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Thursday’s top of the scroll: Interior secretary, top aides to visit drought-stricken Fresno; plus coverage of the Food & Ag hearing yesterday

Posted by: Maven on June 25, 2009 at 8:47 am

From McClatchy Newspapers:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and his top staff will soon be feeling Fresno’s pain, in a high-profile town hall meeting now being organized for Sunday afternoon in the drought-stricken city.

Making his first official on-the-ground visit to the southern San Joaquin Valley, Salazar will be coming with Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor and several Valley lawmakers. They plan a 90-minute public session focused on the Valley’s profound water shortage. “They’re going out to listen to people on all sides of the issue,” Salazar’s spokeswoman, Kendra Barkoff, said Wednesday afternoon. “This is an issue the secretary has been working on for a while.”

Interior Department officials have not yet identified a location for the meeting, which is scheduled to run from 2:30-4 p.m. Officials also have not indicated whether Salazar plans additional announcements at the Fresno session, although Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, observed that “people don’t usually show up with nothing.”

Low precipitation and the diversion of irrigation water to protect salmon and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta have prompted Californians to request everything from federal funding and streamlined rules to new water project approvals. “He isn’t going to solve every California water problem on this trip,” Cardoza cautioned. “It’s a fact-finding trip.”

Read more from McClatchy Newspapers by clicking here.

The Fresno Bee’s coverage weaves the upcoming visits with the Food & Ag board hearing held yesterday:

On Wednesday, meanwhile, state agriculture officials said that a combination of drought and federal environmental regulations have the potential to turn a short-term water crisis into a long-term agricultural and economic disaster.

During a hearing Wednesday of the state Board of Food and Agriculture at Mendota High School, panelists raised many of the same issues as at rallies this spring: Less water for west-side growers means less acreage planted, creating a spike in unemployment and economic hardship for farm laborers and their communities.

“With this regulatory and geologic drought, we’ve seen really how agriculture touches every life,” state Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura said. “Especially in this region, so many lives are being affected beyond the farmers and farmworkers. … The communities impacted go well beyond the farm sector.”

Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.

Fresno’s CBS 47 also covered the hearing:

Just a week removed from Gov.Arnold Schwarzenegger’s visit to the Valley, where he vowed to take the water issue to President Obama, members of the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture met in Mendota to speak with city and county officials to discuss the impact of the drought on communities in the Central Valley.

The California State Board of Food and Agriculture convened a meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss the statewide drought. The meeting, held at the Mendota High School, provided a platform for officials to voice their struggles with water shortages.

Mendota Mayor Robert Mendota said that things will change as long as everyone bands together to build a strong case. “It’s very critical that everyone give their testimony to either private sectors, city sector, or to the farmworker’s sector to gather information for what the Gov. should be doing at the federal level.”

Read more from CBS Channel 47 by clicking here.

June 25, 2009 · Filed Under Drought, Weather & Snowpack

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