding arbitration on the subject.
“EPA touts its outreach efforts but has refused to consult with its own professionals or anyone else prior to hacking apart its library system,” stated PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg. “It is ridiculous that our nation’s top environmental professionals have to wage legal battle just to keep access to information.”
This Tuesday, in an oversight hearing before the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson testified that only five of the 26-library network had been closed. In fact, additional libraries have been shut, including, most recently the EPA Regional Library in Atlanta (serving eight southeastern states) where virtually all services have been transferred to Cincinnati. When confronted by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the committee chair, Johnson said he knew nothing about this functional shuttering of the Atlanta facility.
The rationale for EPA’s library shutdowns has shifted. Originally it was to save funds but agency studies show that its libraries produce cost savings several times their budgets by eliminating staff time that would otherwise be spent on tracking down documents. In addition, EPA’s plan to digitize tens of thousands of documents will likely cost far more than the $1.5 million it estimated it might save.
Now, EPA claims that it wants to modernize its information system, even as its budget is being cut – the FY 08 proposed budget unveiled by President Bush this week would cut EPA’s budget by 6.6%. The agency, however, has not described how the new system it is implementing on a piecemeal basis will ultimately function. Nor is it known how this still-developing new system will perform any better.
“EPA is forcing its entire staff to become their own librarians, wasting countless hours and sacrificing access to mountains of information formerly available,” Goldberg continued. “These shuttered libraries handled tens of thousands of information requests each year, not the handful that EPA is now implying.”

2-5-07
Fresno Bee
Valley lobbies for air cleanup funds
Agency wants $250 million from Proposition 1B.By E.J. Schultz
http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/28090.html
SACRAMENTO — A newly launched effort to clean the Valley's air will face an early test in Sacramento this year when regulators begin to dole out $1 billion in air quality bond money. The Valley's air pollution agency is lobbying for at least $250 million to help replace polluting cars and trucks — a key part of a 16-year, $3 billion plan to meet federal clean air standards ...The $1 billion in clean air money is contained in Proposition 1B, the $19.9billion transportation bond approved by voters in November. The ballot measure calls for the air money to be spent to reduce emissions along trade corridors.

2-7-07
Breathing hard as air goes bad...Michael G. Mooney
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/13270230p-13903091c.html
Over the past few days, the air in Modesto and the Northern San Joaquin Valley was as bad as, or worse than, it was in Fresno and other Central Valley locations. "Basically a strong high-pressure system has moved over California, creating a lid over the entire San Joaquin Valley," said Ferreria, an air quality project planner at the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District...a "bowl" effect is created...Dust, ash, smoke and soot become trapped and hang in the air. Robert Martella, pharmacist..."The albuterol is flying off the shelves,"..."So are the other inhalers, especially for children."...he noticed a weekend sales spike in medicine used by asthmatics, which coincided with poor air quality recorded in and around Modesto. With the high pressure in place, Ferreria said, air movement is at a minimum, causing it to grow increasingly dirty and increasingly unhealthy to breathe. A few days ago, Ferreria said, the ridge settled directly over California, trapping pollution in the atmosphere throughout the entire eight-county Northern San Joaquin Valley.

Fresno Bee
Valley can clean its air quicker, study says...Mark Grossi
http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/28460.html
Valley residents can breathe clean air 11 years sooner than the local air district has predicted and save more than $5 billion in health-care costs...nonprofit International Sustainable Systems Research Center released a study that encourages swifter cleanup of diesel pollution and tougher rules for businesses — such as forbidding the use of older, polluting farm tractors on bad smog days. Seyed Sadredin, executive director of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, replied that even if he followed all the suggestions, the Valley would still come up short...said the research center used outdated estimates of the Valley's pollution emissions. The recommendations also address further restriction of farm irrigation engines and wine fermentation. Another suggestion would regulate composting and green waste facilities years earlier than the district anticipates, according to the study. But those changes would affect only 30% of the problem. The study noted the air district does not have direct control over 70% of the problem — vehicles. The state and federal governments regulate vehicles, planes, trains and other so-called mobile sources. Diesel and other vehicle pollution are the biggest obstacles to a smog cleanup. The research center's study, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is likely to attract wide interest in California...

1/31/07
Fresno Bee
Don't hold your breath...Editorial
http://www.fresnobee.com/274/v-printerfriendly/story/27238.html
The Valley's air district has proposed dropping into the worst category for non-attainment of clean air standards...the district has decided that we can't meet the existing deadline of 2012. Moving from the current "serious" category to extreme would put the Valley in uncomfortable company. Los Angeles is the only region in the worst-offender ranks now. But it would extend the deadline, and finesse some stiff penalties from the federal government - principally the threat to freeze some $2 billion in highway funds. "Even if money were no object...is still physically impossible to get the pollution reductions we need by 2012," said district executive director Seyed Sadredin. Perhaps. But we might get the job done a lot faster with more cooperation from state and federal agencies - particularly the feds. Vehicles are responsible for about 80% for the smog-forming emissions that plague us. And the Valley air district - indeed, local government at all levels - is powerless to do a thing about it. Control of so-called "mobiles sources" rests with Sacramento and Washington. So, yes, perhaps this slide into extreme non-attainment is inevitable - because we didn't do enough to stop it, in Washington, in Sacramento or here at home. Meanwhile, if the air district has its way, a child born in the Valley today will graduate from high school before he has a chance to breathe clean air.

"First you killed your own Indians and now you want to kill us!" the farmer shouted angrily ... Now the Zapatistas are freezing their seed corn to preserve pure Mayan germ plasma so that there will never be a world without it. -- John Ross, CounterPunch, Feb. 14, 2007

A pair of recent reports about the career of the infamous genetic engineering racket, spreading weird genes in our food wherever it goes. They come from that great GE watchdog in California, Thomas Wittman (GE_NEWS@eco-farm.org). Tom has born steady, daily witness for a decade to the evolving corporate business of patenting the staffs of life.

Badlands

Big Biotech is Forcing Farmers to Buy GMO Seeds
The Plot Against Mexican Corn
By JOHN ROSS
CounterPunch, February 14 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02142007.html

The "diableros" (hand truck hostlers) from Lagunilla market clustered around La Lupita's Ricos Tacos in the rough and tumble barrio of Tepito were not smiling. "Yesterday these cost me six pesos. Today, it's eight. Tomorrow, who knows, ten?" complained Rodrigo Aldama, 28, pointing at the three greasy tacos on his paper plate, "Vitamin T is rich man's food now." Vitamin T, a staple of urban diet here, includes tacos, tostadas, tamales, tortillas, and most any kind of street food concocted from corn.

The steep jump of tortilla prices here this January to as high as 18 pesos a kilo (they were six in November) have unleashed a storm of protest and suspicion. "Someone's getting rich on my 'ricos tacos' but it isn't me" lamented Lupita Perez. Many point fingers at the corn distribution system, which is run by transnationals.

Rodrigo had another theory: "the tortilla is Mexico but now they want us to eat white bread like the gringos." Others see even more sinister motives behind the sudden spike in tortilla prices which the government of freshman president Felipe Calderon blames on short supply and high prices for white and yellow corn - the opening of the Mexican milpa or corn patch to genetically modified corn.

World corn prices are currently at an all-time high due to burgeoning interest in ethanol production as a petroleum substitute. In Mexico the price of corn has been pushed upwards by the cost of diesel and petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides despite the fact that Mexico is a major oil producer. Crop failures due to drought, flooding, and even ice storms have contributed to the price surge. But whatever the immediate causes, the dismantlement of government agricultural programs and the brutal impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement have deepened the crisis in Mexican corn production.

