7-6-09

 
7-6-09
Merced Sun-Star
Water officials fear Calif. Aqueduct could sink...TRACIE CONE, Associated Press Writer
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/280/v-print/story/935376.html
FRESNO, Calif. - Fearing the main canal carrying drinking water to millions of Southern Californians is sinking again, water officials are monitoring the effects of incessant agricultural pumping from the aquifer that runs under the aqueduct.
Their concern is that the canal, which has sunk six feet in places during California dry spells, will buckle enough to slow delivery of water to parched points south and force costly repairs.
"We have spotty data saying it's active again," said engineering geologist Al Steele, of the state Department of Water Resources.
On June 1, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and other users of state water signed a $255,000, two-year contract with the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor by satellite the California Aqueduct along a vulnerable 70-mile stretch west of here, between Los Banos and Kettleman City.
"It doesn't mean that all-of-the sudden you're out of water, but you do have to spend a ton of money to fix it," said Roger Patterson, assistant general manager of the MWD, which delivers 1.7 billion gallons a day to 19 million people.
Farmers on the west side of Fresno County, facing cutbacks in canal deliveries because of drought and environmental concerns, are pumping a half-million acre feet this year from the ground to keep crops watered in the most prolific agriculture region of the country.
That pumping is only half as much as the 1 million acre feet a year that caused the ground to sink 30 feet in some places in the San Joaquin Valley in the first half of the last century. But the current pumping is approaching levels reached during the big drought of 1977 and beyond, when the canal bowed several feet, slowed the gravity-flow system and forced emergency repairs.
The growing reliance on groundwater, which has a high salt content, means that some permanent crops such as almonds are wilting, but water officials say the real trouble is brewing underground.
"We are not pumping at a sustainable level," said Tom Glover, who oversees resource management for the sprawling Westlands Water District that straddles the canal on the west side of Fresno County.
As a result of drought, environmental problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and efforts to protect threatened fish, Westlands will receive 10 percent of its federal water allocation this year.
While some farmers without water fallowed a quarter-million acres in Westlands as a result, others who are better capitalized have sunk new wells and are running old ones full-time.
Shawn Coburn, who farms almonds and grapes in Westlands, fears that if sinking becomes an issue, farmers will be forced to stop pumping.
"They'll say it's a national security issue because this canal delivers water to more than just ag users," he said.
When the canal sinks, the walls and bridges on the upstream segments have to be raised. The cost excluding bridge repair is $1 million a mile, state officials say.
Carl Torgerson, chief of operations for the State Water Project, says that affects water flowing to Southern California.
The collapsed aquifer never regains storage capacity, a problem for towns that draw municipal water from it.
"Everyone in the entire valley should be concerned because it's all connected," said hydrogeologist Ken Schmidt, who has studied San Joaquin Valley groundwater for 40 years.
Fresno Bee
LLOYD G. CARTER: Russian roulette with water
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/wo/v-print/story/1516702.html
While cutbacks in Delta irrigation water for 600 growers in the Westlands Water District continue to dominate the California water wars, a bigger problem as old as civilization itself -- salt -- will force the state Water Resources Control Board this week to decide whether to protect the long-term health of critical drinking water aquifers or to permit the continued use of aquifers and rivers as public toilets.
California has long had an anti-degradation policy, which is supposed to preclude the polluting of surface and groundwater supplies from the brine and waste stream of agriculture, industry and municipalities. The policy has been quietly ignored and the state's nine regional boards have routinely granted anti-dumping waivers which have led to the current perilous state of aquifers throughout the state.
On Tuesday, the state board will consider a petition filed by the California Sportsfishing Protection Alliance challenging the validity of the city of Lodi's wastewater disposal practices, especially its disposal of salts of all kinds. The board's staff is recommending the polluting discharge practices be halted.
Why is Lodi so important? It turns out that Lodi has food processing plants, wineries, dry cleaners and several industrial manufacturers that are currently allowed by the Central Valley Regional Water Board to dump their untreated brine and untreated hazardous wastes into unlined ponds or directly on to the ground. The salty groundwater plume migrates and can eventually seep into nearby creeks, rivers, or in Lodi's case, the embattled Delta.
The problem began when the Central Valley Regional Board issued a permit in September of 2007 allowing Lodi to continue dumping untreated waste waters to unlined ponds or on the ground, where it seeps into groundwater. This same regional board, headed by Fresno State University Professor Karl Longley, also granted western San Joaquin Valley growers a controversial waiver in 2006 to continue dumping highly salty drainwater containing selenium into the lower Delta.
If the state board bows to industry pressure and rejects the staff recommendation to halt the polluting practices, industries statewide will be allowed to continue dumping their untreated wastewaters on the ground. Reportedly, the governor's office is leaning on board members to vote against their own staff and allow continued Lodi dumping or face removal from the board.
Water politics can make some really strange bedfellows. The California Farm Bureau Federation and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, who are often at odds, are in agreement that urban salt dumping must end. Farmers don't like crop-damaging salts or other contaminants in their surface or groundwater. The fishing folks want to see a healthy Delta fishery. Salts can destroy a civilization. Ask the Mesopotamians. Ask the Westlands Water District.
This is yet another key test for the state and regional water boards, which were the subject of a critical report by the state watchdog agency, the Little Hoover Commission, issued in January of this year.
The report noted the water boards issue permits, set standards and adopt TMDLs [total maximum daily load of a contaminant] every year that have serious consequences for both business and the environment, and "water board officials acknowledge some of those decisions are essentially made without sufficient information. Lack of monitoring data, the vastness of California's waters and a still-growing understanding of water science contribute to regulatory guesswork. The effect of regulation is often unknown." In other words, we're playing Russian roulette with public health.
As Pamela Creeden, executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Control Board, admitted to a Hoover Commission advisory committee, "We base our decisions on such little data."
It is clear the city of Lodi is polluting local groundwater. Now the State Board must decide whether it will approve the Regional Board's short-sighted waivers or whether it will begin to reverse the slow salting up and polluting of the state's critical groundwater drinking supplies.
Sacramento Bee
Delta gates proposal builds support, but environmental impact remains murky...Matt Weiser
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/2002299.html
A plan to build gates across two Delta channels has strong support from state and federal leaders, though little is known about how the project would affect the environment.
The so-called "two gates" project would build moveable gates across Old River and Connection Slough in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The channels bracket Bacon Island in the heart of the estuary. They are key passages for water and aquatic life moving between San Francisco Bay and the south Delta, where powerful state and federal water export pumps divert water to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
Water officials argue that blocking those channels at key times could prevent threatened Delta smelt from being sucked to their deaths in the pumps. This might allow water diversions to continue even when smelt migrate into the central Delta in winter. Pumping is often reduced now to protect fish, contributing to statewide water shortages.
The project's main proponent is the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which imports about 30 percent of its water supply from the Delta to serve 18 million people.
"The work we have done shows that by temporarily opening and closing these gates, we could improve the level of smelt protection," said Roger Peterson, Metropolitan Water's assistant general manager. "That will eventually result in us being able to operate water supplies with more reliability."
Other supporters include the San Luis & Delta Mendota Water Authority, the Contra Costa Water District, Kern County Water Agency and Westlands Water District.
