Civil Disobedience Now.

There are two issues that I have been writing about for several years. One is the situation with California Water and the California Delta. The other is Climate Change. Both have become politicized beyond all capacity to deal with them on a rational basis. I'm increasingly convinced that large scale, non-violent civil disobedience will be required to give our politicians the will to actually do what needs to be done. This will take two posts. This is the first, regarding the California Water Crisis. I assure you that these issues are linked.

The latest media alert from Restore the Delta called attention to Mike Fitzgerald's current column in the Stockton Record. I have always respected Fitzgerald, both for his knowledge of Central Valley Water issues and his willingness to tell the truth in print. This time, he takes on Sean Hannity and the manufactured myth that the water crisis is really about a "little minnow".

Where to begin? Hannity's show was set in a cotton farm outside Huron. The farm is fallow for lack of water. The Grapes of Wrath, Part II: The Joads of Huron.

Only those ignorant of the oceanic amounts of water needed to farm cotton are oblivious to the irony. If water's scarce, cotton shouldn't even be farmed.

"Turn the water back on!" Hannity intoned over and over, sounding like Moses crying "Let my people go!"

In fact, the water has been "turned on" since June 30. Last Sunday - to cite a typical day - the state and federal pumps exported 13,626 acre-feet of water from the Delta.

The pumps sucked hard enough to make Old River, Middle River and the San Joaquin River at Stockton flow backwards. (emphasis mine)

That is only a taste of what Fitzgerald dished out. You should read the whole thing.

For my take on this, click Read more.


I don't live in the Delta, or the Central Valley. But my local water district, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, sources much of it's water from there. They are not different from most of the state in that regard.

This issue has been so completely politicized that most Republicans think they can not get elected from that region unless they recite the mantra of "Food Grows Where Water Flows" and promise to build more dams. Unfortunately, the only people who might profit from thost dams are engineers and construction companies who would build them.. but I digress... that is really part of the Climate Change story.

This is an issue that is tailor made for Greens. However, except for a very few, it does not get the attention it deserves. There is a long list of issues that always seem to take precedence. All of them are important but, when the water fails, as it surely will, we will see how much it costs to import water from Colorado.. even if we call it Coors.

Those who are manipulating the public opinion have learned to play the populist game and even to make it into a racial issue. Comedian Paul Rodriquez appeared on Hannity's program with his line about representing the Latino Water Coalition. For the real story about this Coalition, its funding from big land owners and its irrigation district engineer leadership, you need to read the Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood by Lloyd G. Carter. Carter is a leading Green from Fresno and has a long history of writing about water for UPI and the Fresno Bee.

Despite the lack of tangible results from the March for Water, the Latino Water Coalition is now planning to take its show to Washington, D.C. to lobby members of Congress and the Obama Administration to suspend the Endangered Species Act and order more pumping from the beleaguered Delta Estuary. Meanwhile, the Delta ecosystem continues to collapse and the commercial and recreational salmon fishing season has been canceled for the second year in a row. No word on whether thousands of salmon industry families thrown out of work also plan to march on Washington, D.C. to demand that more water be kept in the Delta. Maybe the West Side growers can explain why their water needs are more important that the salmon fishing families.

Now, you know how Hannity picked this up.

We have the nexus of Green Leadership on this issue, but I sense no support other than good will. As mentioned, Lloyd G. Carter is a Green. Contra Costa Green Joseph Feller is trying to make is an organizing issue for the Delta Greens. Martin Zehr has helped. The Los Angeles Greens have taken some action, endorsing the sustainability principles of the California Water Impact Network. (Carter was previous on their board.) It is high time that we moved beyond endorsements and such.

This is a list of things that we, as Greens, need to be doing:

• It is time that we put energy into re-establishing the Green Party as an effective organization in San Joaquin County. It has been said that such organizing efforts are a waste of time and energy. But, if we don't make the effort, the big agribusiness interests and the big developers will control it. There is little difference between Republicans and Democrats on this. It is as if the entire Congressional or Legislative delegations spoke with Hannity's voice.
  