Competing with highly subsidized U.S. farmers is driving their Mexican counterparts into bankruptcy. Whereas south of the border, guaranteed prices for farmers' crops is a thing of the past, corporate corn growers north of the Rio Bravo can receive up to $21,000 an acre in subsidies from their government, enabling them to dump their corn over the border at 80% of cost. The impact of this inundation has been to force 6,000,000 farmers and their families here to abandon their plots and leap into the migration stream, according to a 2004 Carnegie Endowment study.

This assault on poor farmers down at the bottom of the food chain will be exacerbated at the end of 2007 when all tariffs on U.S. corn are abolished. Meanwhile President Calderon seeks to tamp down tortilla prices by importing up to 2,000,000 duty-free tons to augment what Mexican farmers can or cannot produce. Such a solution is guaranteed to drive more farmers off the land. Even worse is that much of the new influx of NAFTA corn will be transgenic.

A great deal of the 36,000,000 tons of corn Mexico has imported from the U.S. in the past six years is genetically modified - 40% to 60% estimates the environmental group Greenpeace, reasoning that U.S. producers, barred from dealing GMO corn in Europe and Japan are using Mexico as a dumping ground for the grain.

GMO corn began pouring into Mexico in 1998 and by 2001 was being detected in the remote sierras of Oaxaca and Puebla, a region in which maize was first domesticated seven millenniums ago - both BT and Starlink strains (Monsanto and Novartis brands) were found in Oaxaca's Sierra de Juarez in 2001 and 2002. 11 out of 22 corn-growing regions in the two states registered readings of contamination as high as 60% in a 2002 government study that was suppressed by the Secretary of Agriculture.

Although Mexico imports millions of tons of transgenic corn, it remains a crime here to plant genetically modified seed. In 1998, the National Biosecurity Commission, an interdisciplinary body that involves the health and agricultural secretariats, declared a moratorium on planting genetically modified corn until its impacts could be determined, and the ban remains in place although under heavy attack from big biotech and agribiz and transnational grain purveyors like the Cargill Corporation which now controls much of Mexican corn distribution.

To keep the industry at bay, the Biosecurity commission now grants permits for "experimental" stations where the grain can be grown under government supervision - the Monsanto corporation is now testing its "YieldGuard" brand corn on hundreds of hectares in Sinaloa state, the most prolific corn-producing state in Mexico. A spillover of YieldGuard in Sinaloa could contaminate a big chunk of the existing corn supply.

Despite the prohibitions on planting, there is plenty of transgenic corn tassling up in the Mexican milpas these days. Some of it is accidental. Massive imports of NAFTA corn distributed in rural regions through state-owned Diconsa warehouses threaten vast swatches of the Mexican "campo." Diconsa trucks are old and the roads rough and the GMO corn blows off into the wind contaminating cornfields for miles around.

Although more and more licenses are issued every year for experimental planting, producers groups are now threatening to plant GMO corn without government permission - "If the moratorium is not relaxed, we will start planting the transgenic corn in the spring cycle" warns Perfecto Solis, director of the U.S.-Mexican agribusiness giant Corn Products Systems.

Despite the prohibitions, big corn growers have been sewing transgenic maize without government permission for years. Roberto Gonzalez Barrera, "El Rey de la Tortilla", whose Maseca-Gruma, now a third owned by the Archer Daniels Midlands conglomerate, rules the corn flour and tortilla market (between 60 and 80%), once boasted that he had thousands of hectares under transgenic corn.

Maseca-Gruma is indeed a major player in the "transgenization" of the tortilla industry. During the administration of the now-reviled Carlos Salinas (1988-94), Gonzalez Barrera began marketing an instant corn flour mix milled from both genetically modified and natural corn. Taco shells milled and confected by Gruma and marketed by Kraft were found to contain Starlink corn, then not yet authorized for human consumption, resulting in the largest call-back of any transgenically contaminated product in U.S. history.

The Maseca mix has largely supplanted the traditional Indian way of preparing corn for tortillas - the "nixtamal" in which the "granos" or kernels are put to soak overnight in a brew whose main ingredient is quicklime. As payback for market domination, the King of the Tortillas flew Salinas into self-exile in his private jet in 1995 after the ex-president's brother was arrested for murder.

Barrera and his ADM partners and their transnational associates at Cargill-Consolidated Mexico and Mimsa-Corn Products now control the Mexican maize market. It is that monopoly, which has caused the current panic, considers Luis Hernandez Navarro, op-ed editor at La Jornada, the national left daily, and a writer intimately familiar with agricultural issues. When ex-president Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) closed down CONASUPO, the state grain distribution system in 1997, the transnationals moved in and have taken control, says Hernandez. "When Mexican corn is in danger so is Mexico" he cautions, echoing the old refrain "no hay pais sin maiz" - there is no country without corn.

Hernandez and other veteran observers of the Mexican "campo" strongly suspect that the current corn crisis is being manipulated to end the moratorium on planting transgenic corn in Mexico. "The transnationals want to end the moratorium and are using this made-up crisis to pressure the SAGARPA (Agricultural Secretariat) to do away with it" figures investigator Antonio Serratos at the prestigious College of Mexico think tank. "It is part of their strategy for taking control of the entire agricultural sector."

As if to confirm Serratos' hunch, Big Agro is already petitioning the Biosecurity Commission to permit widespread planting in 2007. "Bio-tech is the only solution to growing more corn and keeping the tortilla affordable" advises Jaime Yesaki, director of the National Agriculture and Livestock Council or C.N.A, the principal agri-business federation in the country.

The C.N.A. was joined in its petition to the Secretary of Agriculture to vacate the ban on growing GMO corn by the National Association of Supermarkets and Retail Stores which is controlled by the U.S. transnational Wal-Mart - Wal-Mart is now Mexico's number one retailer of tortillas and other foodstuffs and, with 700 mega-stores, the nation's largest employer.

The subtext of the corn conflict is control of the seed market. "We have been patiently waiting to end the moratorium for ten years now" complained Eduardo Perez Pico, director of Monsanto-Mexico, the St. Louis-based conglomerate that dominates world seed markets. "Meanwhile Mexico is falling behind the rest of the world in applying new seed technologies that can better feed its people" the magnate recently told La Jornada.

The Mexican geography produces hundreds of varieties of corn that have adapted to the country's myriad bioregions over millenniums. The introduction of transgenic seed will work to homogenize these strains, reasons Dr. Ignacio Chapela, the University of California-Berkeley biologist who was the first to locate GMO contamination here while doing fieldwork in the tiny Oaxaca sierra town of Calpulapan in 2001. "Millions of years of biological history will be lost if transgenic seeds are allowed to be planted in the Mexican milpa" Chapela affirms.

Big Biotech with Monsanto leading the pack wants to replace those millions of years with seeds like the Terminator (named for the action hero governor of California) which goes sterile after one growing cycle and obligates farmers (they sign binding contracts with Monsanto) to buy more, a process Mexican investigator Silvia Ribiero tags "bio-slavery".

Corn is not just nutrition and livelihood in Mexico but also culture and religion. Maiz came from the gods and the Aztecs and Mayas nourished those gods with sacrificial victims to keep it coming. The transnational attack on corn stirs passions and paranoias amongst the descendants of Mexico's first peoples. At a meeting of NAFTA scientists a few years back, some with deep ties to Big Biotech, and charged with investigating allegations brought by 17 Mexican NGOs that GMO corn was a threat to the nation's 57 distinct indigenous peoples, an Indian farmer from Oaxaca seized the mic and accused the scientists of practicing genocide by pushing transgenics. "First you killed your own Indians and now you want to kill us!" the farmer shouted angrily.

