Badlands Journal

To dispense with the obvious, Sen. Dianne Feinstein is playing every game she can to reassure agribusiness that she is still their water girl.

Meanwhile, Rep. Devin Nunes, whose new district includes a heavy addition of skeptical Fresno to true-believin\\\' Tulare County, is facing an emissary from Santa Clara County, who represents interests that wish to send Nunes back to Visalia for the rest of his life because Nune\\\'s H.R. 1837, the so-called "Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act," throws into question the water rights of the Santa Clara Water District among others, and SCWD provides water for all them city slickers in Silicon Valley. 

Badlands Journal editorial board 

2-21-12
Switchboard
Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog
Barry Nelson’s Blog
Water Rights "Hot Potato" and H.R. 1837
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bnelson/water_rights_hot_potato_and_hr.htmskip

4-21-12

Merced Sun-Star
Merced Theatre: Reopening of a crown jewel
Story by AMEERA BUTT

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/04/21/2316698/merced-theatre-reopening-of-a.html

A long submerged voice from Southern California is being heard in the state Capitol on the vital issue of the actual costs and benefits of a peripheral canal. It is refreshing to here from ratepayers in the southern regions asking how much a peripheral canal would cost. It is also refreshing to hear them using the proper word for the project: PERIPHERAL CANAL (just like in 1982, when an initiative to fund the project was defeated).

The CONVEYANCE word has just been offed by the plain-spoken Southern Californians.

The essence of the refreshment we in the North experience when we see our sourthern neighbors demanding some accountability for the hundreds of millions required to build the thing (not including the devastation it will cause to the existing Delta economy) is that this is the voice of actual residents of Southern California, rather than the usual developer flak about people who live elsewhere and don\'t even know that one day they may move to Southern California just as long as those developers can go on bribing whatever officials it is necessary to bribe to continue the flow of Northern California water down the San Joaquin Valley (where 75 percent of it is captured by agribusiness) and over the hill to irrigate new fields of subprime mortgages.

Badlands Journal editorial board

is it out of our minds?

Badlands Journal editorial board

4-26-12
Commondreams.org
America's Mad Cow Crisis
by John Stauber
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/26-1
Americans might remember that when the first mad cow was confirmed in the United States in December, 2003, it was major news.  The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been petitioned for years by lawyers from farm and consumer groups I worked with to stop the cannibal feeding practices that transmit this horrible, always fatal, human and animal dementia.  When the first cow was found in Washington state, the government said it would stop such feeding, and the media went away.  But once the cameras were off and the reporters were gone nothing substantial changed.

We are only as good as our questions. -- Lloyd Carter

4-25-12

Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood

Cowardice at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Lloyd Carter

http://www.lloydgcarter.com/

In my nearly 30 years covering pollution issues at National Wildlife Refuges, I have come across several courageous field level employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and a few cowards in management positions, managers who are afraid of politicians, polluters, and their own shadows. A good example is the debacle at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the early 1980s, where toxic selenium-tainted agricultural waste water from the Westlands Water District polluted the food chain in evaporation ponds at the Merced County "refuge," a supposed haven for migratory ducks and birds, triggering deformities and reproductive failure. There were heroes like biologist Felix Smith - who leaked the Kesterson findings to Fresno Bee reporter Deborah Blum, and there were cowards in the Portland regional office who participated in a cover-up to delay release of the Kesterson findings.

Just imagine the possibilithy that the ground water for the entire San Joaquin Valley, or the entire aquifer under where you live, were contaminated by toxic chemicals mixed into minimallyh regulated pesticides (soil fumigants for nematodes) and injected into the soils of farms all around you without, by the way, agents for the chemical companies or state or federal farm "advisors" being able to tell you why it may kill nematodes. In fact, telone wasn't much of a nematicide. The preferred fumigant was methyl bromide but, oops, fumes from it are burning holes through the protective layer of ozone in the earth's atmosphere.

