Badlands Journal

" In his paper, Blum said the office of the president "should become a model for transformation to efficiency and service, rather than the frequent butt of jokes and cynicism." --Los Angeles Times, Aug. 23, 2007

Blum also pressed the importance of nurturing the newest campus, Merced, to ensure its success and suggested creating a task force to oversee the needs there. --San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 23, 2007

Badlands Journal editorial leader, "Nimble" McMayhem, said Thursday,

We are glad that Richard Feinstein-Blum, chairman of the UC Board of Regents, has been reading our reports of problems with UC administration. However, in light of all the work on this dismal topic that remains to be done, on behalf of the editorial board, I must refuse the recognition Feinstein-Blum has given to our work here in Merced, and pledge to work ceaselessly to amplify our efforts. It was never just the office of the president of UC that was the "butt of (our) jokes." We continue to believe, based on daily evidence, that the largest part of UC administrators are over-paid, over-numerous, fatuous, arrogant snobs not better educated to manage a university than is Chairman Feinstein-Blum. We are also acquainted with exceptions that make the rule.

We do not blame individuals in the UC administration. We believe their over-the-top characters are the result of the company they keep, beginning with the board of regents, stacked with people who bought their positions in political sweepstakes that brings to mind the colorful political term, 'rotten boroughs'.

No, Chairman Feinstein-Blum, we do not support a UC run like and on behalf of private corporations anymore than we support government run like and for private corporations, because neither universities or governments are private corporations. Local, state and national governments and public universities are public institutions. When dominated by private corporations they become disoriented because they have become estranged from the public interest and considerations of the common good. The California public must be suspicious of your criticisms and recommendations because they are couched in the language of private, corporate management, a fundamentalism that does not fit public institutions, especially universities.

Why not begin small by trying to figure out a department of public administration that would educated incorruptible public administrators committed to the public good? Again, there are fine exceptions within the UC administration, which prove the general rule.

On a larger scale, establish a board that judges the quality of research, its benefits for the common good, instead of simply the quantity of grant funds it will attract for the de facto private corporation that is UC. It is not just UC administration that is the butt of jokes and cynicism. UC research has long been known as a system for 'throwing money at a problem' without much planning, and UC star researchers are famed for the amount of funding they attract, regardless of the source and intent of the funding and the desired product of the research. From the newest generation of nuclear weapons to biowarfare research to genetic engineering to the mechanical tomato harvester, UC research within living memory has produced monsters in its quest for prestige and funding over the common good of the people of California. Yet, amid the excess of narcissistic ambition, there are exceptions that continue to prove the rule. The point is that they ought not to be exceptions.

Ms. McMayhem paused for breathe.

This regent chief controls a Boston-based construction company called Perini. This company teams up with another California-based company called Tutor-Saliba to build the LA public transit system ... and all we see is lawsuits for shoddy construction. Ron Tutor is CEO of Perini. Ron Tutor is chairman, CEO and owner of Tutor-Saliba.

Blum says Perini will do no work in California. (Meanwhile, in Nevada it is building hotels and casinos like crazy.

"Give the public a break! hooted McMayhem, quoting an attorney who is an ex officio member of the Badlands editorial board: "'In a long life in the law spent among expert liars, the biggest liar under oath I ever met was Richard Blum.'

Why should we believe Blum that he hasn't and won't benefit from UC construction projects?

The LA Times reports:

Streamlining UC's construction practices to speed up the approval process for new buildings and relying on outside contractors to build them could save the university many millions of dollars, he said.

Like UC doesn't streamline construction practices? Give the public a break! hooted Ms. McMayhem. They built the UC Merced campus without the most important federal permit they had to have, the 404(b) under the Clean Water Act, aka the Least Destructive Project Alternative. They built it in the densest zone of vernal pools in the nation with the full complicity of local, state and federal elected officials, former Gov. Gray Davis, under the oversight of former Secretary of the state Resources Agency, Mary Nichols, recently appointed by the Hun, our present governor, to head the state Air Resources Board. UC built the campus with full knowledge (and to the profit of some regents and most elected officials and assorted staffers) that it would stimulate the largest real estate boom in Merced history. The boom has now busted, leaving the City of Merced with the dubious distinction of having the second-worst foreclosure rate in the nation.

Like former President Pro Tem of the state Senate John Burton, D-SF said at the time, UC Merced was a 'boondoggle.'

Concluding on a San Francisco note," McMayhem said, Burton would have known how construction projects can sometimes get out of control. As a Democratic Party politician in San Francisco, he could not have avoided hearing at least once, the latter-day reflections of Hizzoner Jack Shelley, mayor of San Francisco when Candlestick Park was built. In later life, Shelley was the City's lobbyist in Sacramento, and nobody got away without hearing The Story--the distillation of all practical political wisdom in his life.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hizzoner would say to you, propping his walker on the wall at Posey's and sitting at table, where a thoughtful waiter had already parked his first martini, it all boils down to a cement contract.

A gifted narrator of political experience, aided by several more martinis, Hizzoner would weave the tale in exquisite detail about just how it all boiled down to a cement contract and how, if you traced the hands in that cement contract, you would know all you needed to know about the politics of the City by the Bay, home to Regents' Chairman Richard Feinstein-Blum and his charming wife.

And, speaking of his charming wife, we have to wonder if Blum's animosity toward ousted UC President Robert Dynes was not merely a fit of pique after Dynes married the blonde from UCSD.

McMayhem concluded: "The more we know about the stratospheric scene of the geriatric plutocracy that rules us but is not wise, the more we suppose that all the remains among them is the question: Who's getting any? We decline recognition by the UC Board of Regents for having made UC the butt of jokes and cynicism. Whatever Feinstein-Blum's getting will be at public expense without Teflon.

Chairman Feinstein-Blum, thanks but no thanks on the UC Merced nurturing taskforce. Let it compost, like the careers of all unable to flee it. It was built in the wrong place at the wrong time because the UC Regents and the administration, for which the Regents are responsible, were taken to the cleaners by those of your own, in finance, insurance and real estate special interests -- you arrogant, pathetic hypocrite.

Seriously, old man, if you cannot muster anything better than wretched cliches like "dynamic strategies," the Hun may be forced by bring in former Chainsaw Chancelor of the state university system, Barry Munitz, rehabilitated from the Getty disaster by public oblivion by now. Munitz is a closer.

But, of course, how could I be so stupid? You're considering the old alleged,high-living, alledged enabler of antiquities theft for the presidency.

Badlands editorial board
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Los Angeles Times
UC regent calls for operations overhaul
Blum's suggestion include cutting duplicate staff positions, raising faculty salaries, funding scholarships to alleviate tuition hikes, and streamlining construction process...Richard C. Paddock
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc23aug23,1,4861065.story?coll=la-headlines-california
In a sharp critique of University of California operations, Board of Regents Chairman Richard C. Blum called Wednesday for a major overhaul of the "outmoded and dysfunctional" way the UC administration operates...a six-page paper sent to his fellow regents, Blum called for restructuring the UC president's office to eliminate arcane procedures that have existed for decades and often hinder decisions, costing the university millions of dollars. "Why is it so hard to make broad-scale progress toward our goals?" Blum asked. "I believe the fundamental problem is an overgrown UC administrative infrastructure that substitutes motion for progress." He also proposed creating a scholarship fund of up to $1 billion to help students cope with rising fees and called for improving UC's relations with the governor and Legislature, who have steadily reduced the university's share of the state budget. ...said in an interview that the 10-campus UC system should cut back its administrative staff and devote more resources to education, in particular raising faculty salaries to be competitive with other universities. Streamlining UC's construction practices to speed up the approval process for new buildings and relying on outside contractors to build them could save the university many millions of dollars, he said. "I am quite critical of the way the operations of the university have been run," Blum said. "There are some functions there, nobody knows why they exist. We need to make decisions quickly. We need to be nimble and we are anything but." In his paper, Blum said the office of the president "should become a model for transformation to efficiency and service, rather than the frequent butt of jokes and cynicism." Dynes' presidency was tarnished by a scandal in which he approved millions of dollars in perks and incentives for certain administrators and faculty members without getting the regents' approval or providing public notice. But Blum said that amount pales in comparison to the money wasted by unneeded bureaucracy..Among his proposals Wednesday were lifting arbitrary debt caps to speed campus building projects, reducing cash reserves that are kept unnecessarily high and eliminating millions of dollars in unnecessary or duplicative administration. Blum called on the university to develop a clear strategic vision and to pursue the same high quality in its administration that it strives for in its academic programs. "Cumbersome and enormously expensive layers of bureaucracy have been added over the years, many of which may no longer make sense -- if indeed they ever did," Blum wrote. "Unless the University seriously and accountably commits itself to a new direction, we risk losing the perpetual battle for excellence in many areas."

San Francisco Chronicle
UC's top regent bashes system...Leslie Fulbright
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/23/MNB4RNCP7.DTL&tsp=1
The chairman of the University of California's Board of Regents issued a highly critical analysis of the 10-campus system Wednesday, painting a picture of an impotent administration with a "dysfunctional set of organizational structures, processes and policies." Richard Blum, a San Francisco financier who has been on the governing board for four years, said the university no longer has a clear idea of where it is going, is hamstrung by arcane rules and too often is governed by a consensus system in which no one takes responsibility for results. ...sent to his 25 fellow regents, Blum says no one has really looked at UC's administrative structure in more than 40 years. He proposes a major overhaul of the system that ranges from streamlining expenditures and processes to raising funds for capital improvements to diversifying the student body. The report was issued nine days after university President Robert Dynes announced he would resign by June... A day after his announcement, The Chronicle reported that Dynes had been urged by Blum three week earlier to leave because regents were unhappy with his management. In Blum's report, titled "We Need to be Strategically Dynamic," the chairman says he has grown impatient with the lack of progress in reforming the university. He says that administrators and staff efforts have been less than acceptable and that he regularly hears complaints about faculty salaries, class sizes and delays in building improvements. "Despite the clear persistence of these problems, however, little measurable progress has been made," he said, adding later, "I believe the fundamental problem is an overgrown UC administrative infrastructure that substitutes motion for progress." Blum said major systemwide improvements are needed and that the administrative system should meet the same standards as the academic programs. Blum says expensive layers of bureaucracy are at play in the system and suggests that the administration clarify who is in charge of what and then assure that those people take responsibility for their tasks. The president's administrative office includes 516 full-time positions and an $81 million annual budget. Blum expressed hope that a new Regents Committee on Long Range Planning would develop an integrated plan for diversity admissions and affordability... Blum also pressed the importance of nurturing the newest campus, Merced, to ensure its success and suggested creating a task force to oversee the needs there.

They're still at it! The inseparable couple of wannabe Endangered Species Act
extirpators, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, and former Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy (reborn as a lobbyist) have teamed up on a scheme to defeat an evil plot by the federal government to make San Joaquin County homeowners living in flood plains pay flood insurance. The Pomboza has so far obstructed updates of FEMA flood-plain maps but time in running out. It is very hard to tell from the stingy reports on this plan what the deal really is, but it seems to be something like this: municipalities
along the river and developers will put up funding for levee work and hope the feds will generously match the money.

On August 3, the Stockton Record editorialized that, although as chairman of the House Resources Committee, Pombo did exactly nothing for Delta levees after the Jones Island break and after Katrina, as a lobbyist, he is proposing a win-win, public-private partnership called Central Valley Resources Agency to lobby for federal flood funds and, one imagines, gut the FEMA flood plain maps, at least in San Joaquin County. Pombo has already signed lobbying contracts with Stockton and Manteca but was rebuffed recently by his hometown city council in Tracy.

It seems like a strange way to run a government in the face of a potential problem that could endanger the drinking water supplies for 23 million people, but levees, as has been noted, are strange jurisdictional creatures, mostly private, so perhaps it is the only way the Pomboza can proceed. The state has expressed itself as tired of the idea that it must pay for flood damage along the Delta as the result of legislation brought to life by the artful state Capitol management of developer lobbyists.

The area we call Pombozastan is but a province -- including all its local governments -- of a larger win-win, public-private partnership designated in 2005 by the Hun, our governor, as the Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley. Stretching through interlocking watersheds from the San Joaquin Delta to the Kern River, encompassing subdivisions on flood plains in Stockton to the immense prison/megadairy complex of Kings and Kern counties, it ain't no ecotopia. It's got the worst air quality in the nation and it is the Number One target in California for urban growth. It remains the most productive farming valley in the US, probably in the world, but agriculture's days are numbered in the San Joaquin Valley. We are calling it today the dual monarchy of GrupeSpanopolis and the Fresno Catastrophe, an internal empire of developers who control all levels of its government. the Pomboza is merely its northern-most province.

The Record reports today, Congressman Cardoza is calling for a "regional group to tackle levee problems." Cardoza was sworn into his seat in the state Assembly when a levee break had put about half his district under water in early 1997.

Now let brave souls make wild surmises: this Central Valley Resources Agency will find its way into the Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley plan because its co-chairman is Fritz Grupe, Stockton's largest developer. Due to the essentially private nature of this "agency," the public probably won't see much of the Pomboza Plan before it is sprung as part of the Valley partnership. We'd probably have to bribe a little bird to monitor the Hun's famous Cigar Porch to get an accurate report of the doings of the Central Valley Resources Agency.

The remorselessly consistent Pombo, has left the "Natural" out of his agency's title. But's he's happy he's chairman of a new Resource Agency. Now an employee of a powerful Western lobbying group, Portland-based Pac/West, flaks for our beloved Northwest timber interests, in alliance with the cutting edge of modern agribusiness thinking on private property rights, Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, and funded by developers, the Pomboza agency would appear to be omnipotent. The people who actually live here now would appear to have about the same chance for decent quality of life as a Chinook salmon smolt or a Delta smelt.

Pombo was defeated for reelection to his eighth term by the present Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton. McNerney, the soul of political ambition and yet as timid as a "cautious twerp" of the sort manufactured en masse by the state and national environmental groups that defeated Pombo, is absent from debate on the formation of the Central Valley Resources Agency, although he represents at least as much Valley flood plain as Cardoza does. One imagines the conversation:

"But Dennis, I need some press on water issues in my own district."
To which Cardoza replies with one name: "Andal," McNerney's probable opponent in 2008, a former state Assemblyman, state Franchise Tax Board member and developer in Cardoza's district.

McNerney sneaks off over the Altamont to his stronghold in Bay Area suburbia, far from those tacky Delta water wars. Perhaps he is being advised to do so by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-SF, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA (SF). Who knows what their developer husbands are invested in around here? Too bad, because the people need a voice, which they ain't going to get with either end of the win-win, public-private beast we call The Pomboza Agency and its owners and trainers.

We hope to be surprised by sudden lurches of political evolution not yet in evidence. Meanwhile,the public is in a theological pickle: to pray for rain for drinking and irrigation water, or to pray for continued drought so the levees don't break -- that is the question.

Badlands Journal editorial board
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8-24-07
Dozens hash out levee accreditation...The Record
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/A_NEWS/70823013
Dozens of local, state and federal officials met Thursday to hash out a levee
accreditation process that could end with thousands of residents forced to pay flood insurance as soon as 2009. San Joaquin County officials say they're being required by the federal government to make levee improvements that have not been defined and that they haven't been given enough direction from FEMA or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, asked cities and counties if they'd like to form a regional group to tackle levee problems. Cardoza recently visited New Orleans and called Thursday's meeting to give all the parties a better understanding of the remapping
process.

8-3-07
The voice of Pombo...Editorial
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070803/A_OPINION01/708030308/-1/A_OPINION
Finding a common voice among San Joaquin County officials and residents regarding flood protection is common sense. Even if they're a decade or more behind Sacramento County, Stockton officials have done the right thing by pledging $100,000 in startup funding for just such an endeavor. It's very ironic they would hire former Rep. Richard Pombo, the Republican from Tracy, to help. Pombo spent 14 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he had an ideal platform from which to encourage and support that kind of unity. He couldn't formally lead it, but he had every opportunity to help persuade county and city leaders to establish a public-private collaboration. Pombo - who had become chairman of the House Resources Committee - had other priorities. Now he works for Pac/West Communications, an Oregon-based business that has been commissioned to set up a mechanism for lobbying state and federal officials for flood-protection funds. Now, uniting the county's leaders is a priority in Pombo's new job. This public-private partnership, to be known as the Central Valley Resources Agency, still is in the formative stages. Pombo will know who the key decision-makers are in Washington, D.C. He probably will prove to be an effective advocate.