The Zapatistas are Mayans and the Mayans are the People of the Corn. According to their sacred books, the Popul Vuh and the Chilam Balaam, they are actually made from maiz. Manuel, a member of the ecology-agricultural commission at Oventik, the most accessible Zapatista "caracol" or public center in the mountains above San Cristobal de las Casas, venerates these roots. "We are the corn - if it is poisoned so are we" he insisted during this New Year's "Encounter Between the Peoples of the World and the Peoples of the Zapatista Communities" up at the Caracol "Resistance and Rebellion for Humanity." Now the Zapatistas are freezing their seed corn to preserve pure Mayan germ plasma so that there will never be a world without it. You can even purchase the seeds on the World Wide Web. Check out www.schoolsforchiapas.com.

U.S. Agency Violated Law in Seed Case, Judge Rules
Andrew Pollack
New York Times, February 14 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/business/14crop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Agriculture Department violated the
law by failing to adequately assess possible environmental impacts before
approving Monsanto<'s genetically engineered alfalfa.

Judge Charles R. Breyer of Federal District Court in San Francisco said the
agency had been "cavalier" in deciding that a full environmental impact
statement was not needed because the potential environmental and economic
effects of the crop were not significant.

Plaintiffs in the case  some alfalfa seed companies and environmental and
farm advocacy groups — said they would push to stop the sales and planting of
the alfalfa, which is resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington
advocacy group that organized the lawsuit, said the decision by itself could
block commercial sales of genetically engineered alfalfa seeds but that the
plaintiffs would ask for an injunction to make sure. Judge Breyer asked the
parties to meet and propose remedies to him by Feb. 26.

Christopher R. Horner, a spokesman for Monsanto, said the company had not
seen the decision but thought it would not affect its business. Monsanto was not
named in the suit, which was filed against the Agriculture Department.

Calls to several spokesmen for the Agriculture Department were not returned.
A recording in the department’s communications office said the government
closed early yesterday because of expected bad weather in Washington.

A federal judge in Washington said last week that the Agriculture Department
had not done adequate assessments before approving field trials of genetically
engineered grass. And last August a federal judge in Hawaii, in a case
involving field trials of crops engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, ruled
that the Agriculture Department had not adequately assessed the possible impact on
endangered species.

Mr. Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety said yesterday’s decision could
set a precedent that would require the Agriculture Department to do full impact
statements for other biotech crops before they are approved.

The Roundup Ready alfalfa was deregulated by the Agriculture Department in
June 2005, meaning it could be grown outside of field trials. It was the first
approval in years of a new genetically engineered crop. Because alfalfa is the
fourth most widely planted crop in the United States, the action presented a
big opportunity for Monsanto.

The Agriculture Department had first done an environmental assessment, which
concluded that a longer and more detailed environmental impact statement was
not needed. This was in part, the agency said, because the implanted gene
conferring herbicide resistance was harmless to people and livestock.

But Judge Breyer, in his 20-page opinion, said that the agency had not
adequately considered the possibility that the gene could be transferred by
pollen
to organic or conventional alfalfa, hurting sales of organic farmers or exports
to countries like Japan that did not want the genetically engineered variety.

"An action which potentially eliminates or at least greatly reduces the
availability of a particular plant — here, nonengineered alfalfa — has a
significant effect on the human environment," he wrote.

The judge also said that the Agriculture Department had too easily dismissed
the possibility that planting Roundup-resistant alfalfa would lead to wider
use of Roundup, which in turn would contribute to the development of weeds
resistant to the popular herbicide. That is particularly a risk, he said,
because many other crops like soybeans and corn are also resistant to Roundup, which is
known generically as glyphosate.

"One would expect that some federal agency is considering whether there is
some risk to engineering all of America’s crops to include the gene that
confers resistance to glyphosate," he wrote.

I was struck by a sense of danger this weekend. I haven't had this sense as strongly for decades. In me, this feeling belongs to the period of the Vietnam War when, suddenly a certain combination of news stories would bring me back from work and daily life to consciousness of deepening crisis.

We who went through that war in our various ways (mine was very protected compared to many others' experiences) cannot help seeing analogies with this war, although we seem to agree widely that history never repeats itself exactly, no matter how similar personal alarm bells from within may sound. There are strong similarities between wars in which imperial powers with vastly superior armament invade foreign nations whose people must defend their lands. This sort of war seems to end up in prolonged, bloody battles with high casualties in the rubble of city streets.

Yet, American politics moves blithely on, as if it were the most important thing. Our latest new voice is Barak Obama, who announced his candidacy for president last weekend, stressing that he "listens" to the people. Those of us old enough to remember the Vietnam War also remember American political party conventions where politicians were forced to listen to the people inside and even outside the convention hall, even if all they heard outside were cries of pain, protest and anger as the people were being beaten and arrested by police. We think Chicagoan Obama is listening to Chicago Mayor Richard Daly, Jr., son of Hizzoner Richard Daly, who unleashed his police force on anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic Party convention in 1968, not long after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. We think Obama is also listening closely to Daly's brother, Bill Daly, chief lobbyist in the campaign to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement. To the extent that Obama is listening to the people as opposed to the party elite, what he is likely to hear?

· Echoes of the same sort of propaganda broadcast through corporate media that deceived the people about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

· Confusion, fear and doubt from the people who do not to believe the Bush propaganda about Iran, but do not know what to believe at a moment in which catastrophic decisions are being made in the name of the listeners.

· Or simply, the pitches of economic special interests benefitting from the present crisis?

"Elect me, I stand for your confusion, fear, doubt, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives exchange"?

To look at this bright, eloquent young man from this distance, with this much skepticism, is to admit one is a member of a generation -- largely but not entirely unconcious -- who lived through previous imperial wars, among them Central America.

In Iraq, the famously publicized "surge" is forcing American troops into the high command's original, announced nightmare, an urban, block-by-block street war in Baghdad. Presumably, the cynical Bush administration figures it can now take the higher casualty rate because America has become numb to the war. Or else, coupled with a full-on propaganda campaign, the regime will use it to enrage the American public into supporting war against Iran.

The insurgents have also been knocking down helicopters in increasing numbers, indicating new, better weaponry. As Tom Englehart put it,

Let's not forget that the beginning of the end of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s came when CIA-supplied Stinger missiles began to take down Russian helicopters in significant numbers.

Early reports about how the "surge" on Baghdad will be conducted indicate more American air power will be used, causing Fallujah-level destruction to many neighborhoods. The Bush regime has reached the point where it will destroy Baghdad to save it.

The Vietnam village that engendered that unforgettable phrase, was destroyed and perhaps the US will manage to destroy Baghdad, or at least large portions of it in the coming surge. One of the driving forces in this war is the defense industry, a collection of arms manufacturers who are not in business to minimize their profits and have most excellent lobbyists to persuade the federal government to spend more for their products to kill people and destroy cities. It is beginning to appear that limits of this expenditure might possibly come, not from domestic political resistance to the war, any checks by the government or limitation or greed among defense contractors, but from foreign sources.

The domestic anti-war movement seems weak and fractured at this time and unable to put enough pressure on the Democratic Party in control of Congress to even slow down the escalation, much less stop it. John Ward, an excellent reporter of domestic political dissent, covered the Jan. 29 anti-war protest in Washington. He noted the absence of Ralph Nader, Jason Raimundo, libertarian editor of the great Antiwar.com, and Republican anti-war speakers. Apparently, it was an all-liberal Democrat event. Progressives who think they will wrest control of the Democratic Party from pro-war and empire lobbyists, including the Israeli lobby, are wandering in delusion. The anti-war movement in America this time seemed to bargain away power before they had enough to sell for a decent price. As one US Army Vietnam veteran commented to me recently, “Who would ever have thought the American people would have gone to the ballot box to oppose the war.” Yet, that is what Americans did and the Democrats are now selling them out just as dissidents – most steadily Nader – have been saying they would.

The docile protests against the Iraq War lead an American of middle age to wonder: when do the cracks begin to open, how deep will they be? What sort of fearful future are we headed toward, without benefit of strong political dissent and habeas corpus? What should we do, now? What public strategy and tactics would lead toward peace? Collaboration with the Democratic Party does not top my list.

