Posted on 04/29/2013 10:02:17 AM PDT by MeganC
When Daniel Wilson learned earlier this year that the state of California wants to bulldoze his family's pear orchard to build a giant Sacramento River water diversion, he and his brother were making a major new investment in the crop.
Located near the town of Hood, in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the orchard has grown Bartlett pears for 50 years as the foundation of the family farm.
But Bartletts are not as marketable as they once were. So the brothers were grafting thousands of trees to grow new pear varieties – Bosc and River Maid Red – to ensure viable crops for 50 more years.
The transition costs about $10,000 per acre and takes years to yield a crop. Should they continue if the state intends to condemn the land for its $14 billion plumbing project?
"Literally the question from my brother was, 'Well, do I stop grafting?' " Daniel Wilson said. "And I said, 'No, we can't stop living.' But it's not going to go well. This orchard right here is ground zero for intake No. 2."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
This sounds like the peripheral canal that was proposed many years ago and was shot down.
To paraphrase Mark Twain: “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting.”
Exactly. That’s why the Democrats and Jerry Brown don’t want this to go to a vote even though it’s going to cost the taxpayers over $100 billion just for the first phase - being the tunnels and the diversion projects. The second phase will be another $100 billion project to create another ‘conveyance’ to transport the increased capacity to Southern California that the existing two canals are unable to carry.
I am so glad I do not live in California anymore. I really feel bad for those farmers in the Delta. As long as the Democrats have a super-majority in California, we will see more stories like this.
More BS projects to enrich Richard Blum, the Chandler family, and CALPERS.
Oops.
The problem for Politics is that you cannot steal millions without shifting billions. So suddenly California the bankruptcy King of States just has to have high speed trains and major construction projects.
Nothing left to steal. And with the fall of the dollar, you gotta steal so much more just to have a swiming pool in your old age.
All the farmers need to do to stop the project in its tracks is to report the sighting of some kind of fauna or flora that is an endangered species. A little research will turn up plenty of candidates, but rare spiders, frogs, snails and small fish are best because confirmation is difficult.
Major developments in Texas were stopped by radical environmentalists by citing some rare minnows in a spring and some blind spiders in a cave.
What’s good for the goose...
A good suggestion!
We could do that whenever a new mosque is proposed too.
UPDATE on this story: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/05/5624821/study-estimates-5-billion-benefit.html
The State of California now claims $5 billion in economic benefits from this project that’ll eradicate some 175,000 acres of farmland, dispossess over 40,000 people, and turn the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into a saltwater wasteland.
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