FURTHER DOWN THE DRAIN
BY LLOYD G. CARTER

“Since pre-Columbian times, the Westlands area was known to be part of the uninhabitable Great California Desert.”
From the history section of the Westlands Water District Website, WWW.WestlandsWater.org

For more than half a century, growers in the fabled Westlands Water District have been the “bad boys” of federal irrigation projects in the American West, ignoring residency and acreage requirements for taxpayer-subsidized water, getting Congress to change laws they didn’t like, seducing both Republicans and Democrat politicians with a river of campaign contributions, and reaping more crop, water and power subsidies, tax breaks, and debt forgiveness than any other group of farmers in America.
Now they are poised to pull off the biggest coup in their controversial history. If they get what they are asking for, 260 billion gallons of publicly-owned water a year for 60 years, they will capture water worth anywhere from $20 to $40 billion - that’s billion with a B - with which they are free to farm tainted soils with, OR resell to urban interests at fantastic profit margins. At the current retail market price of $500-600 an acre-foot in Southern California, the Westlands water, purchased at a fraction of its true valley could be worth $2,000 an acre-foot by 2050, when there could be 60 million Californians. The potential value of 15.6 trillion gallons of water in a drought-stricken climate staggers the imagination.
The catch? Westlands says it will solve a problem being caused by irrigation of its drainage-impaired, highly saline soils, contaminated with the toxic trace element selenium. Westlands makes this promise despite 52 years of federal research and hundreds of millions of dollars in studies that have failed to come up with a wildlife-safe, effective and affordable solution. It gets better. Westlands also wants forgiveness on an already interest free $489 million capital debt for taxpayer construction of its water delivery system it should have already paid off.
But first a little history. After pumping a huge aquifer dry on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in less than 40 years, the patriarchal families of the West Side, the Giffens, the Harrises, the O’Neills, the Dieners, the Wolfsens and a few others, turned to a folksy tire salesman from Texas named B.F. “Bernie” Sisk. They bankrolled Sisk’s try for Congress and in 1955 he landed in the nation’s capitol. Sisk spent the next five years tirelessly promoting a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project to bring Northern California (Trinity River) water to western Fresno County.
In a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1959, Sisk promised that if the San Luis Unit (which would have been the last major leg of the Central Valley Project begun in the 1930s) was built, there would 6,000 family farmers on 100-acre ranches on the West Side and peace and prosperity would prevail. It was the first of many misrepresentations Westlands, or its supporters, would make over the next 48 years. Twenty-five years after Sisk’s promise, in 1984, there were still only 240 growers in Westlands and 40 of them, mostly from the original founding families, controlled over half the land and all the politics in the one-acre, one-vote district. Southern Pacific Railroad, Chevron, and cotton king J.G. Boswell were among the major Westlands landholders who influenced and directed district politics.
The late Paul S. Taylor, a University of California economics professor who was a well known critic of Reclamation policies in the mid-20th century wrote a 1964 article in which he quoted Alabama Congressman Oscar Underwood’s1902 speech on the floor of Congress, the year the Reclamation program was created to protect and foster family farming:
“Federal reclamation began as a program to help ‘farm boys’ who ‘want farms of their own’ to obtain them ‘without being driven into the already overcrowded cities to seek employment.’”
Many of the “farm boys” from Westlands would eventually live in multi-million dollar mansions in North Fresno, on the San Joaquin River bluffs or toney Van Ness Extension Avenue, 50 miles from their industrialized farming operations, in a zip code that receives more farm subsidies than any other zip code in America, 93711.
The first thing West Side growers did after the water delivery project was approved by Congress in 1960 was to annex another 200,008 acres known as the West Plains Water Storage into the 400,000-acre Westlands, a move a 1978 Congressional Task Force later concluded was unauthorized by Congress. Ironically, some land in the West Plains district had been designated too salty and unsuitable for irrigation by Bureau engineers in the 1950s when designing the original San Luis project, which included Westlands and three other adjacent small irrigation districts. Irrigation of the upslope West Plains lands, near the Coast Range along Interstate 5, would later worsen salty and selenium-plagued groundwater problems on the low-lying farmland near the trough of the Valley, where the San Joaquin River runs. Congressional funding intended for completing the drainage system was instead diverted to build a water delivery system for West Plains, according to the 1978 Task Force report.
In exchange for bringing cheap subsidized water to the western valley, Westlands growers had agreed to break up the huge estates, including the 106,000 acres owned by Southern Pacific, and the 100,000 acres owned by the Giffen family, after 10 years. The excess land provisions in Reclamation law provided that a husband and wife could own 320 acres but no more than that.
Of course, the Bureau of Reclamation had never enforced the residency requirement or the acreage limitation, which is what drew the wrath of Professor Taylor. When the mid-1970s rolled around, National Land for People, headed by George Ballis, sued to break up the huge ranches and actually give “farm boys” and farmworkers a chance to have ranches of their own. Fat chance.
A celebrated 1977 San Francisco Examiner series titled “The Paper Farmers” chronicled how the big growers were evading the acreage limitations by, in some cases, adding the names of relatives, employees and even unborn children, to land deeds to increase the amount of cheap water they were eligible to receive.
Westlands dragged its feet for several years in the National Land for People case, while the Bureau maintained the status quo on water deliveries, meaning big growers continued to get the cheap water for ranches which often exceeded 5,000 or 10,000 acres. Westlands also went to Congress and Rep. Tony Coelho, who had replaced his mentor Sisk in 1975. Coelho, who would become a powerhouse in the House before resigning following a real estate scandal, helped engineer the so-called “Reclamation Reform Act” in 1982, which didn’t really “reform” anything but did legalize a lot of the outright illegality occurring over the acreage limitation. Coelho was aided by western states congressmen subservient to their own local large growers getting federal water. The Reform Act eliminated the residency requirement and boosted the eligible acreage for the cheap water to 960 acres. It also created an even bigger loophole by allowing growers to get cheap water for lands they leased, rather than owned. As a result, leasing schemes mushroomed overnight and the mega-farms continued to get the cheap water.
Then in 1983-1984, the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge debacle hit, when word leaked out that drainage water from Westlands, being evaporated in 1,280 acres of diked ponds at Kesterson, was poisoning fish, ducks, and shorebirds at the dual purpose ”refuge.” Because of a subterranean clay layer underneath Westlands farmland, salty groundwater accumulated near the root zone. To protect crops the shallow groundwater had to be pumped out and sent somewhere else. The original plan was to funnel the salty drainage through the Delta to the Pacific Ocean. When Bay Area interests objected in the 1970s, Reclamation officials latched on to the risky idea of utilizing evaporation ponds at Kesterson as a stop gap measure while they undertook studies to convince the State Water Resources Control Board the drainwater would not harm the Delta. These studies revealed that much of Westlands’ acreage was riddled with selenium, a trace element which is a micronutrient in very small doses but toxic in slightly higher amounts. Selenium had been washing out of the Coast Range mountains for eons, accumulating in the western valley. Selenium’s toxicity to livestock was well known and Department of Agriculture studies in 1939 had actually detected elevated levels in Fresno County’s western foothills but that information had been overlooked or ignored by Bureau officials eager to build the San Luis Unit.
Many federal scientists saw Kesterson coming although they did not know that it would be selenium, not pesticides, that would cause Kesterson’s Silent Spring. Despite the documented misgivings of field level biologists as early as 1962, the Department of Interior, parent agency of both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation, had actually claimed in the late 1970s that the Westlands salty drainage would be good for the Kesterson wetlands. Amazingly, much of the tab for constructing the Kesterson facilities was deducted from the Westlands’ repayment tab because it was designated a benefit to wildlife and the general public.
The wetlands at the 5,900-acre Kesterson refuge adjacent to the San Joaquin River in Merced County were in the middle of the wintering grounds for hundreds of thousands of migratory ducks supposedly protected by an international treaty, the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. When full strength drainwater began flowing to Kesterson in 1981, high levels of selenium dissolved in the drainage water quickly moved into the food chain, killing fish and birds and triggering grotesque deformities in wildlife. Kesterson neighbors Jim and Karen Claus, who watched their cattle die after drinking water seeping from the evaporation ponds, filed a complaint with the regional water board and sounded the alarm.
On March 15, 1985, following a year of intensive media scrutiny, including a segment on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and front page stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post, Secretary of Interior Donald Hodel ordered the Kesterson ponds closed and irrigation water deliveries to Westlands shut off. Hodel said the evaporation ponds were a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
A delegation of Westlands officials and growers, including former California Secretary of State Bill Jones (Jones’ family owned several thousand acres in Westlands), traveled to Washington to lobby Hodel to resume irrigation deliveries. In exchange for the Bureau to continue the flow of Northern California water to Westlands, the water district officials signed an agreement on April 3, 1985 in which they pledged to halt drainage flows to Kesterson even though this would worsen their drainage crisis. In that 1985 agreement, Westlands also assumed any liability for lawsuits from individual Westlands growers.
In 1991, some growers in a 42,000-acre area of Westlands who had originally drained their wastes to Kesterson filed suit against Westlands and the Bureau of Reclamation for damages caused when the drainage system was closed and plugged. The suit was placed on the back burner during the Clinton years, as Reclamation officials plodded along spending tens of millions of dollars on drainage studies, including a $50 million, five-year investigation by a state-federal team. Their report, issued in 1990, concluded the cheapest solution was to take the high selenium lands out of production and drastically reduce the amount of drainage produced.
When George W. Bush came to office, the growers who had filed the lawsuit a decade earlier began pushing it again. A career Justice Department attorney, Yoshinori H.T. Himel, representing the Department of Interior and the Bureau in the grower suit, filed a motion in August of 2002 to get it dismissed. Himel pointed out that Westlands, in the 1985 agreement, had agreed “to design, install, and operate alternative means for disposal of drain water in an efficient and environmentally sound manner.”
Himel then noted that the 1985 Agreement “placed the obligation on Westlands “to design, install and operate alternative means for disposal of drain water from Westlands.” Himel said alternative means included evaporation ponds, salt tolerant crops and recycling.
While Himel acknowledged it could be argued the 1985 agreement may not have required Westlands to assume long-term responsibility for drainage for the entire San Luis Unit he said Westlands assumed, at the minimum, responsibility for solving the drainage problems of the 49,000 acres that had been draining to Kesterson.
Himel added "One thing the Agreement did alter, however, was Westlands' obligation to indemnify the United States for, among other things, 'losses, damages, claims and liabilities' arising from Westlands’ performance or non-performance of the Agreement. The language 'losses, damages, claims and liabilities' indicates money claims, such as Plaintiffs' money claims in this lawsuit . . . Westlands thus undertook at a minimum to indemnify the United States for lawsuits by those who might be dissatisfied with the results of Westlands’ 'alternative means' for drainage."

