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| The San Joaquin River Gorge |
Depressed at first by Donald
Trump's victory, I woke up last Sunday morning and realized that,
largely due to local media, I have spent most of my life in Trump
land—a domain where facts don't matter, where history is
manipulated by the hands of power, where you're not expected to
believe much, if anything, you hear. I decided that if I can survive
forty-five years in the San Joaquin Valley, in proto-Trump land, then I'm
pretty sure that we can survive the next four years (as long as
Trump's staff manages to keep the President's busy fingers away from
the nuclear launch codes). Then, sipping my coffee, I read The Fresno Bee's editorial supporting a dam at Temperance Flat and an editorial
on the facing page about how farmer's are protecting endangered
species—when farming is in fact the reason for most of the habitat
destruction. (See Letter to the Editor below.) The bald-faced lies, fallacies of logic,
and absurdities seemed even worse than before. After Trump's victory, I concluded, the editorial staff of The Fresno Bee has slid headlong into fatuity.
In true Donald Trump form, The Bee
claims that “People have short memories” while neglecting to
mention that the public in the Central Valley has already given up an
underground sea of groundwater to agribusiness, which has severely
over-drafted the aquifers. The public in the Valley has given up most
of its river resources to agribusiness as well: Riverbeds in the Valley have
remained dry for decades even as water continues to course through
diversion canals. The public has given up its land, wiped out by dams
in numerous places on the San Joaquin River and well over a thousand
other places in California. Now The Fresno Bee is all in favor of the
public paying billions of dollars to allow the annihilation of a
magnificent public park and the diverting of water resources for
agribusiness in a twisted form of socialism for the wealthy—under
the guise of recharging the aquifers. The Bee, unlike just about
everyone else, refuses to acknowledge that the writing is on the wall
due to unregulated groundwater pumping—Another reservoir, which
will hold some of the most expensive water in the state, will not for long keep farmers from putting themselves out of business.
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| Trail into San Joaquin River Gorge, with Pounding Stone to the Left |
The Bee relies on pure hyperbolic
fallacy, claiming that a new dam at Temperance Flat would be a
“linchpin” within the system of waterworks. A new dam will, quite
simply, not hold the various elements of the Central Valley Project's
vast system together as farmers race to the bottom to mine the
groundwater still within reach. Unlike other states in the nation,
farmers have succeeded in pressuring California to avoid imposing
groundwater regulations, which has led to a new water war
that pits neighbor against neighbor and farms against urban areas as
the aquifers run dry. Unrestrained pumping of groundwater for
unsustainable crops, not drought, which has always been a chronic
condition in the Valley, is the main cause. As farmers race to suck
up the last groundwater, the assertion that one dam is going to provide
enough water to recharge nearly exhausted aquifers on the Valley's
east-side, let alone throughout the Valley, is a ludicrous fallacy.
Lisa M. Krieger writes in The
Mercury News about the proliferation of new wells, “The
rush to drill is driven not just by historically dry conditions, but
by a host of other factors that promote short-term consumption over
long-term survival — new, more moisture-demanding crops; improved
drilling technologies; and a surge of corporate investors seeking
profits for agricultural ventures....Now those forces are renewing an
age-old problem of environmental degradation: Decades ago,
overpumping sunk half of the entire San Joaquin Valley, in one area
as much as 28 feet. Today new areas are subsiding, some almost a foot
each year, damaging bridges and vital canals.”
Have dams ever solved for
long the chronic
problem of over-drafting groundwater? Even with all
of California's waterworks, groundwater makes up anywhere from forty to sixty
percent of fresh water consumed in California, according to The
Sacramento Bee. As The Fresno Bee mentions in its editorial, The
Central Valley Project was built in large part because farmers in the
early twentieth century were over-pumping groundwater at an alarming
rate, yet here we are again with the same old problem despite the
dams and water diversions. Despite fledgling groundwater regulations
that farmers could tie up in court for decades, no one can be certain
that farmers will stop over drafting our groundwater supply before
it's too late—even with a new dam.
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| Bush Lupine near Trail |
Effectively fighting off water
regulations for decades and pumping as if there is an unlimited
supply of liquid gold, farmers are in the process of creating ghost
towns on the east-side of the Valley. Pending regulations are currently vague and in a state of limbo. According to The Sacramento Bee, uncertainties abound about the new California
groundwater regulations, including who will fund and who will manage
the agencies; how the water use will be tracked and how the violators
will be punished; how much water will be drawn overall and how it
will be divvied up; and whether or not zoning ordinances should be
used to limit new wells and the types of crops that can be planted.
Whether or not the
regulations have any teeth is the essential
question. Over the years I have
witnessed how industries do a run around regulations by pressuring
legislators to under-fund agencies, by getting representatives who
are hostile to regulation appointed to water-down rules and
enforcement policies, and by limiting citizen representation on rule-making
boards. Often industry members step gingerly through a revolving door
into rule-making positions. In a place where agribusiness has
successfully avoided regulation for the greater part of a century,
where even the word regulation can inspire farmers to run for their
guns, establishing effective regulatory agencies will be a task that would cause even Hercules to tremble.
