The Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood
Lloyd G. Carter, former UPI and Fresno Bee reporter, has been writing about California water issues for more than 35 years. He is President of the California Save Our Streams Council. He is also a board member of the Underground Gardens Conservancy and host of a monthly radio show on KFCF, 88.1 FM in Fresno. This is his personal blog site and contains archives of his news career as well as current articles, radio commentaries, and random thoughts.

Groups write U.S. BOR to request full EIR of renewed water delivery contracts

The Sierra Club, Friends of the River and the Planning and Conservation League have written the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to request a full environmental impact report on a Bureau proposal to renew water delivery contracts for high selenium lands in the Western San Joaquin Valley.  To read more, click HERE

UOP Professor Jeffrey Michael's Analysis of PPIC's New Water Myths Review

I highly recommend all visitors to this website go to the link below to read University of the Pacific Professor Jeffrey Michael's analysis of the Public Policy Institute of California's new water myths review and how it conflicts with an earlier PPIC report.  Very enlightening.  To learn more, click on link below:
 
http://valleyecon.blogspot.com/2010/01/ppic-california-water-myths-review-part.html

Plastic Water bottles: Our 21st Century Problem

Here is a video worth seein which I first spotted on a website called Water Wired. Something each individual American can act on.  READ MORE »

Why the salmon weren't saved half a century ago.

Why the salmon weren't saved half a century ago.  From a newspaper article written 21 years ago.  To learn more click here.

60 Minutes Water Piece Comments

Dear Website visitors,
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How about enforcing current water laws?

Seventeen years ago, Patrick Porgans and I co-authored an article that ran at length in the Forum section of the Sacramento Bee. We argued then that new and proposed state and federal water marketing changes would enrich some people "by turning [publicly-owned] water into a freely transferable commodity."
Sadly, as proven by a recent below-the-rader $73 million water transfer from a small irrigation district in the western San Joaquin Valley to an urban district in the Mojave Desert, time has proven us right. Profiteering by buying cheap water from the public and selling it to the highest bidder is now making small groups of people enormously rich, to the detriment of farming, the Delta, and the state treasury.
Patrick and I remain deeply concerned about an equally serious problem: the inability or unwillingness of the State Water Resources Control Board to catch and punish water rustlers, including the two most powerful water agencies in California: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR).
As the present time both the DWR and USBR are under a Cease and Desist Order issued by the state water board in 2006 for violating the terms and conditions of water quality standards in the south Delta.
Three years later, the State Water Board has still not imposed sanctions for the water quality violations by the two big water agencies.. A hearing on the aging Cease and Desist Order is scheduled for January 5. In addition, a tentative State Water Board meeting is scheduled for mid-February for a proposed North Coast Instream Flow Policy" (AB 2121) that was supposed to be adopted in January 2007, almost three years ago. Water theft, it seems, is rampant in California and the chances of the hundreds if not thousands of water thieves getting caught or punished are small.
Do not expect the Water Board to start doing its job. Do not expect the Legislature to adequately fund the Water Board so it can actually do its job. Do not expect any Governor to begin addressing this ongoing problem.
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Cotton Rotten?

     That "all-natural" cotton T-shirt in your closet? The one with the eco-friendly message brightly printed on the front? Ounce for ounce, it could be the most environmentally toxic item of clothing you own. From the water and agrichemicals lavished on cotton grown in some of the world's driest regions (approximately one-third of the pesticide and fertilizer produced worldwide gets sprayed or dusted on cotton), through multihued rivers of waste streaming from textile mills to landfills bulging with castoff clothing, the life cycle of the humble cotton tee has left ecological wreckage in its wake.

  To learn more, click HERE:

 

http://www.miller-mccune.com/science_environment/can-china-turn-cotton-green-1638.print

NASA Satellites Can See California's Wealth Transfer All The Way From Space

From the Website lastdaywatchers.com

NASA Satellites Can See California’s Wealth Transfer All The Way From Space

Posted by Esther On December - 19 - 2009

NASA Satellites Can See California’s Wealth Transfer All The Way From Space

 

 

The problem with the water debate, to the extent there is one, is the way it’s spun. Long dominated by eco-warrior do-gooders, the fight for water has been framed as boringly and abstractly as possible. How is the “environment” supposed to register in our primitive brains when 1 out of 5 Americans still think the sun revolves around the earth? In fact, it’s pretty simple what the big struggle for water is all about: the rich fleecing the rest of the country. Fact is, they’ve been treating our water wealth like one giant personal trust fund. And it seems they’ve been hitting up the ATM so often that even NASA’s satellites can see the withdrawals all the way from space:

New space observations reveal that since October 2003, the aquifers for California’s primary agricultural region — the Central Valley — and its major mountain water source — the Sierra Nevadas — have lost nearly enough water combined to fill Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir.

. . .  READ MORE »

Gaming the system, seventeen years later

Seventeen years ago Patrick Porgans and I wrote an op-ed for the Sacramento Bee warning that publicly-owned water would be privatized to the benefit of a few individuals who could "game" the system.  That op-ed written long ago at the end of a drought is truer today than when it was written.

 

Harris Ranch wants to control Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo University with money.

It appears that if Cal Poly-San Luis University  wants to continue to get contributions from the Harris Ranch folks all future controversial speakers at the University's Ag department will not be able to speak by themselves.  They will have to appear in a group forum type arrangement, presumably with a Harris Ranch official in opposition. Consider the threatening letter below regarding an appearance by famed writer Michael Pollan:

 

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