Gov. Newsom caves under pressure from big water

Posted by Badlands Journa... on Friday, 20 September 2019

We’ve read extensively about California state Senate Bill 1, an approach to resisting Trump and Bernhardt’s gutting of the federal Endangered Species Act, other environmental acts and their enforcement by federal resource agencies. Not that the federal government has ever been good at enforcing the environmental laws Congress passed, regardless of which party was in power.

“I fully support the principles behind Senate Bill 1,” Newsom’s statement read. “[It] does not, however, provide the state with any new authority to push back against the Trump Administration’s environmental policies. And it limits the state’s ability to rely upon the best available science to protect our environment.”

Balderdash.

Atkins’ bill does provide tools to push back against Trump’s weakening of environmental, public health and work safety protections. Essentially, any federal protections Trump gutted would become state regulations. That affects the federal Central Valley Project — a provision of the bill heatedly opposed by the feds and farmers — and the State Water Project. – Skelton, LA Times, Sept. 15, 2019

The state Legislature passed this bill. Then Gov. Newsom said he’d veto it. He’d been opposed to it from the beginning and he lied in public about his opposition. The special interests, led by Westlands Water District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, just scared him into it. Of course, they mobilized the two dowager empresses of San Francisco, House Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to lean of the little plutocratic laddy from the City, and he dutifully caved. Pelosi fears she’ll lose her majority of new members from sketchy districts like representatives TJ Cox and Josh Harder here in the Valley, and the perpetually vulnerable Jim Costa. But these Blue Dogs, who are in the pockets of Westlands and agribusiness, would cut her throat on California and environmental issues anyway. The Feinstein and her husband, the Blum, own a mountain retreat in Aspen next door to the Reszicks, Stewart and Lynda, who are trying to become the most “Wonderful” monopoly agricultural capitalists that ever grew almonds and pomegranates in California, using federal and state irrigation water.

But who trumps who in a showdown between the state and the federal government over the distribution of water under the jurisdiction of the federal Central Valley Project? If we look at the past history of attempts to “fix” the Delta, we have found that the federal agencies and elected officials have been able to obstruct every attempt to improve the Delta.

The public interest of the people of California is opposed to the special interests of agribusiness and developers regardless of which government, state or national, is captured by the special interests. That public interest includes fresh, clean drinking water, recreation, groundwater recharge as abundant as possible, and protection and the aquatic and terrestrial species that depend on the Delta, the rivers and the canals for their survival. There are species of fish going extinct and the birds of the Valley are is deep crisis.

But man believes that he must always dominate and control Nature and every creature in the world must suffer for man to achieve his insane goal of total domination.

--blj

9-18-19

CalMatters

Demise of key environment bill could escalate California’s water wars

Julie Cart

https://calmatters.org/environment/2019/09/veto-environment-bill-califor...

9-15-19

Los Angeles Times

In defying Newsom, she tried to protect California from Trump — and showed how legislating should work

George Skelton

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-15/skelton-toni-atkins-...

8-16-19