On the international front, Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the US policy last weekend:

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin yesterday warned that the United States' increased use of military force is creating a new arms race, with smaller nations turning toward developing nuclear weapons.

Speaking at a conference of the world's top security officials, including Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, Putin said nations "are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations".

He told the audience of 250 officials, including more than 40 defence and foreign ministers: "The US has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure any more because nobody can hide behind international law.

"This is nourishing an arms race, with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons," he added, without singling out one nation.

Although criticized by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CN, for being "provocative," it seems that Putin had every right to speak as he did, both as president of a nation as experienced as the US was in both nuclear arms races and non-proliferation agreements, and because Russia is not now invading foreign nations. I don't regard Lieberman as a great patriot. I believe he is a reliable spokesman for the neocons and the rightwing contingent in power in Israel. Neither of these interests reflect broad-based American public opinion, Israeli public opinion, or the opinion of American supporters of Israel.

However, aside from the utter immorality of the US invasion of Iraq, we have discovered something that the least acquaintance with history would suggest: Arabs and Afghanis are very good at war in defense of their territory. They hate our guts. I don't think it takes a PhD in international relations to figure that out or some rudimentary reasons for it. If we weren't often awed to silence by the horrendous tragedy of this war, we could see through the hubris and madness of this to its nemesis. In fact, at this moment, Egyptians, Iranians and Syrians might be able to explain to the Bush regime what is happening and could happen . But the Bush regime listens only to the rightwing rulers of Israel and its American clones, the neoconservatives. It took eight centuries to produce a world leader as powerful and stupid as George W. Bush, to start a new crusade. Now, more American troops have died than died in 9/11 and many times more Iraqis and Afghanis. Bush is not conducting foreign policy; he is having a temper tantrum with the most powerful military in the world as his baby rattle.

In the constant barrage of propaganda targeted at the US population, the new demon is Iran. Patrick Cockburn, who has reported from Iraq since long before the war, comments:

The answer to this question is probably that the anti-Iranian tilt of the Bush administration has more to do with American than Iraqi politics. A fresh demon is being presented to the US voter. Iran is portrayed as the hidden hand behind US failure in both Iraq and in Lebanon. The US media, gullible over WMD, is showing itself equally gullible over this exaggerated Iranian threat.

The Bush administration has always shown itself more interested in holding power in Washington than in Baghdad. Whatever its failures on the battlefield, the Republicans were able to retain the presidency and both Houses of Congress in 2004. Confrontation with Iran, diverting attention from the fiasco in Iraq, may be their best chance of holding the White House in 2008.

The Achilles Heel of this glorious war to bring freedom and democracy to the Islamic masses could be economic. Economic columnist for Asia Times, Chan Akya, reflects on China's changing investment policies, involving $1 trillion. His argument is that investment in US Treasury bills, the strategy recommended by the IMF for developing countries, does not produce the income necessary to buy the commodities China needs to continue to grow. Therefore, China must buy oil and mineral resources in commodity markets and through direct purchase around the world. Akya draws a drastic conclusion for both the US and Iran from this:

As for the Islamic powers of the Middle East, they will sell oil to China if only to spite Europe and the US. In doing so, they will also invite more unwanted attention from the US, which is reeling from its lost campaign in Iraq. The main scenario of the US trying to consolidate its hold over the Middle East continues, and argues for getting more desperate in the light of China's growing self-sufficiency in commodities. Thus, to preserve its role, the US has no option but to attack Iran. [4] The consequences will be horrifying for both parties, and push both combatants toward an inexorable decline.

About time,too.

Some of the more forceful domestic anti-war voices come from dissenting Republicans. Former Assistant US Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts' criticism of the Bush regime continues to evolve rapidly along the lines of Kevin Phillips' and Chalmers Johnson's recent historical theses of tragic American decline due to the stupidity of Bush the Lesser’s regime.

But Roberts, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, is not content to describe the inexorable forces. He has a program for how the world can save itself and us from Bush:

The US is totally dependent upon foreigners to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime's military aggressions and war crimes. The Bush Regime's two largest lenders are China and Japan. It is ironic that Japan, the only nation to experience nuclear attack by the US, is banker to the Bush Regime as it prepares a possible nuclear attack on Iran.

If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war. The arrogant hubris associated with the "sole superpower" myth would burst like the bubble it is.

The collapse of the dollar would also end the US government's ability to subvert other countries by purchasing their leaders to do America's will.

The demise of the US dollar is only a question of time. It would save the world from war and devastation if the dollar is brought to its demise before the Bush Regime launches its planned attack on Iran.

A possible consequence that does not seem to be intended by Roberts' program is that by plunging the US into a great depression, perhaps bringing down the entire world economy along with it, a slowdown of global warming might occur.

Political dissent, rather than alliances with gravediggers like the major American political parties, is a hopeful solution. Massive, unified, inclusive popular, non-violent dissent is a powerful weapon for bringing down tyrants, but only if it is used and refuses to be manipulated for political ambitions. In fact, the future of any American's political ambition may at this moment depend on it being used to preserve the political system in which those ambitions play.

Bill Hatch
----------

Notes:

Tomgram: Schwartz on Surging into Catastrophe in Iraq, Feb. 11, 2007,
http://www.Tomdispatch.com

Putin attacks America over nuclear arms race
David Rising (AP), Feb. 10, 2007
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=223662007

Nader and Libertarians Not Welcome
A Splintered Antiwar Movement
By JOHN WALSH, Feb. 12, 2007
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh02122007.html

Scapegoating Iran
It's No Use Blaming Iran for a Lost War
Patrick Cockburn, Feb. 12, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/

Sun Tzu's art of investing
By Chan Akya, Feb. 10, 2007
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/IB10Cb04.html

Dump the Dollar!
How the World Can Stop Bush
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, Feb. 12, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts02122007.html

Once there was a town where apples were grown in great abundance. Yuppies moved in years ago and now there are few orchards left in the area, but the story related here took place back when agriculture in that part of California seemed quite viable and farmers could plan for a future.

A fellow in his late 30s returned to his hometown after wandering the world. He took over management of a family orchard. Although, from his background, he knew more about apple farming than most people reading this story, he didn’t know it all. One thing he did not know was where to buy the best rootstock for a particular variety of apple tree, the most profitable in the area.

To find out the best place to buy the most profitable rootstock, he decided to ask the old apple growers. First, he selected a grower who had the reputation for growing the best apples in the region, and he asked him what the best nursery was. The grower told him. Next, he asked the richest grower in the region the same question. This grower told the fellow he would think about it and get back to him.

The next time the richest grower and the best grower found themselves together before dawn drinking coffee and eating pancakes, they started talking about the young grower. Interest in the subject of a new grower in the region lay somewhere between shooting deer out of season and whose tractor driver was in jail that morning. But if you have breakfast in the same restaurant with same company since the end of World War II, novelty has its place in the conversation.

“He asked me what the best nursery was,” the richest grower said.

“He asked me the same question,” the best grower said.

“What the Hell?” they said to each other. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him the best place,” the best grower said.

At that point another grower, chimed in, “He asked me the same question.”

“What did you tell him?” the best and richest growers asked.

“Why should I tell you?” the other grower said. “I will say I didn’t tell him the best place.”

“Why not?” they asked.

“I never liked his grandfather,” the other grower said.

“Yeah, but he’s going to get crap from that nursery,” the best grower said.

“I hope so,” the neither the best nor richest, grower said.

“But, why’s he asking everybody where to get the best rootstock?” asked the richest grower. “Any one of us could have told him there’s only one good nursery for that variety.”

“Don’t ask me. Must be part of Modern Business Management Practices,” the other grower said. “’Check with your local growers. Sometimes the peasants have valuable experience that, if scientifically cultivated, can produce great wealth and prosperity?’ Something like that?”

