| While the state is drowning in debt, the General Fund is being drained by the government-created toxic drainage crisis in the San Joaquin Valley. Please read this outstanding article by Patrick Porgan of Planetary Solutionaries, one in a series entitled "Doubts about the Drought."
General Fund Being Drained by Budget Crisis and Government-Induced Drainage Crisis
by Patrick Porgan, Planetary Solutionaries
While Californians are being held captive waiting for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to adopt a budget, already more than 80 days late, costing "We the People" $52 million a day; more than $4 billion to date, they are also throwing $100s of millions down the drain and compounding California's government-induced water crisis.
Within the past decade California has been besieged by a water supply crisis, a budget crisis, a credit-rating crisis, a jobs crisis, an education crisis, a health care crises and a water quality crisis. The water quality crisis was identified as a potential crisis in the 1950s, and has contributed to the pollution of a significant length of the 330 mile San Joaquin River. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 215.4 miles of the river are on the 303(d) list, (the latest EPA approved list is from 2006), adding to demise of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The primary sources of the water quality crisis is from toxic salt discharge from lands irrigated by subsidized water delivered by the federal Central Valley Project to contractors "farming" on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Millions of acre-feet of water are exported from the project's Delta pumping plants which transport salt to and from those lands. All of this is being done as the government declares its intent to "save the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary" while sanctioning its demise. Common sense dictates that it is not possible to continue sanctioning the dumping of hundreds of tons of toxic salts into the San Joaquin River and the Bay-Delta Estuary annually and expect it to survive.
Toxic salt loading is not only taking its toll on the river and Bay-Delta Estuary, it is draining the State General Fund, as a myriad of publicly funded programs for drainage, water quality improvement, fisheries restoration and others continue to be financed with borrowed money from the deficit-ridden General Fund.
Water officials have wasted more than $10 billion and 35 years in extended delays in their failed attempt to carry out their legal mandates to protect the waters of the state and restore the Bay-Delta Estuary. In addition, the Bay-Delta Estuary was touted as the "ground-zero poster child" pitched by water officials in support of the so-called historical 2009 "Water Package" - $11 billion bond act, approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor. Even the mainstream media acknowledged this "package" as a "backroom-pork-barrel deal". The "package" is once again being sold to "improve" the Estuary. The bond measure has been rescheduled for the 2012 ballot.
The fact remains that for decades the "responsible" government officials and political appointees on both the State Water Resources Control Board and the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (boards) have been sanctioning the discharge of trainloads of toxic substances into the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay Estuary. The discharges have been reported to exceed the state's toxic threshold limits. The question as to whether this train wreck in the making will be allowed to continue dumping and pumping in excess of 3.4 million pounds of toxic salts per day into the waters of the state will be the subject of a meeting scheduled before the State Board on 5 Oct. 2010.
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/...
A significant portion of the San Joaquin River has been declared to be water quality impaired-polluted (unfit to swim in, eat certain species of fish and so forth). On a map published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 1999, entitled, Index of Watershed Indicators, it shows that the valley is the single largest "more serious water quality problem - high vulnerability" area in the nation. This dubious
distinction is the direct result of the boards' failure to take action to stop the discharge of these toxic substances into the waters of the state, which exceed both state and federal water quality standards.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency - Index of Watershed Indicators |