The project was supported last year by a broad committee of Delta interests acting as advisers to the Delta Vision Task Force. Appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the task force recommended building the two gates by next year as a pilot project.
The $30 million plan calls for building hinged gates on surplus cargo barges. The gates would swivel open and closed like revolving doors on a hotel. The barges would be sunk to the river bottom, with the gates extending to the surface.
Metal sheet piling would be installed between the barges and levees on each side to close off the channel.
The whole apparatus could be removed if the project proved unsuccessful, and moved to another location to try again.
From December through March, Metropolitan Water proposes to close the gates an hour each day. From March through June, the gates could be closed as long as 10 hours a day. They would stay open the rest of the year.
The idea, in short, is to control smelt habitat.
Patterson said smelt prefer to move with pulses of silty water. They follow this cloudy water as it moves deeper into the estuary, and closer to the pumps, in winter and spring.
The gates could limit how far this cloudy water flows, and thus how far smelt move.
It is unknown whether restricting the smelt's movement would harm them. It's also unknown whether other species would be affected.
One side effect is that predators, such as striped bass, could learn to lurk near the closed gates to eat their fill of smelt that might become trapped there.
"We propose it as a five-year test," Patterson said. "But, clearly, if it's not working after the first few months, you can refloat these barges and try it at a different location."
The project is supported by some environmental groups, but not all.
"This might be a project that could provide some incremental improvements," said Jonas Minton of the Planning and Conservation League. "A main reason we are open to this concept is the ability to monitor it and very quickly change or terminate the project."
Water officials want to build the project by December. This would require expedited environmental review.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently told a rally in Fresno he supports it. Plans call for the gates to be operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which is overseen by the Interior Department and which operates one of the two Delta water export systems.
Schwarzenegger said on June 19 that he also supports fast review. The state Department of Water Resources operates the other Delta water pump system.
The project is among a package of proposed Delta fixes being drafted by the ongoing Bay Delta Conservation Plan process. Its centerpiece is a massive new water canal that would divert a portion of the Sacramento River's flow out of the Delta and directly to the export pumps.
A canal could take 10 to 15 years to build. The gates are seen as a quick fix that may help in the meantime.
The CalFed Bay-Delta Authority will convene an independent panel of scientists to review the project at an Aug. 6 meeting in Sacramento. It will issue findings a month later.
Minton of the Planning and Conservation League supports expedited review. But Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, does not. He said it should be subject to a full environmental impact study.
"We will definitely go to court over that, because we don't know what the adverse impacts will be," he said.
Paying for the project also may be controversial. The Metropolitan Water District has spent $5 million on initial studies, Patterson said. It wants the remaining $25 million to come from state bond funding for habitat projects.
Patterson said the project aims to benefit fish and therefore qualifies as a habitat project.
Minton disagreed.
"I would say the project is to mitigate the impact of the pumping that serves those water districts," he said. "They should provide the funding for projects that benefit them."
Two Gates: Fix for the Delta?...Map data
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2002299-a2002420-t46.html
Map data: ESRI, TeleAtlas
Source: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
You'd think water would be a basic right...Peter Asmus
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1998955.html
In the slums of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, about 1 million poor people pay up to 30 times more for water of dubious quality brought to them in old tanker trucks than middle-class citizens pay for clean and safe water provided by the local public water utility via standard household connections.
Some may be shocked by these disturbing disparities in the developing world, but a lack of access to safe, affordable and clean water is also an issue in California, particularly in the Central Valley and along the Central Coast. In these communities, more than 90 percent of drinking water is sucked from contaminated groundwater sources. All told, more than 150,000 California residents lack safe water for drinking, bathing and washing dishes; even more have water service disconnected because they cannot afford to pay their bill.
While the arid West – including California – has always suffered from more severe water challenges than the rest of the country, experts claim 36 states will experience local or regional water shortages over the next five years. Spain is also facing an extreme water crisis, with some wondering whether the Sahara Desert will cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa. And droughts seem to have become a permanent way of life in Australia.
Society appears to face a global crisis in water supply as one in six people – more than 1 billion humans – do not have adequate potable water to meet their most basic survival needs. These facts have spurred efforts to enshrine the human right to water at the United Nations and in the national constitutions of countries such as South Africa and Ecuador.
Interestingly enough, the prime opponent of guaranteeing a human right to water on the international stage at the United Nations has been the United States, which, by the way, is also opposed to a human right to housing and food. It is this political dynamic of our federal government opposing human rights to water that makes Assembly Bill 1242 by Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Los Altos, so interesting. The bill is moving through the California Legislature and a key vote is scheduled Monday.
International debate rages
"The language included in AB 1242 is typical of that used by organizations and campaigns around the world declaring a legal human right to water," said Jeff Conant, international research and communications coordinator for Food and Water Watch, one of the sponsors of the legislation. He went on to say that it would be up to state and local agencies to figure out how to "operationalize" this concept.
On the international stage, much of the discussion about a human right to water is wrapped up in the legal mechanics of treaties and policies at the United Nations. Patricia Jones, program manager for the environmental justice program of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, favors the concept of an "International Bill of Human Rights" that would be comprised of direct obligations and treaties that would make the human right to water both explicit and implicit. World Health Organization activists have been working on similar ideas but focused more on trying to stop the spread of endemic diseases, requiring regional governments to commit to the human right to water to receive funding for water projects.
"From a legal point of view, there most definitely is a human right to water, which is part of the right to an adequate standard of living," argues Thorsten Keifer, a human rights expert with Bread for the World, a 50-year-old German nonprofit organization. "The question of how such a right to water can finally be recognized is a very good one as there is nothing like an agreed-upon check list for recognition of implied or new human rights in international law."
From his vantage point, the right to water is not at all at odds with goals of efficiency, reduced water use and effective pricing. "The right to water does not mean that water should per se be for free, but that it should be affordable for all people," he said. "That the human right to water means that everyone should have access to water free of charge is a common misconception – propagated by a handful of activists – that has really interfered with discussions on the issue for far too long. Everyone who can pay should pay!"
So how does a corporation fulfill the human right to water? Coca-Cola has developed a "rights-based approach" because water is so fundamental to its business, and has such large impacts on ecosystems and people. This policy applies to existing and new production, and bottling plants.
"In essence, what this approach means is that our use of water should not infringe on the ability of humans to access water or impact the groundwater or the general population. Our presence as an economic entity should not raise the price of water and make water less affordable to the local community," said Greg Koch, global director, water stewardship, for the Coca-Cola Co.
Harry Ott, a retired Coca-Cola executive and a senior fellow with Future 500, a San Francisco-based organization, added this: "What I've learned is that one must meet with the local community on a regular basis, ideally, before you begin building or operating. One not only needs a government license, but a social license."
He noted that Coca-Cola's employees benefit from better water management. "If our employees have poor water quality at their homes, then they get sick and cannot work."
The California context
Californians will likely face escalating water bills to pay for facilities to treat contamination and to upgrade aging infrastructure. Many supporters of AB 1242 are concerned about the cost implications for disenfranchised citizens, particularly low- income Central Valley residents.
Some environmental organizations, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, argue that we do not charge enough for water, and that's why so much is wasted.