A federal court rejected this argument but critical issues of apportionment of liability for the drainage mess remained. Of course, we will never know what would have happened had the apportionment of fault issues been decided by a jury or a judge. Bennett Raley, a Colorado attorney who represented irrigation districts and was appointed Assistant Secretary for Water and Science by his Interior Secretary Gale Norton in 2001, made sure that a trial on the merits did not happen. Raley, undoubtedly with the support of Norton and the White House, undercut Himel and other Justice Department career attorneys defending the suit, agreeing to a $139 million settlement in December of 2002, with most of the money coming from U.S. taxpayers, not Westlands. Raley, of course, gained fame in 2002 for allotting water from Oregon's Klamath River to irrigators rather than to endangered fish, leading to a massive salmon die-off. News reports later indicated Vice President Dick Cheney masterminded the Klamath decision. It is unknown if Cheney or former White House advisor mastermind Karl Rove were consulted or involved in the decision to concede victory to the Westlands growers without a court fight.
In an October, 24, 2002 pre-trial order for partial summary judgment in the growers’ suit, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger noted that there was no dispute the growers continued to irrigate their lands knowing “that their lands would be damaged without drainage.”
Wanger added, “There are multiple issues to address at trial, however, regarding the operative ‘cause’ of damage to plaintiffs’ land, whether that damage constitutes a public or private nuisance, whether federal defendants and Westlands are concurrent tortfeasors, apportionment of any comparative fault of plaintiffs, and whether plaintiffs[] consented to or assumed the risk of a nuisance or trespass by demanding water deliveries to their farmlands, despite the knowledge that no drainage facility existed.” (Emphasis added.) In other words, a jury or a judge may have found the growers knowingly ruined their own lands and might not have awarded them a cent in damages. But Raley, as already noted, pre-empted any jury determination of those issues and, contrary to the Justice Department attorneys’ written arguments, settled.
Under the settlement, the federal government was to pay $107 million to have the farmers' lawsuit dismissed. Westlands had to spend $32 million to settle its part of the case,
buying 34,000 acres of the plaintiff’s ruined land and retiring it.
"We weren't batting a thousand with this court," Raley claimed in a 2002 interview with the Sacramento Bee. "They were claiming that we had damaged them, damages in excess of $400 million." Raley did not mention Westlands officials had signed the April 1985 agreement assuming liability for all such lawsuits or that his own government attorneys thought they had a good case and could win in court.
Rep. George Miller and environmental activists howled at the settlement, which they warned would be used as a precedent for the still unsolved drainage problem facing the Western San Joaquin Valley. Having given away $107 million in taxpayer money, Raley returned to private practice representing water districts in December of 2004.
Following the 2002 settlement (in which the federal government admitted no wrongdoing), Westlands worked on getting a new long-term water delivery contract and pressuring Reclamation to come up with a drainage solution because a district court, and then the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, had ruled Reclamation had a legal obligation to try and complete a drainage system for Westlands.
Westlands growers had a powerful ally in Jason Peltier, a native Californian and deputy secretary at Interior who was the Administration’s point man on western water issues and was a former lobbyist for Westlands and other California federal irrigation districts. Peltier claimed in news interviews he had nothing to do with matters involving Westlands. However, Westlands recently hired Peltier at an undisclosed salary. A former regional Reclamation official, Susan Ramos, has also been hired by Westlands.
Which brings us to the present. Westlands general manager and general counsel Tom Birmingham is now pushing a “global” settlement to the outstanding drainage lawsuits (filed by water districts downslope from Westlands) and Westlands’ desire for a long-term secure water supply. In recent closed door meetings with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Valley congressmen Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa (who represents the Westlands area), Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Hamilton Candee and a few others, the various stakeholders have tried to work out a deal. The news media is not permitted to cover these talks while decisions are made involving billions of taxpayer dollars.
Ed Imhoff, a retired federal scientist who headed a post-Kesterson $50 million, five-year study of the drainage problem from 1985-1990, was also kept out of the talks. Feinstein reportedly insisted “too many” people were in on the talks. Imhoff has been critical of the proposed drainage solutions of both Reclamation and Westlands. His 1990 study, dubbed the “Rainbow Report” noted land retirement was the cheapest option.
In the Central Valley Project, water supplies have always been distributed on a first in time, first in right priority system in which the oldest CVP irrigation districts get the water they need before irrigation districts down the totem pole get their water. Westlands, as the last CVP area to come on line, is at the bottom of the totem pole. This has often meant drastically reduced supplies for Westlands. For example, during the 1987-1992 drought, Westlands, in 1990 and 1991, only got 25 percent of its annual contract amount of 1.15 million acre-feet (an acre-foot is 325,851 gallons). Westlands has tried repeatedly in court to get on the same footing as more senior water contractors but to no avail. The drainage crisis, widely misunderstood and mishandled by both Reclamation and Westlands, has provided the growers an opening.
A few months ago, Westlands announced it could solve the drainage dilemma for less than half of the $2.6 billion Reclamation officials say it will cost to provide reverse osmosis, bio-remediation, recycling, and land retirement. Birmingham said that in exchange for letting the Bureau off the hook on drainage, Westlands wanted the Bureau’s extraordinarily valuable state water permit and operational control of the huge San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos. As anticipated, the audacious claim provoked a hostile response from Rep. Miller, Northern California interests and environmental groups statewide.
Birmingham then abandoned that strategy amid a torrent of negative publicity and, in the first week of August, just prior to another closed door meeting with Feinstein he came up with a revised, but still sketchy, proposal. Birmingham suggested that if the federal government would forgive a $489 million debt the Westlands owes for capital construction costs, and would exempt Westlands and other San Luis Unit water districts from acreage limitations and pricing provisions of federal law, Westlands would take over responsibility for the drainage mess.
In addition, Westlands wants a 60-year water delivery contract with rights of renewal (federal law now prohibits federal water contracts in excess of 25 years) and wants the Bureau to authorize transfer of title to various pumping plants, internal distribution systems, and the Coalinga Canal.
Apparently unmentioned in the Feinstein talks is that Westlands signed a “waiver/indemnity agreement” with Interior back on April 3, 1985, after the Kesterson closure or that the federal government admitted no liability in the 2002 settlement. The claim that the United States is somehow responsible for any damage to the former desert lands and thus should make major concessions on water delivery or drainage issues is simply unproven in a court of law.
Feinstein also seems unclear on the concept that even though the Bureau estimates it may take up to $2.6 billion to produce a drainage program, Westlands is ultimately required under the 1960 legislation to pay for it, albeit over 40 or 50 years and interest free. Neither the district court nor the Ninth Circuit has ever held that Congress must appropriate money to build a drainage system or that Westlands would not have to ultimately pay for it.
Moreover, few people in Washington seem to be questioning why Westlands should get off the hook for the $489 million still owed on the delivery system. If a man builds you a house and a plumbing system and fouls up the pipes underneath the bathroom, you don’t get the house for free. You just get your plumbing fixed.
Following a meeting in her office on Aug.1, Senator Feinstein said of a potential agreement “the devil is in the details.” Environmentalists fear she isn’t really paying attention to the details or looking out for the interests of American taxpayers and especially Californians, who are cutting back usage in urban areas while Westlands’ 500-600 growers could get enough water annually to meet the needs of a city of eight million people, or two cities the size of Los Angeles.
Consider this: If Westlands gets 800,000 acre-feet of water a year, which is what it would like, that translates to 260.68 billion gallons of water a year and 15 trillion, 640 billion gallons over the life of the proposed 60-year contract.
If you calculate the urban retail value of 800,000 acre-feet of water at a conservative $500 an acre-foot (Rep. Grace Napolitano of Los Angeles, new chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Water and Power Resources, says its $600 an acre-foot in Southern California) you come up with $400 million a year. Assuming the Westlands pays a generous $100 an acre-foot (they will argue for, and probably get, a cheaper price) that means they will pay $80 million for $400 million worth of water in a given year. Over 60 years, $400 million times 60 turns out to be $24 billion worth of water for a few hundred growers(Westlands claims 600 growers but has never produced a list and critics say it could be as few as 400). And many of those “growers are connected by blood or marriage, or simply entities operating under different corporate names but controlled by the same people. Of course, in my example, they would pay for 20 percent of that water ($100 an acre-foot) which means the retail value of that water delivered over the life of the contract, less what they paid for it, would be $19.2 billion.
Actually, the potential profits of water sale could be much higher. First of all, you can bet that the current urban price of water will be far higher in 60 years, when the western San Joaquin Valley may look like the San Fernando Valley. Water then may be worth $2,000 an acre-foot or even more if climate change produces extended drought.
Although Westlands’ Birmingham contends any guaranteed supply of water is strictly for farming in the district, there is no question it is legally permissible, thanks to a 1992 change in Reclamation law, for Westlands to sell its water on the retail market to the highest bidder, i.e. Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which has an insatiable thirst. Indeed, several San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts are already selling water to developers or urban interests and some individual Westlands growers have already offered to sell water to Metropolitan. They understand very well that water is the new cash crop.
Westlands’ so-called solution to the drainage problem is (1) conservation, (2) recycling and the most controversial and unproven, (3) use of sprinklers to disperse the tainted drainage water into the air, with the water evaporating and the salts and selenium falling back onto a gravel bed. The technology has never been tried large scale other than on one California Department of Water Resources test plot that was less than the size of a city lot.
Westlands officials have not explained where the millions of tons of salts that would accumulate over the decades would be hauled for disposal. Or what would happen if their scheme did not work. Environmentalists worry the drift of the salty spray from the sprinklers, especially in windy conditions, could damage surrounding fields or further taint groundwater. And sprinklers, or puddling of water would surely draw wildlife to the tainted water. The spray drift zone downwind would be more than two football fields long. If trees were planted for a drift barrier that would created a selenium-charged terrestrial environment. Huge amounts of land for a safety zone around the sprinklers would be required for the amount of drainage Westlands generates. The district hasn’t said how much land.
So if Westlands’ drainage scheme doesn’t work the growers will simply idle the bad lands and keep the very valuable water which they can resell to the highest bidder under the 1992 law. How fortunate.
At Feinstein’s Aug. 1 meeting with Birmingham and others, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist Joseph Skorupa was not in attendance although Senator Feinstein reportedly asked for him to be there. Skorupa is probably the premier expert in the United States on the impacts of farm drainage water on wildlife, especially birds, and has been studying San Joaquin Valley drainage since the 1980s. Fish and Wildlife managers, under pressure from Bureau officials, told Sen. Feinstein that Skorupa was unable to attend the Aug. 1 Washington meeting. According to sources at Interior, however, this was an outright lie and Skorupa was both willing, and able, to attend the Feinstein meeting.
Ironically, the same day Skorupa was told he could not attend the Feinstein meeting, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Dale Hall was testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee Hearing regarding Interior’s questionable scientific and policy decisions under the Endangered Species Act and claimed that “Science is the cornerstone of the Service’s work; it is what guides the agency’s decisions.” Unless, of course, Westlands is involved.
Westlands growers have making campaign contributions to Feinstein for years, including nearly $5,000 personally from Birmingham. No one has calculated how much. But they have a lot to gain if Feinstein buys off on their proposal and sponsors legislation.
According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) website, in a recent year the largest 10 percent of the farms in the Central Valley Project - which stretches from Redding to Bakersfield - got 67 percent of the water, and of course, Westlands has the biggest CVP farms of all and uses the most water of any district. Twenty-seven large CVP farms, most in the Westlands, received water subsidies averaging in excess of $1 million annually (i.e. the cost of replacement water). One Westlands farm, Woolf Enterprises, received more water by itself than 70 water districts in the Central Valley Project, for a subsidy worth up to $4.2 million annually at urban prices for water. EWG has also documented that CVP farmers get power subsidies to pump that Delta water uphill into the San Joaquin Valley at rates that are about 1/15th what the average citizen pays for the monthly electricity bill. CVP growers’ water rates are about two percent of Los Angeles residents’ rates.
Fortunately, any deal the Westlands/Bush Administration cabal makes with Feinstein must run the gauntlet of a Democratic Congress, which may not be as solicitous of the Westlands as Feinstein is. Rep. Miller and Rep. Napolitano promise to closely monitor any sweetheart water giveaway. California environmental groups, fishing groups and Northern California Native Americans are also mobilizing to fight the latest Westlands scheme.
One question for Congress to ask is how many billions do American taxpayers owe the few hundred Westlands growers? Kesterson whistleblower Felix Smith, a retired Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who first leaked to the news media the selenium-caused bird deformities, has been writing about the Kesterson debacle for 25 years. He estimates the overall subsidy to the Westlands (cheap water, cheap power, interest free construction costs), per acre, is now well over $6,600 per acre, or $3 billion for the whole district. The per acre subsidy is far more than the land is worth.
More worrisome is that if Westlands is guaranteed an enormous amount of water, it will increase the stress on a Delta that is already on the verge of ecological collapse due to overpumping by the State Water Project as well as the federal pumps.
However, Westlands’ “farm boys” are hoping that public apathy and congressional confusion or ignorance will result in one more very big payday. Over 15.6 trillion gallons of water in the middle of a desert. Think of the riches. Their desert may be uninhabitable but it does rain money.
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If you want to protect your tax dollars and slow down the Westlands express you can go to, and sign the petition at, www.thepetitionsite.com/1/no-more-secret-deals. The Planning and Conservation League is also adding information on the Westlands proposal to its website. It is your tax money and your public water supply that is being given away. The devil is indeed in the details. Stay informed.
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Lloyd Carter has been writing about Westlands water issues for more than 30 years and served as a reporter for United Press International from 1969 to 1984 and again from 1987 to 1990. He spent three years as a reporter at the Fresno Bee from 1984 to 1987. He won the San Francisco Press Club’s Best Environmental Coverage award in 1985 for his stories on the bird deformities at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge caused by selenium-tainted drainage water from Westlands. He is now an attorney in Fresno, CA.

To:
Gwen Huff, Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator
Karen Whipp, Merced Alliance/RCD Grant Administrator

From:
Members of the Merced River Stakeholders

Re: Merced River Stakeholders public minutes of East Merced Resource Conservation District meetings

Date: August 22, 2007

Gwen, Thank you for acknowledging and agreeing to send our protest letter to Merced River stakeholders (posted below). At this time, we are requesting that the enclosed attachments also be sent to Merced River stakeholders and EMRCD board members.

The enclosed attachments include two versions of what happened at the June 14, 2007 EMRCD special meeting, held by teleconference: the minutes taken by the EMRCD/Merced Alliance staff; and those dictated from notes from a Merced River Stakeholder on the call. The difference between the two sets of minutes is remarkable and should be noted by the public. As a result of this difference, members of the Merced River Stakeholders have begun attending EMRCD board meetings.

The third attachment is the Merced Stakeholders public minutes of the EMRCD board meeting of August 15, 2007. For the moment, Stakeholder concerns about public funds have been addressed by EMRCD funders, but a lively dispute continues between members of the Merced River Stakeholders and the EMRCD.

For more background on the dispute, we direct the attention of the public to three recent articles appearing on Badlandsjournal.com:

New Merced County Planning Commissioner: fast and loose with public processes, public funds --Friday, June 29th, 2007
Central Valley Safe Environment Network reply to a Merced County Planning Commissioner--Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Badlands replies to Commissioner Lashbrook’s information and commentary--Tuesday, July 24th, 2007
---------------------------

Lydia Miller, President San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center
P.O. Box 778
Merced, CA 95341

Meeting Minutes of the
BOARD OF DIRECTORS SPECIAL MEETING
EAST MERCED RESOURCE CONSERVATION DISTRICT

Thursday, June 14, 2007, 9:00 a.m.,

Teleconference Location – 1635 Luke Drive, Merced, CA
913 West Yale Avenue, Fresno, CA, 12230 Livingston-Cressey Rd., Livingston, CA, 1658 Scenic View Drive, San Leandro, CA, 6401 Hultberg Road, Hilmar, CA, 3279 Merced Falls Road, Snelling, CA
Call EMRCD for more information (209-723-6755)

Directors Present Per Roll Call:
Glenn Anderson
Tony Azevedo
Karen Barstow
Cathy Weber
Bernard Wade (joined call at 9:30 a.m.)

Directors Absent:
Bob Bliss

Others Present:
Karen Whipp, EMRCD personnel
Cindy Lashbrook, EMRCD personnel and associate director
Gwen Huff, EMRCD personnel

Item #
Vice-President Azevedo called meeting to order at 9:10 am.

1. INTRODUCTIONS
Done.

2. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS
None.

3. CORRECTIONS AND/OR ADDITIONS TO THE AGENDA
Karen Barstow moved to add item to agenda regarding preparing rebuttal letter for the opposition letter of the submission of the Merced River Management Plan grant Proposal.
Glenn Anderson seconded the motion/
Call for the vote, Director Anderson, yes; Vice-President Azevedo, yes, Director Barstow yes, Director Bliss, absent, Director Weber, yes; President Wade, absent.
MOTION CARRIED.

4. LETTER OF SUPPORT FOR 4H EDUCATION PROJECT
Cathy Weber moved to approve the EMRCD Board submit a letter of support for the 4H Education Project and authorize Board President to sign letter of support.
Tony Azevedo seconded the motion.
Call for the vote, Director Anderson, yes; Vice-President Azevedo, yes, Director Barstow yes, Director Bliss, absent, Director Weber, yes; President Wade, absent.
MOTION CARRIED.

4A. REBUTTAL LETTER OF THE OPPOSITION LETTER OF RECENT GRANT PROPOSAL
Kathy Weber moved to table this item and discuss at the next regular EMRCD Board meeting.
Glenn Anderson seconded the motion.
Call for the vote, Director Anderson, yes; Vice-President Azevedo, yes, Director Barstow yes, Director Bliss, absent, Director Weber, yes; President Wade, absent.
MOTION CARRIED.
Let it be noted that President Bernard Wade joined the conference call at 9:30 am. The board members reviewed the meeting and actions of the board with him.

5. NEXT MEETING: The next EMRCD Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, June 20, 2007, 12:00 pm at Golden By Products, Inc., 13000 Newport Road, Ballico, CA.

6. ADJOURNMENT 9:50 a.m.

For more information, contact: East Merced Resource Conservation District, 2135 W. Wardrobe Ave., Suite C, Merced, CA 95340, Phone (209) 723-6755, Fax (209) 723-0880.
----------------------------

Merced River Stakeholders public minutes

Subject: Minutes of June 14, 2007 East Merced Resource Conservation District Meeting by Telephone

Gwen Huff said letters were written to legislators by Pat Ferrigno. The Farm Bureau and Diedre Kelsey were OK with the grant. Huff asked that an emergency item (4a) be placed on the agenda because Ferrigno had written to the legislators, calling for a response from the EMRCD to Ferrigno’s letter.

They took a roll call vote.

On the call at this time: Gwen Huff, Cathy Weber, Karen Barstow, Glenn Anderson, Cindy Lashbrook , Karen Whipp, Tony Azevedo, and Lydia Miller. Miller was never asked if a public member was on the phone.

Attempts were made by email and fax to get Bernie Wade on the call. Wade had called the wrong number and was put on indefinite hold. He joined the meeting late.

The purpose of the special meeting was a letter of support for the 4-H Wells Project.

Lashbrook, having just checked her email, brought up the need for EMRCD to sign on to the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition letter to the Governor about the Williamson Act. Sign on deadline was the next day. Weber said the board would like to see the letter.

Wade finally got on the call, requiring a briefing of all that had already happened.

After Huff told Wade about the need for a letter to the legislators to reply to Ferrigno’s letter, Wade asked, “When is this going to end?”

Lashbrook replied: “We’re at war.”

There was a discussion about the ingratitude of the Merced River Stakeholders. Wade recommended that the stakeholders should be cut out.

The board authorized the letter on the 4-H Wells Project, but didn’t authorize either a letter to legislators in reply to Ferrigno’s letter or the letter to the governor on the Williamson Act. Wade and Weber expressed irritation with being presented with 11th-hour decisions (referring to the Williamson Act letter).

Lashbrook brought up the idea of a means to streamline the authority process.

The board decided on an agenda item to ask the stakeholders how they wished to be involved with the EMRCD in the future.

Azevedo said he would be out of town for the board meeting on June 20. It was to be held at Golden Bi-Products Tire Recycling Co.. Barstow said the company had teleconferencing capability.

Submitted July 17, 2007
By Lydia Miller, president
San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center
-----------------

Public minutes of the East Merced Resource Conservation District (RCD) board meeting, August 15, 2007

Members of the public, in this instance also members of the Merced River Stakeholders, believing that the official minutes of RCD meetings fail to describe the political and economic issues being discussed and decided by the RCD, have begun taking their own public minutes of its meetings. We urge other members of the public, particularly river stakeholders, to begin attending RCD meetings.

The East Merced RCD is a public institution. Its board members are appointed by Merced County supervisors, its books are overseen by Merced County and its funds are derived from grants from public agencies.

Members of the Merced River Stakeholders recently challenged RCD grant proposals amounting to nearly a half-million dollars. This meeting primarily concerns the results and consequences of the grantors’ decisions regarding these proposals and the RCD response.

Participants:
Public: Bill Hatch, Stakeholder

RCD Board:
Bernie Wade, Glenn Anderson, Cathy Weber, Robert Bliss
Associate Board Member, Cindy Lashbrook, Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator

RCD staff:
Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Cindy Lashbrook
Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholder Facilitator Gwen Huff
Merced Alliance/RCD Grant Administrator Karen Whipp
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service staff:
Malia Hildebrandt

Bill Hatch, Stakeholder who prepared these minutes arrived about a half an hour late to the meeting. Merced County Planning Commissioner Cindy Lashbrook, an associate (non-voting) member of the RCD board and a staff member of the Merced Alliance, whose grants are administered by the RCD, was speaking. She said she had signed up the RCD to attend an economic development conference being held by the City of Merced.

Next, Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook mentioned a sign-on letter by the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition that she wished the RCD board to sign. She said, as she had said in a previous RCD meeting, that the RCD board should appoint either one person or a small committee to deal with issues signing onto this letter, which occur between meetings.