It is no accident that Livingston is one of the plaintiffs in the fumigant suits: Livingston boasts being the Sweet Potato Capital of California. The sweet potato industry has been fighting nematodes, which feed on roots, since its inception. The sandy nature of the soil, so good for growing root crops, also allows nematodes to move around more quickly than in denser soils.

4-17-12
Chronicles of the hydraulic brotherhood

Selenium contributing to honeybee die-off?...Lloyd Carter

http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/120416556_selenium-contributing-honeybee-die

Like the rest of the people in the Valley who try to stay informed, we've followed the high speed rail story from the beginning. Oujr sense of smell is probably a bit better developed than many due to our familiarity with the UC Merced project and the Great Real Estate Boom and Bust in the north San Joaquin Valley, which left its three county seats vying for top ranking in the national foreclosure sweepstakes. But there was always something stinky about the HSRR deal in our view because it was the same developers and the public officials that sold their public responsibility making all the noise, although the South African CEO of the operation until recently was a curiously fascist twist. He worked well with the former chairman of the board, an ex-state legislator, now a lobbyist busy fighting a bill to clean up water pollution in Southern California. Their staff, at least the people we met who were "handling" the Valley were primitive throwbacks to a time when the Railroad owned California and there was no such thing as public meeting and records law.

"Build it and they will go mad" should have been the slogan for construction of the Friant Dam/Lake Millerton/Friant-Kern Canal. The lastest chapter in the drama, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, hereafter known as the Octopus, released flood waters from Lake Millerton -- not to aid restoration of the San Joaquin River under the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement -- but for Octopos customers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, in Westlands Water District. The Friant Water Users Authority has just sued the Octopus.

Meanwhile (see the March 12 posting on Badlands, "Downstream vengeance in California ," http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2012-03-12/007762) for the action in Congress regarding the settlement, Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act, authored by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia. While the FWA staff and the boards of the districts that compose the authority spent 18 years in court on the side of the Octopus, fighting against the Natural Resources Defense Council and its co-plaintiffs, and ultimately came to agreement with a funding appropriation passed by Congress rather than face the decision of the federal judge, little Devin Nunes grew up and won himself a seat in Congress. And now he's the leader of all the haters south of the Kings River. That's a mean crowd.

We were outraged to read in our humorless, self-righteous local McClatchy tabloid that our favorite local politician, the indominable Cindy Lashbrook had fallen afoul of the state Fair Political Practices Commission. Actually, a little investigation reviewed that this was not her first offense. But that's just chicken feathers to us. We believe and hereby publicly submit to the commission that former-Merced County Planning Commissioner/staff for-East Merced  Resource Consevation District/EMRCD board member/former staff for Merced River Alliance/humble blueberry grower who testified before Congress she was "just looking for a niche"/simple river landowner of Riverdance Farm/promoter of annual Riverdance Fair/agricultural consultant dba Four Seasons/former representative of Merced Alliance for Responsible Growth (some of them sued WalMart)/board member of state Community Alliance with Family Farmers/board member of California Certified Organic Farmers, advisor to the county Farm Bureau, and even represents the Asthma Coalition Cindy Lashbrook should be exempt from any requirements for holding public office in the state of California because she has provided a grateful public with so much genuine amusement. Instead, the FPPC fined her on three separate occasions, ranging from $200 to $600 to $2,500 for her serially comedic approach to law and regulation -- such a charming outlook in a public official.

The Delta Stewardship Council, not the most democratic or representative of bodies at the best of times, will be, under a proposal by Gov. Jerry Brown, absorbed into the state Resources Agency, where experts will be adequately protected against the protests of people who live on or near the Delta and depend upon it even in its present degraded condition, and therefore will be able to make the correct engineering decision -- to build the canal or tunnel above the Delta and turn the water into another bay on the Pacific coast.

Badlands Journal editorial board

4-11-12.
Stockton Record
Agency to absorb Delta council
Consolidation could favor plans for peripheral canal
By Alex Breitler

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120411/A_NEWS/204110316/-1/A_NEWS03

An independent council with at least some veto power over a peripheral canal or tunnel would be consumed by the same agency that wants to build one under a little-noticed element of a reorganization plan by canal supporter Gov. Jerry Brown.

