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My so-called drought: Can Southern California get off the North’s water?

Posted by: Maven on March 26, 2009 at 6:19 am

From Los Angeles City Beat:

It was perhaps not the best time to chant for rain. The 1,100 or so people who participated in Sunday’s March for Water had already braved a steady drizzle on the three-mile walk from one state park along the Los Angeles River to the next. As the day warmed, kids crowded around food trucks and drummers gathered on the grass. Politicians took the stage to pitch their projects; community organizers handed out flyers.

And then Caleen Sisk-Franco came along.

The spiritual leader of the Northern California-based Winnemem Wintu tribe, Sisk-Franco, dressed in traditional buckskins with four feathers gathered at the back of her head, had come to pray for an end to California’s water wars, the century-long battle over who owns the state’s most basic natural resource.

At the moment, however, the situation is complicated. Governor Schwarzenegger insists we’re in the middle of a “drought emergency” that necessitates construction of a $5 billion “water conveyance system” to import more water from the North. Local environmentalists, including march coordinator Conner Everts of the Southern California Watershed Alliance, say the water shortage is man-made: “We’ve created a drought crisis by mismanaging our water,” he said in a press release for the event.

Everts’ long-time ally, the late environmental activist and Heal the Bay founder Dorothy Green, would have put it more plainly. Shortly before her death in October, she insisted that the drought had been flat-out “manufactured” for the sake of corporate agricultural interests maneuvering to get into the water business.

Read more from Los Angeles City Beat by clicking here.

March 26, 2009 · Filed Under Drought, Weather & Snowpack

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