"We need to decouple revenue from sales," argued Ronnie Cohen, water policy director for NRDC, referencing pricing strategies employed in the electricity sector in California. "The city of Los Angeles has such an adjustment mechanism to account for (water) conservative programs, but most water agencies lose money if people conserve too much. These water agencies need to sell water to collect revenue to run their programs."
California part of the conversation
AB 1242 does not delve into any of these specifics of water pricing or water management, but it is viewed as the first step in addressing water issues most pressing in the Central Valley akin to safety and cost issues more commonly witnessed in the developing world. California does not have a universal statewide lifeline water rate or allocation – one similar to our lifeline rates for energy and phone service – so when costs become excessive, families cannot pay their bills and risk losing water service entirely.
The issues facing the Central Valley are much more common in the developing world and China, where, oddly enough, multinationals often are better at cleaning up their acts than are local governments.
AB 1242's general affirmation of the human right to water is intended to address a specific challenge regarding groundwater contamination and access to affordable water in Central California. But it is also part of a much larger conversation.
Declaring a human right to water is one thing. Figuring out how to guarantee access to this elixir of life is a Rubik's cube. Yet we certainly must begin somewhere, and soon.
Napa Valley Register
Where’s the water?
County launches study of aquifers from Angwin to American Canyon...MIKE TRELEVEN
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2009/07/06/news/
local/doc4a516d3bed5bb362237055.txt
Napa County wants to find out what it knows and what it doesn’t about its underground aquifers, and is drilling through the data to get a clear assessment of the water supply under the heart of the valley.
Napa County has hired an engineering firm, Luhdorff & Scalmanini of Woodland, to go through the groundwater data and try to paint as full a picture of the water supply as possible from what might be sketchy information. The project is expected to take between seven months and a year and cost around $230,000.
What the engineers find could result in policy changes. Maybe the county will have to drill monitoring wells or ask private landowners if they would volunteer information or allow their wells to be monitored.
Jim Lincoln, chair of the natural resources committee at the Napa County Farm Bureau and vineyard manager for Beckstoffer Vineyards, said people get really nervous when you start talking groundwater, even studying groundwater. “They believe the next logical step is groundwater regulations, and that frightens a lot of people,” he said.
But Lincoln said he believes the more information available, the better. “If there had been better information in the MST (Milliken-Sarco-Tulocay) and Carneros, maybe we could have made better land-use decisions,” he said.
Lincoln believes sharing information and landowners working together is critical to helping solve their underground water problems in the MST, where the county and property owners are considering building a recycled water pipeline for agricultural uses and other options. “Their wells are not doing so good and they see working together is helping,” he said.
Lincoln said that if a continuous picture of the county’s groundwater situation had been maintained since the 1960s, when vineyard plantings began to intensify, it probably would have resulted in better planning and conservation of water.
“I see this (first phase) as positive. Everyone just needs to be careful of people’s property and water rights. But we can’t be afraid of information,” Lincoln said.
Felix Riesenberg, principal water resources engineer for Napa County Public Works Department, said there is a lack of understanding of the current groundwater conditions up and down the valley.
“This particular effort is not to quantify, but is effort to understand the behaviors of the ground water basins,” Riesenberg said.
He said some people are concerned about an overdraft — when more water is removed than is replaced in an underground aquifer. “That does not seem to be the case in the main Napa Valley basin,” he said. “But every so often there seem to be issues in very specific locations.”
Riesenberg said it is clear that MST is a deficit groundwater area, and that information is sketchy in Carneros — where there is a push to obtain recycled water. “We hear about Carneros, but it is hit or miss. They have issues from time to time and yet we don’t have any data out there,” Riesenberg said.
With a comprehensive study, “in the future the county can address issues more proactively. The goal is to improve our overall groundwater knowledge in the county. “People fear management (of groundwater), but that is not what this is about at this point.
The underground aquifers the county is focused on include the main basin on the valley floor, Carneros, MST, American Canyon, Angwin-Deer Park area, Pope Valley and Chiles Valley. “Primarily we want to look at areas where there are populations and developed agriculture,” Riesenberg said.
“If you don’t know what is going on, you won’t know if you are having a problem later on,” Riesenberg said. “We need to know the history to make a sound decision.”
San Francisco Chronicle
Making the case for the human right to water...Peter Asmus. Peter Asmus is an environmental writer in Stinson Beach and author of "Introduction to Energy in California" (University of California Press).
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/06/EDGV18H122.DTL&type=printable
Most of us assume we'll have the water we need to survive, especially in California. Think again.
Access to safe, affordable and clean water is hardly a given in the Central Valley and parts of the Central Coast. In these communities, more than 90 percent of drinking water is from contaminated groundwater. In Delano (Kern County), the water is undrinkable, yet poor residents pay between $20 and $45 per month for it. All told, more than 150,000 California residents lack safe water for drinking, bathing and washing dishes; even more have water service disconnected because they cannot afford to pay their bill.
The concept of a human right to water is a hot topic at the United Nations and in international circles. But what does a human right to water really mean?
Interestingly enough, the prime opponent of guaranteeing a human right to water has been the United States. It is this political dynamic of our federal government opposing human rights to not only water, but food and housing as well, that makes AB1242 by Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City, so interesting. The key vote on this bill is today.
The prime opponents of the bill - public water agencies and municipal utilities - worry that they will come up short on the revenue side if this law requires them to provide water for free.
But the right to free speech does not require the publishers of this newspaper to give it away for free. Nor does a right to water mean water services must be free. Indeed, subsidized water can sometimes drive shortages, by encouraging waste.
Many environmental activists, support the notion of charging market prices for water in order to provide incentives for conservation. But the dilemma is this: The more water that is conserved, the less revenue for public water providers. On top of that, California does not have a universal statewide lifeline water rate or allocation - similar to our lifeline rates for energy and phone service - so when costs become excessive, families cannot pay their bills and, thereby, risk losing water service.
While the arid West has always suffered from more severe water challenges than the rest of the United States, experts claim 36 states will experience local or regional water shortages over the next five years. Californians will probably face escalating water bills to pay for facilities to treat contamination and to upgrade aging infrastructure. Many supporters of AB1242 are concerned about the cost implications for disenfranchised citizens, particularly low-income Central Valley residents.
AB1242 does not delve into any of these water pricing issues. Most public water systems do provide safe, clean and affordable water. The issues facing the Central Valley are much more common in the developing world and China, where, oddly enough, multinational companies are often better at cleaning up their acts than local governments.
AB1242's general affirmation of the human right to water is intended to address a specific challenge regarding groundwater contamination and access to affordable water in Central California. But it is also part of a much larger conversation.
CSU chancellor hires 2 lobbyists without bids...Jim Doyle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/06/MNGL18HBC9.DTL&type=printable
California State University Chancellor Charles Reed has retained high-priced lobbyists without competitive bidding, even though CSU has a Sacramento office where it runs a $1.1 million-a-year, in-house lobbying unit whose state employees monitor CSU-related bills and follow state budget hearings.
In the last decade, the university system has paid more than $2 million in public funds to two Sacramento lobbying firms - Capitol Advocacy LLC, and Sloat Higgins Jensen & Associates - to influence the policies and budget decisions of the governor and state lawmakers.
