The law/lobbying firm that represents the Westlands Water District in Washington, D.C., for $20,000 a month, is also invested in Cadiz Inc., a firm which wants to mine groundwater in the Mojave Desert, according to a report from the Voice of San Diego website, which is a non-profit organization that undertakes investigative journalism.

     According to the article written by Will Carless, Christine Frahm is a shareholder in the Denver-based law firm of Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck. She is also a former chairwoman of the San Diego County Water Authority, which has authority to seek new water supplies for the county's water districts.  Frahm has been heavily involved in San Diego County water politics for years and currently serves both as an attorney and "consultant" for the Water Authority via a multi-million dollar contract with the Brownstein law firm.  I have blogged on the Brownstein/Westlands connection in the past.  You can read my prior articles by entering the keyword Brownstein in my home page search engine.

By Lloyd G. Carter

               On the day before the start of summer in June of 1980, Russian oceanographer/hydrologist/fisheries biologist and political exile Michael Rozengurt, along with American marine biologist Irwin Haydock, co-wrote then Gov. Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr.  a two-page letter warning that a proposed "Peripheral Canal" to funnel Northern California river water around the problem-plagued Delta, would result in the demise of the Delta ecosystem and its abundant fishery.

               Rozengurt, now 78 and living in Los Angeles,  was no stranger to gloomy predictions.  In his 1986 epic on western water "Cadillac Desert", the late author Marc Reisner described Rozengurt as "an expatriate Russian fisheries biologist, who compared California's situation to what the Russians had done to the Sea of Azov, a spectacular fishery turned into a biological desert by Stalin's directive to irrigate a limitless acreage of cotton." He had also watched the Soviet construction of a peripheral canal on the Volga River in 1974 which had caused "mind-boggling" damage to the river's fishery.

The dangers of discarded drugs getting into drinking water supplies have been under study for more than a decade and although it appears humans are not directly threatened, the same cannot be said for fish and other creatures living in waters tainted by pharmaceuticals.  The link below provides a very good explanation of the problem facing fish on drugs.  Thanks to my friend Mike Campagna for alerting me to this video.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYbRlJLBzn4&feature=youtu.be

FRIENDS OF THE RIVER

1418 20TH STREET, SUITE 100, SACRAMENTO, CA 95811

PHONE: 916/442-3155 ● FAX: 916/442-3396

June 4, 2013

Dear Federal Agencies, Officers, and Staff Members:

INTRODUCTION

By Patrick Porgans & Lloyd G. Carter

 READ MORE »

Some unanswered questions about Westlands Water District grower Mark Borba's racial slur against President Obama and the behind-the-scenes efforts to get Westlands more Northern California water

By Lloyd G. Carter

   READ MORE »

 READ MORE »

 Officials of the Maddy Institute said today (April 16, 2013) that prominent Westlands Water District grower Mark Borba resigned last Friday from the board of directors of the institute.   The Institute, named after the late Kenneth Maddy, who served 28 years in the state legislature, was established in 1999.  The mission of the Maddy Institute, according to its website (www.Maddyinstitute.org)  is to inspire citizen participation, elevate government performance, provide non-partisan analysis and assist in providing solutions for public policy issues important to the region, state and nation.

  Borba, who along with his brother, farms 8,600 acres in Westlands, was voted off the board of directors of Community Hospitals in early March but hospital officials would not explain the reason.  On March 9, the Fresno Bee ran a front page story about an expletive-filled email that Borba sent to Westlands general manager Tom Birmingham, complaining about severe cutbacks in water allocations for Westlands.  In that email, Borba derisively called President Obama "Blackie" and also argued that Sen. Dianne Feinstein should have marched into the White House and demanded more water for Westlands, which may receive only 25 percent of its allotment this year.  READ MORE »

 READ MORE »

  Dr. Jeffrey Michael says the Westlands Water District and Rep. Jim Costa are exagaretting the impacts of water cutbacks to the nation's largest federal water district.  Westlands may only receive 20 percent of its requested amount of water this year and claims it will be impacted worse than 2009, when Westlands supplies were held to just 10 percent.  Dr. Michael is director of the Business Forecasting Center at the University of Pacific in Stockton.  You can read his blog here: http://valleyecon.blogspot.com/

  Jim Costa, a Democrat, represents the Westlands area and wrote a letter to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation commissioner Michael Connor on March 3, claiming the cutbacks, due to dry year conditions and court ordered protections for Delta fish, including smelt and salmon, will cost his region's economy $2.2 billion.   Thomas Birmingham, general manager of Westlands, estimated economy losses of "more than $1 billion", in a March 22 press release,  more than a billion less than Costa's prediction.  Neither Costa or Birmingham revealed the source of their numbers or how they define "region."    READ MORE »