Free Republic

California: While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worries about rising seas, his state sinks below the waves. Don't mess with Texas, they say. But California and the nation could follow its lead. Last Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change. His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide...

Blaming America - Planting Discord in Los Angeles by Ari Bussel Downtown Los Angeles is composed of many districts – jewelry, fashion, toys, flowers, produce and others. A concentration of skyscrapers, uncommon to the Southern California landscape, differentiates it from the vastness of the Greater Los Angeles area. It was during the last decade of constant increase in real estate prices that old buildings, often from utilities or institutions, were converted into affordable lots. Once dangerous and unwelcoming, Downtown went through a process of revitalization, its face today unrecognizable to past visitors. Back in 1984 I elected to go to...

Calif. Drought Means More Imported Produce San Joaquin Valley, Where Half of U.S. Fruits and Vegetables are Grown, Hit Hard; State Considers More Water Restrictions (CBS) The talk in sunny California these days is about water - specifically, the lack of it. Legislators there are working a sweeping plan to overhaul the state's water management system. The plan includes tough new rules forcing residents to use 10 percent less water by the year 2015. CBS News correspondent Sandra Hughes reports on why such measures are needed. To combat California's water woes, everyone is having to cut back - and drought...

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's top executive, H. David Nahai, has resigned from the agency effective immediately, the mayor's office announced this morning. In a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Nahai said he was leaving to take a position as an advisor to former President Clinton's climate initiative. Nahai had served two years as a DWP commissioner before Villaraigosa elevated him to the post of chief executive and general manager in 2007. Ever since, he had been under fire from an array of forces. He drew strong criticism from the head of the powerful International Brotherhood of...

Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt. (snip) The Senate rejected the amendment by a largely party-line 61-36 margin, with Feinstein opposing the restoration of water deliveries to farmers. The California senator claimed she was blindsided by the amendment to the bill she was managing in the Senate, bizarrely comparing the move to a "Pearl Harbor." "No one from California has called, written or indicated they wanted this on the calendar," Feinstein protested.

Kenya's dilemmas, man-made and natural Economy stuck in low growth amid drought and global downturn By Christopher Noble, MarketWatch NAIROBI, Kenya (MarketWatch) -- Kenya's lions have come to Nairobi looking for water. The king of the jungle isn't roaming the streets of East Africa's biggest city, but a severe drought ravaging the nation has driven lions and other wildlife into Nairobi National Park, which, unlike most of the country, has plenty of water. The years-long drought is battering Kenya, endangering millions of people, killing crops and livestock and damaging wildlife. Crippling unemployment and the after-effects of political violence in 2007...

Delta smelts: Preferred over humans. Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt.There was a time when the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive agricultural region in the world. It was a large part of what made the Golden State golden.Now it's a place where farmers no longer farm, but instead line up at food banks to feed the families of those who once fed the rest of the country and a good chunk of the...

Last week, FNC’s Sean Hannity traveled to the San Joaquin Valley to report on the man-made drought that’s wreaking havoc on farmers in the name of saving the Delta smelt: {video}...Earlier tonight, GOP South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint tried to turn the water back on. The Senate voted down his amendment, 61-36. Here’s the roll call vote.

Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show, Uniting the Races with Truth, Instead of Dividing them with Lies LISTEN TO THE REAL REVEREND JESSE ON THE INTERNET OR A RADIO STATION IN YOUR AREA......BOND Action, Inc...Educating, Motivating and Rallying Americans! The Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show Streamed live online from 6-9 a.m. PST / 9-12 a.m. EST. Call in the same times usually. For Live Questions or Comments Call 1-888-77-JESSE(5-3773) You can email comments and questions to radio@bondaction.org For more information on getting The Jesse Lee Peterson Show picked up on a station in your local area call Ermias Alemayehu at 1-877-WE...