The public correspondent mentioned that the two groups from Merced that are founders of the CRCC, San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center and the San Joaquin Valley Conservancy, are not going to sign this particular letter because it was not clear in the letter that the easements CRCC were requesting would be perpetual and the two founders have a firm policy against term easements.

“Land-use decisions can’t wait,” Lashbrook said, stressing the urgency of the coalition letter to Congress, urging it to pass provisions in the 2007 Farm Bill that would fund more land easements.

RCD Board Member Cathy Weber said the board needed more members (four of the six voting members were at the meeting) present before deciding on such a protocol, and asked that the issue be put on the agenda for the next board meeting, September 27.

Malia Hildebrandt, Merced County Natural Resources Conservation Service staff, reported to the board about the latest water discharge order for dairies, stating that the first reports were due December 31, 2007, NRCS would be providing workshops for dairymen in November and December to help them write their plans for manure disposal and discharge pollutant plans. She also said that Merced County Environmental Health Department is applying for grants to pay for a consultant to help prepare the dairy reports. Consultations would cost between $8,000 and $20,000 per dairy. Hildebrandt said there were about 330 dairies in the county. The NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) would require recipients to file these reports, Hidebrandt said. She added that some dairies were already opting out, but that the program covered all dairies of all sizes and that new dairies or expanded dairies must get individual permits.

In response to a question from the public about the effect of the closure of Hilmar Cheese Co. and the loss of dairies, Hildebrandt said she didn’t know. RCD Board Member Glenn Anderson said he’d heard “there would be no more cows in Hilmar” at some point in the future, either 2020 or 2050 (he wasn’t sure).

Hildebrandt announced that on August 29, Rep. Dennis Cardoza would be holding a “listening” conference on the Farm Bill from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Double Tree in Modesto.

She also mentioned that new dairy lagoons would have to be double-lined with new synthetic, leak-proof liners.

The report of Merced River Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Gwen Huff came next, beginning with a question of whether state Department of Water Resources official, Dan Wermiel, would have to sign off on the next Merced River Alliance newsletter concerning a recent meeting with board members and staff at Henderson Park in Snelling on July 20.

County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook explained that the meeting was a citizen water-quality monitoring event of a sort that will continue “as long as the grant continues.”

A version of the meeting somewhat different than the commissioner’s explanation occurs later in the minutes.

Staff reported that Nancy McConnell, another Merced River Alliance educational coordinator, had written a report on the meeting in Snelling with Wermiel.

Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Huff announced that the RCD had lost both the large and the small vernal pool grant its had applied for. She said she was awaiting comments from CalFed, the granting agency, about why the RCD had failed to get the grants.

Board Member Weber said that Lydia Miller, president of San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center, a Merced River Stakeholder, had sent the RCD a copy of the letter written in opposition to the RCD grants and had asked that the RCD send it out of other stakeholders. Weber and others objected to the heading on the letter, which read: “Merced River Stakeholders,” saying that Miller and a member of the public present at the meeting weren’t the only stakeholders.

There is a header on the top of each page of the protest letter because it was professionally written. The first sentence of the letter reads:

We are writing, as members of the Merced River Stakeholders, to protest a proposal submitted by the East Merced Resource Conservation District (EMRCD) called “Lower Merced Watershed Management Plan.”

Huff said the next meeting of the Merced River Stakeholders was on September 24. Huff, both Merced Alliance/RCD watershed coordinator and facilitator of the stakeholders’ meetings, said that “we won’t spend time on how the grant was developed, but on how the stakeholders should participate” in the future. She added that staff was inviting a regional manager of the state RCDs to attend the meeting to help “RCD/stakeholders’ interface.”

Commissioner Lashbrook said, “We don’t need their (stakeholders’) input.”

Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Huff outlined RCD board options on how the stakeholders’ should participate in RCD grant applications in the future, prefacing her remarks by saying that Teri Murrison, her predecessor as facilitator for the stakeholders, thought the stakeholders were the most important part of the RCD. “She came to the stakeholders before submitting concept grants,” Huff said. This, Huff said, was Murrison’s first suggestion on RCD relations with the stakeholders. Second, inform the stakeholders. Third, take their comments.

Board Member Weber said that the stakeholders were also independent and that the board should support the idea that stakeholders should be notified and notified better in the future. “But the RCD is also independent,” she added.

RCD Board President Bernie Wade summarized that the board should inform the stakeholders and accept their comments.

Board Member Anderson asked: “Who is to be informed and how? It is a fluid group. Every landowner on the river?”

Actually, in addition to landowners on the river, environmental groups and state and federal agencies have been involved with the Merced River Stakeholders since its inception, facts perhaps forgotten by Anderson.

Lashbrook said that on March 6, 10 days before the concept proposal, “it was mentioned” at a stakeholders’ meeting. “Anyone who cared could have commented.”

Actually, the Merced River Stakeholders meeting was held on March 19.

Karen Whipp, grant administrator for the Merced River Alliance/RCD, said that some Merced River stakeholders don’t open their messages. She keeps a file on those, she added.

RCD Board Member Robert Bliss said that five stakeholders had attended an RCD meeting and they were positive about the two RCD grant proposals.

The board returned to the subject of the Merced River Stakeholders, complaining again that it has no real mechanism for reaching a consensus or for voting.

Commissioner Lashbrook opined that that was because “(Merced River Stakeholders) Lydia Miller and Pat Ferrigno” had rigged the stakeholders’ bylaws so that they would have no mechanism for consensus or voting.

“There has to be a mechanism for support or opposition to a proposal,” one board member said.

Returning to the topic of Lydia Miller’s request that the letter of opposition to the grant be sent to the stakeholders by the Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator and Merced River Stakeholders’ Facilitator, Gwen Huff, Commissioner Lashbrook said: “We don’t have to rub our nose in our failure.”

Merced Alliance/RCD Grant Administrator Whipp stated that, “Lydia doesn’t pay Gwen’s salary.”

Huff, Merced River Alliance/RCD watershed coordinator and stakeholders’ facilitator, said that she would like to send out the letter with a preface.

Lashbrook, county planning commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD educational coordinator, said that the RCD needs to write an introduction to the stakeholders’ letter sent by Miller.

Board Member Weber agreed with Huff and suggested an introductory paragraph: “Lydia requested that this be sent out before the next stakeholders’ meeting.

Commissioner Lashbrook and board member Bliss disagreed. Commissioner Lashbrook did not want the letter sent out without a negative introduction by the RCD.

Board Member Anderson suggested: “Lydia has requested …”

Board Member Bliss stated, “Lydia pays the postage.”

Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Stakeholder Facilitator Huff informed Bliss that the letter would be sent by email.

Merced County Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook reminded the board that the action about to be taken was a board action and not a “unilateral staff action.”

“You as a group decided not to publish a rebuttal letter,” Lashbrook said (although at this point the board had decided nothing.)

Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook wanted a letter of rebuttal by the RCD to points made in the letter of opposition to the grant the Merced River Stakeholder Miller had requested Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Huff to distribute to the Merced River Stakeholders before the next meeting. She emphasized that the stakeholders had been notified of the concept grant on March 6. She added that the RCD needed “to make a few points against this crap!”

Board President Wade said: “We send out a letter. It will never end!”

Commissioner Lashbrook said something about “different letters …RCD not defending …”

Board Member Anderson said: “All we can do is move forward. If it requires that the stakeholders organize for making comments …”

Commissioner Lashbrook said that there were stakeholders who didn’t know.

Board Member Weber focused on the header of the letter of opposition to the grant and suggested the RCD send out only the header and the first page.

Merced Alliance/RCD Grant Administrator Whipp asked why the RCD was “sending out this scathing letter?”

Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook asked: “Why send out our ‘slap down’?”

Board Member Weber then withdrew her motion to send out the letter in opposition to the grant.

Grant Administrator Whipp informed the board that it would have to make some motion, for example, that Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Huff is not authorized (by the RCD) to do this …”

Huff said she had already promised Miller she would send out the letter.

Board Member Bliss moved that the letter not be sent out because it is “inflammatory.”

Board President Wade suggested “not authorized –the letter is not authorized to be sent by the board or staff.”

Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholder Facilitator Huff thanked the board for this resolution, which passed. She then described three new grant opportunities available before the end of the year. One involved Bear Creek, the urban parts of which are not in the RCD. The grants were for a watershed coordinator for the stakeholders, water monitoring, and water pollution. Huff finished her report by asking the board to find a group for her to make her final presentation on the Endangered Species Act (in order to fulfill a grant).

The remaining member of the public asked Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholder Facilitator Huff who paid her salary? Huff replied it was paid by the state Department of Conservation at the moment and that will continue until May through the Merced Alliance. At this point, she added, the RCD is looking for new funds from the state Department of Conservation.

Grant Administrator Whipp interjected to explain that the watershed coordinator has a contract with the RCD for the task of facilitating the meetings of the Merced River Stakeholders.

According to Whipp’s logic, Miller as a California taxpayer is paying the watershed coordinator’s salary but evidently the RCD dictates the tasks of stakeholder facilitation.

Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook, reporting as staff of the Merced Alliance on a grant run through the RCD, said that the Riverfair had gone well however there was some question about where it would be held next year. This year it was held at the commissioner’s ranch.

She expressed surprise that state Department of Water Resources official Dan Wermiel “had said those things” at the Snelling meeting on July 20. She added that she is “not putting up with a lot of shit from people for their own self aggrandizement.” She also said she was “hoping we’ll put in some grants that won’t be misrepresented.” She concluded by saying, “These are trying times. You may just be meeting here and looking at each other …”

The member of the public interpreted these remarks to mean that Commissioner Lashbrook’s “ war” (declared at a special RCD meeting a month earlier) against the Merced River Stakeholders who had opposed her grants was still on, however, things didn’t look good for future grants to the East Merced Resource Conservation District, at least from its usual sources.

Board Member Weber suggested that the RCD go to the stakeholders with ideas for things that can be done without grants and coordinate with the stakeholders on these projects.

Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Huff stated that in California, all RCD funding is by grant.

County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook added that California is the only state that operates its RCD funds this way.

NRCS staff Hildebrandt said that some states have base state funding for RCDs and others don’t.

Commissioner Lashbrook told the board that it needed to look to its strategy “in light of what’s going on.” Funding for RCD staff runs out in March. She quoted DWR official Wermiel as saying that the federal government didn’t contribute to CalFed.

Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook said that the instructions CalFed gave her and other grant writers were that they needed a broader stakeholder base and a wider watershed to qualify. She said it would have been an “open public process, not steered …” and that “we (the grant writing staff) were set to do a plan for implementation.”

However, she continued, “big negatives drowned that out.”

Commissioner Lashbrook said the granting agency told her nothing would be accepted after the submission date. She added that had she known, she could have gotten 40-60 support letters.

Board President Wade said, “Scandal! Criminal!”

The stakeholders opposed to the grant contacted the granting agency, still unable to get a copy of the grant from after the submission date from either Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Huff or Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook. The funders instructed them to send their opposition letter early in the week after the submission deadline.

Huff said that the review of the grants from the funders will come and will be shared.

Board members said that DWR official Wermiel had called the meeting on July 20 in Snelling (so it was not really a routine water monitoring meeting). Then a letter from Nancy McConnell, like Commissioner Lashbrook, another Merced Alliance educational coordinator, was read in which McConnell said she was “real sorry the grant didn’t make it.” The McConnell letter continued to say that after the tour, Wermiel said that chances of getting more CalFed money were unlikely. California is very backwards, said McConnell, who lives out of the area. She said, “top managers of the watershed program didn’t buy into the process themselves.” She concluded the letter with a rousing: “Keep the watershed community base faith!”

The board and staff did not discuss the request of Merced River Stakeholders Miller and Pat Ferrigno and RCD Board President Wade’s request to be sent a report on the meeting between Merced Alliance/RCD staff and DWR official Wermiel, nor has it sent her a copy as of the writing of these minutes.

Merced County Planning Commissioner/Merced Alliance/RCD Education Coordinator Lashbrook reported on a Merced County plan to review all “annexations.” RCD, which is a special district and falls under the jurisdiction of the county Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), will be reviewed and needed to provide a legal description of the district and a man. A new annexation would cost $2,700 and require environmental review and a Notice of Determination.

Members of the board entered into an intense discussion about where the legal description and map might be, which was brought to an end when Huff found them in a filing cabinet behind Planning Commissioner Lashbrook.

Lashbrook reported that the Sierra Club would hold a meeting on the high-speed rail proposal the next day and that Kim Forest, US Fish and Wildlife Service manager of the Grasslands would attend to express her concerns about how the rail proposal would affect west side grasslands. The planning commissioner added that there would be a public hearing on the project at the end of the month – the only hearing on it in the Valley, to be held in Merced.

Board members discussed briefly whether the high speed, electric powered railway would cut down on pollution, some saying yes, others asking how the electric power would be generated.

Board Member Anderson reported on the Valley Land Alliance, a board he also sits on, saying that the Alliance “wants an active role.” Currently, he said the Alliance is proposing a food-and-energy element in the county General Plan Update process.

Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator Huff said that the board should consider using fee-for-service agreements to raise funds as well as grants.

The meeting adjourned.

During the meeting, another member of the public, who had to leave the meeting early, said that when he was in the hallway outside the meeting before it began, Commissioner Lashbrook demanded to know why he was there (at a public meeting discussing public funds). There have been several reliable reports by either eyewitnesses or victims, that Commissioner Lashbrook has threatened people in what has the appearance of a personal vendetta against Merced River Stakeholder Miller for protesting the substance and process in the RCD grant proposals. Commissioner Lashbrook has been reported to say to people that they must choose sides between herself and Merced River Stakeholder Miller and must not communicate with either Miller or anyone associated with her, presumably including all people for the last 30 years who have used the services of or volunteered with the San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center or are now or have ever been members of the Central Valley Safe Environment Network as well as people involved with newer organizations. In a previous RCD meeting, Merced Planning Commissioner Lashbrook summed up her attitude toward Merced River Stakeholder Miller: “It’s war.”

Is this the way Merced County citizens want high officials to treat the public?

The question of whether the RCD has a right to obstruct the tasks of the Merced River Stakeholders facilitator, paid public funds to facilitate stakeholders’ meetings, will be taken up at the stakeholders’ meeting in September.

Recently accused by a local planning commissioner of being a dishonest journalist, I reviewed my notebooks for moral reassurance. I found notes from an interview I once did with a city planning-department staffer in charge of maps. This Galilean fundamentalist believed that geography was the queen of the sciences and would set us free. I honestly reported this lunacy for the local newspaper.

Our little region of the globe contains three north San Joaquin Valley CA counties in the largest parts of two congressional districts formerly known as Pombozastan in honor of representatives Pombo and Cardoza, of anti-Endangered Species Act fame. The three county seats are tops in the nation for mortgage foreclosures. Three other Central California cities, Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield, also score high for mortgage foreclosure rates. These land-use jurisdictions, whose elected officials approved the massive construction boom driven by speculation, are awash in debt and planning maps: county limits, city limits, specific urban development plans, spheres of influence, blueprints, greenprints and regional partnerships.

Years ago, state Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, irritated with local governments in Northern California, advanced an idea to consolidate its 50 counties into conveniently large land-use jurisdictions like the eight counties south of the Tehachapis, which contain the largest population in the state. I don't remember the speaker's exact political purpose for this suggestion, but it threatened the livelihoods and power of thousands of county staff and supervisors, presumably to some positive outcome for the
Legislature in that year's state budget. To my knowledge, Brown's proposal has not returned in his forthright terms, but it has gained momentum by other means.

As anyone knows, whose life has detoured for some reason into the intellectual sump called "land-use planning" in California, the topic is rich in absurdity and cannot be faced, let alone comprehended without deep study of the comic novel and neglected masterpieces of 18th-century Neapolitan social theory. Although the environment constantly deteriorates under the impact of "inevitable growth," although the resource-carrying capacity of the state is breaking down all around us, although new slogans along the lines of the familiar chestnut "smart growth" are endlessly confected by land-use propagandists -- we know we cannot take this sugar-coated bullshit seriously. Down that path lies idiocy, and there are examples all around us of those who have ventured there and never returned.

The area including 15 Central California counties is missing the two maps essential to understanding the true land-use jurisdictions.

Each of the 15 counties has land-use authority over the unincorporated areas within its borders. The cities within them have land-use authority over the areas within their corporate city limits and consultative jurisdiction over areas beyond their limits depending on spheres of influence, specific urban development plans, and other arrangements with their counties. (As a canny realtor/city councilman once put it: "Counties don't grow; cities do.")

