Obama's Katrina

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Obama's Katrina

8/10/2009

by Scott Ruppert

There's a major socio-economic catastrophe happening in America that if left unchanged will make the effects of Katrina on the gulf coast look trivial. Unfortunately, this problem is man-made and at its core, is a story of do-gooders versus good people.

Imagine a city where unemployment and poverty reach such levels as to witness lines over a mile long to get meals from community soup kitchens. No imagination needed as it's happening right now in the US and not just in one city but throughout a large region of one of our most resourced states; California. Years of drought, increasingly strict water usage regulations, and the actions of Federal Courts has produced just such a scenario in the Golden State. Known for its agricultural base, it presents an incredible irony in that the people standing in line at these soup kitchens are the same ones that in recent years grew and harvested over 12% of the nation’s food and represented our country's most prolific milk producers. But that was before the government and the extreme environmentalists shut their irrigation water off...

Let’s set the stage for our story. The Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, seasonal home of the Delta Smelt, is the main water thoroughfare for 25 million Californians providing drinking water to 2/3 of the states’ population. It is in this delta that the Delta Smelt makes it home. Resembling a sardine, it isn’t edible, has a life span shorter than a NASCAR calendar and comes from a family tree of smelt cousins a mile long.

The Delta is also home to two large pumping stations at Baker and Tracy that move water out of the Delta for irrigation and drinking water for the benefit of users to the south. A current three year drought coupled with harsh regulations and an ever increasing state population has complicated the overall logistical problems associated with water quantity and allocation for the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The Delta also supplies the San Joaquin, Kings, and Kern Rivers with irrigation water for the arid Central Valley, a world renowned fertile region long considered a national treasure. The agriculture industry annually accounts for $36 billion in revenue and an additional $100 billion in related economic activity for the state, making it California’s largest industry. The predominately agricultural San Joaquin Valley (southern portion of the Great Central Valley) is home to 4+ million people where unemployment has reached 40+% in some regions in recent years, a large portion of which are Hispanic farm workers. It represents 23 of the 29 poorest counties in the state with per capita incomes in those areas less than $7,600 annually...

While California’s crisis did not begin on the watch of the current administration, this devastation can be solved with some immediate attention of our current leaders. President Obama's Hurricane Katrina is picking up speed, as the valley's farming communities play the role of New Orleans and the impoverished farming communities replace NOLA's displaced African-American population. Unfortunately so far, those living this nightmare are the only ones able to connect those dots.

http://www.agweb.com/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?s...7e-929e7e7b96ec

[Sofiyya 1,687]

I wonder if any of those ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC kool-aid drinkers know much about this real threat at all? Fox is all over it.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

A Water Grab Masquerading As Conservation Plan

by Dan Bacher

California Senators and Assemblymembers are now pushing a deceptive water bill package through the Legislature that will enable Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger' to build his peripheral canal, an environmentally destructive and obscenely expensive project that will approximate the Panana Canal in length and width.

SB 12, a bill sponsored by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), will set up a Delta Stewardship Council consisting of seven members - four appointed by the Governor and one each by the Senate and the Assembly, with the seventh being the chairperson of the Delta Protection Commission, according to Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of Restore the Delta. How can Simitian allow Schwarzenegger, the worst-ever Governor for fish and the environment in California history, to appoint four out of seven seats of this council when the Governor wants to build the canal as a monument to his gigantic ego?

This is the same Governor that has presided over the collapse of Sacramento River salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, striped bass, Sacramento splittail and other species. This is the same Governor that has relentlessly fought the court-ordered federal government biological opinion to prevent Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and the southern resident population of killer whales from going extinct.

This is the same Governor that has fast-tracked a corrupt, elitist and racist Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process that kicks Native Americans, fishermen and seaweed harvesters off their traditional harvesting areas off Stewarts Point and Point Arena while doing absolutely nothing to stop water pollution and the threats posed by offshore oil drilling and wave energy projects. This is the same Governor who continually engages in meaningless "green energy" corporate greenwashing photo opportunities while doing his best to destroy the California Delta and the people that depend on a healthy Delta to survive...

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/10/18615178.php

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Water Wars Threaten California Delta

By Dan O'Sullivan

Bassmaster.com

As a fishery, the California Delta has been host to some significant moments in bass fishing history — the invention of flippin' by Dee Thomas, Robert Lee's four BASS victories, Mark Tyler's 14-pound, 9-ounce largemouth in 1999 that still stands as the biggest ever caught in BASS competition.

What has been historically a place for hard fought battles amongst anglers is becoming the site for an escalated series of battles in California's ongoing water wars. The California state government, along with the state's corporate agricultural businesses, has set out to change the flow of the state's most important waterway and freshwater fishery.

The California Delta is a complex maze of man-made levees holding the majority of California's most valuable commodity — water. While largely known for its connection to the San Francisco Bay, the Delta eventually receives water that is released from Shasta Dam, which receives water from the Sacramento River, the McCloud River and the Pit River; from Oroville Dam, which holds back the north, middle and south forks of the Feather River; from Folsom Dam, that contains both forks of the American River.

Along with northern California's three largest watershed storage reservoirs, the heart of the Delta is the San Joaquin River which counts the Mokelumne, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced and Calaveras rivers among its tributaries. In short, the vast majority of fresh water from northern California and the eastern Sierra Mountains finds its way to the California Delta.