Turning the water off is not just bad politics, it’s an act of domestic terror. Former Fresno, California Mayor Alan Autry Forgive me if I am less than diplomatic here. I am not a fan at all of the radical environmental movement. I’m even less of a fan of radical, Big Government. Let’s cut to the chase here. The rabid environmentalists have destroyed the economy in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Not only have they destroyed the economy, they have destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of farmers, as well. According to the California Farm Water Coalition unemployment...

Here we go again. I was watching Sean Hannity tonight (9/17/2009), and have been following loosely the situation in the San Joaquin Valley of California with their water crisis over the small Delta Smelt minnow and its endangered species listing. The Farmers have water rights to that water. There is no legal water rights for that water for a minnow over the farmers. There is only a manufactured judicial legal decision by liberal judges based on junk science and the whims of administrators and bureaucrats that create these incidents based on the Endangered Species Act and a rabid environmental...

As FNC's Sean Hannity devoted his show Hannity on Thursday evening to the plight of California farmers who are suffering unemployment because the federal government is withholding water from their crops in favor of saving endangered fish, Hannity began the show, specially titled "The Valley That Hope Forgot," by interviewing comedian and former Democrat Paul Rodriguez, chairman of the California Latino Water Coalition. Rodriguez, who last year supported Barack Obama but famously turned GOP after Democrats refused to help him and other farmers obtain water for their crops, made a plea for help to President Obama on Hannity's show: Mr....

I want to know how the situation covered on Hannity today is not cause enough for armed insurrection by the people of California against the tyranny of Washington DC. I want to know how governor Schwarzenegger has not called out the national guard and by force of arms turned the water on. I want to know how any rational human being can look at the starving of an area, the destroyed landscape, the human misery caused by artificially starving an area of a natural resource and defend it. I want to know if our government would accept such actions committed...

Talk show host Sean Hannity is in our Valley tonight. The topic is water. But it’s bigger than that. Some believe its: Environmentalists vs. Liberty. Some believe environmentalists are standing on the necks of our farmers and their kids. And ... some believe they’re coming for YOUR water next. This link has..

If you plan to attend the protest with Sean Hannity tomorrow and don't know what to wear, print this reversed on a t-shirt iron-on.

Sep 14, 2009 ... Sean Hannity on Thursday will broadcast his national FOX TV show life from the west side of Fresno for a program on California's water that ...

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal Letters to the Editor: Your editorial "California's Man-Made Drought" (Sept. 2) about the severe drought and water crisis in California argues that California's water problems could be wished away if our nation were only willing to sacrifice an endangered three-inch fish, turn on a few pumps to move water from Northern California to the Central Valley, and wave a magic wand. The trouble is: The fish are a sliver of the problem, the pumps are already on, and pointed fingers can't make it rain. California's water crisis is far more troubling than your editorial suggests....

Welcome to Mendota, Calif. Its population is 10,000. Most of its families work in farming; the town used to be called the "cantaloupe capital of the world." Today, unemployment hovers around 41 percent. The town is now known as "the food-line capital," says Mendota's mayor, Robert Silva. This is the Dust Bowl, circa 2009. Mendota is located in Fresno County, where July unemployment stood at 15 percent. And even that staggering number is artificially low because of all the temporary employees hired to pick the seasonal vegetables like squash, carrots, tomatoes and peppers. Why are the communities of Fresno County...

California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America's premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico is suffering from its driest year in 68 years, killing crops and cattle in the countryside and forcing the government to slow the flow of water to the crowded capital. Below-average rainfall since last year has left about 80 of Mexico's 175 largest reservoirs less than half full, said Felipe Arreguin, a senior official at the Conagua commission, which manages the country's water supply. "We have zones where the reservoirs are totally full but others that don't have even a drop of water," he said in an interview late on Tuesday. More than 1,000 cattle have...