At a time of state budget cuts, student tuition hikes, canceled classes, faculty hiring freezes and layoffs, CSU's lobbyists have been paid to defeat bills designed to shed more light on CSU executive salaries and perks as well as public records. In 2006, The Chronicle reported that millions of dollars in extra compensation was quietly handed out to campus presidents and other top executives as they left their posts.
The university has paid the outside lobbyists not only to obtain funding for programs such as student financial aid and an Education Doctorate degree, state records show, but also to monitor nearly a dozen bills that had little or no direct connection to the university, including legislation on affordable housing for Iraq veterans, money laundering, terrorism, sex offenders and sacred Indian grounds.
Reed has used the lobbyists mainly to advance certain pieces of CSU-related legislation and defeat bills considered not in the state university's interest.
The lobbyists have also been marshaled to press the Legislature on faculty salary negotiations and to woo political support in hopes of preserving the university's shrinking budget.
"CSU needs coverage for a lot of different policy matters and budget matters that constantly come up," Reed told The Chronicle, "and I want the CSU represented to the very best level that we can."
Although the chancellor defended his use of lobbying firms, critics voiced outrage.
"This is the time for Chancellor Reed and the Board of Trustees to pull the plug on this secret lobbying corps, this secret force," said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-East Los Angeles, who chairs the Senate Education Committee. "There is no need for these lobbyists. There is no need for us to spend this money.
"Government relations offices are established at public universities for the direct purpose of interacting with the Legislature," the senator said. "So what the CSU has done is go beyond established protocol and use these special contracts that are not directly reportable to defeat the legislative interest of the people who pay the bills."
Salary disclosure blocked
Trent Hager, chief of staff for Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge (Los Angeles County), said CSU paid the two lobbying firms in 2007 to derail his boss' bill aimed at full disclosure of CSU salaries. "They got it sidetracked and killed," he said.
In addition, CSU paid $38,000 to Capitol Advocacy last year to monitor legislation to provide affordable housing for Iraq war veterans, according to reports filed at the California Fair Political Practices Commission, although the university took no position on the bill.
CSU Spokeswoman Claudia Keith said the outside lobbyists tracked the bill "because of housing programs at our campuses." But the bill dealt only with housing projects leased for at least 55 years by federal or state Veterans Affairs agencies. It was passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.
Sloat Higgins tracked a money laundering bill for CSU in 2003, Keith said, because of concern over how it might affect fund transfers for the university's international programs, but did not take a position on the legislation. The bill, which set higher penalties for money laundering linked to terrorism, was voted down in committee in 2004.
Sex-offender bill tracked
CSU paid Sloat Higgins in 2003 to monitor a sex offender bill to determine what kind of disclosure rules it contained for state agencies, Keith said, but never took a formal position on it. The bill was passed by the Legislature in 2004 and signed into law by the governor.
Both lobbying firms were paid by CSU in 2003 to watch a bill intended to protect tribal cultural places on public property. CSU took no formal position on the bill, Keith said, but it was tracked for one quarter because the state university has Native American sites and "to make sure it did no harm." The bill was approved in 2004 by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor.
Since taking over the chancellorship of the nation's largest four-year university system in 1998, Reed has granted a total of about $2.4 million in no-bid contracts to Capitol Advocacy and Sloat Higgins. These powerful lobbying firms have a host of clients including Fortune 500 companies; Capitol Advocacy's clients also include California Indian tribes that own gambling casinos.
Retainer fees paid
But nearly $400,000 of those funds were paid to the two lobbying firms during months of the year when the firms performed no services for the CSU system regarding administrative or legislative actions, state records show.
Keith said the firms were on a monthly retainer as per their contracts.
CSU's long-term retention of outside lobbyists is highly unusual among California state agencies and publicly financed institutions. Typically, state agencies rely on staff for courting key lawmakers and do not use taxpayer funds to hire private lobbyists.
The University of California only rarely uses outside lobbyists when particular expertise is needed, UC officials said.
Ron Owens, a spokesman for California Community Colleges, said his system does not use outside lobbyists. "We do have a government affairs office that does our legislative advocacy work at the state Capitol and an assistant vice chancellor who handles the federal side," he said.
Why not in-house lobby?
Critics question why this kind of work is not done in-house by CSU staff, especially in lean economic times. They say the flow of public largess from the chancellor has few checks and balances, and the returns are questionable.
"The CSU has been particularly aggressive about pursuing this style of privately influencing government," said Dan Heller, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit organization that monitors state politics. "The state university system is paying high-priced lobbyists to trade on their political influence in Sacramento. At the end of the day, that's not good for our public school system. Private interests win out."
Private lobbyists defended
Others defend CSU's use of private lobbyists.
"We would call upon them to do some extra lobbying if a high priority bill got to the governor's desk that needed to be killed or signed," said Jeff Vaca, a former CSU in-house lobbyist/analyst. "When the issue is big enough, you can never have too much help."
Patrick Lenz, a former employee in the CSU governmental affairs office, said Reed's use of private lobbyists helps "ensure that the university's position is well understood by policymakers."
In selecting Capitol Advocacy and Sloat Higgins, the chancellor's office bypassed scores of other lobbyists. According to CSU records, the two lobbying firms were awarded contracts because of their unique qualifications.
Hubert Riley, a principal of Capitol Advocacy, is deputy executive director of the Democratic Governors' Association and has extensive ties in Sacramento. Reed himself hired Riley's firm in 2001, according to CSU records.
Connections to lobbyist
The chancellor is acquainted with Riley's father, Richard Riley, a former U.S. secretary of education. Reed and Richard Riley have served together on at least three education boards and commissions. CSU's Keith said Reed has known Richard Riley and his son for 30 years.
Kevin Sloat, who heads the Sloat Higgins firm, served as legislative chief of staff for former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican. Sloat was initially retained in 1997 by former Chancellor Barry Munitz.
Neither lobbyist would comment on their CSU work.
Under CSU policy, university officials must identify in writing three additional firms that they surveyed with regard to a no-bid contract. CSU officials did not do this.
Indybay.org
The Budget-Busting Peripheral Canal and the Three Big Lies...Dan Bacher
The campaign by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Legislators to build a peripheral canal is based on "The Three Big Lies."
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/05/18605769.php
The proposal to build a peripheral canal around the California Delta, overwhelmingly defeated by the voters in 1982, has been resurrected many times since then by politicians trying to curry favor with corporate agribusiness. In June 2007 Governor Schwarzenegger unveiled a new water bond proposal for a peripheral canal and more dams – and has been relentlessly campaigning for it ever since.
The current incarnation of the canal, the "dual conveyance" backed by the Governor, Senator Diane Feinstein and Legislators from both sides of the political aisle, is cynically being touted to serve the “co-equal”goals of water supply and “ecosystem restoration."
However, a growing coalition of Delta farmers, recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes and environmental justice advocates are fighting this financial and environmental boondoggle because they believe it will only be used to export more water out of the Delta and destroy the ecosystem. The canal and dams are being pushed through the Governor's controversial Delta Vision and Bay Delta Conservation Plan processes, as well as through the Legislature. Opponents criticize the canal for a number of reasons, including its enormous cost and environmental destructiveness.
