Mayor Ted Brandvold wants more money to hire police officers and most agree our police force is understaffed. Nonetheless, many concerned citizens fear Brandvold will divert funds and continue to neglect Modesto’s urban forest, once a symbol of pride that has now become a financial liability. With her typical keen insight and concern for the city, Babette Wagner wonders whether the spread of destructive mistletoe will add even more costs […]
Environment
Draining the Last Great Aquifer: a Group Project
Environmentalists who had high hopes Gavin Newsom would lead the way to sustainable water use in the San Joaquin Valley are waking up to the knowledge that the new governor isn’t going to be any more effective than the old governor. Sustainability is just too big a lift. Even before Newsom took office, the terms of the water debate were morphing from “sustainability” to “voluntary agreements.” Not long after, sustainability […]
PG&E: A Casualty of Global Warming?
Amid the power outages and horrific fires caused by downed transmission lines, a growing chorus of politicians is suggesting restructuring Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Although the company operates efficiently with a large economy of scale, San Francisco and other urban areas are looking into breaking off pieces of territory to establish locally owned power companies. Is this a good idea? Climate Change Before 2000, California had longer and wetter […]
Trinitas Partners Hires OID Water Attorney: Conflict?
In a move very likely to revive local controversies and bitter memories, Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) water attorney Tim O’Laughlin has been hired by Trinitas Partners to manage its huge Hawaiian farming operation in Maui, where it’s known as “Mahi Pono.” Now an entity with too many names and subsidiaries to list, Trinitas/Mahi Pono recently purchased 56,000 acres in Maui for $267 million from sugar cane growers Alexander & Baldwin. […]
Water Myths of the San Joaquin Valley
Among the more persistent myths about water in the San Joaquin Valley, none is more durable than the canard that water shortages and land subsidence have been caused by, “an innumerable myriad of Endangered Species Act-related laws, mandates, opinions, rulings and settlements.” This latest addition to the catalogue of misinformation comes from Kristi Diener, in an OP/ED for the Modesto and Fresno Bee newspapers. Diener, like everyone else who attempts […]
On the Public Record is just too Good
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how little most of us really know about water in the San Joaquin Valley. And even when we do know just a little, it’s even easier for what little we know to be submerged in the flood of mis- and disinformation that fills most of our media most of the time. For those reasons and more, insiders who follow western water news closely rely on […]
A New Tyranny of the Minority Threatens Wildlife and Nature
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind. […]
Trinitas Partners Brings its Water Hammer to Maui
Like any journalist in these days of escalating water prices amid growing scarcity, Deborah Rybak maintains a keen interest in agriculture. So late last December, when she learned 56,000 acres of farmland had changed hands on the island of Maui, her reporter’s radar went on full alert. Rybak writes for Maui Time, the island’s leading news journal. The selling price alone—$262 million—was enough to pique her interest. Anyone with that […]
State Water Board Rips the Irrigation District
So far, it’s been a rough year for the Oakdale Irrigation District (OID), and it’s not even half over. First, OID lost again in its case against the Oakdale Groundwater Association (OGA) when the Fresno Appellate Court denied its appeal and awarded OGA court costs and attorneys’ fees. That decision cost OID upwards of $330,000, in addition to the money it shelled out to its own attorneys. Next, OID lost […]
Water and the River: Upping the Ante
Those who attended last Tuesday’s afternoon session of the Federal Energy Regulation Comission (FERC) at Modesto’s Doubletree Hotel listened to people who use and love the Tuolumne River explain why their needs should be represented in decisions about relicensing Don Pedro Dam’s hydroelectric project, which is powered by the Tuolumne River. The chief issue for everyone was the state’s proposal to increase flows along all the major rivers of the […]