DALLAS (Reuters) – A vast swathe of Texas remains in the grip of a scorching drought, which has cost billions of dollars and is cleaving America's largest beef cattle herd. One county has seen its entire cotton harvest wiped out and losses for cattle, crops and the state's fast growing game farming industry are seen mounting with no relief in sight. Texas is second only to California in U.S. farm production and the sector's sales for the state topped $21 billion in 2007. The drought-stricken area straddles the central Texas hill country, near the capitol Austin, and stretches south through...

Each day thousands of farmers in California’s Central Valley depend on water to produce America’s food, but that water isn’t being delivered. Inaction from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congress and state legislators are leaving thousands unemployed, threatening national food security and further crippling the American economy by causing a man-made drought in the most fertile land in America. California farmers are not receiving enough water to sustain their crops because lawmakers refuse to ease the application of the Endangered Species Act, creating dire economic and agricultural conditions throughout the Central Valley. This disaster will have a ripple effect on food prices...

From the weekend WSJ. An excerpt: Crops rot and people stand in line for food while the EPA engineers a drought San Joaquin Valley, Calif. In 1931, a severe drought began that within a few years engulfed the Oklahoma panhandle and a third of the Great Plains in a "Dust Bowl." Tens of thousands of people fled the region — many traveling to California along Route 66, which John Steinbeck called "the mother road, the road of flight" in "The Grapes of Wrath." A lot of the "Okies" settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the decades that followed, state...

n 1931, a severe drought began that within a few years engulfed the Oklahoma panhandle and a third of the Great Plains in a "Dust Bowl." Tens of thousands of people fled the region—many traveling to California along Route 66, which John Steinbeck called "the mother road, the road of flight" in "The Grapes of Wrath." A lot of the "Okies" settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the decades that followed, state and federal officials built dams and other irrigation projects that helped turn the valley into some of the world's richest farmland.

[SNIP] San Antonio, which relies on the Edwards Aquifer for its water, is enduring its driest 23-month period since weather data was recorded starting in 1885, according to the National Weather Service. The aquifer's been hovering just above 640 feet deep, and if it dips below that the city will issue its harshest watering restrictions yet. The city's not just sitting around, though. A total of 30 off-duty officers and other employees are working overtime to patrol the city looking for people illegally watering. Since April, about 1,500 people have been cited and ordered to pay fines ranging from $50...

A wet weather pattern is continuing to set up across the Southern United States from Texas through the Lower Mississippi Valley and into the Tennessee Valley for this week. We are definitely in need of some rainfall to help break drought conditions in Texas but too much rain too fast is not good either.

San Joaquin Valley farms are laying off workers and letting fields lie fallow as their water ration falls. Reporting from Mendota, Calif. -- Water built the semi-arid San Joaquin Valley into an agricultural powerhouse. Drought and irrigation battles now threaten to turn huge swaths of it into a dust bowl. Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That's sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty. [snip] This year has been even drier after a federal court ordered that pumps moving water through the system be turned...

A landmark desalination project gained final approval from regulators Wednesday, bringing the promise of an entirely new supply of water to San Diego County ---- and perhaps one of many in water-short California. But opposition to the plant, including legal action, continues. And the company that wants to build the $300 million plant in coastal Carlsbad still needs to raise the money. On Wednesday, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control board unanimously approved a permit for the plant. It had already considered the proposal twice this year. The permit approves a plan by Poseidon Resources Corp. to reduce the...

NEW DELHI: The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Thursday spent considerable time deliberating the impact of less than normal monsoon and its possible effects on the economy and the food situation in the country. Despite the IMD predicting that July and August would see a recovery in the monsoon, fears were expressed that a repeat of last year — a dip in July rains — coming on the back of very weak June monsoon could be dangerous for the economy.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked President Barack Obama to declare a federal disaster in the drought-stricken heart of the state's agricultural industry. As well as requesting federal support for parched Fresno County, Schwarzenegger also issued a local order allowing for emergency state funds to be made available to the region, part of California's Central Valley. "California's Central Valley is our nation's agricultural engine and unemployment here is devastating the economy and hurting the people of California," said Schwarzenegger. "These are dire circumstances -- no water means no work -- and no work means people cannot...

