Since I'm still California Dreamin' I wandered over to Lloyd G. Carter's blog and stumbled upon two items related to California water, in particular the Central Valley and Bay-Delta. That's not hard to do these days.
1) The first item is an editorial from the Monterey County Herald, Sky hasn't fallen over water allotment reduction:
Let's return for a moment to last spring, when doom and gloom descended on the San Joaquin Valley in the form of water-allotment reductions that, we were told, would bankrupt the farmers, idle the workers and turn the region into a modern dust bowl.
Perhaps you remember when TV commentator Sean Hannity, with ample PR help from the huge Westlands Water District, went on the air with a series of heart-tugging stories about how farms and jobs were being lost because wrongheaded environmentalists and federal officials were diverting "valley" water to protect insignificant smelt and salmon.
In western Fresno County, the bedraggled farm town of Mendota provided the perfect backdrop for photo opportunities featuring busloads of sad-eyed field workers supposedly thrown out of work by the likes of the Sierra Club.
Unfortunately for the recreational and commercial fishing industries and others with an interest in keeping the environment in balance, Hannity and others easily misled news operations largely missed the story about the dramatic decline in the salmon population caused, largely, by San Joaquin Delta pumping schedules that traditionally favored field crops over fish.
Well, guess what. Farm income did slip last year in Fresno County. By 75 percent? Fifty percent?
Try 4.5percent. [emboldening mine]
The county-by-county annual crop reports came out this week, and Fresno County retained its title as the king of California agriculture, producing $5.4billion in receipts.
Read more.
2) Carter's other item describes a lawsuit over the Kern Water Bank:
BAKERSFIELD, Calif.— A coalition of farmers, sportfishing interests and environmentalists filed suit today seeking to have the Kern Water Bank returned to state control. The water bank, a massive underground reservoir in Kern County built by the state’s Department of Water Resources, was illegally gifted to powerful corporate agribusiness interests and real-estate speculators as part of the controversial "Monterey Plus Amendments" to theState Water Project system.
"The Kern Water Bank is an integral part of our State Water Project and crucial to the future health of our farms, our cities and our environment," said Adam Keats, urban wildlands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "It was built and paid for by the people of California and should remain the property of the people of California, not handed over to a small group of powerful private interests.
Read more.
All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray...
"The government should stop meddling in the business of the farmers, who would actually still be living in a desert if not for government meddling." --Jon Stewart
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