A person who has
a weak argument often attacks the opposition about unrelated issues. Mike
Dunbar, editorial page editor and columnist for the Modesto Bee, does just that
in a recent editorial (printed with “Enviros say dams bad—until they need cold water” as the title in The Fresno Bee). First,
you’ve got to love his cute nickname for environmentalists, “Enviros,” which sounds
a lot like “whackos.” And you’ve got to admire a columnist who, right off the
bat, shows his bias, announcing that he has no intention of presenting a
reasonable, balanced argument. Even I at first thought I was being too
sensitive, but, sure enough, in the third paragraph he lambasts an
environmental group for collecting $133 million dollars in contributions in
2015.
Imagine that! An environmental group that
raises enough money to be effective! They must be doing something right. I have
more trouble imagining a local newspaper these days that makes enough money to
stay in business and consistently issue a quality daily newspaper. Certainly,
in the last few years, The Bee in my neck of the woods has started charging
twice the price for half the quality. Alas, if only The Bee could be as
business-savvy and competent as an environmental group. To Mr. Dunbar, that is
unthinkable. He suggests that a large number of people are merely being duped
by a group of slick con-artists. That’s why enviros cynically attack farmers—so
they can keep “vast rivers of cash” flowing into their coffers. (Apparently,
the masses just love it when enviros attack farmers.)
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| Pink Fairy Lanterns and Chinese Purple Houses |
I would love to
watch Mr. Dunbar go up against a powerful industry just to see how far he gets
without the help of these organizations. Oh, but then both he and Bill McEwan,
editorial page editor of The Fresno Bee, carry the buckets for big ag. (And gee,
it’s becoming pretty clear how to get a job as an editorial page editor in the
Central Valley….)
Mr. Dunbar’s main
argument is absurd on its face. He implies that enviros complain about dams
until they need cold water, which can be found only in deep pools behind dams, to
maintain salmon runs. Apparently, in Mr. Dunbar’s confused mind, dams have
created the cold water necessary for maintaining salmon populations. Need I remind
Mr. Dunbar that the salmon were doing just fine before the dams were built? Where
I live, dams completely wiped out a healthy salmon run, which will probably never
return. Dams and water diversions have essentially killed the San Joaquin River,
which runs dry northwest of Fresno most years. Yet Mr. Dunbar resents releasing
cold water from the reservoirs to enable conservationists to maintain salmon
runs in a few rivers. On the other hand, diverting eighty percent of the water for
agriculture and killing our rivers is just fine and dandy in Mr. Dunbar’s book.
If he has ever considered how dams have adversely affected other species or the
public, he doesn’t let on. And given the percentage of water used by farmers and his criticism of releasing water for salmon runs, Mr.
Dunbar’s concept of “shared use” is simply laughable.
Let’s consider some
facts. A Stanford study, according to Mr. Dunbar, “shows the South Valley lost
from 336,000 to 600,000 acre-feet of storage capacity during the drought” due to
farmers causing aquifers to collapse by over-pumping the groundwater. That’s
about ten times the new water that would be created by a dam at Temperance Flat
(60,000 thousand acre-feet) in a good year. In dry years, which are quite
common in the Valley, the dam would only create about 21,000 acre-feet of new water
annually. Mr. Dunbar also mentions that farmers pumped 10 million acre-feet of
water during the drought in the past five years. Based on his own facts, how
could Mr. Dunbar believe that current farming practices are sustainable? Another
dam cannot even begin to counteract farmers’ over-use of groundwater in the
Valley. Donald Trump may lie about most things, but he is right about one: “There
is no drought.” In the Valley, drought is the normal condition, yet farmers and
Mr. Dunbar want to live in a fantasy world where they can pretend that anything
can be grown in a desert (as long as more and more dams are built), even
almonds, walnuts, pistachios, cotton, rice, fodder crops, and on and on and on.
Mr. Dunbar has forgotten his history: The Central Valley Project (CVP) was
built in the mid-twentieth century in large part due to farmers severely over-drafting
the groundwater. Half a century later, the same problem is rearing its ugly
head, even with all the dams and the seven million acre-feet a year that the
CVP provides. How can Mr. Dunbar possibly consider this situation sustainable?
Mr. Dunbar stakes
his hopes on the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014, which requires
all groundwater basins to become sustainable by 2030. As he says, “If no
sustainability plan is submitted by 2022, the state will impose one.” This is a
state that, unlike most other states, has avoided imposing groundwater
regulations for over a century on farmers due to the concentrated power of the
hydraulic brotherhood. Most people who are paying attention know there are
numerous ways to weaken regulations and enforcement rules and undermine the
best laid plans of the public and the government. Call me cynical, but as Mr.
Dunbar states, “In the Valley, where farming is a way of life and dependency on
our rivers and aquifers is a given, planning is well under way”—no doubt to
undermine the sustainability plan. Anyone who believes that this plan will have
teeth is a fool—that is, if there is not a well-organized effort by concerned
citizens to bird-dog the process every step of the way. A large group of
retired volunteers would be ideal, in other words, people who don’t have to
worry about being blackballed by a powerful industry—because, as Mr. Dunbar may
or may not realize, that is what our democracy is like here in the Central
Valley. Perhaps Mr. Dunbar would volunteer to be our watchdog, or maybe Mr.
Dunbar would be so kind as to politely ask the enviros with rivers of cash to
devote countless hours to making sure the plan is effective.
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| Lupine, Poppies, Purple Vetch |
If corporate
agribusiness is sincere in adhering to reasonable regulations, then we don’t
have to worry, or do we? Right now, there are farmers who are planting almond
orchards in the foothills and causing the water-table to drop 10 to 20 feet,
which in Mr. Dunbar’s words is “clearly unsustainable,” a “slow-motion
catastrophe.” Mr. Dunbar refuses to admit that the same slow-motion catastrophe
in the entire Valley might not be slow enough to avoid disaster before 2030.
The Bee, in both
Fresno and Modesto, is incapable of presenting the truth about a dam at
Temperance Flat, almost as if some evil power has taken control of its word
processors and continually censors all the facts. Consider the following. The
state has over-allocated water rights on the San Joaquin River by 861 percent,
and the river itself is fully appropriated, meaning that no more water rights
are available. The river is already so over-used and abused that a dam will
create very little new water. This is a river, by the way, that continues to
maintain the honor of being one of the most endangered rivers in America. When is
the public going to put two and two together? The public will pay billions for
a dam that destroys public land mainly for the benefit of people in one
industry who maintain water rights—even though that same industry continues to
overdraft our subterranean lakes and kill our rivers and take land without
compensation that belongs to our children and grandchildren. Mr. Dunbar should
crunch the numbers: How much will each holder of water rights gain from a dam
at Temperance Flat? Whatever it is, the public will lose something beyond measure.
The public should be thankful that the NRDC and other environmental
organizations have enough cash and courage to stand up to the likes of Mr.
Dunbar and The Bee and agri-business, which is obviously still the most influential
industry in the state.