Republicans Call for Action to Address Man-Made Drought Projections: Up to 35,000 Jobs Lost and 300,000 Acres of Farm Land Unused Ranking Member Doc Hastings, along with Representatives Devin Nunes, Tom McClintock, Kevin McCarthy, Ken Calvert and George Radanovich, hold a press conference to highlight the man-made California drought and policies that provide water for fish (like the three-inch smelt shown above), but not people. WASHINGTON, D.C. - The House Natural Resources Committee held a full committee hearing today on the "The California Drought: Actions by Federal and State agencies to address impacts on lands, fisheries and water users." Witnesses,...

Caffeine addicts face higher prices for their daily fix as the wholesale cost of both coffee and sugar rise sharply because of poor crops and robust demand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twd59PrqCNg

In 1729, British satirist Jonathan Swift anonymously wrote A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of the Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. Swift mockingly suggested that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for the English gentry. Flash forward to Southern California in 2009 and Swift's satiric book might be re-titled something like: A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of the Poor People and Farmers of Central and Southern California from Being an Unsustainable Water Burden...

David Powell is a retired civil engineer who has resided in Pasadena for the past 37 years. He is a 1949 graduate of Caltech. His engineering career of nearly 40 years with Bookman-Edmonston Engineering was largely involved in the planning of public works projects, including project formulation, evaluation of alternatives (including economic evaluation), preparation of project reports, development of financing programs and related activities. A few thoughts on California water issues from one who had a reasonably responsible forty-year career a a water engineer and water engineering executive. I also can claim some familiarly with Pasadena, having lived in the...

Lake Castaic is the southerly terminal reservoir for the California Aqueduct which delivers water from Northern California. Castaic Lake is located within the Angeles National Forest just 15 minutes north of Six Flags Magic Mountain and 5 minutes from I-5 Freeway. Castaic Lake is a holding reservoir for part of the western regions irrigation water supply. The Castaic Lake Dam is 425 feet high and holds 350,000 acre feet of water at full capacity. Nearby Pyramid Lake, also a repository of Northern California water from the California Aqueduct, holds 180,000 acre feet of water. Both are managed by the Department...

It’s hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona’s green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high. So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years, Australia is a lesson of what the American West could become. Bush fires are killing people and obliterating towns. Rice exports collapsed last year and the wheat crop was halved two years running. Water rationing is part of daily life. This could be western America's future. "Think of that as California’s future,“ said Heather Cooley...

DALLAS (Reuters) – Texas Governor Rick Perry asked for disaster relief assistance from the federal government on Friday for drought-stricken farmers across the state. Parts of south and central Texas including the ranch lands around San Antonio and the state capitol Austin are suffering from their most severe drought on record, exacerbating the woes of the state's cattle industry already been laid low by the country's deepening recession. Extreme drought conditions also exist across many other areas of the parched state, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. "Governor Rick Perry today requested that the U.S. Department of Agriculture provide disaster...

Two-faced California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Friday, urging urban water systems to cut usage by 20%. “This drought is having a devastating impact on our people, our communities, our economy and our environment, making today’s action absolutely necessary,” the so-called Republican governor said. According to Brietbart.com,....

What we need is a new drought vocabulary in California. It seems that every type of shortage of water in California is called a drought. And logically speaking, if everything is called a drought, nothing is. Typically, we associate the word drought with a water shortage condition of natural origin. But not every "drought" is a drought. Some water shortages we call drought are thought mostly to be natural, some climatological, some judicial, some demographic, and some regulatory. But they all end up being called drought. When in doubt, call everything a drought seems to be the rule. So a...

The warnings have been ominous this winter: California is headed into the worst drought in modern history. The water supply is drying up. Or, as one water association declared last week, "Things just keep getting worse and worse." Is it really that bad? If you look at the numbers, the answer is no. Not only have a series of February storms pushed up mountain snowpack levels, but by historical standards the current three-year drought is far from the worst. Monday, the state Department of Water Resources announced that the mountain snowpack that feeds the state's reservoirs has reached 80% of...

