Welcome To Badlands Journal

Badlands is always honored whenever it receives a letter from Dr. Felix Smith, the great US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who was in the first team that blew the whistle on the poisoning of Kesterson Wildlife Refuge by heavy-metal laden agricultural runoff from Westlands Water District, a great act of governmental malfeasance by the Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and other state and federal resource agencies. If you ever thought scientists were wimps, I'd like to introduce Badlands readers once again to Felix Smith, a heroic scientist and whistleblower.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
•    Smedley Butler, US Marine Corps Major General, 1881-1940, author of War is a Racket (1935)

“You feel dizzy, everything starts getting like dark, the lights dim, the voices echo all around, you see everything in slow motion. When it’s really bad you can’t breathe, your heart feels like it’s going to pound out of your chest, your fingertips get really cold, you sweat a lot and your nails start getting really purple,” Pasillas remembers. “If you want to feel an asthma attack go under water and try to breathe, your inside burns.” --  Aguilera, CALmatters, January 25, 2019

Heading south from the tributary rivers feeding the cities and irrigation districts in the north San Joaquin Valley the situation gets progressively worse, culminating in the catastrophe on the Colorado River, gathering force for the past 25 years. -- blj