• It is time that we all start following the Lloyd G. Carter's blog, following his stories to the source and then laying out a Green solution.
  
• We need to put full support into all efforts for bio-regional ownership of all resource issues. In the Democratic Plans for a new Delta Commission to plan California's water, the only area that was left out of the proposed commission was the Delta itself. Like they should trust their future to everyone else. If nothing else, this should tell you that the back room deals have been done. This support needs to include the financial.
  
• We need to make a concerted effort to let all of our legislators know that voting for back room deals like Darrell Steinberg proposed is asking to be voted out of office. We know that even so-called progressive Democrats will sell out their constituents for a big donation.
  
• We need to start showing up at meetings, wearing our Green shirts.
  
• We need to actively locate and recruit Greens to run for Water District boards. There are some on the boards who might be small "g" green but we need full political presence there.
  

I ask all of you to sign up for Restore the Delta newsletters, either from their web site or through facebook. (I only see 30 fans there. Make it 300 or shower in salt water.)

Rain

Well, we finally had some in Northern / Central California. However, that is not the reason I bring it up. The current water wars are keeping Sacramento all astir, if not all of the media.

Blogger Wu Ming has posted an intriguing essay on rain and water at the progressive blog Calitics.

I am not an idealist here; we cannot go back to the status quo ante, not with everything that has been built, not with all the people who now depend upon that infrastructure's maintenance. But we can at least admit that our insecurity with regard to the weather - putting aside for a moment the even greater threat of human-created climate change and its consequences for our civilization and ecosystem - is in large part a dilemma of our own making. We froze the landscape, we diverted the rivers, we remade the very lay of the land in service of the settling of California; and yet imperfectly, as the erratic swing of flood and drought reminds us, humbles us, from time to time.

Go read the whole thing, it is a short time well spent. In fact, Stockton Record Columnist Mike Fitzgerald called it "Amazing: a fresh take on the water crisis".

LA City Greens have Dorothy Green of California Water Impact Network (Cal-WIN) as the speaker at their next meeting (10/17). Even if you are not from LA, if you are in the area, go.

Stockton Record on Bad Water.

Mike Fitzgerald, a featured columnist at the Stockton Record, was one journalist who attended the Restore the Delta session this past week. I have long appreciated Fitzgerald's commentary. At times it is the best thing in the Record. I even consider his characterization of Richard Pombo as "taker in chief" as being the last nail in Pombo's electoral coffin.

Fitzgerald's column today (09/32/07) is essentially a report on that session. Like Kamran Alavi's comments on the GP Cal Forum list, he was impressed by Winnemem Wintu speaker Mark Franco.

Franco's fresh take on the peripheral canal, on the dams proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and on water in general arises from a world view radically different from the European. But his spiritual view meshed with Nomellini's legal analysis.

"They look at water as a commodity to be bought and sold - water 'rights,' not water responsibility," Franco said of big Delta water users, "with no regard for the place that may be left dry."

Fitzgerald goes on to call attention to the great coverage by the San Diego Union-Tribune, What's Killing the Delta. That ends with a reminder from UC Davis Prof. Dr. Jeffrey Mount of what we are really doing, defining our future.

"This is not a static landscape," Mount says. "It is constantly evolving. The delta is going to be something different. And we’re in the process of deciding that."

I can not think of much that is as important to this state as getting things right on Water. It is our future life. It is our future economy. It determines how much we will pay for the food we eat and whether or not we have to get it from Chile or New Zealand.

For once, most of the main stream media seem to be getting it right. The Union-Tribune article and Fitzgerald's column linked above are right on. Mike Taugher told the unpleasant truth about our water bureaucracy in the story I linked yesterday. The LA Times Editorial on Coping with Drought was excellent. Why then, are the politicians all getting it wrong?

If there were ever a time for politicians who truly had a green ethic, that time is now. What we appear to have with Schwarzenegger and Nuñez is green-washed astroturf.