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Tuesday’s top of the scroll: Nunes, Hannity & bloggers react to the 60 Minutes story

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 29, 2009 at 8:17 am

Did anyone like the 60 Minutes show? Apparently not, if this round-up of commentary is representative of the sentiment. Devin Nunes appeared on Sean Hannity’s show, saying “Seventy-five percent of it was a piece on (Governor Schwarzenegger), which is ridiculous, because he’s been a day late and a dollar short,” the Valley Republican told guest host Tucker Carlson. “The Governor has yet to go back to Washington D.C. to meet with President Obama or Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”

Here’s the clip (hat tip to KMJ Radio):

Bloggers didn’t think much of the program, either. Starting with the On the Public Record blog, in a series of two posts, OTPR says scale is important, especially in regards to the part in the story where they say that 130,000 almond trees have basically become compost:

” … (130,000 almond trees)*(1 acre/105 almond trees) = 1238 ACRES OF TREES!!!!

(1,238 almond acres)/(710,000 acres of almond trees in CA) = 0.0017

That’s almost 0.2% change in the California almond acreage!!!

Even with this devastating loss, the Californian almond harvest this year was 1.6 billion pounds shelled (up from 1.3 billion pounds shelled last year) accounting for 85% of the world’s almond production. C’mon, Sixty Minutes. I know tractors ripping out trees look awesome, but so does the annual Almond Almanac. A few seconds of searching would have given you some perspective on this. It would have told you how big the imminent impact is going to be. And that even with the drought, there were more almonds harvested this year than ever before. … “

Full text of this blog post from On the Public Record by clicking here.

In a subsequent post, OTPR takes issue with the portrayal of “water wars”:

” … Seriously, we are not in a water war. I can tell you this because if it were a war, I’d be on the front lines. I am a water bureaucrat, baby, deep in the trenches of the decades-long water war. In real life, this means I work in a very ordinary cube in ordinary clothing. No one ever takes any shots at me. (Sometimes, someone suggests that I re-phrase something before we release it to the public.) No one took any shots at anyone during the protracted negotiations for the new water legislation. So far as I know, Judge Wanger walks to his car un-escorted and unafraid, which means that we are really and truly not in a water war.

Instead, we’re in an extended, complicated, multi-party conflict over resource use that will be resolved through incremental progress in courts, administrative plans, white papers and legislation (or maybe earthquake-caused collapse of Delta levees). I am sorry if that doesn’t give our Action Governor a boner, but that is not a war. The conflict is not exciting. … “

Aquafornia Note: To me, the term ‘water wars’ is simply much easier to say than “extended, complicated, multi-party conflict over resource use”. And, I don’t know about you, but I do find it exciting and interesting, otherwise I would not bother to write this blog. (I tell people it’s like a football game: the action’s just as brutal but the game never ends.) But that’s me. And probably you, too, if you read this blog regularly! :)

Read the full text of this post from On the Public Record by clicking here.

Emily Green from the Chance of Rain blog says she’s tired of the well worn “whiskeys for … ” cliche:

” … Those instantly overtaken by boredom whenever a speech (tv program, headline, fill in the blank) opens with the threadbare Twain quote “whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting,” be further warned: Lesley Stahl opens with it.

Beyond the cliches, the esteemed news magazine offers a decent potted version of our water woes. An empty promise of a free drink to anyone who counts how many times Stahl called the Delta smelt “tiny.” … “

And what about that Latino Coaliton? Read the full text of this blog post from Chance of Rain by clicking here.

Restore the Delta says they expected better from the network program that went after tobacco so fervently, noting that they didn’t bother to interview anybody who lived in or depended on the Delta, as well as this:

” … Restore the Delta gives Professor Jeffrey Mount an unqualified “A” for saying that farmers need to stop relying on water transfers. But he gets a resounding “F” as in “fragile,” the word he once again applied to Delta levees. The implication, as always: they’re too fragile to be worth maintaining. But Mount knows we have to maintain them, not just for water transfers and farming but to protect infrastructure and manage flooding in the whole region.