As official land-use jurisdictions, these counties and their cities are subject to state and federal environmental laws and regulations, particularly the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which defines the state’s unique procedures and requirements for environmental review. Federal laws and regulations define other duties and responsibilities of local land-use jurisdictions. The main federal laws are the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. If the local jurisdictions corrupt these laws too blatantly, their decisions are open to legal challenge.

Local land-use officials do not don sackcloth and sit in ashes when they are defeated in court. Their response to a negative ruling is to ramp up the propaganda attack against successful petitioners, courts, judges and environmental law, approve more projects and sacrifice to golden cows, praying for the extirpation of their enemies -- from the San Joaquin Kit Fox to environmental organizations. After a few years of these rustic rites, a stranger arriving in their midst and observing their public behavior must theorize that they were born that way or that the idiocy is environmentally caused.

The executive director of the San Joaquin Valley air board, controlled by pro-growth county supervisors, continues his campaign to convince the public that one of the two worst air quality basins in the nation, facing epidemic growing rates of childhood and elder asthma, has better air quality than it was 25 years ago. The only way to comprehend this is to realize that the San Joaquin Valley Regional Air Quality Board, like city councils and boards of supervisors in its region, has been wholly digested and evacuated by its “regulated community.”

Environmental laws and regulations governing the legal actions of local land-use jurisdictions theoretically obstruct developers in collusion with local officials from doing exactly what they want to do -- create a continuous slurb from Chico to Bakersfield on the richest, most productive farm and ranch land in the nation and one of the greatest agricultural treasures in the world, also home to abundant wildlife. They seek to create residential subdivisions to profit while making the region’s air unbreathable, its water unpotable and its wildlife extinct.

There are numerous county and municipal general plans being updated at the moment. The state has mandated general plans since 1927 and has required frequent updates in recent years. The whole Valley is updating general plans that are out of compliance with unenforced state law. General plans are supposed to be made to guide development as if the existing population mattered. They are the main venue in which citizens have any say about what developers and their government enablers have planned for them. "Planning" is an activity conducted in an arcane jargon designed to impress and intimidate the populace. But, at least the jurisdictions covered by the general plans are relatively well marked on maps. Locally, Fresno and Merced cannot seem to settle its boundaries, but in the rest of the state, these disputes were settled a century ago.

Meanwhile, various forms of regional planning are going on. The seven counties around Sacramento have a regional transportation-planning agency called Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) that ceaselessly generating frosted cow pies for public consumption. Lately, the eight San Joaquin Valley counties have gotten into the business with a state-funded San Joaquin Valley Blueprint Planning Process, led by the Merced County Associations of Governments (MCAG). In addition to our blueprint, we have a special commission, the San Joaquin Valley Partnership, chaired by Stockton’s largest developer.

These parallel planning processes are necessarily uncoordinated. The transportation planning, for example, has one aim: persuading the state Department of Transportation that it should put SACOG or MCAG's special streets and roads projects at the top of the pile in the annual hogfest of requests to the Federal Highway Administration.

The regional transportation planning process pays as little attention as possible to state and federal environmental law. While the local general plans must at least pretend an interest in the environment, regional transportation planning is motivated by its higher calling -- federal highway funds. Thanks to the durable public-private/"win-win" partnership between developers and land-use authorities, housing is built without enough roads to handle the increased traffic (known in planning jargon as "inadequate transportation infrastructure"). Delegations speaking with "One Voice" are regularly dispatched to Congress demanding that the empty barrel of speculation-driven construction be filled with pork.

The CAGs and COGs generate an abundance of beautiful, colored maps. However, the two most important maps are controlled by jurisdictions that do not share.

The official boundaries of the region Formerly-Known-As- Pombozastan are clearly marked. Gerrymandered as they are according to vanities of the two-party system, the 11th and 18th congressional districts will remain the same until after the next US Census in 2010. But Pombozastan was never the most important political jurisdiction in its region.

Extremely conservatively, I date the period of radical growth of the new, unmapped political jurisdiction to the spring of 2005, when Stockton’s largest developer held a fundraiser for representatives RichPAC Pombo and Dennis "Fairy Shrimp Slayer" Cardoza, after which the two congressmen split a reported $50,000. In attendance at the event were no doubt representatives of a Sacramento-based, unmapped political jurisdiction recently stung by defeat at the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers in the US Supreme Court, when the justice from Sacramento recused himself. In the fall of 2005, about the time Pombo and Cardoza introduced their latest bill to gut the ESA, the same Stockton developer was appointed by the Hun, our governor, to co-chair the San Joaquin Valley Partnership. The term "co-chair" is overly modest.

The first great, undrawn map is now being layered over the San Joaquin Valley, for years known as the Territory of the Warring Irrigation Districts. This map is composed of two parts (befitting a partnership), representing a dual monarchy along Austro-Hungarian lines that must appeal to the Hun. In the north, we have a highly organized administrative unit built for growth called GrupeSpanopolis. The southern part of the Partnership, while not quite as well organized (though better monitored by the FBI) is called the Fresno
Catastrophe, which contains a vast prison/mega-dairy complex in its southern provinces.

In the Sacramento area, even the 7-county SACOG transportation planning region does not contain Tsakopolis, a perpetually developing dynastic octopus reaching at certain points into the neighboring Partnership. Tsakopolis is also managed along Balkan lines, although it probably owes more to the Ottoman than to the Austro-Hungarian model. The state Capitol is simply one among many gated communities in Tsakopolis.

This is the first layer of undrawn maps. One might say, (following Vico's New Science) that these are kingdoms of giants, representing no more than many other signals we are receiving our entrance into a new age of barbarism.

This map is unlikely to be drawn by local land-use jurisdictions because they must deny that the giants have any influence over land-use decisions governed by environmental law and regulation, some of the most popular laws in the state and nation. If even the existence of the kingdoms of the giants were admitted publicly and mapped, it could lead to investigations that might result in criminal prosecutions for mis, mal and non-feasance. This sort of reform could be like something out of the "Progressive Era," conjured up by the Hun from the dustheap of Republican Party history during the recall election. The Hun conquered a state capitol inside which no trooper can direct a tourist to the portrait of Gov. Hiram Johnson.

A giant, perpetual propaganda campaign sells the idea that our developers are enlightened, benevolent and humble citizens fulfilling the deepest community needs. This campaign is as true as the inevitability of growth, the absolute necessity for the peripheral canal, Sykes and Temperance Flats reservoirs, that Westlands Water District must own San Luis Reservoir, that the quality of Valley air and water is better than it was 25 years ago, that several species of Delta fish are not going extinct, that thousands of acres of habitat for endangered species can be destroyed with impunity and that developers can build mile-long sewer lines through farmland without any legal permits at all. This campaign, fomented by the global information-management firm, Fee, Fai, Foe and Fumm LLP, runs larger campaigns denying global warming, peak oil, the loss of habeas corpus, extinction of the Polar Bear, defeat in Iraq and the global credit crunch.

Like the prehistoric giants they resemble (said to have learned piety from fear of thunder and lightning), someday our giants might come to Jesus via flood, drought or both. But do not tempt your Lord about it. They would earn fabulous profits from reconstruction projects. Every child knows that giants prize gold above all.

But, there is another undrawn map, the only map at the moment of any use to hundreds of thousands of our Valley residents now inhabiting the housing products the giants built. The Great Speculative Housing Boom has Busted and people don't know who holds their mortgages anymore than the mortgage holders know the people who aren’t paying subprime resets. It would be dishonest journalism to say that I know of a map showing how mortgages in Tsakopolis, GrupeSpanopolis and the Fresno Catastrophe have been bundled and distributed among the hedge funds, investment banks and federal bailout agencies.

Bill Hatch

Letters to the Editor
Fresno Bee
July 27, 2007

Dear Sir or Madam,

The U.S. Department of Agriculture gets my inept federal bureaucracy of the month award for writing subsidy checks to 172,801 dead farmers totaling $1.1 billion dollars during the period from 1999 to 2005. This gives new meaning to the term "buying the farm."
All the sordid details are available in a report from the Government Accountability Office located at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d071137t.pdf.
Nineteen percent of the deceased subsidy recipients had been dead for seven years or more, while a whopping 40 percent had been dead for three years or more. Even more troubling, someone undoubtedly alive signed and cashed those checks given the considerable difficulty the dead have in signing checks.
There must be plenty of dead San Joaquin Valley farmers on the list given that we are the farming capitol of the nation. They must be chuckling somewhere in the Great Pasture in the Sky that they couldn't make any money while living but managed to generate some green after they were gone.

Lloyd Carter

Robert Dynes, appointed by the Regents of the University of California as UC president on June 11, 2003, is stepping down. Love is the reason UC flaksters have confected. It being UC, the new bride was immediately appointed an Associate of the President, an honorific promotion from legal counsel at UCSD for which it is unimaginable there was not some nuptual emolument of public funds. The president would have known we the Californians would have settled for nothing less.

We consulted the gutter press of San Francisco that had tastelessly reported on various compensation packages Dynes approved, on account of which several state senators most uncharactistically called for his resignation. Then we covered the equally venal LA Times, which had followed the San Francisco Chronicle and then added some of their own about exorbitant pay packages to UC administrators and star researchers. They did not have headlines, reading: UC president gives it up for love.

The Project on Government Oversight, a national watchdog group that pays particular close attention to the two national laboratories where nuclear weapons are designed, redesigned and tested, both managed by UC (now in partnership with Bechtel and several other war contractors), was too polite to lead with: Dynes resigns; leaks go on.

Badlands, known to its readers to be a venal, gutter blog, suffused with bad taste, suggests another headline:
He didn't bring home the hoof and mouth:
Dynes resigns in wake of failure of Livermore Lab's bid for a level-4 biowarfare lab in radioactive Valley bombing range.

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

8-14-07
San Francisco Chronicle
Dynes quitting as head of UC - presided over compensation scandal...Carolyn Jones
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/14/MNVNRHPJA.DTL&hw=uc&sn=003&sc=851
Saying he wants to spend more time with his new wife, UC President Robert Dynes announced Monday that he is resigning, capping an often tumultuous four-year tenure as head of the nation's top public university system. "I'm in love with my wife, and it's time for me to spend time with her before we no longer have time to spend together," said Dynes, 64. "I've thought long and hard about what my accomplishments have been and where and when is the time to step down." A former chancellor at UC San Diego and a physics professor, Dynes oversaw dramatic changes within the university system. Drastic budget cuts, uncertainty over UC management of two national nuclear weapons laboratories, scandals over executive compensation, the opening of a 10th campus and skyrocketing student fees are among the challenges Dynes grappled with. Dynes said his departure is not related to the compensation scandal, nor was he asked to leave. His resignation is also unrelated to a pending management review of his office by the Monitor Group consulting firm, he said.

4 years at the top: Dynes' achievements overshadowed by executive pay controversy...Charles Burress
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/14/MN2VRHSHI.DTL
Robert Dynes could have another academic year as UC president, but if his legacy were written today after nearly four years at the helm, he probably would be remembered most for the university's executive pay scandal...public attention and political heat focused largely on revelations - brought to light by The Chronicle beginning in November 2005 - of millions of dollars in hidden perks and benefits for some of the university's highest paid employees at a time when students fees were rising and campus services declining. UC policies on compensation often were ignored or circumvented, at times without the required approval or even knowledge of the governing Board of Regents.The revelations were followed by three audits last year - conducted by the state, the university and an outside firm - substantiating abuses and improper payments. Three state senators called for Dynes' resignation, but the regents expressed their confidence in him. Another cloud over Dynes' administration was a series of mismanagement revelations and security breaches at the two university-run national laboratories that develop nuclear weapons, in addition to other research. Many of the problems at Los Alamos and Livermore national labs, which had been managed by UC... Another source of headlines for Dynes was his effort to stop the financial hemorrhaging of the university in 2004

Los Angeles Times
UC president announces resignation...Richard C. Paddock
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dynes14aug14,1,1996310,print.story?ctrack=3&cset=true
University of California President Robert C. Dynes, whose four years in office have been marked by dwindling budgets and a scandal over compensation for top officials, announced Monday that he will step down by June. Though praised by associates for his "extraordinary intellect," Dynes appears to have lost the support of key members of the UC Board of Regents who believe the 10-campus system must act more aggressively to maintain its excellence. In the end, it was the university's compensation practices, including quietly awarding millions of dollars in perks to top executives without the regents' approval, that appear to have hurt him the most. Dynes, a native of Canada, took over as UC's 18th president in October 2003 as the system was reeling from a series of budget cuts -- and facing even more. The most damaging period for Dynes came last year with revelations that UC had given top administrators millions of dollars in perks and bonuses even as it raised student fees. Many of the payments were not disclosed publicly or approved by the regents, in violation of university policy. Dynes accepted responsibility for the payments and apologized repeatedly. But the scandal left its mark.

7-12-07
Tracy Press
Tracy dropped from bio-lab list…Rob L. Wagner
http://tracypress.com/content/view/10137/2242/
Tracy didn’t make the cut to host a $450 million national lab where killer germs like anthrax, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease will be studied, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday…the federal government has selected finalists from five other states for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. The decision eliminates the potential to bring hundreds of highly skilled jobs to the city but is considered a victory by many residents who were troubled by the secrecy and possible threat posed by the project.

8-06-07
Project on Government Oversight
Another Security Breach at Los Alamos...Contact: Danielle Brian or Peter Stockton (202) 347-1122
An incident involving the unauthorized release of classified data via email occurred last week at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The incident, which has been confirmed by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), is rated among “the most serious threats to national security.”
The incident follows the Department of Energy’s (DOE) July decision to slap the Lab with a $3.3 million fine, and to threaten the Lab with another fine if it failed to comply with security rules. The fine was levied because of the October 2006 incident in which classified information was discovered during a methamphetamine drug bust. The discovery was originally revealed by POGO. Last week’s breach follows a series of other incidents in recent months (see links below).
This most recent breach was originally rated an Impact Measurement Index-1 (IMI-1), which is the most serious level security violation. In an attempt to minimize the problem, the breach was downgraded to a less severe category of IMI-4. After another review, however, it was elevated back to IMI-1.
“LANL has been fined, lab officials have been fired, and the lab was even closed for a number of months so that it could get its act together,” said POGO Senior Investigator Peter Stockton. “It’s clear that it just can’t.”
According to LANL, an IMI-1 rated incident is defined as:
“Actions, inactions, or events that pose the most serious threats to national security interests and/or critical DOE assets, create serious security situations, or could result in deaths in the workforce or general public. IMI-1 includes, but is not limited to, (1) confirmed or suspected loss, theft, or diversion of a nuclear device or components or weapon data; (2) confirmed or suspected intrusions, hackings, or break-ins into DOE computer systems containing Top Secret, SAP [Special Access Programs] information, or Secret Compartmented information; and (3) confirmed or suspected acts or attempts of terrorist actions.”
Below is a list of security incidents at the Los Alamos National Laboratory since the Wen Ho Lee scandal in 1999.

+++++++++++

Los Alamos Security Incidents Since the Wen Ho Lee Controversy
http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/ha-070806-lanl.html
July 2007 – Los Alamos lab worker with “highest possible security clearance” arrested in cocaine drug bust. July 6, 2007. SOURCE: KRQE

June 2007 – Los Alamos board member sends highly classified email message unsecured, comprising “the most serious breach of U.S. national security.” SOURCE: Time Magazine

May/June 2007 – Los Alamos staffer takes lab laptop containing “government documents of a sensitive nature” with him on vacation to Ireland , where it is stolen. Los Alamos scientist sends highly classified email over unclassified networks to the Nevada Test Site. SOURCE: Newsweek

October 2006 – Classified information from Los Alamos found during methamphetamine drug raid. SOURCE: POGO

June 2006 – NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks informs Congress that computer hackers got access to detailed personal information, including Social Security numbers for about 1,500 DOE contract workers in September 2005. Yet neither the workers whose personal information was compromised, nor the DOE’s cyber-security head were notified about the incident. SOURCE: Associated Press

July 2004 – POGO reports that 17 incidents of classified information from Los Alamos were sent over unclassified networks. On July 23, 2004, DOE shuts down operations involving Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM) across the entire nuclear weapons complex. SOURCE: POGO

May 2004 – Classified computer media goes missing at Los Alamos . Lab claims it is “a single accounting discrepancy.” SOURCE: POGO

December 2003 – Los Alamos confirms that computer disks were identified as lost during an “inventory of classified computer media.” In total, ten disks were lost. SOURCE: POGO, LANL

California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
“An Advocate for Fisheries, Habitat and Water Quality”
3536 Rainier Avenue, Stockton, CA 95204
Tel: 209-464-5067, Fax: 209-464-1028, E: deltakeep@aol.com

For immediate release:
9 August 2007

For information:
Bill Jennings, CSPA Executive Director, 209-464-5067, 209-938-9053 (cell)

Water Board Acknowledges It Can’t Protect Water Quality
Has Less Than A Third Of Staff Necessary To Meet Legal Mandates
Major backsliding in water quality protection

(Stockton, CA) The Executive Officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board) has acknowledged that the Board is so understaffed that it can’t meet its core regulatory mission of protecting the State’s water quality. This stunning admission came during Executive Officer Pamela Creedon’s State of the Central Valley Region presentation at the 2 August 2007 meeting of the Board. The Central Valley Region covers nearly 40% of the State’s land area, provides drinking water to two-thirds of the State’s population and includes reservoirs storing nearly 30 million acre feet of water. According to State reports, virtually all of the waterways within the Region are impaired by an astonishing array of pesticides, metals, salts, pathogens, fertilizers and industrial chemicals.

