Badlands Journal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This question is not addressed by these demographers.

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Sometimes the morning clips from the state Department of Water Resources are really something. The following articles add to our understanding of the Colorado River dispute. What reporters were too polite to mention is the Secretary of Interior Gail Norton is a former Colorado state official.   Nevada offers money to end water impasse San Diego Union Tribune - 8/28/03 By Michael Gardner, staff writer, Copley News Service SACRAMENTO Nevada has quietly stepped in with a surprise offer of $82 million to help California seal an elusive landmark deal to share the Colorado River and bring a vast new supply of water to the San Diego region. The proposal is being touted in some circles as a possible breakthrough in the stalled talks.Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority that serves the Las Vegas region, said the offer was made to break the impasse and assure Nevada of water during drought. Talks have deadlocked since the Metropolitan Water District, the Los Angeles-based wholesaler, balked over paying $82 million to help restore the Salton Sea. MWD officials say it could gain more water at a cheaper price by tapping reserves, conservation and desalination. "Metropolitan may notneed the water but we sure do," Mulroy said. In return for the $82 million, Nevada could store up to 330,000 acre-feet of water cumulatively in California over the next 15 to 20 years. An acre-foot is enough water to supply two households for a year. "According to the parties, this is the only thing keeping us apart," Mulroy said.

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Guest article by that superb prose stylist and truth speaker, Hakim of the Westside, who offers a more complete version of a recent subdivision deal in the region.

Southland scenario

Anaheim Bob, as he is affectionately know to the southland’s developer community, was nearly in tears as he made his report about his visit with the Merced County planning department to the board of directors of the I-5 City project.

“I’m tellin’ you they didn’t want to hear about this project. They didn’t even look at our popsicle-stick model of I-5 City with the battery-powered fiberoptic street lights and the little cars parked along the streets. And they made me turn off the ‘It’s a Small World’ music that was suppose to go along with the Powerpoint presentation. All they wanted to know was where we’re gonna get water for 1,500 homes. They kept askin’ that over and over again, ‘Where is your water source? Where is your water source?’ I felt like pissin’ in one of their in-baskets and sayin’ there’s your damned water source.”

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Evidence of growing panic in the White House, Oregon’s largest paper reports below how President Bush’s top political advisor, Karl Rove, has entered into the Klamath Basin water dispute, to support the Republican "rural base."

The history: during a recent drought the federal Bureau of Reclamation cut irrigation water off to the basin to protect an endangered species of fish, known locally with extreme contempt as “suckers,” to distinguish them from commercial salmon species. But when Bushovites gained control of the Department of Interior, Sectretary Gail Norton opened up the gates again. Since then, resource agency dialectics have occurred.

The economics: Klamath Basin’s top crop is alfalfa, the thirstiest variety of hay, required by the exploding western dairy industry. California, the country’s largest dairy state, grew 58 percent since 1985 and Idaho, another prime Klamath County customer, doubled dairy production since 1992. Dairy prices are low but alfalfa production is down, driving feed costs up. Cows eat and produce milk whether the market pays a break-even price for it or not.

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WEST SIDE -- When you talk water on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley no one is impolite enough to say exactly where the latest madness occurred or who told you. The west side is populated entirely by unattributed sources and water deals that passeth all understanding.

Consider the latest totally unattributed rumor that a developer bought a large acreage, planned to build a new town on it for the west side’s burgeoning bedroom community so well employed in Silicon Valley.

An anonymous source who seeks comic diversion from the tragedies of daily life on the west side, recently looked at a map of local water districts and noted that the proposed new town fell outside the boundaries of any district.

"All economic systems are subsystems within the big biophysical system of ecological interdependence. The ecosystem provides a set of physical constraints to which all economic systems must conform. The facility with which an economic system can adapt to these constraints is a major, if neglected, criterion for comparing economic systems." Herman Daly

Economics is nice but getting to the core of things, give me a lawsuit between two public agencies over money. It’s well-known to reporters who cover government, that the real hatred of government is in government -- the hatred of one arm of it for another arm. When they get to fighting among themselves over money, it’s livelier than a King City dog fight. One lawyer warned that if this suit isn’t heard by the state Supreme Court, "unintended consequences" could occur. What she meant was that the case is providing broad scope for legal arguments about which different judges have differed and if wisdom doesn’t prevail, total anarchy in public finance is a distinct possibility.

Give me a lawsuit for getting to the bones of an issue, even if on occasion the bones get crushed in the process. They may start off slow and tentative but as they mature from court to court they pick up steam. Californians just love to argue about land, the environment, water, public safety and such. When the whole argument is publicly funded, anything can happen between different governments, except possibly communication.

Marina et al v.

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March 16, 1968 came three years after the biggest American buildup of troops in Vietnam. Vietnamese began fighting for freedom from French colonialism more than 30 years earlier. It was 15 years after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (when the French left Vietnam). By March, 1968, nearly 40,000 American troops and an unestimated, but far, far greater number of Vietnamese had already died.

On that date, Charlie Company of the US Army entered a Vietnam village called My Lai 4 and killed several hundred civilians, including many women and children. The Unified Buddhist Congregation of Vietnam, reported 394 civilians killed, 176 missing and 23 wounded in what came to be known as the My Lai Massacre. The US Army reported about the same number killed.

A Vietnam vet, who wasn’t in My Lai, heard about the massacre from a number of sources and after he was discharged wrote a letter to a number of congressmen about it. An army reporter had taken a number of photos of the massacre. When My Lai investigations became public in late 1969, newspapers published stories and some of the photos. Lt. William Calley, was tried in the early seventies for personally murdering 22 Vietnamese civilians and directing the larger massacre. He was convicted by military court and sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence was soon commuted to 10 years and he was released in 1974.

Seymour Hersch, who wrote a book about My Lai, devoted a chapter to some of the public reactions.

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