Meteorologist Kevin Martin predicted in the Summer of 2008 that the California rainy season would be above average in many spots and give an edge on the state's suffered drought. We are in a state of emergency due to the drought in California. We haven't seen much rain where it is needed for several years. That is just the way California is. SCWXA Meteorologist Kevin Martin expects March to bring more storms to help the drought situation.

... The disaster coming this spring and summer is no movie, and nothing menacing is falling from the sky. It's about what's not falling from the sky — rain. After three years of below-average rain and snowfall, coupled with new pumping restrictions to protect endangered fish, California's farmers are running out of water. The devastating impact has trickled down to dozens of small Central Valley farming communities. ... The farmers who will be slammed the hardest are those who depend on the Central Valley Project, the massive federal system of dams, reservoirs, pumps and canals that helped spawn California's $36...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office says he will declare a state of emergency after three years of below-average rain and snowfall in California. The drought has forced farmers to fallow their fields, put thousands of agricultural workers out of work and prompted conservation measures in cities throughout the state. ... Federal water managers plan to temporarily cut off water this March to thousands of California farms. The state has said it probably would deliver just 15 percent of the water contractors have requested this year.

Yet another problem with city-owned Ficus trees located along sidewalk frontage has emerged in the City of Pasadena. Those of us who have bit the bullet and planted drought-resistant gardens now realize that the large shade canopy of the city's Ficus trees will prevent direct sunlight from getting to varieties of cacti, yuccas, flax, sage, succulents, and fescue grass planted in our front yards. Water thirsty plants, such as Azaleas, actually are symbiotic with the shade canopy of the Ficus trees. Conversely, water wise lawns, such as Bermuda grass, need sunlight. Bermuda grass does not like shade and is incompatible...

MENDOTA, Calif. — The country’s biggest agricultural engine, California’s sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere. But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms and towns. Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence. With fewer...

An old fashioned method of water conservation was to put a brick in the tank of your toilet. But what if you put a sponge brick in the tank of a toilet? You wouldn't save any real water but you might create the impression that you were conserving water. The term *sponge brick* is thus an oxymoron - a contradiction in terms. At the macro-level water conservation in Pasadena is oxymoronic like a sponge brick. It entails high profile popular efforts at restoration to the middle Arroyo Seco streambed within the Raymond Basin for aesthetic and recreational purposes, the acquisition...

With the Obamacrats in charge of things now, one thing this country does not need is a new idea from a foreign nation on how to raise revenue in the form a brand new tax. Heaven knows that American liberals are practically second-to-none - veritable trendsetters and mold breakers - at attempting to siphon money from the private sector in the name of reinvestment and stimulus.In that spirit, one can only hope that Democrats aren't paying too much attention to the news coming from Down Under reporting that Australia wants to attack its water shortage woes by charging its...

SYDNEY: Raging wildfires swept southeastern Australia on Saturday, killing at least 14 people and razing some 100 homes as scorching temperatures and gale-force winds combined into a deadly inferno, while floodwaters in the country’s sodden north continued to rise. Victoria state police said the death toll might exceed 40 as dozens of fires burned unchecked into the night. Some officials described the day as the worst in the sunburned country’s history of wildfires. More than 30,000 volunteer firefighters were battling fires after dark, when helicopters and planes that hand-dumped millions of tons of water on the flames returned to base...

China is suffering another natural disaster -- this time, the worst drought in half a century. The land is parched and the irrigation dams have dried up. Crops and livestock are dying. Water levels in some Chinese rivers are well below their average with 50 to 80 percent less rain than last year. China on Thursday raised the drought-emergency-alert level from orange to red and allocated an additional $44 million dollars on top of the $13 million in emergency aid already released. Since November northern and central China has had little rain. Many places have not had rainfall for more...