The water bond would cost anywhere from $10-40 billion today and much more over the thirty years trying to pay it back, according to Steve Evans of Friends of the River. This is at a time that Governor has proclaimed a “fiscal emergency” because of the $24.3 billion deficit. Schwarzenegger last Wednesday called the Legislature into a special session and issued an executive order to impose three furlough days per month for state employees.
Canal opponents also believe that the canal/dams plan will transfer destructive impacts of pumping upon salmon and other fish from San Joaquin River to the Sacramento River, take increased water exports from an estuary that needs more freshwater flows for fish to survive and cause increased salinity in the Delta, impacting Delta farmers.
The campaign for a canal and more dams has been based on what I call the “Three Big Lies” of the Schwarzenegger administration, corporate agribusiness and their political allies.
Big Lie #1: No Dams for 30 Years
The false contention that no dams or water infrastructure have been built since the 1970’s was the "Big Lie #1" used in the summer of 2007 by Schwarzenegger and the water barons to promote the peripheral canal. “Do you know that for 20 years, well, actually since the late '70s, they have not built a dam?" Schwarzenegger stated at a town meeting in Bakersfield in July 14, 2007. "I mean, think about that. They have not built a dam."
Actually, numerous dams, reservoirs and groundwater banks have been built in recent years, amounting to 6,200,00 acre-feet of water since 1990, according to data compiled by Spreck Rosecrans, a economic analyst for Environmental Defense. Some of the surface storage reservoirs constructed during this period include:
• San Justo Reservoir in Hollister
• Los Vaqueros Reservoir (100,000 acre feet of water) in Livermore
• The Metropolitan Water District's massive Diamond Valley Reservoir (800,000 acre feet of water) in Southern California
However, virtually all of the economically and environmentally feasible dam sites in California have been already been used. The two dams that Schwarzenegger and his allies are proposing, Sites Dam in the Sacramento Valley and Temperance Dam on the San Joaquin River, are not considered to be economically feasible for the amount of additional water storage they would provide.
After I exposed this Big Lie and other reporters began to research the facts, the Governor stopped using this lie in his press conferences and press releases. He then moved on to Big Lie #2: A Catastrophic Drought.
Big Lie #2: A Catastrophic Drought
"This drought is an urgent reminder of the immediate need to upgrade California's water infrastructure," said Arnold Schwarzenegger in June 2008, using the "drought" as an opportunity to push the canal and dams proposal. "There is no more time to waste because nothing is more vital to protect our economy, our environment and our quality-of-life."
The Governor again declared a drought this year, even though 2099 and the past couple of years have been by no means critically dry years. "This drought is having a devastating impact on our people, our communities, our economy and our environment, making today's action absolutely necessary," Schwarzenegger said in his statement declaring a drought emergency in February 2009.
In fact, information compiled by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) reveals that in 2009 water supply in most parts of the Valley will be in excess of 80% of average. Water storage in the state's reservoirs was at 72% of normal on March 1, but had risen to about 83% of normal by June 30. State reservoir water levels are only about 16% below normal, according to Elissa Lynn, DWR senior meteorologist.
Meanwhile, the American River Division contractors will be delivered 100 percent of their water. North of the Delta contractors who receive their supply from the Sacramento River will receive 75 percent of historic deliveries. Friant Division contractors in the San Joaquin Valley will receive 100 percent of their water.
Westlands is the only district whose Central Valley Project water deliveries are being cut substantially, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. In spite of all of the rhetoric of gloom and doom among the Valley's water contractors, Tom Birmingham, the district's general manager said in a press release on June 15, "We expect to have 64% of our average water supply in 2009," correcting a chart attached to a letter by DWR Director Lester Snow to Senator Dianne Feinstein that indicated Westlands would have 86 percent of their average water supply this year.
"Over the past 20 years, Westlands has imported an average of 750,000 acre feet of water from the Central Valley Project each year," said Birmingham. "This year, with our current allocation of 10%, we are on track to import 119,000 acre feet, which is 16% of our average over the past 20 years. Even if we include our anticipated supplemental water supply of 135,000 acre feet, the district will still receive only 36% of our average imported water supply."
Birmingham indicated that it would obtain the rest of their irrigation water through groundwater pumping, but said, "We do not know at this point how much water Westlands farmers will pump in 2009."
(http://www.klamathbucketbrigade.org/WestlandsPR_
WestlandsWaterSupplyin2009062609.htm)
In spite of the hyperbole and rhetoric, it is clear that the contention of Schwarzenegger and corporate agribusiness that we are in a catastrophic drought is simply not true, though it is true that we are in the third year of below normal precipitation.
Big Lie #3: Fish Versus People
In conjunction with the lie about the catastrophic drought, the Schwarzenegger adminstration and Valley agribusiness have been pushing Big Lie #3: “Fish Versus People."
Schwarzenegger, Paul Rodriguez, chairman of the agribusiness-backed Latino Water Coalition, and numerous others have tried to falsely portray the battle to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and oppose the peripheral canal as one of "fish versus people," ignoring the thousands and thousands of commercial and recreational fishing businesses and coastal communities that have been devastated by fishery collapses caused by massive exports of water to corporate agribusiness and the operation of Central Valley dams.
“This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians and the health and security of the world’s eighth largest economy," claimed Schwarzenegger in June when he attacked the federal plan protecting Sacramento winter and spring run Chinook salmon, green sturgeon, Central Valley steelhead and southern resident killer whales. "The piling on of one federal court decision after another in a species-by-species approach is killing our economy and undermining the integrity of the Endangered Species Act."
Contrary to the Governor and agribusiness, the conflict is actually one between thousands employed in the fishing and tourist industry and Delta farms versus subsidized agribusiness. More simply, the real conflict is people versus land barons!
Damages to the fishing industry in Washington, Oregon and California totaled $290 million last year because of the ocean and river salmon closures, spurred by record water exports out of the Delta. Currently there are 23,000 commercial and recreational people unemployed because California’s salmon fishery is shut down, according to Dick Pool, administrator of Water for Fish. This has taken $1.4 billion out of the State’s economy.
Commercial and recreational fishing contributes many billions of dollars to the California economy. California had the highest amount of sales generated by the commercial fishing industry, $9.8 billion, and the most jobs, 47,000, of any state in 2006, the last year that salmon fishing was open on the ocean. California was also third in recreational fishing sales, $1.9 billion sales, and jobs, 23,000, in 2006, according to NOAA's Fisheries Economics of the United States, 2006 (http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st5/index.html).
Many of these jobs are directly dependent upon the health of the California Delta. The Delta Protection Commission in 1995 estimated that over 6,000 jobs were directly tied to recreational fishing within the Delta itself.
Farmworker jobs on the Delta are also directly threatened by water exports to west side agribusiness. The 500,000 acres of Delta farmland produce an estimated total revenues of $3 billion annually, according to Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of Restore the Delta.
Meanwhile, Representatives Devin Nunes, George Radinovich, Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza, kneeling down to corporate agribusiness, attempted to portray the drought as the cause of massive unemployment and economic misery in the San Joaquin Valley during a town hall meeting with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in Fresno on June 28. Paul Rodriguez tried to make fun of environmentalists' comparison of the Delta smelt to the “canary in the coal mine” as an indicator of the ecoystem’s health.
