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Odds and ends: FOX, Westlands & the ‘shock doctrine’, stupid arguments against desal, Lloyd Carter on the farmworker’s march, Zetland on Sacramento’s pee, hydric deficit calculations, California’s engineering disasters & more!

Posted by: Maven on May 25, 2009 at 8:13 am

“Meet FOX’s victim of the month, Westlands Water District,” says the FireDogLake blog: One-fourth the size of Connecticut, owned by a few hundred wealthy families and trusts, in hock to us taxpayers for nearly half a billion dollars, and laden with farmers who get triple Federal subsidies (crop, water, electricity). Oh, and, nearly 300,000 acres, much of it public lands, poisoned, so severely with heavy metals that the land will be toxic for millennia. Fox is feeding us the Shock Doctrine, so says the blogger: Where’s the Shock Doctrine come in? Pretending market failure is actually a natural resources “emergency.” Taking up that intentional lie and using it to demand suspension of Federal law, California law, and a century of water rights senior to Westlands’. Creating the mechanism for a handful of very wealthy, very powerful people to take perpetual control over the commons, in the form of publicly owned water from state and Federal projects. Water that just happens to be the part of the commons that we all require, every day, to live. Read more from the Fire Dog Lake blog: Westlands: 300,000 Acres of Hot Water Perfect for a FOX Teabag

Stupid arguments against desalination, says blogger: The Learning Diary of an Israeli Water Engineer explores what the blogger feels are two of the stupidest arguments against desalination. The first one being the concern for corporate control of seawater, a common property of all humanity, and the second one being the ‘disminution’ of fish: This is a favorite “green” argument that I never understood. Say before the Poseidon plant there were two trillion small fishes we call the schmietzsch. Say the schmietzsch likes sea water with 30,000 mg salt/lt and the plant will increase salinity in a 100 meter radius. Some schmietzsch may have to emigrate. The overall number of schmietzsch may decrease to only one trillion and nine hundred billion, but a second species called “saltwater schmietzsch” that looks exactly like the schmietzsch will colonize the newly underpopulated waters. The overall biomass will not suffer or even increase. Diversity will increase. By what law of nature there is a need for a fixed number of schmietzsch to exist? Every living population fluctuates, there are no fixed numbers at all. And the schmietzsch may been a Central European immigrant that arrived in 1945. What are its rights? Why Poseidon has to build an artificial schmietzsch paradise? Read more here: The Stupidest Arguments Against Desalination

Lloyd Carter weighs in on the farmworker’s March for Water, pointing out that the United Farm Workers Union was noticeably not present, a fact not widely reported in the press. Lloyd writes: In my view, the coverage of the march by San Joaquin Valley media outlets was little more than cheerleading for the region’s biggest industry. Not one reporter asked whether or not Comedian Paul Rodriguez is being paid for any of his efforts, nor how much the march cost, or who actually is bankrolling the California Latino Water Coalition although it seems obvious it is the growers and not the poverty-stricken farmworkers. Read more from the Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood blog: “March for water” was not a farmworkers’ march.

Aguanomics chats via email with Claudia Goss of the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District: Claudia defends the SRCSD: First, ammonia from Sacramento’s discharge has not to date been found to be responsible for the decline in Delta fish species. (Unlike water exports which have actually been proven to have caused significant impacts.) You should be aware that SRCSD and its treatment plant meets all of its regulatory and water quality requirements at a high rate of compliance, including attainment of US EPA aquatic life criteria for ammonia in the Sacramento River. However, we have been the first to state that if scientific analysis finds that, under current conditions, SRCSD’s discharge is adversely impacting the Delta environment and that ammonia reduction is the best course of action, we will expect to pay our fair share and address the problem. Secondly, we believe prudent policy and fiscal management dictate the largest Delta impacts be tackled first – namely reduced flow effects and fish losses associated with SWP and CVP project operations – instead of expending significant resources to nibble around the edges of the problem. Otherwise many million more dollars will be spent on “solutions” that will not fix the problem. Zetland responds, saying in part, I would not hide behind the figleaf of compliance with EPA guidelines. It’s easy to obey the law and still do harm and I agree that there is more politics than science in these issues — mostly because politics is a winner-take-all game! Read the full text of the email and response from the Aguanomics blog: Sacramento’s Pee

Calling all math nerds! How to calculate hydric deficit: The Lost in the Landscape blog calculates hydric deficit for San Diego and for some of the other areas of California, and shows you how to calculate your own: how dry am i?

Some of California’s engineering disasters featured on Modern Marvels: Check out this online episode of Modern Marvels on engineering disasters, covering the Baldwin Hills reservoir break in Los Angeles, the Salton Sea, and the Aral Sea, among others. From VideoSift: Modern Marvels – Engineering Disasters

Entertaining video on groundwater, produced by King’s County in Washington:

Honorable mentions for interestingness: Hippies, Hollywood and the Flush Factor from the New York Times, How Many is Too Many from the California Greening blog, Like Clockwork, State Raises Water Deliveries to 40% After Propositions Defeated by the Pasadena SubRosa blog, off-topic but interesting – GOOD Picture Show: Traffic!

May 25, 2009 · Filed Under Aquafornia News & Exclusives

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