Ms. Creedon admitted that, based upon a needs assessment, the Board has only: a) 12% of the staff necessary to regulate stormwater discharges, b) 16% of those required to regulate dairies, c) 37% necessary to control municipal wastewater discharges, d) 40% of those needed to regulate landfills, e) 26% of those necessary to control discharges of waste to land and f) only 22% of the staff crucial to enforcing conditions of the controversial agricultural waivers. Other Board units are similarly understaffed. For example, the enforcement unit is assigned only 3.5 people, the surface water monitoring and assessment unit has only 2, underground tanks has only 17 of 41 needed, and the Basin Planning unit has only 11 of the 38 necessary to update the Basin Plans that are fundamental to all Board actions. An overview of the staffing shortages is attached at the end of this press release.

“The waterboards have been systematically deprived of staff necessary to protect water quality and it is simply disingenuous for the administration to suggest that our rivers and streams are being protected given these massive shortfalls,” said Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). “Since Governor Schwarzenegger’s election, we’ve witnessed an appalling u-turn in water quality protection: weakened or nonexistent permits, delayed cleanups and lagging enforcement. Consequently, pollutant loads are rising, waterways are increasingly degraded and fisheries are collapsing. The result is a threat to public health and an embezzlement of our legacy of fish and wildlife,” he added.

Illustrative of the Board’s retreat from water quality protection is the backsliding in the more than 200 municipal waste discharge permits, issued pursuant to the federal Clean Water Act. First, federal funds were returned to USEPA so that the majority of permit writing could be out-sourced to Tetra Tech (the Regional Board Executive Director’s former employer). Tetra Tech’s permit writers are located throughout the nation, principally in Virginia and Colorado. These permit writers lack professional engineering registration in California, have not sworn to uphold California laws and are unfamiliar with local conditions. Outsourcing has significantly increased the backlog of unrenewed permits. Second, the Board stopped insisting upon a complete Reports of Waste Discharge (characterization of the waste stream) before processing a permit. Third, fundamental regulatory requirements have been ignored and permit conditions have been weakened in an effort to eliminate costly opposition by dischargers. Fourth, permittees operating in violation of their permits have been provided with extensions of compliance schedules in order to eliminate mandatory penalties and avoid having to initiate enforcement actions. Over the last year, CSPA has appealed some 30 permits to the State Water Board for violations of the most fundamental regulatory requirements of the Clean Water Act.

Without adequate staff, the Regional Board has turned to largely voluntary and predictably less effective alternatives to traditional regulation. For example, the Central Valley Region has over 45% of the state’s harvested timber. With only 9 individuals to cover thousands of timber harvest projects, the Board had no alternative but to turn to conditional waivers of waste discharge requirements and voluntary compliance to address the adverse impacts of logging.

Similarly, waivers were adopted to address waste discharges from irrigated lands. Under the agricultural waiver, coalitions of farmers oversee implementation of waiver conditions. These legally fictitious coalitions have no enforcement authority and cannot require an individual discharger to take any specific action. The Regional Board doesn’t know who is actually discharging, where the discharges are occurring, the constituents being discharged, the volume and concentration of discharged pollutants, whether management measures have been implemented or whether implemented measures are effective. Regulation of the largest source of pollution to Central Valley waterways has effectively been delegated to the voluntary goodwill of groups of dischargers. And the result is that virtually every agricultural dominated waterway is seriously polluted.

When the State Legislature eliminated funding of core regulatory functions from the General Fund, they expressly provided the State Water Board with the authority to assess fees to support necessary regulatory activities. However, the Schwarzenegger administration has refused to establish a fee schedule sufficient to comply with the law and protect water quality. Consequently, the waterboards are increasingly relying upon inadequate cookie-cutter permits that ignore regulatory requirements and self-regulatory “stakeholder” driven programs that have never previously been successful in protecting water quality.

“The Governor proclaims himself to globally environmentally concerned but we’re seeing a major retreat by his Administration’s day-to-day implementation of environmental laws and regulations,” said Jennings “rhetoric is meaningless without effective compliance.”

CSPA is a public benefit conservation and research organization established in 1983 for the purpose of conserving, restoring, and enhancing the state’s water quality and fishery resources and their aquatic ecosystems and associated riparian habitats. CSPA has actively promoted the protection of water quality and fisheries throughout California before state and federal agencies, the State Legislature and Congress and regularly participates in administrative and judicial proceedings on behalf of its members to protect, enhance, and restore California’s water quality and fisheries.

California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA)
A Brief Overview of Staffing Shortages Revealed in The State of the Central Valley Region Presented by Pamela Creedon, Executive Officer, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Regional Board’s 2001/2002 Water Board Needs Assessment

At the 2 August 2007 meeting of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board), Executive Officer Pamela Creedon presented a State of the Central Valley Region. Ms. Creedon’s presentation included an evaluation of the status of major programs and organization-wide issues. Included in the evaluation was a frank assessment of staffing levels and shortfalls based upon a waterboard needs assessment. Below is a compilation, drawn from the State of the Central Valley Region and the 2001/2002 Needs Assessment, of the Regional Board’s present staff levels and the increases in staffing levels that would be necessary for the Region Board to meet its statutory commitments to protect water quality.

The Central Valley Region comprises nearly 40% of the State’s land are, 18% of the State’s population, two-thirds of the State’s drinking water and nearly 30 million acre-feet of reservoir storage.

1. Title 27 Unit (Regulates approximately 265 landfills and numerous surface impoundments and waste piles).
a. Current staff: 21 PYs (person/years)
b. Regional Board has only 40% of staff needed to protect water quality (according to State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director on 2 August 2007).
2. Cleanup Program Unit (Oversees cleanups at Superfund, Brownfield, mines, Department of Defense and other (i.e., Aerojet, Lawrence Livermore Lab/Lehr, etc.) sites
a. Federal Superfund Sites, Department of Defense facilities, Livermore/Lehr sites and Iron Mtn., Sulphur Bank and Lava Cap mines.
i. Current staff: 8 PYs
ii. Need???
b. Underground Storage Tank Cleanups (1,059 cases RB lead; 1,309 cases local agency lead.
i. Current staff: 16.9 PYs.
ii. Regional Board needs 41 additional PYs need to protect water quality according to 01/02 needs assessment.
c. Private Sites (350 SLIC facilities, 20 mines and 40 other cleanup sites.).
i. Current staff: 17 PYs.
ii. Proposed state budget provides 5.3 new PYs.
iii. Need????
3. Waste Discharge Program Unit (Regulates discharges to land from more than 1,500 facilities). Note: Backlogged WDRs have doubled since 2000.
a. Current staff: 25 PYs
b. Regional Board has only 26% of staff needed to protect water quality (according to State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director on 2 August 2007).
4. Dairy Program Unit (Regulates 1,550 existing dairies and more than 400 feedlots, poultry and other confined animal operations)
a. Current staff: 8 PYs (7 new PYs in proposed budget)
b. Regional Board has only 16% of staff needed to protect water quality (according to State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director on 2 August 2007).
5. NPDES Wastewater Unit (Regulates over 200 Permits – 30% of state-wide total – 54 majors/162 minors)
a. Current staff: 17.5 PYs
b. Regional Board has only 37% of staff needed to protect water quality (according to State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director on 2 August 2007).
c. Preparation of most NPDES permits is outsourced to Tetra Tech and permit writers located outside California.
6. NPDES Stormwater Unit (Regulates 7 Phase I MS-4 permits, 86 Phase II MS-4 permits, more than 2,000 industrial permits and more than 5,500 construction permits)
a. Current staff: 11 PYs plus students
b. Regional Board has only 12% of staff needed to protect water quality (according to State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director on 2 August 2007).
7. Water Quality Certification Unit (Regulates projects that threaten wetlands. More 400 certifications processed every year). Note: lack of staff ensures that there are no pre/post inspections of projects, mitigation, monitoring or enforcement.
a. Current staff: 2.6 PYS
b. Regional Board needs 25 additional PYs to protect water quality and wetlands according to 01/02 Water Board needs assessment (130 PYs needed statewide according to State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director on 2 August 2007).
8. Irrigated Lands Waiver Unit (Regulating runoff from more than 5 million acres of irrigated farmland)
a. Current staff: 14.2 PYs
b. Regional Board needs an additional 64 PYs according to 01/02 Water Board needs assessment.
c. Fails to consider staff required to protect groundwater (improperly excluded from waiver).
9. Timber Harvest Waiver Unit (Central Valley Region encompasses approximately 45% of the state’s harvested timber that requires review of thousands of individual timber harvest projects)
a. Current staff: 9.2 PYs
b. Regional Board needs an additional 15 PYs (staff estimate in draft State of the Central Valley Region presentation – deleted in final)
10. TMDL Unit (Develops TMDLs and oversees 300 waterbody/pollutant combinations identified as “impaired”)
a. Current staff: 12.9 PYs TMDL funds; 3 PYs other sources
b. Regional Board needs an additional 10 PYs to implement TMDLs (according to State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director on 2 August 2007).
11. Basin Planning Unit (Sacramento/San Joaquin &Tulare Basin Plans provide the foundation for all Board actions.
a. Current staff: 0.6 PYs, general planning; 9 PYs, TMDL related; 1.75 PYs stakeholders.
b. Regional Board needs an additional 38 PYs to prepare Basin Plan Updates for Triennial Review (according to Draft State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director and 01/02 Needs Assessment – deleted from final presentation).
12. Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program or SWAMP Unit (Responsible for monitoring/assessing surface waters for over 60,000 sq. miles)
a. Current staff: 2 PYs
b. Regional Board needs an additional 2 PYs and $300,000 to meet baseline requirements (according to Draft State of the Central Valley Region presentation by Regional Water Board Executive Director and 01/02 Needs Assessment – deleted from final presentation).
c. NOTE: According to the state’s 305(b) report:
i. Only 3.4% of the rivers and streams, in the Central Valley, have been assessed by the state in terms of supporting aquatic life and only 1.8% has been assessed in terms of supporting swimming.
ii. Of those assessed, only 9% fully support aquatic life and 18% fully support swimming.
iii. The state’s Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program receives only 3-6% of the funds identified by the state as minimally necessary to evaluate water quality.
13. Grants Unit (Responsible for managing over 80 grants, totaling nearly $70 million, to ensure projects are accomplishing state goals, on task and on time)
a. Current staff: 12.8 PYs – However reduced to 9.2 PYs for FY 07/08
b. Need ????
14. Enforcement Unit (Responsible for evaluating compliance, issuing enforcement orders and assessing penalties).
a. Current staff: 3.4 PYs (20% of State-wide funds)
b. Need????

I was recently asked to produce a bibliography of "essential books" on the San Joaquin Valley.

Argh!

A dozen favorites leapt to mind; a few days later a dozen more; and the pleasant task began to turn into a real project destined for certain failure and remorse. It turns out not to be so easy to remember the books of a lifetime and each dive into the Internet provides more that look very useful but I haven't had time to read yet.

When one gets to a certain age it becomes difficult to remember the heroes because they are all gone and it is harder to recall that I met some of them a time or two, here and there -- for example, Fred Ross, a slim, serious man, perpetually moving purposefully around the Delano headquarters of the UFWOC; the wise, friendly Larry Itliong; or Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel on the phone correcting the spelling of her name in an article I'd written; or the voice of Art Coelho, poet and publisher of our Valley voices, from Montana, talking about burning up cowboy boots on big cats disking the west side and years wandering the West as an itinerant poet composing the best list of country poets in the West.

I remembered a call about a great farm labor leader in farmworkers rest home in Delano leading a seminar on Lenin to fellow octogenarians from the fields. We dreamed of that moment when those workers would confront St. Peter and demand to know: "What is to be done?"

I remember the face of the great, betrayed C. Al Green, director of the multi-racial AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, a victim, like Chavez, of liberal perfidity that has resulted in indebted servitude in the fields today. All the political thieves of San Francisco have ever wanted from the Valley was agribusiness campaign cash, any way they could get it. "Migrants don't vote," they said. These days, it's "Illegal immigrants don't vote."

The longer I worked on it, the more holes I saw in the vista of written material on the San Joaquin Valley that stretched out before me like a vast battlefield of a war that has been going on since before the great Yojuts leader Estanislao defeated the young Lt. Mariano Vallejo. Looking at water rights issues today, sometimes it seems as if the ghosts of heroes and villains rising off the battlefield are pulling the strings of the living in a never-ending feud we call our "Valley way of life." Another way to look at it is that bioregions matter.

Every reader will find something missing in this bibliography. For example, I am frantically digging in book boxes for a good one on the Chinese in California I know I have somewhere but cannot remember the title of. Can't find it, have nothing on their enormous contribution except in various general histories like Bean's superb California: An Interpretive History.

Everyone I have talked to has added a book I've forgotten or never knew about.

So, this is a work in progress and I invite anyone to write us at billhatch@hotmail.com, gleefully to announce what a knucklehead I was to forget their favorite, indispensible books about the Valley.

Meanwhile, apologies to the people who originally requested the bibliography -- we'll let you know when it's done.

Bill Hatch, for the Badlands Journal editorial board

Non-fiction:

Garden of the Sun, Wallace Smith (the only history to date strictly about the SJV)
Handbook of the Yokuts Indians, Frank Latta
The Stanislaus Indian Wars, Thorne P. Gray
The Destruction of the California Indians, Robert F. Heizer
Saints or Oppressors: The Franciscan Missionaries of California; In The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide, Rupert and Jeannette Costa
Flooding the Courtrooms: Law and Water in the Far West, by Mary Catherine Miller (a legal biography of the Miller&Lux cattle company)
Empires in the Sun, Peter Wiley, Robert Gottlieb (development of power utilities in the West)
Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (DDT)
Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner
Death in the Marsh, Tom Harris (the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge ecological disaster caused by agricultural drainage containing heavy metals)
Fruits of Natural Advantage, Steven Stoll (the self-destructive economics of agribusiness)
The New California, Dan Walters
Works of Paul Taylor and Dorothea Lange: Taylor was one of the first academics (UC Berkeley economist) to study farm labor, both Mexican and Dust Bowl immigrants; Lange's photographs of migrants stand alongside Walker Evans' work with James Agee as testimony to the destruction and poverty of the Depression
Factories in the Fields, Carey McWilliams
Farm workers and agri-business in California, 1947-1960, Ernesto Galarza
Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa, Jacques E. Levy
United Farm Workers website, history section http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=research_history.html
Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement, Craig Scharlin
Articles on 160-acre limitation by E. Phillip Leveen (have to do Google search for them, Leveen was the top spokesman for the 160-acre limitation for federal water during the last great war over it in the late 70s; an agricultural economist at the time, he was trained as an historian and gives the history of the whole federal water/land fraud in the Valley)
Articles by Don Villarejo, founder of the California Institute for Rural Studies, list available at http://donvillarejo.com/ (nearly 50 years of thought and research on the Valley balancing social, economic and environmental justice claims)
California Institute of Rural Studies publication catalogue http://www.cirsinc.org/pub/pubcat.htm
Isao Fujimoto, UC Davis emeritus, has published a number of studies on different aspects of the Central Valley -- from farm labor to environmental issues
The King Of California: JG Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire, by Mark Arax,Rick Wartzman
Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm, by David Mas Masumoto
BORDER CORRESPONDENT, Selected Writings, 1955-1970, Ruben Salazar
Mean Justice, by Ed Hume
California: An Interpretive History, Walton Bean
Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), www.ciw-online.org/ (the Florida front line of current farm-labor organizing)

Legal and administrative decisions and discussion: The San Joaquin Valley has produced major legal contests on an array of natural resource issues; these sources will lead the reader into essential topics in Valley history; others are dealt with in the non-fiction section

Public Trust Doctrine
Migratory Bird Treaty Act
Mono Lake Decision
San Joaquin Raptor Wildlife Rescue Center
Monterery Accord decision: PCL v. DWR
Kesterson Wildlife Refuge
San Joaquin River Settlement
Rapanos Decision
CEQA decisions (law firm blogs like Abbott and Kinderman Land Use Law blog offer reviews of recent decisions: San Joaquin Raptor v. County of Merced, Woodward Park Homeowners Association, Inc. v. City of Fresno, Vineyard Area Citizens for Responsible Growth Inc. v City of Rancho Cordova, Hayward Area Planning Association v. City of Hayward, City of Marina v. Board of Trustees of California State University, etc.
Badlandsjournal.com provides current news on lawsuits, administrative decisions, essays and articles on resource law

Fiction, Poetry, Drama

Poetry of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel (the greatest Dust Bowl poet, still writing about her people until shortly before she died this April)
Grapes of Wrath, In Dubious Battle, by John Steinbeck
The Octopus, Frank Norris
The Ford, Mary Austin
Art Coehlo (Cuelho) and Seven Buffaloes Press
Gerald Haslam's works, short stories and Workin' Man's Blues (memoirs of youth in Oildale and the development of "Nashville West," Bakersfield.
Plays of Luis Valdez ("Zoot Suit," "La Bamba"). http://store.elteatrocampesino.com/books.html
Luis is the farmworkers' Bertold Brecht.
Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Central Valley, edited by Stan Yogi, Gayle Mak, and Patricia Wakida
Fat City, Leonard Gardner
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Additions since posting:

New Roots for Agriculture, Wes Jackson
Topsoil and Civilization, Vernon Gill Carter and Tom Dale
The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin

For reasons unknown to Patric Hedlund, editor of the Mountain Enterprise, and to the Badlands editorial staff, we received a press release on the Enterprise's recent success garnering three awards for excellence in journlaism from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. What is more remarkable, for an CNPA award, the Enterprise in an independent newspaper serving unincorporated towns near and along the Grapevine and in the Los Padres National Forest.