"The canary is there so it will perish and the miner can live, but these people got it backward," Rodriguez claimed. "They want the fish to live so that everyone can die."
Contrary to the lies of agribusiness representatives and Valley politicians repeated again and again at that meeting and at rallies and press conferences over the past several months, farm employment actually rose in 6 out of 7 San Joaquin Valley counties from May 2006 to May 2009! During three years of drought between May of 2006 and May of 2009, farm employment went up 13.7% in Kern County, 12.1% in Fresno County, 19.3% in Tulare County, 2% in Merced County, 5.3% in Madera and 8.4% in Stanislaus County, according to official data compiled by the California Economic Development Department. Only in the smallest agricultural county of Kings was there a decline.
"While we’re told that 262,000 acres have been fallowed in Fresno County, the County’s Department of Agriculture was releasing a report that revealed 2008 was another record year with agricultural production dollars up 5.9% over the previous record year of 2007," revealed Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
For more about agribusiness lies about the drought and the "impact" on San Joaquin Valley agriculture, please read CSPA's Press Release - Myths, Lies and Damn Lies at http://www.calsport.org/6-28-09.htm. For a superb analysis of the public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller (B-M), that has promoted the "Fish Versus People" lie to give a "human face" to corporate agribusiness, read Lloyd Carter's "The PR Firm from Hell," http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/090629251_the-pr-firm-from-hell.
The Delta Ecosystem Crash Continues
While the Governor’s office, Valley Representatives and land barons are constantly repeating the "Three Big Lies” to push the peripheral canal and more dams, the unprecedented ecosystem crash on the Delta continues.
Delta smelt, American shad, threadfin shad, Sacramento splittail, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass, threadfin shad and other fish have declined to record lows in recent years. The causes of the collapse are increases in water exports, toxic chemicals and invasive species, according to scientists from the Pelagic Organism Decline Team.
Winter, spring run and fall run Chinook salmon are also being devastated by massive water exports and decreasing water quality. Only 66,264 adult Chinooks returned to spawn in the Sacramento River in the fall of 2008, the lowest number on record. Only 122,196 fish are expected to return to the river this fall. The Sacramento run numbered nearly 800,000 fish only seven years ago.
Record water export levels occurred in 2003 (6.3 million acre-feet or MAF), 2004 (6.1 MAF), 2005 (6.5 MAF) and 2006 (6.3 MAF). Exports averaged 4.6 MAF annually between 1990 and 1999 and increased to an average of 6 MAF between 2000 and 2007, a rise of almost 30 percent, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
The two big questions I have posed to canal supporters are:
(1) Can you give me one example in U.S. history of where a diversion canal has taken less water out of a system?
(2) Can you give one example in U.S. history where a diversion canal, after being constructed, has helped to restore an ecosystem?
I am still waiting for an answer.
If you oppose the peripheral canal, make sure that show up at the North Steps of the State Capitol on Tuesday, July 7, at 11 am for a rally by Delta Legislators, Delta farmers, recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen and environmental justice advocates opposed to the 48 mile canal, which would be nearly the width and length of the Panama Canal. For more details, go to: http://www.calsport.org.
Inside Bay Area
EPA tentatively agrees to pesticide use restrictions near Bay Area endangered species habitat...Suzanne Bohan, Contra Costa Times
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/
ci_12753941http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/
localnews/ci_12753941
The Environmental Protection Agency last week announced its tentative settlement agreement to temporarily ban in eight Bay Area counties the use of 74 pesticides in habitat set aside for 11 imperiled species.
The agency also agreed to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rigorously assess any risks posed by these pesticides to the endangered or threatened species.
That latter step will clear up uncertainty over the effects of these powerful chemicals on animal species deemed near the brink of survival, said Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, a nonprofit that filed a 2007 lawsuit leading to the settlement.
"The end game is to get them to actually conduct the assessments of what the actual effects are," Miller said.
Counties covered by the agreement are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solana and Sonoma.
The settlement lists the Alameda whipsnake, bay checkerspot butterfly, California clapper rail, California freshwater shrimp, California tiger salamander, delta smelt, salt marsh harvest mouse, San Francisco garter snake, San Joaquin kit fox, tidewater goby and valley elderberry longhorn beetle as at risk from the chemicals.
The EPA, under the Endangered Species Act, is required to subject pesticides to extra scrutiny if they're used on or near critical habitat set aside for imperiled species. In its lawsuit, the environmental group contended that the agency for years has failed to take this extra step. The group settled a similar case with the EPA in 2006, which prohibited the use of 66 pesticides statewide in and adjacent to threatened California red-legged frog habitat.
The EPA, however, defended its approval process for pesticides.
"Scientifically supported findings are the foundation of our regulatory decisions," said Enesta Jones, an EPA spokeswoman. "The agency intends to ensure that all registered pesticides are evaluated consistent with requirements of the Endangered Species Act."
Allen James, president of RISE, or Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment, said the group supports efforts to require the EPA to subject pesticides to all required reviews.
"We have always supported full implementation of the law," said James, whose trade group represents pesticide suppliers and users in urban areas. "We want them to do it, we need them to do it as rapidly, as scientifically, as possible."
But James strongly objects to the proposed halt on using the 74 pesticides in imperiled species habitat until the scientific review is completed, estimated in 2014.
"It brings commerce to a halt," he said. And homeowners living on or near the imperiled species habitat will have fewer options for battling termites, weeds and other pests, he said.
Miller countered that few homeowners would be affected.
"Very few people have homes within endangered species habitat," Miller said. He also said those homeowners have numerous other options for battling the pests.
The EPA has opened the settlement agreement to public comment through July 16, and will consider petitions for amending it. The two parties would go back the negotiating table to agree to any new terms.
"We do not feel this is an equitable agreement, and we will enter our comments," James said.
The proposed settlement can be viewed, and comments posted, by visiting tinyurl.com/l95swf.
While only land set aside for endangered species would be affected under the proposed terms, James said that amounts to "a tremendous amount of acreage." Miller said it's largely farm and vineyard operators that will be affected.
James said there's no evidence that any of the pesticides are actually causing harm to the listed animals. The lawsuit, he said, focused on a procedural flaw within the EPA.
The environmental group, however, has no doubt that these pesticides have worsened the condition of the imperiled wildlife.
"There is very good evidence of pesticide harm to the species," Miller said. "Obviously there are a lot threats to species: climate change, habitat loss, invasive species. But for some species pesticides are a pretty big factor, especially amphibians."
He cited the center's 2006 report, "Poisoning Our Imperiled Wildlife: San Francisco Bay Area Endangered Species at Risk from Pesticides," which critiques EPA handling of endangered species' exposure to pesticides.
Los Angeles Times
Despair flows as fields go dry and unemployment rises
San Joaquin Valley farms are laying off workers and letting fields lie fallow as their water ration falls...Alana Semuels
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-drought6-2009jul06,0,3934654,print.story
Reporting from Mendota, Calif. — Water built the semi-arid San Joaquin Valley into an agricultural powerhouse. Drought and irrigation battles now threaten to turn huge swaths of it into a dust bowl.
Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That's sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty.