Mount’s model of saltwater intrusion was indeed alarming, but the Governor’s conveyance dream will not address the problems of saltwater intrusion into the Estuary and the Delta, especially if it diverts resources from levee management. … “

Read the full text of this post from Restore the Delta by clicking here.

Lloyd Carter took issue with the neglect to mention the drainage-impaired lands of the west side:

” … Not once did she mention the selenium-tainted soils of the Westlands Water District. Drainage water from the Westlands fields contains selenium, which got into the food chain at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge 25 years ago and killed thousands of birds and triggered deformities in bird embryos.

Thanks, in part, to an excellent report by 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley on March 9, 1985, the poisoned evaporation ponds at Kesterson were closed. Sadly, this latest 60 Minutes report on Westlands is far off the mark.

Twenty-five years later the estimated cost for providing drainage to the 600 growers who operate on a thousand square miles in Westlands is set at $2.7 billion.

Leslie Stahl should have asked the governor what he is doing about the drainage problem. Answer? He’s doing nothing. … “

Read the full text of Lloyd Carters remarks by clicking here.

Holly Doremus at the Legal Planet blog says:

” … That story is demonstrably false on at least two different levels. First, while the San Joaquin valley has had a tough economic year, its woes have not been driven by water shortages. According to this independent report from economist Jeffrey Michael at the University of the Pacific, the real culprit is the collapse of the housing market and therefore of the construction industry … ”
…
Second, it’s not true that California agriculture had a bad year across the board. Farming has always been a boom-bust business, as overplanting gluts the market and tough growing conditions deplete it. But 2009 was not a bust year. The California tomato crop, for example, hit an all-time high both in total production and in dollar value at the farm. As for the almond grower that complained to 60 Minutes that he was having to destroy his trees, take that with a grain of salt. Almond trees have a relatively short life-span, so orchards are continually removed and replanted. … “

Read the full text of this post from Legal Planet by clicking here.

Tom Lang (who hails from the Central Valley) seemed to think it was okay, and made this interesting point:

” … It is interesting that Governor Schwarzenegger took the CBS crew to San Luis Reservoir, which was designed and built on the west side of the Valley to exclusively store pumped Delta water as opposed to natural mountain run-off as are a multitude of other dams built on the east side of the Valley. San Luis Reservoir’s low level this past fall (when the reservoir segment was filmed) was entirely due to the pumps being off or operated at low capacity earlier in the year, not a “drought” as the report would have viewers believe.

On a trip past the same reservoir just before Christmas, it was apparent to my wife, Aletha, and me that the lake was being refilled – it didn’t look nearly as empty as when CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl commented on it.

According to the California Department of Water Resources website, more than 800,000 acre-feet of water is being stored in San Luis as of today’s date – up from 473,257 acre-feet at this same time last year. … “

Read the full text of this post from Tom Lang’s blog by clicking here.

E. J. Schultz of the Fresno Bee finds someone else who is happy and sums it up in this post from the Fresno Bee News Blog:

” … So if Northern Californians and enviros are mad, then Valley growers must be happy? Yep.

Water issues are “very complex,” said Sarah Woolf, a Westlands Water District spokeswoman whose brother-in-law was one of a couple farmers interviewed by 60 Minutes. “I think they did a nice job.”

Read the full text of this post from the Fresno Bee News Blog by clicking here.

December 29, 2009 · Filed Under General Water Issues

Comments

One Response to “Tuesday’s top of the scroll: Nunes, Hannity & bloggers react to the 60 Minutes story”

  1. apsherman on December 29th, 2009 2:20 pm

    Does anybody know who sponsored the “bread line” featured in the 60 minutes episode? Who paid for those carrots from china? That little nugget of folklore will be the meme of the farmer’s plight for a long time if it’s not investigated. A grim reminder of Arthur Rothstein’s steer skull.

    http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock-part-1/

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