The story gets better. We contacted Hedlund because we were interested in the the paper's reporter staff of "volunteer community reporters." Hedlund informed us that much of the Enterprise copy is written by volunteers from the various communities the 4,000-subscription weekly covers. In fact, one of the paper's chief missions is training good volunteer community reporters to get both sides of the story in the sprawling rural area it covers. The stories are edited by professional journalists on the Enterprise staff.

As a recent example, she told the story of being contacted by a Pine Mountain resident, LaVonne L. Lewis, Ph.D., R.N., a psychologist and an emergency room and critical care nurse. Lewis' husband had discovered a dead bird on her porch, Lewis contacted Kern County about how to deal with the carcass and later contacted the state about how to deal with Kern County. Finally, she wrote the story that appears below. This report, it turned out, was part of a much larger breaking story that Kern County is the leading county in the state for human cases of West Nile Virus, which prompted state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, to request that the governor declare a state emergency in Kern County.

The cause of the independent weekly, fact-based journalism and the promotion civic dialogue around public process is well served by the Mountain Enterprise.

Badlands editorial staff
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7-19-07
The Mountain Enterprise
Tiny Mountain Newspaper Wins Three Statewide Journalism Awards
California Newspaper Competition Draws More Than 4,000 Entries

FRAZIER PARK, CA – The Mountain Enterprise, which serves a cluster of mountain villages in the Los Padres National Forest (a tri-county area of Kern, Los Angeles and Ventura counties) has won three awards for excellence in journalism. A team of volunteer community reporters and the woman who founded the newspaper 41 years ago were all invited to accompany the paper’s owners to the awards ceremony at the historic Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco on Saturday, July 14.

During the 119th Annual Convention of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, The Mountain Enterprise received:
• First Place award for its series telling how mountain residents worked together to respond to a 700-home development project that produced a six-volume Environmental Impact Report without disclosing that the water table was plunging in the area on which it wished to build;
• First Place for its newly launched website (www.MountainEnteprise.com)
• Second Place for its public service series about the deaths and endangerment of mountain residents caused by inadequate ambulance response in an area of Kern County served by a private ambulance company owned by the Mayor of Bakersfield.

Management and ownership of The Mountain Enterprise was assumed by Publisher Gary Meyer and Editor Patric Hedlund in August of 2004. The two are producers of award-winning documentary films and investigative articles, including an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

More than 4,000 entries were received by the statewide newspaper association from over 400 contest participants throughout the state. Newspapers compete with their peers in categories set by size and frequency of circulation.

Context in which The Mountain Enterprise works:

A deluge of industrial and residential developments are poised to explode into the Interstate 5 region known as the Grapevine. The Mountain Enterprise's coverage area has become ground zero for a convergence of deep-pocket interests ready to do battle with environmental litigators, starting this winter of 2007-08.

Tejon Ranch Company's 270,000 acres is the largest contiguous parcel of privately owned land in California. This year, TRC hopes to launch the 23,000-home Centennial project in northern LA County and the 3500-home, seven resort hotel Tejon Mountain Village in southern Kern County. Meanwhile, adjacent developments are lining up applications for about two thousand additional homes..

The area in which these developers wish to build is targeted by environmentalists as a critical habitat to many rare species of plants and wildlife, some of which are found nowhere else in the world. Environmental and conservation groups have lined up on both sides of the issues, some casting their lots with TRC's plans, others against.

The Mountain Enterprise has covered the issues as they arise for public consideration, aiming always at the needs of residents and businesses to stay informed about the coming changes, while also examining possible strategies for developing a stronger local economy.

First Place Series
The paper closely reported detailed findings in a series of hearings hosted by the Mountain Communities Town Council and added original reporting about the Frazier Park Estates development proposal.

When community reporter Doug Peters analyzed the housing project’s six volume Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for data regarding water studies, Editor Patric Hedlund and Publisher Gary Meyer worked with him to explain clearly how ground water measurement data had been scattered throughout the report in a confusing manner.

When Peters assembled the data and presented it in a graph published in the paper, readers learned that the water levels in the proposed development area (near Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec) had fallen significantly over a period of 11 years.

Following a Kern County public presentation of the DEIR, the The Mountain Enterprise published the Planning Department’s subtle verbal assertion that, according to the development plan, Frazier Park’s Fire Station 57 would be closed and moved three miles away to the housing development site. After significant and well-informed public input by letter and email during the 45-day comment period, Kern County’s Planning Department withdrew the DEIR and required the developer to perform a complete rewrite.

Best Website

The Mountain Enterprise received a First Place award for “Best Website” within the new site’s first few months of operation. The site, www.MountainEnterprise.com went online in December 2006.
It is a feature-filled yet simple-to-use site, designed for high functionality and user convenience. Back issues of the paper can be searched using a full range of Google-like search tools. It also contains significant additional material in the Community FYI areas. This year, The Mountain Enterprise’s full 42 years of history are being prepared for inclusion in the archive.

Public Service

In addition to the two First Place awards, The Mountain Enterprise’s coverage of ongoing community efforts to bring full-time Advanced Life Support (ALS) paramedic services to the outlying areas of the Mountain Communities received a Second Place award for Public Service reporting.

After Pine Mountain resident Harold Bailey died of a heart attack in 2005 while waiting more than an hour for an ambulance to arrive, The Mountain Enterprise reported the groundswell of community action that persisted to demand improvements by private company Hall Ambulance Service and in standards set by Kern County’s Emergency Medical Services Department.

On May 29, 2007 the Kern County Grand Jury recommended that County Fire Department establish paramedic services in Pine Mountain and that “Kern County Fire Department and private ambulance companies resolve their differences” regarding public safety in medical emergencies. Kern County Fire Chief Dennis Thompson has announced that a third firefighter will be on duty at Station 58 in Pine Mountain during all shifts by August 1 and that his goal is to have firefighters licensed as ALS paramedics on the mountain within the next two years.

Outstanding Reporting

A fourth series by The Mountain Enterprise received the CNPA Certificate of Achievement. The Mountain Enterprise provided in-depth reports about actions of the El Tejon Unified School District (ETUSD) board of trustees, then-superintendent John Wight and Frazier Mountain High School’s principal to offer a Philosophy of Intelligent Design course in early 2006.

While ETUSD’s superintendent provided soundbites to national TV news networks from the campus, The Mountain Enterprise published interviews with the teacher offering the course and the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed with eleven other parents requesting that the course be stopped. During the final days of the class, ETUSD Superintendent John Wight called the Kern County Sheriff’s Department to have publisher Gary Meyer and editor Patric Hedlund of The Mountain Enterprise arrested while reporting on the high school campus—a right and responsibility of the press on behalf of the public, protected by state and federal law.

The paper dedicated a forum for the community’s ongoing dialog about Intelligent Design in its pages for more than a month.

The lawsuit was settled and the superintendent resigned five months later, thirty minutes after being shown a videotape of himself taking gasoline, allegedly for personal use, in six trips within four hours from school district gas pumps, and appearing to pump the fuel into a system of gasoline containers assembled in the rear seat area of his car. When the board president refused to discuss the existence of the videotape and the reason for the superintendent’s sudden departure, a public records request submitted by The Mountain Enterprise secured release of copies of the videotape. The newspaper also published a carefully documented history of serious problems in a previous district where the former superintendent had served. See “El Tejon Unified School District” under “Community FYI” at www.MountainEnterprise.com for those stories.
------------------
8-3-07
Mountain Enterprise

West Nile Virus May Be Here To Stay ... LaVonne L. Lewis, Ph.D., R.N.
http://www.mountainenterprise.com/full.php?sid=1320

West Nile Virus is a growing problem in Kern County. Last month two elders died of the disease in this county. The State of California reports that there are 56 reported human cases of the virus and 38 of those are in Kern County. This makes us the number one county in the state dealing with this disease.

So what is being done about it? From what I have seen, not nearly enough.

On Monday, July 23 a dead bird was found on our Pine Mountain porch by my husband. He followed the recommendations of the State of California. The dead bird was reported at 3:30 p.m. Monday to www.westnile.ca.gov, the website for the California Department of Health Services.

That report was sent by fax to Kern County Environmental Health Services at 3:42 p.m. by an employee identified as Clarence (the last names of state employees are not allowed to be given to the public, he said).

Another state employee then called my husband to tell him to "bag the bird" himself and leave it outside the house. The county, he was told, "would pick it up within 24 hours." He was also told "if the bird is not picked up after three days, just discard it." Much to the dismay of our family, the bird was never picked up by Kern County to be tested.

I called the California Department of Health Services on Thursday July 26 to speak with Lakeyssia (again, we were told that last names not allowed to be given by state employees) at (877) 968-2473.

She checked the computer record to confirm that the report had been logged by the state and that Kern County Environmental Health Services was informed within 12 minutes by fax. Lakeyssia stated that the protocol requires that the animal be picked up within 24 hours. She was quite surprised that the protocol was not followed and that the bird was not picked up.

I then placed a call to Kern County Environmental Health Services and spoke with Mat Constantine at (661) 862-8700. His response was appalling. He said he felt that testing animals was "wasting resources."

Constantine said, "West Nile Virus is here—we already know that—so why test?" He said he feels the money should be used in prevention and education. He stated that there are no funds in the county to have employees driving (sometimes for a couple of hours) to pick up a dead animal. He said sometimes he has to pull people from other jobs in order to pick up a dead animal.

I replied that from an epidemiological point of view it is important to know how many animals might be infected in a given area. That information can then be used to prevent human deaths by finding and treating the source (such as standing water).

I asked him, hypothetically, if they found 35 infected dead animals in an area like Pine Mountain, would he think that would be valuable information? There was a prolonged pause on the phone.

I stated that this would be very valuable information leading to possible spraying to prevent loss of human life.

Constantine agreed, but said he feels there is just not enough money to do it. So the question arises: how many dead and infected animals are not being picked up for testing in our county?

The California Department of Health Services has since called me to apologize for this entire unfortunate situation. The supervisor (Stan) said he is going to call the county to try to seek a resolution, as the State is very concerned about the disease. Kern County seems to be having difficulty acknowledging the magnitude of this situation. The numbers speak for themselves, 38 out of 56 human cases are here in Kern County. What is it our taxes are paying for?

LaVonne L. Lewis, Ph.D., R.N. is a Psychologist and an Emergency Room and Critical Care Nurse. Her family lives in Pine Mountain
----------------------

BREAKING NEWS: State of Emergency Declared in Spread of West Nile Virus

At 10:00 a.m. Thursday, August 2 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Kern County due to the three-fold increased spread of West Nile Virus (WNV). Of 56 cases of WNV reported in California this year, 38 of them are in Kern County. Colusa and San Joaquin counties were included in the declaration to prevent the spread of this mosquito-borne disease. This year there have been four deaths in California due to West Nile Virus (two in Kern County, one in San Joaquin County and one in Colusa County).

In The Mountain Enterprise issue on the news stands today, Thursday, August 2, see the story about how a Mountain Communities family's efforts to get Kern County 's health officials to test a dead bird found on their deck reveals a dysfunctional system for protecting the public against West Nile Virus in Kern County.

In an August 1 letter to State Senator Dean Florez, D-Bakersfield, the governor said, "I agree that there is a need to address this issue to protect our fellow Californians against an epidemic. To that end, tomorrow I will proclaim a state of emergency within the counties of Kern, Colusa and San Joaquin, the counties hit hardest by the virus. My proclamation will make financial assistance available to the local vector control districts and direct State agencies to take proactive measures to protect Californians from further spread of West Nile Virus."

Senator Florez requested a minimum of $48 million from Gov. Schwarzenegger. The governor responded that he, "will make as much funding as immediately needed to combat this virus at the local level."

The Thursday morning press release said "since taking office, Governor Schwarzenegger has invested more than $15 million to fight the West Nile Virus. California has one of the most comprehensive West Nile Virus surveillance and control systems in the U.S. The state deploys surveillance and detection technology to track specific areas of West Nile Virus activity and alert local agencies so they can target their mosquito control activities."

The story in The Mountain Enterprise revealed that such "surveillance and control" systems were not being fully implemented in Kern County.

Watch The Mountain Enterprise for an update about the specific measures Kern County will now take to protect the public against WNV.

HERE IS THE DECLARATION OF A STATE OF EMERGENCY:

"Today I'm taking action to help the counties hit hardest by West Nile Virus. My proclamation makes financial assistance available to the local vector control districts and directs state agencies to take proactive measures to protect Californians from further spread of this deadly virus. I will continue to ensure our local agencies have whatever resources they need to fight the spread of this disease," said Governor Schwarzenegger.

For more information about West Nile Virus, visit http://westnile.ca.gov.