“Well, what are we going to do about this guy?” the best grower asked. “He asks me, he asks you and you and who knows how many other people. That ain’t right. If you’re going to help a guy, that’s a personal deal. It’s nobody else’s business. Hell, I never would have said anything about it if you hadn’t. I was embarrassed about it when he asked me, to be honest with you. He's not my son, is he?"

So, the growers assembled their valuable peasant experience and figured out a line to feed the young modern agricultural manager about getting just the right trees that would guarantee that his new block of the profitable variety would be unprofitable.

This unprofitability came to pass in due time and the young scientific manager came to the feed and seed store and asked the growers what happened. Employing peasant cunning, they asked him what phase the moon was in when he’d planted the trees. He consulted old calendars in the public library until he returned with the right answer.

“Ah,” the best, the richest, and neither the best nor richest grower replied unanimously, “wrong phase.”

“But, you never told me about the moon!” the young grower exclaimed.

“Did he ask you about the moon?” the growers asked each other, shaking their heads.

“You never asked us about the moon,” they agreed.

“But you should have told me!” the young grower said.

“Who should have told you?” the best grower said. “Me? Him? Him?”

“What difference does it make?” the young grower asked. “Somebody. Anybody.”

The richest grower asked the best grower, “Are you Somebody? Am I Anybody?”

“Naw,” said the neither the richest or best grower, “you’re nobody but a couple of apple growers.”

After the young grower retreated from the seed and feed store, the richest grower asked the best grower what phase of the moon he used.

“The one my father told me to use,” the best grower said.

“What one is that?” asked the neither best nor richest grower.

The Tracy City Council voted on Tuesday to oppose the UC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proposal to build a level-4 biowarfare laboratory at Site 300, a nearby bomb-testing site owned by the Department of Energy and managed by UC/Lawrence Livermore.

At the same meeting, the council voted to support trebling the amount of explosives that can be used on Site 300.

Both votes were 3-1.

Site 300 is outside the Tracy city limits.

Presumably, the two votes make sense in Tracy.

Bill Hatch
-----------------------

2-7-07
Tracy Press
Council votes against proposed bio-lab...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/7689/2/
Councilwoman Irene Sundberg, Councilwoman Evelyn Tolbert and Councilman Steve Abercombie voted Tuesday night to oppose a proposal by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to build the bio-lab at Site 300 in the hills southwest of Tracy, even though the council has no jurisdiction over the site. Acting Mayor Suzanne Tucker voted against opposing the lab... University of California Vice Provost for Research Lawrence Coleman asked Tracy City Council to not take a position on the bio-lab until the Department of Homeland Security provides more information later this year. The University of California operates Lawrence Livermore for the Department of Energy. Sundberg criticized Lawrence Livermore for taking too long to clean Site 300 contaminants...You’ve got no money to clean it up. And now you want to put more stuff in my backyard. Activist Bob Sarvey played an audio tape from a Nov. 15 public forum on the bio-lab, in which Lawrence Livermore spokeswoman Susan Houghton acknowledged that human errors could occur at the bio-lab and that homeowners might need to warn potential homebuyers about the facility. Stockton resident Mike Robinson, president of the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau, and Livermore resident Darrel Sweet, a past president of the California Cattleman’s Association, said the agricultural industry supports building the bio-lab at Site 300 in part because it would help speed up detection of exotic diseases in California’s agricultural stock.

2-8-07
Tracy votes down controversial bio lab...Jake Armstrong
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070208/A_NEWS/702080318
The Tracy City Council voted late Tuesday night to oppose the University of California's bid to locate a federal laboratory that would research incurable diseases on a high-explosives test range southwest of the city...called the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility. In a twist of irony, moments later, the council by the same margin voted to support an increase in the amount of explosives used in tests on the range known as Site 300, a 7,000-acre parcel owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Air pollution regulators in December gave Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory approval to more than triple the amount of explosives it uses in its outdoor tests at Site 300. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control Hearing Board was set Wednesday to hear an appeal of the permit, which allows the laboratory to use 350 pounds of explosives a day and up to 8,000 pounds a year. However, the board voted to continue the hearing to next month in order to handle a request for public documents. Tracy council does not have jurisdiction over Site 300, which is just outside city limits, the city's opposition to the bio lab will be put into a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials who are evaluating more than a dozen proposals from universities and laboratories seeking to win the facility. The lab would also research incurable pathogens in an area of the strictest containment level, or Bio-Safety Level 4. Other factors that will influence the final decision are a local work force with experience running high-level bio-safety labs and access to multiple forms of transportation from the site, Kelly said. The 18 contenders for the bio lab face a Feb. 16 deadline to submit more information on their proposals to DHS, which plans to visit the sites and make final recommendations sometime from March to May. Environmental impact studies on a short list of sites will begin in July, with a finalist being named in October 2008. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2010, and the bio lab is expected to be up and running as early as 2013.

Former Merced County Supervisor Mike Bogna, while in office, once demonstrated his solidarity with agribusiness by quaffing a glass of guthion. Although organophosphate pesticides have been banned or highly restricted for a number of years, the good old boys evidently keep a small supply around and Bogna got into it again, before writing this letter.

To begin, Riverside Motorsports Park Promoter John Condren's financial ability to fund the massive autosports complex project the Merced County Board of Supervisors approved ought to have been some part of the deliberation in its approval of the environmental impact on the project. The project required a General Plan amendment, a zone change and an override of the Castle Airport Land Use Commission's designated two-mile noise/safety zone. Bogna's legal theory that the county could be sued for questioning the financial bona fides of the promoter of a $250-million project suggests he may have graduated from guthion to parathion since his last term on the board.

Bogna writes:

Third, one must keep in mind that it's entirely possible this project may never be built. To suggest the board was taken for a ride and that the public will be left "looking like suckers" clearly demonstrates that Mr. Cameron has no understanding of the public policy process.

Mr. Cameron, a sportswriter, can be forgiven for not understanding "the public policy process." He covers events that have rules. The natural allies in any newsroom are the crime reporter and the political reporter, who cover the lawless side of community life.

What Bogna is saying is that the Riverside Motorsports Park may be, as some have suspected from the beginning, a paper project, a fantastic diversion for the purpose of a General Plan amendment, a zoning change, and the airport commission override. In other words, as those who read it suspected, the EIR for this project is also "paper." The next stage of this organophosphate logic is that the lawsuits filed against the paper racetrack's paper EIR are also just paper. And the money to prepare the EIR, the money paid the county staff to work on it, the expense of the two public hearings on the project and the three town hall meetings held on the project -- every hour of county staff time and overtime that was paid for by the public -- plus the money paid for the lawsuits, is all just Monopoly money.

Bogna continues:

Regarding whether or not RMP will be able to come up with the investment necessary to make this project a reality, it simply won't happen unless the money comes.

How can we possibly reply to this remarkable statement? Before approval of the EIR Condren had a project worth a reported $5 million. After the approval, he is reported to have got a $12.5-million loan on it from a Missouri bank. So, the board's approval of the project was worth a possible $7.5 million in capital to Condren (if any of the financial figures involved with this racetrack are accurately reported). Other possibly more reliable sources said he paid less for the property and so, if the loan figure is accurate, has more working capital at hand to pursue whatever course he wishes. But, don't fret. According to our retired pesticide tippler and authority on the ways of government, it's all just paper money, a currency that either comes or it doesn't.

Wasn't Bogna on the board when E. Anne Eisenhower was asked to provide a business plan for the Pegasus project at Castle?

Bogna notes that it is "ironic" that the newspaper endorsed the project and then published some negative background information on promoter John Condren, Alleged Pillager of Nauvoo. Here we go again with Merced irony, a mysterious form of expression to say the least. We feel sure that what Old Pesticide means by "irony" here is that the newspaper got hustled before the project was passed and that some powerful malcontent leaked the dirt on Condren after it was passed.