Water scarcity looms as a major challenge to California's $37-billion agricultural industry, which has long relied on imported water to bloom. The consequences of closing the spigot are already evident here in rural Fresno County, about 230 miles north of Los Angeles. Lost farm revenue will top $900 million in the San Joaquin Valley this year, said UC Davis economist Richard Howitt, who estimates that water woes will cost the recession-battered region an additional 30,000 jobs in 2009.
Standing in a parched field in 104-degree heat, valley farmer Joe Del Bosque pointed to cracked earth where tomatoes should be growing. He didn't bother this year because he can't get enough water to irrigate them. He's cultivating only about half of the cantaloupe and asparagus that he did in 2007. He has slashed his workforce, and his bills are mounting.
"We can't survive at 10% of our water," said Del Bosque, 60, a white cowboy hat, long sleeves and jeans protecting him from the blistering sun.
Desperation is rippling through agricultural communities such as Mendota, 35 miles west of Fresno, where an estimated 39% of the labor force is jobless. It's a stunning figure even for this battered community of about 10,000 people, which has long been accustomed to double-digit unemployment rates.
Sporadic food giveaways by churches and nonprofits draw hundreds of people. Enrollment in area schools has dropped by a quarter this year. Crime is up, so much, in fact, that the cash-strapped town voted in May to form its own police department rather than rely on the county sheriff.
On a recent afternoon, a dozen men in white T-shirts and jeans were leaning against a liquor store wall across from City Hall, hoping someone would hire them. Others, such as Candelario Torres, sat in the shade of Kiki's Pool Hall, playing cards and swatting flies. They, too, waited for the slim chance a farmer would employ them to weed tomato fields or pick cantaloupe.
"There's no water, so there's no work," said Torres, a 56-year-old father of three who doesn't have a car and can't go far to look for jobs. "Everyone in here is looking."
It's much the same in rural towns such as Firebaugh and Huron, whose jobless farm laborers helped pushed the Fresno County unemployment rate to 15.4% in May, above the California rate of 11.5% and up from 9.4% a year earlier.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month asked President Obama to declare Fresno County a disaster area to boost federal aid. But that's not what the farmers say they want. At a recent town hall meeting in Fresno, while some women in the audience knitted, men in baseball caps and T-shirts shouted down officials from the Interior Department: "We don't want welfare, we want water."
But climate change is intensifying competition for this resource and may well force changes in the way the valley has been farmed for decades.
This area, once known as part of the great California desert, has always depended on water from somewhere else. In the early part of the century, homesteaders dug wells or hauled water from up north, but in 1952 they banded together to form the Westlands Water District. It later contracted to buy water from the federal government, which built a system of canals and reservoirs that captures water in the northern part of the state and sends it to farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Because of its subordinate water rights, the 600,000-acre Westlands Water District is often last on the long list of groups receiving water from this federal project. In the last two years, below-average rainfall and a shrinking snowpack have made the supply even tighter than usual.
Statewide runoff -- the amount of rainfall and snow melt that ends up in rivers and streams -- was 53% of normal in 2007 and 58% of normal in 2008, said Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources. The federal government-run water supply allotted only half the water that farmers south of the delta had been expecting in 2007, and 40% in 2008.
This year has been even drier after a federal court ordered that pumps moving water through the system be turned down to protect endangered species including delta smelt, salmon and green sturgeon. The pumps can reverse the water flow and trap salmon in the river, pulverize fish or ensnare them on screens, said Maria Rea, supervisor of the Sacramento office of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Farmers in the Westlands Water District have protested at Fresno City Hall, joined a March for Water that stretched from Mendota to the San Luis Reservoir, and posted signs along Interstate 5 declaring the area a "Congress Created Dust Bowl."
"We taught the entire world how to grow crops," said Tom Stefanopoulos, owner of Stamoules Produce, bitterly. "But this is the first time we've had to compete with fish."
Stefanopoulos, who owns one of the largest farms in the Westlands district, has planted fewer seasonal row crops this year, but hasn't lost any of his precious pistachio trees. But a neighboring farm, lacking water, left its plum orchard to die. Weeds and dead branches now litter the ground next to Stamoules' field of sweet corn.
Valley farmers aren't the only ones suffering. Increasingly, when it come to water, one industry's livelihood is another's loss.
The more water that's pumped from the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, which stretches from Yolo County near Sacramento to the lower parts of San Joaquin County, the more that wildlife from the area is harmed, said C. Mark Rockwell, California representative of the Endangered Species Coalition. There hasn't been a commercial or recreational salmon fishing season in California or in certain parts of Oregon in the last two years, he said.
Pulling water from the delta also lets more seawater in from the San Francisco Bay, sullying farms near Sacramento, said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of advocacy group Restore the Delta.
"There really isn't enough water to go around, particularly in a drought year," Rockwell said.
Fights will probably escalate in the face of global warming, said Juliet Christian-Smith, a senior research associate at the Pacific Institute.
"We have a new climate reality, and our old structure for allocating water will not work for the future," she said. "Fish are just one sign of an ecosystem that's collapsing."
Officials have discussed a variety of long- and short-term fixes, including transferring water from other areas, installing gates to protect the smelt and increasing the statewide storage of water.
But Del Bosque and other farmers said they couldn't survive even one more year of stingy water allocation. Some are considering quitting the business. Field hands too are looking to other industries. But there aren't many options now that the region's construction boom has gone bust.
Valley farmworker Cecilia Reyes said some of her neighbors drive from Fresno County to places as far as Bakersfield, Hollister and Gilroy to look for work, returning at night to be with their families.
Reyes, a slight woman clad in a baseball cap emblazoned with the word "Angel," a handkerchief and long sleeves, said she felt lucky that she recently had found three days' work weeding tomato fields. "I hope there's more work this year," she said in Spanish. "If there's not, I don't know what I'll do."
Saving the Columbia and Snake river salmon
A judge overseeing endangered salmon on the Columbia and Snake rivers is raising the possibility of dam removal. If politics trumps science this time, how can we hope to deal with climate change?...Paul VanDevelder. Paul VanDevelder is the author of "Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire Through Indian Territory."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-vandevelder6-2009jul06,0,1653592,print.story
If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.
The policy deadlock that has resulted from the debate among stakeholders along the Columbia and the Snake -- aluminum smelters, the Bonneville Power Administration, politicians, Indian tribes, states, conservation groups, fishermen, barge operators, agribusiness and wheat farmers -- has flushed billions of taxpayer dollars out to sea over the last 15 years while doing very little to prevent 13 endangered salmon stocks from going extinct.
In March, the federal judge responsible for herding all these cats toward a scientifically based solution that meets the requirements of the Endangered Species Act announced that he had heard enough bickering. District Judge James Redden summoned all the stakeholders to his courtroom in Portland, Ore., with the edict to take "aggressive action" and that "now is the time to make that happen."
In addition to being the judge in this case, Redden acts as the government's "special master" for the Columbia River basin, a network of rivers and streams that fans out over an area the size of France. In that role, he has the final say on any proposed changes to fish habitat and the uses of the rivers' payload: water.
At the March meeting in his courtroom, Redden wore both hats and congratulated all sides for getting "very close" to a final rescue plan for the fish. After losing precious years to political infighting and foot-dragging by the Clinton and Bush administrations, Redden noted that much progress had been made in recent years in formulating a workable plan -- "a biological opinion" -- to keep the salmon from becoming extinct.