Full text of the Governor's emergency proclamation:

A PROCLAMATION OF A STATE OF EMERGENCY

WHEREAS when compared to the same time last year, there has been a three-fold increase in the number of people infected by West Nile Virus; and

WHEREAS since 2002, West Nile Virus has infected hundreds of people and caused multiple deaths in California, including four deaths this year; and

WHEREAS the recent upturn in foreclosures this year has increased the number of vacant homes this summer with unattended and untreated pools, which has exacerbated the spread of West Nile Virus; and

WHEREAS local governments have made sustained efforts to minimize the spread of the virus, and the state has supplemented these efforts by dedicating over $15 million over the last three years to mitigate the virus's effects; and

WHEREAS despite those efforts to eradicate West Nile Virus, the virus remains a threat, and further efforts to control the spread of the virus and to reduce and minimize the risk of infection are needed; and

WHEREAS the Mosquito Vector Control Association of California, which is composed of 61 local vector control districts, is seeking state assistance in addressing the potential for a West Nile Virus epidemic in California; including a request for funding for surveillance activity and abatement efforts; and

WHEREAS control of West Nile Virus may require immediate actions to limit the population of adult mosquitoes and mosquito larvae, and those actions may include the ground and aerial application of pesticides in urban, suburban and rural areas; and

WHEREAS there are also numerous and significant incidents of Valley Fever, especially in Kern County; and

WHEREAS due to the magnitude of the threat, the size of the affected areas and the need to control the spread of the virus across jurisdictional boundaries, the conditions are beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment and facilities of any single county, city and county, or city, and require the combined forces of a mutual aid region or regions; and

WHEREAS under section 8558(b) of the California Government Code, I find that conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property exist within the Counties of Kern, Colusa and San Joaquin caused by the threat of West Nile Virus.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, Governor of the State of California, in accordance with the authority vested in me by the California Constitution and the California Emergency Services Act and, in particular, sections 8625, 8567 and 8571 of the California Government Code, HEREBY PROCLAIM A STATE OF EMERGENCY to exist within Kern, Colusa and San Joaquin Counties, and hereby issue the following orders:

IT IS ORDERED that the Department of Public Health shall allocate up to $1 million dollars as needed, to local vector control agencies to identify potential mosquito habitat and to treat those areas to prevent the spread of West Nile Virus in the three above-listed counties and other counties identified by the Department of Public Health.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Health shall allocate up to $350,000 to local vector control agencies for surveillance purposes to provide an early warning of the incidence of West Nile Virus so that proper control measures can be taken by the local vector control agencies to prevent the spread of West Nile Virus in the three above-listed counties and other counties identified by the Department of Public Health.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Health shall coordinate with the State and Consumer Services Agency, the Resources Agency and the Department of Food and Agriculture to develop a plan using best management practices for implementation by the appropriate state agencies for the early detection of West Nile Virus on state-owned properties and appropriate mitigation and abatement measures. Funds in the amount up to $150,000 shall be allocated for the purpose of developing this plan.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Health and the Department of Food and Agriculture shall work with the Mosquito Research Program at the University of California, Davis, to determine what resources are needed to further advance the research on the ecology and the epidemiology of West Nile Virus.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Health shall work with (1) local vector control districts to utilize their existing power pursuant to Health and Safety code section 2053 to inspect and abate vector or public nuisances, with special emphasis on the removal of standing water in untended pools and containers on vacant property; and (2) the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency and local public health departments to notify lenders, realtors, mortgage brokers and others whose responsibilities include managing vacant homes to ensure that pools and other containers that can hold water are drained and maintained empty to prevent the spread of West Nile Virus.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Heath shall implement a supplemental program of mosquito control, including health advisories and technical assistance, in the above-listed counties to assist those counties and the mosquito and vector control agencies within those regions to minimize the proliferation of mosquitoes and to reduce the transmission of West Nile Virus.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all agencies and departments of state government utilize and employ state personnel, equipment and facilities for the performance of any and all activities consistent with the direction of the Department of Public Health in an effort to address and mitigate this emergency, and consistent with the State Emergency Plan as coordinated by the Office of Emergency Services.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Health enter into such contracts as it deems appropriate, in consultation with the above-listed counties and the mosquito and vector control agencies within those regions, to provide services, material, personnel and equipment to supplement the West Nile Virus mitigation efforts in those jurisdictions.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the provisions of the Government Code, the Public Contract Code, the State Contracting Manual and Management Memo 03-10, along with all Department of Pubic Health policies, applicable to state contracts, including, but not limited to, advertising and competitive bidding requirements and approvals for non-competitively bid contracts, are hereby temporarily suspended with respect to contracts to provide services, material, personnel and equipment to supplement the West Nile Virus mitigation and abatement efforts in the above-listed counties to the extent that such laws would prevent, hinder or delay prompt mitigation of the effects of this emergency.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Health shall consult with the county agricultural commissioner prior to the application of "prohibited materials," as defined in subdivision (p) of section 110815 of the Health and Safety Code, to agricultural land used for the production of certified organic foods.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Department of Public Health work with local public health departments to take appropriate actions to minimize the incidents of Valley Fever in the above-listed counties.

I FURTHER DIRECT that as soon as hereafter possible, this proclamation be filed in the Office of the Secretary of State and that widespread publicity and notice be given to this proclamation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 2nd day of August 2007.

______________________________
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Governor of California
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For the probable origins of West Nile Virus in the US, see Lab 257 by Michael Christopher Carroll, pp. 28 et seq. -- Badlands

The National Park Service's top scientist says politics drove the decision...Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Todd Willens was the leader of the U.S. delegation who made the motion to take the Everglades off the list. Until last fall, Willens was a top aide to former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., a frequent critic of environmental laws and environmental groups. -- St. Petersburg Times, Craig Pittman, July 31, 2007

The president's brother, Jeb, as readers may recall from the Florida 2000 election, is governor of Florida, site of the Everglades and of developers as voracious as those in the former region of Pombozastan, now suffering the highest per capita rate of mortgage foreclosure in the nation. Even as top political appointees to the Department of Interior were toppling in investigations, the Bush administration appointed the defeated Pombo's top aide to a top role in Interior.

This sort of fin de regime move smacks of Al Gore's sale of the Elk Hills Naval Oil Reserve (south San Joaquin Valley) to Occidental Petroleum in the days of stained blue dresses, impeachment and bombs over Kosovo.

Another late Bush-regime move to be alert for would be the sale of the San Luis Reservoir to Westlands Water Districts. Investigations by representatives Nick Rahall (chairman of the Natural Resources Committee) and George Miller into the activities of Jason Peltier, a high Department of Interior official until he announced he was leaving government to become a high official with Westlands, may turn up the trail leading to this outrageous gift to agribusiness and its imperial water agency.

We are grateful to the Frog for catching the relationship between the UN decision on the Everglades and former Pombo staffer, Willens.

Badlands editorial staff
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7-31-07
St. Petersburg Times
Imperiled Glades cut from watch list
A U.N. committee downgrades the park, despite concerns ...CRAIG PITTMAN
Published July 31, 2007
www.sptimes.com/2007/07/31/Worldandnation/Imperiled_Glades_cut_.shtml

Last month, the U.N. World Heritage Committee made headlines when it took Everglades National Park off its list of endangered sites.
The committee, charged with protecting irreplaceable landmarks of outstanding universal significance, hailed the progress the United States had made toward Everglades restoration. This, even though a report released a week later showed that the billion-dollar restoration project already had fallen years behind schedule.
The committee's decision went against the National Park Service's own recommendation and the U.N. committee's science advisers.
"We said it should stay on the danger list because further work needed to be done," said David Sheppard, who heads the Programme on Protected Areas for the Switzerland-based Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, which goes by the initials IUCN.
However, Sheppard said, "the head of the U.S. delegation made the comment that it should come off (the list) because of the progress they had made," and the committee went along with that.
The National Park Service's top scientist says politics drove the decision.
"There's always been a kind of pressure from the Washington level to say, 'Okay, we've got a plan, now take us off the list,' " said Robert Johnson, director of the South Florida Natural Resources Center at Everglades National Park since 1995. "I think for the Bush administration, it was seen as a black eye to be on that list."
Being taken off the list "gives people the impression that things are going well," when the restoration is actually decades away from achieving its goals, he said.
For the past four years it has been the only American site listed as being in danger. Being on the list "focuses more international attention on what we do," Johnson said.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Todd Willens was the leader of the U.S. delegation who made the motion to take the Everglades off the list. Until last fall, Willens was a top aide to former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., a frequent critic of environmental laws and environmental groups.
Willens said that making the change was not the result of some political agenda. In fact, it wasn't even his idea, he said. Instead, he said, before the meeting, representatives from some of the 21 other countries on the committee told him they wanted the Everglades off the list because of the 7-year-old restoration project.
So even though the National Park Service's own report recommended keeping the Everglades on the danger list, "I changed the last sentence of our report and said we wanted to be taken off," Willens said.
He said he made the motion before any other country could jump in, because "the U.S. should be fully in charge of its own sites."
The committee is the governing body of the 176-nation World Heritage Convention, set up under a treaty initiated by President Richard Nixon. In 1973, the United States became the first nation to ratify it.
The committee takes inventory of all major world landmarks. It compiled a list of 380 World Heritage sites, including Stonehenge and China's Great Wall. In 1996, when a Polish company proposed building a shopping center near Auschwitz, its World Heritage Site status helped spur international opposition.
Twenty U.S. sites are on the overall list, including the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park. Everglades National Park has been listed as a World Heritage site since 1979.
When the committee puts a site on its danger list, the goal is to call attention to the threats facing the site. For instance, the Galapagos Islands are being invaded by exotic species, and Jerusalem's Old City is imperiled by Mideast unrest.
The committee put Everglades National Park on the danger list in 1993 when it was beset with threats from encroaching development, water pollution and damage from Hurricane Andrew.
In 2000, Congress and the state Legislature approved a complex plan to restore the River of Grass. Some of its crucial elements are six years behind schedule and the cost has ballooned to nearly $20-billion, according to a Government Accountability Office report made public this month.
Last year, on behalf of the U.N. committee, Sheppard of the IUCN visited Everglades National Park to check on progress.
"I thought the site, although there had been significant progress, still faced significant threats," he said. That's why the IUCN recommended the committee keep the Everglades on the danger list for at least two more years.
Meanwhile, Johnson said, the park staff "put a lot of work into" creating a list of benchmarks that could be used to gauge their progress on dealing with the threats, such as curtailing the phosphorous pollution flowing into the park.
But the committee's own staff noted this month that there are still concerns about water pollution in the park and urban development creeping closer to the park boundaries.
"Various sources have emphasized that restoration is progressing very slowly," the committee's staff wrote in a recommendation to keep the Everglades on the list.
But when the committee heard Willens' motion, it went along with it. There was no formal vote, Willens and Sheppard said, and no dissent. Willens said that's because other sites on the list are in far worse shape than the Everglades, such as one in Iraq.
"Some of the other sites are in war zones," he said. "This way the Everglades doesn't take a lot of attention away from them."
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8-1-07
Sacramento Bee
Talks continue grinding forward to reach water deal
The proposed transfer to Westlands still faces major obstacles ...Michael Doyle, Bee Washington Bureau and Dennis Pollock, Fresno Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/302589.html
WASHINGTON -- Negotiators are pressing forward today on what some are calling the biggest water transfer in the nation's history, hoping to end a Central Valley irrigation dispute that's defied solution for several decades.
The sprawling Westlands Water District would gain control of the water stored in San Luis Reservoir, under the revised proposal expected on Capitol Hill. Westlands could be free of the federal acreage limits meant to preserve small family farms, and would stop repaying the government for building the reservoir and associated canals.
In return, the Rhode Island-sized water district and several others would assume responsibility for cleaning up a multibillion-dollar irrigation drainage mess. So far, the districts haven't specified exactly how they might solve the drainage problem...
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8-1-07
Farmers ready to take big drink; CALIFORNIA: May get huge water grant while cities conserve -- Garance Burke (AP)
FRESNO, Calif. -- The U.S. government appears poised to turn over the rights to billions of gallons of water to a politically connected group of farmers in California, where most people are being asked to conserve.
Landowners in the Westlands Water District would gain the rights to 1 million acre feet of water under a proposed settlement federal regulators are likely to present today. An acre foot translates to the amount needed to cover one acre with a foot of water.
That's 15 percent of the federally controlled water in California -- the largest grant to irrigators since 1903. ..

10-27-2000
The Center for Public Integrity
Did Taxpayers Lose on Deal For Oil Field?
Elk Hills Timeline -- Josey Ballenger, Nathaniel Heller and Knut Royce
http://www.publicintegrity.net/report.aspx?aid=457
WASHINGTON, October 27, 2000 — 1912: Out of concern for the long-term availability of oil supplies for naval ships, President Taft establishes Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 near Bakersfield, Calif. Over the next few years, his administration adds two more oil and three oil shale reserves in the West to the program. They remain essentially undeveloped until 1976.

1922: NPR-1, informally known as Elk Hills, is part of the "Teapot Dome Scandal" in which oil barons bribed Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall for secret oil drilling leases during the Harding administration.

1976: During President Carter's term, the Arab oil embargo of 1973-1974 leads Congress to pass the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act to open NPR-1 and 3 for production on July 3. The law required that the reserves be operated at maximum efficient rates. From 1976 to its transfer to Occidental in February 1998, Elk Hills alone generated $17.1 billion in revenue for the U.S. Treasury, against expenses of $3.3 billion.

1985-1994: In every year but one, the White House's Office of Management and Budget proposes the sale or lease of Elk Hills under the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, but each time, the Democrat-controlled Congress shoots the proposal down.

July 1993: The Senate Armed Services Committee requests that the Department of Energy utilize the National Academy of Public Administration to study management alternatives for the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves, including the concept of corporatization, or turning the property over to a government corporation.

May 1994: The NAPA report recommends turning Elk Hills and the other Reserve properties into a wholly owned, for-profit government corporation.

Nov. 23, 1994: A memo appears on the desk of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary asking her concurrence to have Elk Hills, by far the most lucrative Naval Reserve, run by a public corporation. All assistant secretaries have signed off on the proposal.

Dec. 2, 1994: Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Patricia Godley meets with Deputy Secretary Bill White, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Reserves Captain Ernest Hunter and OMB Associate Director T.J. Glauthier to discuss corporatization. DOE memos indicate that "OMB continues to favor immediate privatization of the Reserves as the preferred option."

Dec. 19, 1994: At a news conference with President Clinton and Vice President Gore on the "Middle Class Bill of Rights" and "Reinventing Government," Deputy Energy Secretary White announces the administration's intent to sell Elk Hills.

Sept. 7, 1995: On the second anniversary of "Reinventing Government," Vice President Al Gore presents a report by the National Performance Review, an interagency task force that made recommendations for more than 180 specific cuts in government. President Clinton says these cuts will save more than $70 billion in the next five years. One of the recommendations is to sell Elk Hills.

Feb. 10, 1996: The Defense Authorization Act of 1996, which spells out the procedure for selling Elk Hills within two years, is signed into law.

Oct. 1, 1997: The deadline for all bids on Elk Hills to be submitted, at noon in Houston.

Oct. 6, 1997: DOE announces Occidental Petroleum Corp. is the high bidder on Elk Hills, at $3.65 billion. DOE does not divulge, to this day, the other bidders' names or offer amounts.

Feb. 10, 1998: Occidental takes over control of Elk Hills from the U.S. government.
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July 2000
The Nation
Al Gore's Teapot Dome....by COCKBURN, ALEXANDER
www.questia.com/library/encyclopedia/101273888
Al Gore succeeded where the Administration of Warren Harding failed. He privatized Elk Hills, the huge oilfield outside Bakersfield, California, set aside long ago as a strategic reserve for the Navy. Back in the Harding days, Interior Secretary Albert Fall went to jail for taking a $100,000 bribe to approve lease of the field to Edward Doheny. For seventy years, lingering recollections of Teapot Dome remained strong enough to stymie attempted raids on the military's largest strategic fuel reserve. Nixon tried to sell it, and so did Reagan; each time Congress beat them back...
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8-29-00
Al Gore: The Other Oil Candidate ...Bill Mesler, Special to CorpWatch
www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=468
For thousands of years, the Kitanemuk Indians made their home in the Elk Hills of central California. Come February 2001, the last of the 100 burial grounds, holy places and other archaeological sites of the Kitanemuks will be obliterated by the oil drilling of Occidental Petroleum Company. Oxy's plans will "destroy forever the evidence that we once existed on this land," according to Dee Dominguez, a Kitanemuk whose great grandfather was a signatory to the 1851 treaty that surrendered the Elk Hills.
Occidental's planned drilling of the Elk Hills doesn't only threaten the memory of the Kitanemuk. Environmentalists say a rare species of fox, lizard and the kangaroo rat would also be threatened by Oxy's plans. A lawsuit has been filed under the Endangered Species Act. But none of that has given pause to Occidental or the politician who helped engineer the sale of the drilling rights to the federally-owned Elk Hills. That politician is Al Gore.
Gore recommended that the Elk Hills be sold as part of his 1995 "Reinventing Government" National Performance Review program. Gore-confidant (and former campaign manager) Tony Cohelo served on the board of directors of the private company hired to assess the sale's environmental consequences. The sale was a windfall for Oxy. Within weeks of the announced purchase Occidental stock rose ten percent.
That was good news for Gore. Despite controversy over Dick Cheney's plans to keep stock options if elected, most Americans don't know that we already have a vice president with oil company stocks. Before the Elk Hills sale, Al Gore controlled between $250,000-$500,000 of Occidental stock (he is executor of a trust that he says goes only to his mother, but will revert to him upon her death). After the sale, Gore began disclosing between $500,000 and $1 million of his significantly more valuable stock.
Nowhere is Al Gore's environmental hypocrisy more glaring than when it comes to his relationship with Occidental. While on the one hand talking tough about his "big oil" opponents and waxing poetic about indigenous peoples in his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," the Elk Hills sale and other deals show that money has always been more important to Al Gore than ideals...