Bogna concludes:

I learned in my many years of public service that there will always be a group of naysayers suggesting that something will not be of benefit to our county. Fortunately, our country was built on hope and opportunity.

In other words, have Confidence!

Badlands Journal editorial board
-----------------

Note:

2-6-07
Sports editor got it wrong...Mike Bogna, Atwater...Letters to the editor
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/opinion/story/13270165p-13903048c.html
Letter to the Editor: Sports editor got it wrong

Editor: As a former two-term Merced County Supervisor, I'm well positioned to comment on the Jan. 31 column written by Sun-Star Sports Editor Steve Cameron titled, "Supervisors: Anyone awake down there?" Not only did Mr. Cameron miss the mark on several accounts, he fails to have a common understanding of what is and what is not taken into consideration as part of decisions made by the Board of Supervisors.
First, Mr. John Condren's alleged background was not a matter related to the environmental impact report. The Board of Supervisors was being asked to either certify or reject RMP's environmental document. This was the sole basis of the decision.

Second, whether one agrees or not, the Board of Supervisors and city councils do not look into the personal backgrounds of project applicants primarily for one reason: should they reject a project based upon such a background check, they could be sued for discrimination.

Third, one must keep in mind that it's entirely possible this project may never be built. To suggest the board was taken for a ride and that the public will be left "looking like suckers" clearly demonstrates that Mr. Cameron has no understanding of the public policy process. Just a few years ago, this same exact land was being developed for a business park. After aspects of the project fell through, the land use was reverted back to agricultural zoning. This could take place again.

Regarding whether or not RMP will be able to come up with the investment necessary to make this project a reality, it simply won't happen unless the money comes. Again, the board can only make a decision based upon the information presented to it including land use concerns, environmental impacts and the merits of the project. Whether RMP can attract the investment is an issue for them to address, not the Merced County Board of Supervisors.

Fourth, and hopefully this is just a result of not fact-checking and nothing more, the vote certifying the project was 3 to 2 and not the four-fifths as suggested in his column. Supervisors Deidre Kelsey and John Pedrozo voted against the project.

Lastly, Mr. Cameron suggested that the Board of Supervisors should have looked into Mr. Condren's background before voting. It's rather ironic that the Sun-Star editorial board endorsed the RMP project prior to any vote of the Board of Supervisors, apparently without doing their own homework and research.

I learned in my many years of public service that there will always be a group of naysayers suggesting that something will not be of benefit to our county. Fortunately, our country was built on hope and opportunity.

Mike Bogna

Build the rooftops and the lobbyist may come.

Build a mile-long, illegal 42-inch pipeline to your sewer plant on County land without a County permit, maybe you need the former state Assembly Speaker and Lt. Governor as your lobbyist.

But can Livingston, not the wealthiest community in Merced County, afford Bustamante? It leads the public to consider whether it is the people behind the sewer line and the development it could induce who are paying for the long-time state elected official. If the Merced County fix is no longer as secure as it was when former Bill Lockyer was state Attorney General, who knows, people could be asking questions.

Another question is Livingston's alleged motive for hiring a lobbyist -- more better Highway 99 improvements around Livingston. Perhaps the one thing Livingston actually has is the best stretch of 99 in the county. So, the public can safely discount this as the reason for hiring a lobbyist and consider other regional transportation plans as the more likely target, like the Big Beltway that will exit Highway 99 between Livingston and Atwater, run through prime farmland to UC Merced, then down the Campus Parkway to the WalMart distribution center. Other plans for expanding roads from the Livingston area toward Stevinson, fitting in with development plans of the Kelley and Mike Gallo families are also likely topics of conversation between the former Lt. governor and the new generation of legislators.

Livingston may need Bustamante, not the worse politician from the Valley to have served in the state Legislature and Executive. But why would Bustamante want to launch his new lobbyist career representing Livingston?

To get closer to money, the mother's milk, Cheerios and New York steak of politics.

Badlands Journal editorial staff
-------------------

2-6-07
Merced Sun-Star
Livingston may hire lobbyist Bustamante...Scott Jason
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/13267202p-13900255c.html
After more than 30 years in politics, former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante remained guarded last month about his career after leaving office. But the Sacramento insider is returning to the political arena, this time on the other side of the table. The Livingston City Council will consider hiring Bustamante, 54, tonight to lobby Sacramento leaders with hopes that their multimillion-dollar highway construction plans will be fast-tracked. Livingston could be the second Merced County city to hire a lobbyist this month to maintain a presence in Sacramento. Merced's City Council awarded a $65,000 one-year contract to Townsend Public Affairs, an Irvine-based lobbying firm, Monday night. Two contract options with Bustamante will come before the City Council. One is for six months at $10,000 a month. The second is a two-year contract with the first six months at $10,000 a month, which decreases to $7,500 for the remaining 18 months.

Former Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, has climbed through the revolving door from House committee chairman up to the real power: he's joining a lobbying firm representing Northwest and Alaskan timber interests and oil companies among others. He is no doubt an attractive candidate for elevation into the lobbying ranks because he would bring some clients with him -- the same handful of north San Joaquin Valley developers on whose behalf he nearly gutted the Endangered Species Act, Indian casinos, off-shore oil-drilling companies, Western agribusiness, Pacific island sweatshops, as well as various and sundry haters of environmental law and regulation. Pombo had an able teacher in the lobbying game, Jack Abramoff, who last year pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials.

Pombo in Washington with adequate funds is no doubt a profound relief to the special interests of the former Pombozastan, that region comprising the 11th and 18th congressional districts, the latter represented by Dennis Cardoza, Merced. Without Pombo to guide him, it was looking like Cardoza was going to lose his focus on the developers' agenda and wander off among the organic fruits and nuts and House rules.

But now Pombo will be in Washington to watch over his protege and guide him with a steady, cash-filled hand right back into his pocket. Together again, with their hands on the money, the Pomboza lives. Perhaps it will be stronger now in the backroom than it ever were out front, back when the House Natural Resources Committee was called the House Resources Committee, Pombo was its chair and Cardoza was introducing a bill a year to gut provisions in the ESA.

Badlands editorial board
----------------

Note:

1-24-07
Stockton Record
Pombo in talks to join Oregon-based lobbying firm...Hank Shaw
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/A_NEWS/701240320
The Washington insider paper Roll Call reported Tuesday: "The former House Resources chairman is in talks with Pac/West Communications, an Oregon-based PR and lobbying firm that has a roster of timber and energy clients." ...the company already has signed a deal with Pombo's former staff director, Steve Ding, to open a California office in Sacramento. Pombo, who, despite reports to the contrary, isn't rolling in dough, might very well need the added income - especially now that he'll probably keep his town house in Virginia...

1-24-07
Tracy Press
Supes vote to back bio-lab...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/7317/2/
Acting on the advice of its agricultural committee, the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday to support an anti-biological terrorism laboratory that could be built southwest of Tracy to research incurable fatal diseases that affect both animals and people. Superintendent Steven Gutierrez voted against his colleagues, saying it was too early to determine whether the research activities would help safeguard and support the general public. “What research activity” Gutierrez said. “You don’t know what they’re going to do.” The Department of Homeland Security and Lawrence Livermore have not yet announced what types of diseases will be studied at the bio-lab, how the pathogens will be shipped in and out of the bio-lab, or whether accidents will be publicly reported. The Tracy City Council is expected to vote on whether it supports the bio-lab proposal at its meeting Feb. 6. Lawrence Livermore is managed by the University of California. The university’s agricultural division’s government and external relations director, Steve Nation, said after the meeting that the agricultural industry strongly supports the proposed bio-lab. He said the California Farm Bureau, the California Cattlemen’s Association, a woolgrowers association and Foster Farms support the bio-lab …

Let us return to ground recently covered. Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, was defeated by a coalition of state and national environmental groups because he and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, collectively known as the Pomboza, tried to gut the Endangered Species Act, one of the most popular laws in America.

