Monday’s top of the scroll: Feinstein heeded donor Resnick, sought Delta study

From the Sacramento Bee:

“Wealthy corporate farmer Stewart Resnick has written check after check to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s political campaigns. He’s hosted a party in her honor at his Beverly Hills mansion, and he’s entertained her at his second home in Aspen, Colo.

In September, when Resnick asked Feinstein to weigh in on the side of agribusiness in a drought-fueled environmental dispute over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the wealthy grower and political donor got quick results, documents show.

On Sept. 4, Resnick wrote to Feinstein, complaining that the latest federal plan to rescue the Delta’s endangered salmon and shad fisheries was “exacerbating the state’s severe drought” because it cut back on water available to irrigate crops. “Sloppy science” by federal wildlife agencies had led to “regulatory-induced water shortages,” he claimed.

“I really appreciate your involvement in this issue,” he wrote to Feinstein. … “

And then … Find out what happened and more from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.

Blog commentary: Stateside with Rosalea Barker provides commentary, starting with the difficulties she was having accessing some obscure foundation’s website somehow connected with Schwarzenegger’s travels, and writes:

“Perhaps the reason the CSPF website is “temporarily unavailable or too busy” is the story I read this morning about Stewart Resnick (aka The Water Baron of Kern County) donating $50,000 to the Governor’s travel fund. The story made the front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle because it is about how Resnick’s influence with Senator Feinstein and Governor Schwarzenegger has led to the Obama Administration ordering a new scientific review of the data about the environmental impacts of pumping water south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta.

I can’t link to the Resnick story on sfgate because you can only get to it if you subscribe to the digital edition of the newspaper. Not to worry. You can read the article on the Center for Investigative Reporting’s website, where it originated. And read it you should because, for all my leading you down the wrong towpath in the first few paragraphs of this column, the influence of agribusiness in the wars for California water cannot be overstated. … “

Read more of Rosalea Barker’s commentary by clicking here.

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