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Trust and the peripheral canal: Exploring why the crowd laughed at “We are a system of laws”

Posted by: Maven on March 26, 2009 at 3:22 pm

In this article by Dan Bacher, posted at IndyBay.org, Dan cites this excerpt from the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance regarding the meeting in Stockton, reported on here by the Stockton Record:

Tuesday night, more than 120 people joined CSPA, environmentalists and Delta water agencies and farmers to vent their frustration at Resource Secretary Mike Chrisman and DWR Deputy Director Jerry Johns at a meeting over the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan and the proposal to construct a peripheral canal around the estuary.

Comments ripping the proposed plan were met with cheers and applause. The crowd broke into riotous laughter when Jerry Johns replied that “we are a system of laws” in response to Dante Nomellini Jr’s question of what assurances he would give that only surplus water would be diverted into the canal.

CSPA Executive Director Bill Jennings observed that the “BDCP was essentially a massive water project masquerading as a Habitat Conservation Plan to circumvent the Endangered Species Act” and characterized it as “simply an illegal scheme to allow those in the South Valley, who hold junior water rights to surplus water – water they understood would not be available in certain years – to take precedence over the senior water rights and the public trust needs of Northern California.”

You can read the full text of the press release, plus Dan Bacher’s comments, by clicking here.

The article in the Stockton Record caught a few blogger’s eyes, with a really good post on the issue of trust and the peripheral canal posted at the On the Public Record blog. The blogger writes that lack of trust is the major reason why Delta residents are fighting the peripheral canal so vigorously; there’s two types of trust involved here, they write, one is delusional and the other well justified. The delusional mistrust?

They imagine that state agencies are making up data in service of a complicated land and water grab conspiracy. They don’t believe the abstract data. The evidence of their eyes and lives is stronger. They see levees every day, and those always look just like working levees. They’ve never been in island collapse floods (as evidenced by the fact that they are alive) and they will not believe something that 1. is counter to their experience and 2. means leaving the lives they know. So they choose magical thinking and believe that the islands can last.

The well justified mistrust?

One is that so long as there is no canal, the state is forced to keep islands intact so we can keep the freshwater sloughs between them delivering water to the pumps. They do not trust the state to maintain their lifestyles if we are not forced to by how we pump water to LA and the San Joaquin Valley. ….

The other mistrust that seems well justified to me is that Delta residents do not believe the Department of Water Resources will obey the laws that govern any new Peripheral Canal. I mean, the people at that meeting laughed at the notion. The environmental group Friends of the River says “plumbing is destiny”. ….

I think it is staggeringly irresponsible to have the drinking water supply for two huge cities to be as vulnerable as ours is, they write. A great post, well written and worth the click through from the On the Public Record blog: Trust and the Peripheral Canal

The distrust aspect is elaborated further in this post from the L.A. Creek Freak:

…. while all enviros deplore the state of salmon, delta smelt and other aquatic life in the Bay Delta, there are plenty of disagreements over solutions. Is the Bay Delta too saline, or not enough? Does a peripheral canal restore the Bay Delta or not? Are we screwed no matter what we do? Whose scientific charts and graphs are more convincing? The Blue Ribbon Task Force proposed a restoration vision, but there are critiques from the grassroots. Yet through much of this arguing, there is a consensus that Southern California will want its water, and has the power to get it.

But! According to an attorney speaking at the conference, only surplus water is supposed to go south. Surplus meaning that which is left over after the Bay Delta has received enough to maintain its water quality (which has declined over the years) and those with primary water rights (Sac Valley farmers) have gotten their allotments. These basic principles have been routinely breached in order to ensure that water goes south. How? By declaring states of emergency. Indeed, according to Michael Fitzgeralds at RecordNet.com, the “state and feds wrote contracts promising 130 million acre feet” of water, when the average Delta flow is 29 million acre-feet, resulting in overdrafts of Bay-Delta supplies during the 90s as water agencies in the south cut in line to enforce their entitlements.

(Right about now, my mind is swinging back and forth like an oversized ping-pong ball.)

And then it spills over into social justice issues. Some enviros have really stuck a stinky foot in the mouth, conflating water consumption in the San Joaquin Valley with immigration and crime (HUH?), while at least one politically-connected Latino organization has taken the position that when we declare emergency drought conditions, flows are restricted (just the opposite of what we heard above). They argue this means unemployment, so we need secure water exports (i.e. infrastructure) in order to keep jobs for Latinos secure. In other words, peripheral canal = environmental justice.

Read more from the L.A. Creek Freak: Discourse and distraction. In other words, California water policy.

The crowd laughing at the system of laws wasn’t missed by the Pasadena SubRosa blog, which has a decidedly different view:

Maybe those in Northern California don’t understand that the water system in California is socialized. It isn’t Northern California’s water that pours into the Sacramento Delta from the Sierra snowpack.

Contrary to the current media zeitsgeist, it isn’t markets that are failing but socialized systems that are failing, whether in banking, finance, or water. But that isn’t what is being reported.

Read more from the Pasadena SubRosa blog: Crowd laughs at “We are a system of laws”

No doubt the peripheral canal continues to be a hot topic. You can find out more – a lot more – about Delta conveyance in the current issue of Western Water. Click here to find out how you can download your copy today from the Water Education Foundation.

March 26, 2009 · Filed Under Delta Issues

Comments

One Response to “Trust and the peripheral canal: Exploring why the crowd laughed at “We are a system of laws””

  1. WaterSource on March 27th, 2009 5:07 am

    As every Boy Scout learns … Be Prepared …

    Even for a major earthquake … CA did you hear that ?

    If not, maybe the actual sound of the earthquake will awaken you …

    Oh what a tangled web of water woes CA weaves,…

    CA certainly needs Drought Insurance and a Drought Water Bank.

    The banks (existing storage facilities) are already built and most are only half full !

    Why not store a million acre feet of real NON-TRIBUTARY fresh water EACH YEAR from a Source that is legally available, economically feasible and can be developed without damage to the environment or the water rights of anyone, anywhere !

    Yes California, such a FRESH WATER Source does in fact exist.

    It’s NON-TRIBUTARY aspect legally allows water developed from it complete flexibility in California’s multi-faceted complex distribution and delivery systems.

    The reason for the flexibility is because there will be NO HARM to existing water rights, entitlements, Court rulings or environmental flows !

    Development of the new fresh water Source and associated infrastructure will provide the greatest returns in achieving economic recovery, tremendous JOB GROWTH, greater efficiency and farm productivity in California.

    With cooperation & coordination of efforts, it is also possible to develop the Source so that no power will be required to move the water.

    The infrastructure can also be designed to deal with the quagga mussel problem .

    “The laughter of fools has always been the reward of any man who comes up with a new thought.”

    Will CA be able to hear the laughter over the roar of the earthquake ? … time will tell …

    Ray Walker (Retired Water Rights Analyst) waterrdw@yahoo.com

    It’s true…You can lead a mule to water in CA, but you can’t make it drink !

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