The Delta receives fresh water from the Sacramento River on its west and the San Joaquin from the east. The majority of the water from the Sacramento flushes past the Delta to the San Francisco Bay, while the San Joaquin flows directly to the City of Tracy.

Tracy, and its Clifton Court Forebay, at the bottom of the Delta, is home to two pumps — one state and one federal, that remove fresh water from the Delta system for transport to southern California and the Central Valley, for drinking water as well as agricultural irrigation.

Due to court rulings on the endangered status of the Delta Smelt, a native to the waterway and a forage fish that makes up one of lower foundations of the Delta food chain, those pumps have been kept quiet for some time. They feed the California Aqueduct, the main water supply to Southern California and the Central Valley.

The State of California, with its Bay Delta Conservation Plan, or BDCP, a series of projects for which planning began in 2008, is attempting to re-route much of the water supply of the Delta. Among the parts of the plan is a "New Conveyance," a new 500-foot wide canal that will remove fresh water from the Sacramento River above the Delta and shuttle it around the heart of the Delta to Tracy. This is a resurrected version of the Peripheral Canal rejected by voters in 1982.

Opponents of this new canal say the amount of fresh water being removed from the Sacramento River will result in much of the Delta being turned into a shallow, saltwater marsh.

####### Poole, the owner of Pro Troll Lures, and a member of the American Sportfishing Association's Board of Directors, said that the outcome of the change would be catastrophic. "Removing that much fresh water from the Sacramento River would result in the extinction of the Central Valley salmon and steelhead runs," Poole said. "Two are already in danger, but this project would destroy it."

Along with the new canal, a series of tide control gates will be established, two permanently in the western Delta and two in the central Delta as long term temporary solutions, to allow fresh water flow into the system on high tide to be contained as the tide begins to turn for the outflow.

In an effort to restore native fish species, part of the plan is the eradication of (presumably by poisoning the waterway) "non-native predatory species" that proponents of the BDCP say threaten indigenous Delta Smelt, Longfin Smelt and salmonid populations (Conservation Strategy, page 171 OSCM24). While not stated, this part of the BDCP specifically targets striped bass, largemouth bass and every other non-native predatory species in the waterway.

Longtime Delta guide and regional professional angler Bobby Barrack of Oakley, Calif., said that the proposed legislation is more than crippling. "The moment they put in the first piece of the peripheral canal or begin 'eradicating' non-native species is a nail in the coffin for all of the businesses surrounding the Delta," Barrack said. "I guide on this waterway as a livelihood, and this will kill my business as well as every marina and hotel in the area that have built their lives around the Delta."

As disturbing as the eradication of large quantities of gamefish is, even more alarming is the fact that the State of California has been working behind closed doors to develop the actions set forth in the BDCP. Committees are being formed, plans being made and sites are currently being tested for location of tide control gates and pumps that will feed the "New Conveyance."

All of the execution of the BDCP appears to be falling under the newly restored California Water Commission, (Senate Bill 229) a seven member committee with four of its members appointed by the Governor, with increased authority over the Delta.

"The state government has stated that the BDCP has been created to protect the Delta, but it doesn't appear to have any provision for the fishery, and they are trying to do this without input from the populace" Poole opined. "Governor Schwarzenegger and the majority of the state government appear to have very distinct leanings toward water movement, which makes them no help to our cause. Our only hope is that the federal government will intervene."

Many organizations are opposed to the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, including the California Striped Bass Association (www.striper-csba.com), California Delta Chamber and Visitors Bureau (www.californiadelta.org), California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (www.calsport.org), Restore the Delta (www.restorethedelta.org), Water 4 Fish (www.water4fish.org), several of the Delta water districts and the cities and five counties that comprise the Delta.

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/bassmas...fDelta_20090811

[Ban Hammer 14,578]

can we then say obama hates black people?

[luckytxn 2,265]

It sees most want water but a few want fish instead.

[DIARD 1]

Im familar with the water problems and the delta smelt. From what I remember concessions were made for the fish but they weren't accepted. I think regardless of what some people believe in regards to fish, destroying any species entirely is a slippery slope. On the other hand, we have to balance this with the needs of people in the area. I believe that they really tried to work out a solution for both the fish and the farmers. It should have been tried by the feds instead of stopped out of hand like that.

Now saying this, this was all started and done under Arnie (a Republican) and the former Bush administration. How exactly is this like Katrina for the President? Did Obama say "Arnie, your doing a heck of job" with a slap on his back and a frat boy grin while people were dying????

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Im familar with the water problems and the delta smelt. From what I remember concessions were made for the fish but they weren't accepted. I think regardless of what some people believe in regards to fish, destroying any species entirely is a slippery slope. On the other hand, we have to balance this with the needs of people in the area. I believe that they really tried to work out a solution for both the fish and the farmers. It should have been tried by the feds instead of stopped out of hand like that.

Now saying this, this was all started and done under Arnie (a Republican) and the former Bush administration. How exactly is this like Katrina for the President? Did Obama say "Arnie, your doing a heck of job" with a slap on his back and a frat boy grin while people were dying????

Perhaps the author of the first article is drawing the same analogy about Katrina. People only look to who is in office, when disaster struck, not the long line of circumstances that created the situation over time. For California, it's a complicated issue, and short of expelling half the population, there are no good solutions on the table.

While California’s crisis did not begin on the watch of the current administration, this devastation can be solved with some immediate attention of our current leaders. President Obama's Hurricane Katrina is picking up speed, as the valley's farming communities play the role of New Orleans