[Sustain] [gpus-ecoaction] Water Issues

[Mato Ska]

Wes,

I think that the EcoAction Committee IS the working group for all such activity. We might look to doing it in the state of California. San Francisco has the Sustainability Working Group. I am emailing this to them to focus on your concerns and implementing a state focus.

Mato






________________________________

Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:09:53 -0700
From: wrolley at charter.net
To: gpus-ecoaction at lists.riseup.net
Subject: [gpus-ecoaction] Water Issues


We definitely need to go further with work on Water.  We are lucky to have Mato Ska on the committee now, and also the Grand Riverkeeper himself, Earl Hatley.  Between the two, we should stay out of trouble.

Here is an update from California:

There are a multiplicity of things happening, and all at once. Let me list a few.

 1. a proposition for a bond to pay for water infrastructure failed to make the ballot.  Its provisions were:

Authorizes $11,690,000,000 in bonds paid from state’s General Fund, allocated approximately as follows: 30% to dams and other surface and groundwater storage for the state water system and the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta (“delta”) or its tributaries; 23% to statewide water supply reliability projects; 21% to delta sustainability and ecosystem improvements; 14% to groundwater protection and water quality projects; 11% to statewide conservation and pollution cleanup including ecosystem and urban watershed protection; and 2% to water recycling
It's failure was a good thing.  I don't like too much bonded indebtedness and 30% for dams is stupid.

However, there are 5 versions of this "proposition" in circulation for signatures (433,971 required) and all have the same odious requirement for more dams.

2.  The Public Policy Institute of California has released a new study that is very controversial.   However, it does do one thing and that is to downplay the need for new dams.  I have blogged at California Greening about the PPIC report and will not repeat it here.  One key issue is the fact that the Co-Owner of Bechtel Corp. was one of two funding sources for the study and their connection to building water systems and behaviors on contracts that could only be described as "black water".

As usual, politicians are behind the time, indebted to special interests and have a tendency to favor large scale multi-million dollar (billion dollar?) projects that can be named after them.  I could just see the Diane Feinstein Peripheral Canal if she delivers federal funding for such a project.   (BTW: Feinstein has been a part of every failed compromise on California Water projects in the last 20 years.)

3.  No one is addressing the relationship of agricultural practices and the ability to provide safe drinking water and meet the standards of the Clean Water Act.  For example, the West Side of the San Joaquin Valley leaches selenium from the soil when irrigation water flows through fields and collects in settling ponds.  These ponds have, on occasion, been labeled ecological disasters due to the poisoning of life from excess selenium.  (I have not begun to consider fertilizer runoff... the selenium is enough to say we need to put a stop to things.)

While Orange County, in a move strangely progressive for a hot bed of Libertarianism, has gone to the use of recycled water, allowing it to percolate down into the aquifers that are then pumped back up for human consumption.   More of this is needed.

There was a discussion of the PPIC report and the San Joaquin, Sacramento River Delta on KQED (public supported radio) from San Francisco today.   Two approaches that were ignored in the report were mentioned.  One demands bio-regional self-sufficiency.  The other was to limit growth to the level that can be supported on existing water use.  In some scenarios for global warming, the idea of maintaining current use rates may be an optimistic view of what we will get.

This is just California, or part of it.  Similar scenarios will play out all across the country.  Any recommendations that we make need to consider this fact... one size does not fit all.

So, what are the next steps?  We have Mato Ska's work.  Do we need to set up some sort of unique working group on water that will be able to take that and go a bit further?





--
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente

Wes Rolley
17211 Quail Court, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
http://www.refpub.com/ -- Tel: 408.778.3024