Internet giant Amazon is proposing package delivery using drones. As envisioned, the drones would fly day and night. Unfortunately, the more drones are used, the more evident the hazards. In the Valley, he potential for life-threatening accidents is greater than in many other parts of the country. Stanislaus County is a typical Valley county. It has several small airports, including ones in Modesto, Oakdale, Turlock, and Crows Landing. There are […]
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Water, History, and the Environment: Part II
History? Not around here… “Like most environmentalists, they want it all,” said Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) General Manager Steve Knell recently when discussing water rights along the Stanislaus River. Though absurd on the face of it, Knell’s claim represents a widespread belief throughout the San Joaquin Valley, where environmental illiteracy and historical amnesia have enabled private appropriation of public resources since the days of the gold rush. The simple fact […]
Still Passing the Buck on Water
For decades now, water woes in the San Joaquin Valley have been blamed on the state and federal government and especially on the “enviros,” those effete coastal dwellers who prefer fish to people. So it was that at last Tuesday’s Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) Board of Director’s meeting when rice farmer Robert Frobose brought up OID’s broken promises about possible impacts from annexing Trinitas Partners, General Manager Steve Knell was […]
Did Trinitas Buy the Irrigation District?
After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Robert Frobose’s great-grandfather rebuilt his grocery store, then sold it and moved to Oakdale, where he began farming. “I was born into the Oakdale Irrigation District (OID),” said Frobose recently. “We still have one of my great grandfather’s ranches.” A rice farmer, Frobose is keenly aware of his crop’s water needs. When he learned this year’s allocation of water for senior OID members would […]
Expect Increases in Modesto Water Rates
Between 1999 and 2003, the public works department repeatedly told the Modesto City Council that the city needn’t worry about water supplies for many years. In fact, water managers worried that if we didn’t use more surface water, we could lose water rights by state edict. Yet, Modesto citizens have been on water rationing since the late 1980’s, with restrictions on landscape watering. Earlier this year, the State of California […]
Hot Night at Knights Ferry Water Meeting
Thursday, June 25, over two hundred people met at the Community Club in Knights Ferry. Sponsored by the Stanislaus Ground Water Alliance Committee, the purpose of the meeting was to provide a forum for large farming operators, the Oakdale Irrigation District (OID), and elected leaders to respond to questions from local residents about problems caused by thousands of acres of new orchards and the ongoing drought. The overflow crowd packed […]
Why Water Needs CEQA
The pipes extend in all directions from their exoskeleton pumping arrays, each one entering the ground like the alien proboscis of an off-world insect. Some of the arrays have as many as seven or eight 300 horsepower pumps, each one capable of lifting thousands of gallons of water a minute. These powerful pumping systems are the signature apparatus of the industrial almond orchard, a favored investment of speculators looking for, […]
How Trinitas Rolled the Irrigation District
According to General Manager Steve Knell, the Oakdale Irrigation District’s (OID) Board of Directors was preoccupied with the district’s precarious financial position as far back as 2011. And that may be why the Board failed to address its state-mandated requirement to apportion district boundaries based on population. “The board, faced with financial challenges, may have elected not to spend money hiring a consultant to help reapportion, a priority that ‘probably […]
The Water Sale Mirage
Among the most sacred shibboleths of the water world’s power elite, none is more revered than the one that proclaims, “Water sales are wise and beneficial.” Of course, no member in good standing of water’s movers and shakers would ever refer to “water sales,” a vulgar and much too accurate description. The proper terminology is “water transfers.” As is often the case with euphemisms, the purpose is to conceal an […]
The Irrigation District’s Water Math
Thursday, May 14, Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) General Manager Steve Knell told a group of local farmers he was more worried about OID’s financial situation than he was about the drought. Knell said OID lost $7 million last year and would lose $10 million this year. “Those losses will be made up with water sales,” he added. Knell is a staunch advocate of water sales, euphemistically known as “water transfers.” […]