by Chico del los Pozos

I have concluded over the years that when writing about the complexities of California’s byzantine water world, it is easiest to write about water in terms of cold hard cash. A flowing, living river has aesthetic value to environmentalists and preservationists while a river of dollar bills appeals to a different set of values that even the most apathetic taxpayer can understand.

Reading this morning’s Merced Sun-Star article, “Freeway work has chopped up roads,” we couldn’t help asking the obvious question: What were our leaders – local, state and federal elected officials, their staffs, the staffs of the city and county of Merced, business and financial leaders, large land owners and the newspaper – thinking?

So, we return to the elemental parental question, when the child returns injured or having damaged his family’s or someone else’s property: “What were you thinking?”

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/87455845-BD62-4D4B-9F16-559AF4BCF...

Lebanon oil spill crisis

Saturday 29 July 2006, 0:43 Makka Time, 21:43 GMT

The Lebanese coastline has been badly affected

The Lebanese government has appealed for help to clean up a huge oil spill along its coastline created after Israel bombed a power plant.

The California Supreme Court yesterday decided the Marina, City of v. Board of Trustees (CSU) case in favor of Marina. The state high court found that the argument of California State University, Monterey Bay that state agencies have no obligation to pay for off-site mitigation, defined in environmental impact reports arising from their construction or expansion, was without merit.