Cardoza’s membership in the Pomboza stemmed from his support of the University of California’s attempts to destroy the richest fields of vernal pools, containing 15 endangered plants and animals, in the nation.

UC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory wants to win the contract to put a level-4 biowarfare laboratory on Site 300, the Livermore lab’s bomb-testing site, near Tracy. This lab would test the most dangerous biological toxins known to man. And it would get lots of defense grants for UC.

Congressional hearings are currently being held that raise the question: is UC, even with Bechtel at its side, incapable of running Los Alamos National Laboratory competently, or is it just impossible to run a weapons of mass destruction lab securely?

The ordinary person in Northern California has read a number of articles in recent years pointing out that UC security at the Livermore lab is not too hot either.

Maybe, that ordinary citizen, especially if he or she lives downwind from Tracy, does one more step of reasoning. You have to coat a bomb with plutonium and detonate it for its dust to spread around too much and pollute the groundwater, as it has near Tracy. It would seem that all you would have to do with a killer virus would be to drop a bottle of it on the floor and it could be all over the region rather quickly. Isn’t that what they do in a state of nature?

When that sort of thought goes through Joe Sixpack’s head, he rolls his eyes, groans, grabs another beer, turns on the TV and hopes he can really, really get into the football game.

An environmentally oriented person will protest this lab, as hundreds of people who have signed petitions against it have done.

Now, here comes the California Farm Bureau, the California Cattlemen’s Association, a woolgrowers association and Foster Farms. They support the lab, they told the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors’ agricultural committee to support it, and they did, leaving it up to the Tracy City Council to hold the line on Feb. 6.

Given the nature of the full-court flak press by UC, the federal government is not interested in putting such an incredibly dangerous laboratory near a place where there is real controversy about it. UC tried several years ago to site this same laboratory at UC Davis, the Davis City Council opposed it adamantly, and the biowarfare lab did not go to Davis. So far, UC has had better luck with the Pomboza.

The decision by agribusiness to support the project was made apparently based on some sort of promises by UC Livermore lab to do some work on animal diseases. This will be done by bringing the animal diseases in concentrated form to the bio lab to research them, right in the middle of the densest populations of cattle and poultry in the state. It is not that these industries lack the benefits of modern agricultural science through the UC Cooperative Extension, the USDA and numerous other scientific entities.

Let’s bring Avian Flu here to the Valley to study it. UC has a proven record of security lapses, but agribusiness knows that UC can do no wrong. If the Avian Flu gets out and wipes out the poultry industry, the migrating birds on the Pacific Flyway and some people, agribusiness and UC can blame it on terrorists. Terrorists are an extremely important part of biowarfare research, because without terrorists, there would be no reason for the research because the terrorists are the ones who are going to introduce the deadly toxins into our environment for which the biowarfare lab is going to create antidotes. The terrorists are going to do this because they hate freedom. If they hate freedom enough to sneak past UC’s porous security and liberate a few deadly cattle and poultry viruses from the Tracy level-4 biowarfare lab, who are you going to blame for that? Osama. Boy, will we be mad at Osama then. We’ll get him for sure if that happens. You bet. But, we’ll have all the antidote we need to inoculate millions of cows, chickens, turkeys, migrating ducks and humans by that time. You bet. UC and the federal government together cannot go wrong.

The only possible explanation for this political decision on the part of agribusiness is that it is anti-environmental. By golly, we’re going to stick it to them damn environmentalists this time! However, one lone San Joaquin County supervisor wisely said that nobody really knew what UC would be studying at the level-4 biowarfare lab. It reminded us in Merced of where UC Merced is going to get its water.

What the proposed biowarfare lab will study will depend on the grants it gets. It will depend overwhelmingly on federal government priorities, which returns us in a dismal circle to the terrorists again. I wonder if there is any other way of getting the terrorists not to unleash deadly plagues upon our livestock, migrating ducks and ourselves other than importing them to the neighborhood to experiment on in another leaky UC weapons of mass destruction lab that would seem to be an attraction for freedom-hating terrorists. But it’s never so simple. Because, in addition to your freedom-hating terrorists, you’ve got those terrorists who just hate Americans because Americans killed their relatives. But that gets into the metaphysics of the imperial defense industry, distracting us from the evolutionary facts on the ground.

Looking at agribusiness from an environmental point of view puts us in mind of what happens to endangered species when they lose too much of their habitat.

Scientific advisory c ommittee to Badlands editorial board
----------------------

Notes:

1-24-07
Stockton Record
Pombo in talks to join Oregon-based lobbying firm...Hank Shaw
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/A_NEWS/701240320
The Washington insider paper Roll Call reported Tuesday: "The former House Resources chairman is in talks with Pac/West Communications, an Oregon-based PR and lobbying firm that has a roster of timber and energy clients." ...the company already has signed a deal with Pombo's former staff director, Steve Ding, to open a California office in Sacramento. Pombo, who, despite reports to the contrary, isn't rolling in dough, might very well need the added income - especially now that he'll probably keep his town house in Virginia.

1-31-07
Contra Costa Times
Nuclear security agency at risk...AP, MedialNews staff writer Ian Hoffman contributed to this story
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/16586727.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Fed-up lawmakers on a House oversight committee said Tuesday that they want to strip a federal nuclear-weapons agency of its security responsibilities, and they threatened to shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory, now under new managers from the Bay Area. The lawmakers criticized the lab for its most recent security breach, in which a contract worker walked out with more than 1,500 pages of classified documents. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said that if problems cannot be solved this time, he will ask that Los Alamos lab, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, be shut down. After more than 60 years of operation by the University of California, the lab now is run by former Lawrence Livermore lab director Michael Anastasio and a consortium led by UC and San Francisco-based Bechtel National. Barton, Dingell and others on the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a measure Tuesday to strip the National Nuclear Security Administration of its primary security responsibilities and turn them back to the Energy Department...expressed concerns that NNSA has not fixed Los Alamos security problems despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on improvements. A new management team was installed at Los Alamos less than a year ago, in part to reverse years of security and safety problems. The embarrassing October incident involving the classified documents resulted in a shake-up in the agency that oversees the lab. Linton Brooks, already reprimanded for an earlier incident, resigned this month as NNSA chief. Tuesday's four-hour hearing, lawmakers asked repeatedly why the lab needs to exist and whether it simply has too much responsibility for too many secret materials. Deputy energy secretary Clay Sell said Los Alamos probably could not be replaced or duplicated...is the only place where plutonium fission cores for weapons can be made...much of what happens at Los Alamos is secret because the lab is responsible for the bulk of the strategic nuclear weapons stockpile. "It has been suggested that we shoot the dog," Sell responded. "I have to reject that suggestion.”

Hardway Hardesty was removing sleeping cats from his kitchen sink when he noticed his neighbor Leroy walking down the road from Way Up the Crik, kicking rocks. From Hardway’s angle, it looked like Leroy had a cloud over his head. But it could have just been flies, the Crik’s premier scientist figured, because Leroy didn’t wash much and worked with stinky camels.

Leroy knocked on the door.

“Leroy,” Hardway said, “you look like a man of a thousand sorrows this morning. Can I offer you a brownie and a beer?”

“Don’t want none of your damn psychotic pastries, Hardway,” Leroy said. “I got problems and I need some counsel.”

“What’s up,” Hardesty asked, placing a cold one in the hands of his neighbor.

“I am under attack!”

“The organic growers want to tax you?”

“Hell, that’s nothing. I raise my organic camels for transport, not for food. They can’t touch me. Los Angeles just bought up Up the Crik, for starters.”