However, he warned, there were still problems with the plan. For one thing, government scientists had relied too heavily on statistical sleight of hand to support their argument that endangered fish were trending toward recovery. For another, the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River must be included in the recovery plan in case all other remedies fail.
There it was. Out in the open and on the table. Dam removal -- a remedy that the Bush administration had rejected out of hand -- was back in play. Fax machines across the region came to life when Redden's letter reached the stakeholders.
"Federal law doesn't allow dam removal, and no Democrat-politician-turned-activist-judge can rewrite the law," wrote Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) The Northwest River Partners expressed dismay, and the Portland Oregonian's editorial board described Redden's letter as "puzzling."
"The letter is strongly critical of the key strategy in the plan to focus on habitat improvements to offset the harm that federal power-generating dams inflict on fish," the Oregonian wrote, expressing surprise at such a reaction while conveniently ignoring the fact that billions of dollars spent on habitat improvement, fish ladders and barging young fish around dams have done very little to increase salmon populations.
If anything, these measures have lengthened the odds against the salmon's survival by shifting the focus away from more politically explosive solutions, such as dam removal. Redden first issued his warning about the dams in 2004, when he threw out the first Bush rescue plan.
Politicians and stakeholders have steadfastly resisted the painful solution of dam removal while hoping for a miracle. That hope turned out to be a one-way road on a dead-end street, and in many respects they're now blaming the court for their current predicament. With few exceptions, the region's politicians, past and current, have been challenging the recommendations of scientists (including dam removal and increasing the spills over the dams) for more than a decade. Former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) famously vowed to chain himself to a dam rather than surrender, a prospect relished by many conservation groups.
Throughout this stalemate, fish counts have continued to fall, and the underlying science is clear: In river after river where dams have been removed, native fish populations have rebounded and thrived. As the government's former chief aquatic biologist, Don Chapman, concluded, dam removal is the most effective strategy for saving endangered native fish stocks from extinction.
This was the conclusion reached by the Idaho Statesman newspaper back in 1997 after it conducted a yearlong study of the Snake River dams. The paper reported that the economic benefits of a healthy fishery -- and the resultant tens of thousands of jobs -- would swamp the benefits of leaving the dams in place.
Dozens of reports by natural resources economists have agreed. Among other things, they describe the dams as economic sinkholes, which produce less than 3% of the region's power, do nothing for flood control, irrigate only a handful of big farms and subsidize transportation costs (at the expense of taxpayers and salmon) for wheat farmers in Idaho and eastern Washington.
The Columbia-Snake corridor is the salmon's only option for survival, and Redden is probably their last hope. He is the one person in this entire drama who is legally obligated to use science and the law to protect the fish from extinction and from the whims of politicians. If the law and science are unable to trump politics to save this fishery -- a fishery that was the most productive in the world just two generations ago -- how will we ever meet the towering challenges posed by global climate change?
For the sake of the fish and the 500 other species that depend on this wild and "vital resource" for their survival, many of us hope the judge has the resolve to stay the course and to see the job through.
Washington Post

AP analysis: Economic stress up in much of nation...JEANNINE AVERSA and MIKE SCHNEIDER, The Associated Press. Associated Press Writer Evelyn Nieves in San Francisco contributed to this report
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070601083_pf.html
-- California, Michigan and South Carolina suffered the most financial pain in May as unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies rose, according to The Associated Press' monthly analysis of economic stress in more than 3,100 U.S. counties.
The latest results of the AP's Economic Stress Index show the worst financial crisis since the 1930s causing lingering damage even as other signs suggest the recession is winding down.
The average county's Stress score, fueled by worsening unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies, rose to 10 in May, from 9.7 in April. In May 2008, the average Stress score was 6.2. The pain was lower then because the economy was still expanding. In fact, the second quarter of 2008 was the last time the economy grew.
The AP calculates a score from 1 to 100 based on each county's unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy rates. The higher the score, the higher the economic stress.
Under a rough rule of thumb, a county is considered stressed when its score zooms past 11. In May, 36 percent of the counties scored 11 or higher, up from 34 percent in April. But the latest reading was slightly better than February and March, when nearly 40 percent of counties were at or above that threshold.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and many other economists predict the recession will end later this year. Even if it does, unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies are likely to keep climbing and cause further harm in many communities, economists predicted.
"The pain will linger well after the recession is over, making for a subdued economic recovery," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research.
Many economists say the recession eased from April to June and that the economy might start growing again as soon as the current July-to-September quarter.
Among states, California, Michigan and South Carolina showed the most economic stress in May, with their counties' scores averaging 16, 15.9 and 15, respectively, the AP analysis shows.
California has been battered by the housing bust, and Michigan has absorbed the brunt of the auto industry crisis.
"And South Carolina is a little bit of everything," said Sean Snaith, economics professor at the University of Central Florida. "Manufacturing and construction jobs have been hard hit in the state."
One common thread running through all three states is heavy jobs losses. Rising unemployment, in turn, is escalating foreclosures and bankruptcies.
The rising economic stress comes as California, saddled with a whopping $24.3 billion budget deficit, and other states are scrambling to cope with fiscal crises.
Over the past year, South Carolina, Oregon and Indiana have suffered the most stress. The loss of manufacturing jobs has deepened Indiana's and South Carolina's woes. And Oregon has been hurt by the real-estate bust and falling demand for construction materials like plywood and windows that are produced in the state.
North Dakota and Nebraska were the least stressed states in May, with county scores averaging under 5. Those Plains states also fared the best over the past year. North Dakota has been helped by the oil business. Nebraska has benefited from the relative strength of two of its main industries: agriculture and food-production.
"Those are also some of the few places that didn't experience the housing boom and therefore escaped the intense problems of the housing bust," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia.
At the county level, the highest scores in May for those with populations of at least 25,000 residents were Imperial County, Calif; Merced County, Calif.; Yuma County, Ariz.; Lauderdale County, Tenn.; and Stanislaus, Calif.
Merced and Stanislaus have endured some of the nation's highest foreclosure rates in the past year. And even in good times, Imperial, Lauderdale and Yuma have been among the most impoverished U.S. counties.
The counties (of at least 25,000 residents) that suffered the sharpest increases in stress scores over the past year were manufacturing communities: Williams County, Ohio; Elkhart County, Ind.; Huntingdon County, Pa.; Howard County, Ind.; Union County, S.C.; and Noble, Ind.
AP's analysis also found that foreclosure rates climbed over the past year in areas hardest hit by the housing crisis: Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada and metro Atlanta.
Foreclosures also jumped in some Utah counties that had experienced rapid growth in the past decade.
"It was a speculative bubble, and when the economy popped, it hit us hard," said Dean Cox, administrator for Washington County in southwest Utah, where the foreclosure rate more than doubled to 4 percent in the past year.
Bankruptcy rates also grew in areas where the housing bust struck hardest: Southern California, southern Oregon and Las Vegas.
"It's not surprising, since the inability to make your mortgage payment is a pretty good proxy of the financial situation households are in," said Samuel Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute.
Gerdano says he foresees an estimated 1.5 million bankruptcy filings this year - the most since the nation's bankruptcy laws were tightened in 2005.