Badlands Journal

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...

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.
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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
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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
-----------

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

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
--------

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

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????

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

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

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

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 a