Critics say the change would strip the council of its role as impartial evaluator of the estimated $13 billion aqueduct, which would cross the Delta west of Stockton.

There are a number people in this town and county that are not going to be unhappy to see this legal notice. It announces that Patty Waid, assistant vice chancellor for university communications (one of the better paid and better protected public jobs in the county) is a deadbeat who has defaulted on her mortgage. These people would include all who have ever tried to get a straight answer out of UC Merced about anything at all.

Presumably, her mortgage was subsidized by UC Merced, in other words, by the public.

Badlands Journal editorial board

4-6/8-12

Counterpunch.com
The Housing Doldrums
The Bottomless Pit
by MIKE WHITNEY
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/06/the-bottomless-pit/

“There are many good reasons to believe that the 5.5 million foreclosures we have seen are barely halfway through their full course. The United States may end up with a total of 8-10 million foreclosures before we are finished.”

– Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture

It all gets down to supply and demand. The banks have been keeping millions of homes off the market until a settlement was reached in the $25 billion robosigning scandal. Now that the 49-state deal has been finalized, the banks are preparing to put more of their of distressed homes up for sale. That will lead to lower prices and the next leg down in the 6-year long housing crisis.

According to Reuters, new foreclosures “begun by Deutsche Bank were up 47 percent from 2011. Those of Wells Fargo’s rose 68 percent and Bank of America’s, including BAC Home Loans Servicing, jumped nearly seven-fold — 251 starts versus 37 in the same period in 2011.”

The Bureau of Reclamation, which wishes the extinction of the Delta Smelt because it will make the the final destruction of the 
Delta less messy, pays off some UC Davis scientists to do yet another study on the poor species in the very process of its "extirpation."

This isn't science. It is bureaucratic and academic pathology.

Badlands Journal editorial board

4-5-12
Sacramento Bee
Needs of threatened Delta fish to be studied at UC Davis
By Matt Weiser
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/05/4392483/needs-of-threatened-delta-fish.html

Merced Irrigation District! This group, which can't even handle its normal irrigation business without the odor of scandal, is supposed to be able to negotiate its relicensing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission? The state Department of Water Resources trusts MID to lead, plan and administer the Integrated Regional Water Management Plan (IRWMP "Ear-wimp")?

MID is a very shaky organization.

Following her dishonorable role in attempting to bankrupt the environmental groups that publicly sued the Riverside Motorsports Park project near her dairy while she and other farmers hid behind them and schemed against them, Suzy Hultgren was miraculously appointed to the county farm bureau board of directors and soon after won election to the board of the Merced Irrigation District. Evidently, her extensive family, with roots here and there all over the county, has decided to make Suzy its public face. Included in that family is her cousin, John Sweigard, who left his position on the west side as general manager of the Patterson Irrigation District and board member on the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority board.

So, in a year with a 55-percent snowpack in the Sierras and cuts in delivery amounts to irrigators in the district, MID sells 15,000 acre-feet to the San Luis Water District. The two public proponents of the sale are Sweigard, former board member of the SLDMWA, and Hultgren, his cousin, with Hicham Eltal, assistant general manager, trotting on behind.

The bleak figures, however, need not be a harbinger of gloom, said Michael Dozier, executive director of the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, an organization of public officials and business leaders that aims to address the region's economic, environmental and social problems.

"When studies like these come out, it's not like they're telling us anything new," he said. "What they do is show us how much better things could be with all the resources we have. … We should laugh at it and say, 'It just gives us that much more room to improve.' " -- Modesto Bee, April 2, 2012

 

We suspect that regardless of the possible merits of high speed rail, the reason people in the Valley distrust it is that it is a huge project involving a great amount of public debt, and the people who live at the epicenter of the greatest credit fraud in world history know -- not that debt can be manipulated to the benefit of the plutocracy and the detriment of ordinary citizens -- but that it will be manipulated that way.