Hardesty, whose recent windfalls had provided funds for well drilling, no longer cared what happened to Up the Crik, but expressed his sympathies anyway.

“Yep, Up the Crik’s going south next summer,” Leroy said.

“Well, camels don’t drink much, do they?”

“They drink something, though, don’t they?” Leroy snarled. “But that ain’t the worst of it.”

“What could be worse than an organic camel farm with no water?” Hardesty asked.

“Lookee yonder, down to the valley. What do you see?” Leroy wailed.

“Row crops. Cotton, probably.”

“Wrong! What you see down there is next year’s ethanol crop, the natural economic enemy of a camel-transport based economy! I am ruined.”

“Jeez, Leroy, sure you don’t want a brownie?” Hardesty asked, who had already invested a little in the grain futures market.

“Ha ha,” Leroy said, sarcastically. “You said the future was in camels and I believed you. You said I couldn’t go wrong with camels. You said the world would beat a path to my door if I had camels for sale. What with all the camels getting blown up in the Arab countries, you said, I couldn’t lose. You said about the time I got my herd built up the automobile would disappear. But what I got is $50 oil and all that damn corn all over America.”

“Leroy, a visionary investor must have guts of steel,” Hardesty. “Yours are turning to mush.”

“Hell, I could have bought real estate,” Leroy replied. “Instead I bought camels. And now I don’t even know where I’m going to find water for them.”

“And where would you be right now with a bunch of houses?” Hardway asked.

“Up the Crik without a bunch of damn camels,” Leroy said.

“Lemme ask you: how much diesel do you use in a year to feed your herd?”

“Well, not as much as it would cost me to grow 20 acres of corn, not to mention the water savings.”

“That’s my point. When the ethanol speculators figure that one out, they will be beating your door down. Houses last year, ethanol this year, camels next year. You’ll be making a fortune. Be positive. Yesterday’s real estate speculator will be arbitraging tomorrow’s camel-sperm futures market.”

“You think so?” Leroy asked, wide-eyed with amazement and hope.

“I know so, my friend. Trust me on this,” Hardesty assured his neighbor. “An entrepreneur has got to believe in his product!”

“That just leaves the water,” Leroy said.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Hardesty said.

“That’s what them guys from LA said when they was damming up the crik. I said I got me riparian rights to the Crik. They said they’d make me a deal: one standpipe for my personal use but no water for the camels.

“It’s prejudice, Hardway, that’s what it is,” Leroy said. “You take your ordinary American who works for a corporate water thief, he’s a nice enough fellow. Probably has a nice wife, some babies, goes to church. But, he looks at the camel and he can’t see the future in the camel. He can’t accept reality and begin to adjust. He don’t want to. He’s still making payments on his latest pickup and then there’s the speedboat he’d got in his driveway. Now, the camel doesn’t fit into his picture of life.

“It’s nothing but prejudice.”

“It’s true, Leroy,” Hardesty said, “you are a man ahead of your time. You are a man of surpassing sanity with a gift to the world, if the world would only see it. It’s also true that your camels suggest a future without pickups, petroleum products, speedboats and such. An old, slower, quieter, gentler world, one of long caravans crossing vast wastes, bearing water jugs for trade with whoever remains here after the floods.

“No, Leroy, you are the future. You’re a dozen steps ahead. You’re a prophet dishonored up his own crik, except here in my house, of course.

“You can water them here for the dry season,” Hardway said, “I have a stake in your vision. I hope to live to see the day when no American family is without its camel. But you must understand the politics.”

“Politics? Leroy asked. “What politics?”

“First, you should write your congressman, who is said to be interested in specialty crops and organic agriculture. What could be more special than your growing herd of organic camels?”

“I wrote my congressman about the theft of Up the Crik,” Leroy replied. “Someone wrote me back – here, I have the letter –“ Leroy said, rummaging around in his homespun camel-hair cowboy vest – “It says right here, ‘the congressman does not get involved in local issues.’

“Water? A local issue?”

“Oh well, he’s young and, being a Democrat, terribly timid.”

“That’s one word for it.”

Hardesty continued, saying that there were other political aspects to Leroy’s product, although he corrected himself once, to say they might be “more cultural than strictly speaking political.” He said he felt that Americans in fact did have certain prejudices against camels, not so much because of a dislike about the beast itself, which had had a career in parts of the Western US in earlier days, but of the future that the beast implied. Hardesty felt that this was a future it would be hard for the average American to square with the commonly accepted notion of eternal Progress through the American Way of Life.

“I don’t know about no American Way of Life,” Leroy said. “I come from Up the Crik, America. We’ll take any way of life we can git. Now, your camel is drought resistant, eats grass, carries a load and is a genuine thrifty form of transportation. That’s what I call American.”

“As I recall, Leroy, you don’t have a TV up there, do you?”

“You find me one that runs on wood smoke, you let me know and I’ll swap you a camel for it.”

“Ah.”

“You telling me I can’t be an American if I don’t have TV?”

“Now that’s a very interesting question. I might have to take a rain check on it, though,” Hardesty said. “Meanwhile, Leroy, you stick with your vision and your camels. The way this economy is going, you may have off-shore banking types knocking at your door in a few years, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t have a clue what you mean and I never did, Hardway,” Leroy said. “No offense. I enjoy your company and all. Best man in the world for drinking a morning beer with.”

With that, the neighbors parted, good friends just chewing the fat on a cold morning Up the Crik.

Finally, valley's farmers get seat at USDA's table...Editorial

http://www.modbee.com/opinion/story/13254925p-13889404c.html
Unlike previous incarnations, this farm bill proposal is actually important to farmers in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. Anne Cannon, who spearheads Rep. Dennis Cardoza's team on ag issues, was particularly pleased with that: "For the USDA to specifically recognize us in such a fashion is hugely important." Cardoza is particularly well placed to have an impact. He is chairman of the subcommittee on fruits and vegetables and sits on subcommittees that deal with livestock and conservation. He also sits on the important Rules Committee, which sets the agenda for all of Congress. That makes him important to every other representative. Despite all the positives, this proposal could be in for a rough ride. Congress, not the USDA, writes legislation and already considerable resistance is developing. Ag issues split on regional lines rather than partisan, so it wasn't surprising when one Midwestern Republican senator greeted the proposal with a press release that said, essentially, "we'll see" about subsidy reductions.

Clearly, the trauma experienced by Big Wine, Big Cheeze, Big Milk and Big Cotton of not having their own USDA secretary from Modesto for a year and a half has unbalanced the mind of McClatchy-Modesto’s editorial staff. Modesto has produced two USDA secretaries in the last 20 years, Dick Lyng and Ann Veneman, and three state Department of Food and Agriculture secretaries, Lyng, Veneman, and Bill Lyons, Jr. The Modesto Assembly district has produced two Assembly Ag Committee chairmen in recent years, John Thurman and Dennis Cardoza.

The anxiety of agricultural commerce without a Modestan secretary of USDA may have popped big pumpkins in the north San Joaquin Valley.

It is true that a strong, bipartisan campaign including a strong showing by state and national environmental groups defeated Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, who might well have become the chairman of the House Ag Committee. But he and Cardoza formed the Pomboza, funded by developers, to try to gut the Endangered Species Act.

Meanwhile, Valley agriculture lost the enormous clout of chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, who retired.

So, now Big Wine, Big Cheese, etc., are stuck with Cardoza, the senior Valley Democrat in the newly elected Democratic Congress. Cardoza has been appointed chairman of an agricultural subcommittee on specialty crops. We find nothing in his political career to indicate he is interested in anything but the speculative real estate value of the land on which these fruits, nuts and vegetables are being grown. I have never met a farmer or rancher in the 18th congressional district who had confidence in Cardoza’s grasp of agricultural issues. Perhaps his agricultural “spearhead” knows the answers.