California Water Bureaucracy

I live in the living reality of "the bureaucracy reigns supreme". This impacts decisions on water, where projects are voted on every year and state employees and advocacy groups that are hired as contractors get out the vote to increase the bureaucracy. I live in a state where corrections unions increased the size and multitude of prisons for their members. I live in a state that can't balance its budget because of state employee pensions. I live in a state that uses massive diversions of water to allay political centres of power in Los Angeles and San Francisco. I live in a state where sustainability is defined by people living in San Francisco as the ability to get by with 85% of its supplies of water imported from Hetch-Hetchy. I live in a state where Owens Lake was drained for the benefit of Los Angeles water appetite. I live in a state where the city manager in Bell with a population of 37,000 received $787,637 a year. I live in a city that is planning to spend $4.6 billion dollars to "earthquake proof" its supply of water from the Sierras and spends $6.2 billion dollars on the Bay Bridge reconstruction. I live in a state where "San Diego imports 85-90 percent of its water" and then declares: "these conditions put considerable stress on the City's water system."


I live in a state where energy used for water pumping consumes about 8% of the total statewide electrical use.

I live in a state that never heard of regional water planning with transparency and open input such as the Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly had. I live in a state where administrators, such as those in Middle Rio Council Of Governments, reign supreme and legislators change the rules of governance every year through the referenda process. Little towns such as Antioch and Owens Valley have no say. The issue is not a liberal ideology. That is simply window dressing that stamps the character of public debates. The fundamental law of political physics in California is that those in power tend to stay in power, and those who are marginalized tend to stay marginalized.



We have seen this in the Middle Rio Grande already with the water plan and how it was drowned in its own tub.



Enough said.

Hearing on Prospect Island Fish Kill

According to a news release that I just received from Dan Bacher (Ed. The Fishsniffer) Assemblywoman Lois Wolk will hold a hearing on the Prospect Island Fish Kill this week. Here are the particulars. It is open to the public.

WHEN: Thursday, December 6, 2007. 9:30 AM

WHERE: Rio Vista City Council Chambers

One Main Street, Rio Vista, CA 94571

I have just sent the good Assemblywoman the following note. I would be very pleased if more of the readers here send her a similar message.

Assemblywoman Wolk,

I don't belong to your political party. I am a Green.
I don't live in your district, I live in John Laird's.

Still, I hope that you will pay attention to this note, because you are the one member of our State Legislature who appears to be doing the right things regarding the Delta.

I believe that your hearing on the Prospect Island fish kill is an opportunity to make the point that the bureaucracies of Department Fish and Game and the Bureau of Reclamation care more about budgets than they do about results, more about protecting their turf than about the environment.

This problem was so avoidable. Every environmental and fishing organization in the State of California would have contributed to a solution, as they are doing after the fact. All it would have taken is for one person to decide not to go business as usual.

Please do not let the rest of us down. We care about the Delta. We care about biodiversity. We do not care about self-protective bureaucracies..