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| Lupine and Poppies by Trail |
Trump's choice of Scott Pruitt,
sworn enemy of environmentalists, to head the Environmental
Protection Agency makes the future of the regulations even more
uncertain. Considering the bitter water wars of the past and the
political effectiveness of the hydraulic brotherhood, as a person who has been politically active for several decades, I have little hope that
the regulations will be effective enough to keep the farmers from
exhausting our water resources or from putting themselves out of
business. The farmers can always sell their land; the public,
on the other hand, will be left with no water in the well.
The public has given up its river resources and its groundwater and its park lands, and has paid a fortune to assist agribusiness, yet the problem of over-drafting continues to rear its ugly head because of an unsustainable system. In the Valley, farmers have continued to plant permanent, unsustainable crops, including almonds, pistachios, and walnuts, and water-guzzling crops, such as cotton and rice, that have no business being grown in a desert. Farmers, like bankers on Wall Street, have created a disaster waiting to happen. With the Temperance Flat Dam proposal, they hope to benefit from the threat of disaster. The Fresno Bee, despite its public trust role, is all too happy to provide the PR for them. If a dam is built at Temperance Flat, unfortunately, the next great loss to the public will no doubt be the Kings River Special Management Area when farmers provide the next installment of disaster capitalism: Farmers have clamored to build a dam at Roger's Crossing for years. California and the federal government have yet to put the brakes on a system that is wildly out of control, and the public will continue to pay for it—with hard-earned cash and the loss of even more public resources.
The public has given up its river resources and its groundwater and its park lands, and has paid a fortune to assist agribusiness, yet the problem of over-drafting continues to rear its ugly head because of an unsustainable system. In the Valley, farmers have continued to plant permanent, unsustainable crops, including almonds, pistachios, and walnuts, and water-guzzling crops, such as cotton and rice, that have no business being grown in a desert. Farmers, like bankers on Wall Street, have created a disaster waiting to happen. With the Temperance Flat Dam proposal, they hope to benefit from the threat of disaster. The Fresno Bee, despite its public trust role, is all too happy to provide the PR for them. If a dam is built at Temperance Flat, unfortunately, the next great loss to the public will no doubt be the Kings River Special Management Area when farmers provide the next installment of disaster capitalism: Farmers have clamored to build a dam at Roger's Crossing for years. California and the federal government have yet to put the brakes on a system that is wildly out of control, and the public will continue to pay for it—with hard-earned cash and the loss of even more public resources.
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| Trail Below Bluffs: San Joaquin River Gorge |
Despite the minefield of water rights and policies in California, our legislators have neglected one simple fact: Water does not recognize property
boundaries. Neglecting this fact is quickly leading to a day of reckoning. At some point, no doubt, the only farmers who survive
the exhaustion of ground water resources will be the ones who can afford to
drill the deepest wells, but even they will reach a point where it is
no longer profitable to drill deeper. Quite simply, California's system of allowing one industry unrestrained access to groundwater
and its kooky policy of handing out five times more rights to water than our rivers produce even in a normal
year has led to the draining of water resources by one industry,
resulting in one loss after another for the public, the loss
of rivers and riparian ecosystems and public lands and precious
groundwater. The loss of The San Joaquin River Gorge Special
Recreation Management Area, which would be wiped out by a dam at
Temperance Flat, would be just another tragedy in a lengthy list of losses.
Unfortunately, there is not much left for the public to lose.
When it comes to who gets the
water from the new reservoir, even The Bee has acknowledged that much
of the water is spoken for. Despite all that the public has given up,
the people whose wells have run dry are probably not going to be
first on the list to receive water for recharging their aquifers. The
farmers are going to continue to receive the lion's share of the
water. Instead of addressing the public's needs, The Bee has decided
that the public should feel obliged to give up another arm and a leg
to perpetuate the unsustainable practices of a private industry, with the net effect
of destroying public lands and diverting the vast majority of river
water for irrigation even while farmers continue to suck up the
groundwater and pollute with toxic chemicals what should be treated
as a public resource. The public in the Central Valley is once again
the loser. The Bee, which should play a public trust role, is once
again twisting the truth for the wealthiest beneficiaries of
California's most precious resource.
Tony
Francois's statement (opinion Dec. 4) of the diversion of “water of
life” by federal water managers from endangered Valley wildlife
species for Delta smelt protection, is nothing but an emotional
fabrication of the truth.
Vernal
pools (filled only by annual rainfall) which host various species of
fairy shrimp, the California tiger salamander and unique compositions
of vernal pool wildflowers, and the associated grassy uplands
containing prime habitat for the San Joaquin kit fox are not
threatened by water diversions, but from the incessant conversion of
this unique foothill habitat for thousands of acres of new and
water-thirsty almond orchards.
The
California condor, which nests in remote rocky crags within forested
foothills, is not a water-dependent species, but receives its liquids
from dead carrion. It is also very doubtful that kayakers are
“regularly engaging in recreation” in arid kit fox habitat.
His
verbose bashing of federal water managers is just another verse from
a very overplayed song of unsubstantiated accusations.
(Thank you, Mr. Zahm!)
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