[CRNMC] Fwd: PROPOSITION ONE! NO! NO! NO!

[edward Oberweiser]

Here's some more on proposition 1.

Ed

Nature Conservancy contributes $500,000 to Yes on Prop. 1 campaign
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/31/1340650/-Prop-1-Opponents-Call-Nature-Conservancy-s-500-000-Political-Contribution-Disturbing>

by Dan Bacher <http://www.dailykos.com/user/Dan%20Bacher>

   -

   -
   - 3 Comments / 3 New
   <http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/31/1340650/-Prop-1-Opponents-Call-Nature-Conservancy-s-500-000-Political-Contribution-Disturbing#comments>

Opponents of Proposition 1, Governor Jerry Brown's State Water Bond, today
called a $500,000 political contribution to Prop. 1 by The Nature
Conservancy, one of the largest recipients of Walton Family Foundation
money every year, “disturbing.”

“Donors to Prop. 1 want this water bond to pass so that they can get
something from it:  short-term jobs building dams that will be created with
public tax dollars, land to manage bought with public funds, and
taxpayer-subsidized water to grow permanent crops on unsuitable land," said
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta.

“Prop. 1’s big dam projects will make very little new water, and the water
will mainly go to unsustainable huge agribusinesses,” said Barbara
Barrigan-Parrilla. “Most disturbing is the $500,000 that the Nature
Conservancy has contributed to the Prop 1 campaign. The Nature Conservancy
has benefited from the gifting of public lands in the Delta by the
Department of Water Resources."

She emphasized, "The Nature Conservancy turned a blind eye to oil drilling
in the Gulf of Mexico for the ability to manage wetlands, and pumps oil on
its own lands. In California, they are turning a blind eye to the issue of
how water exports will be accelerated from the Bay-Delta estuary if Prop. 1
passes, and how this water will fill Governor Brown's Delta tunnels."

"They are supporting water policies that will serve special corporate
interests in exchange for the opportunity to manage more conservancy
projects in the Delta and throughout California," concluded
Barrigan-Parrilla.

The Nature Conservancy, known for its service to corporate interests at
great expense to fish, wildlife, the environment and the public trust,
received a total of $5,482,699 from the Walton Family Foundation in 2013.
This includes $1,545,963 for freshwater "conservation" on the Colorado
River, $1,437,986 for freshwater "conservation" on the Mississippi River.
$475,000 for marine "conservation," and $2,023,750 for other "conservation"
grants.

The Walton Family Foundation is governed by the descendants of Sam and
Helen Walton, the founders of retail giant Walmart, a company notorious for
the poor treatment of its workers and its environmentally destructive
practices around the globe.

An analysis of environmental grants that the Walton Family Foundation gave
to conservation organizations in 2013 reveals that NGOs supporting
Proposition 1, the water bond on California's November 4 ballot, received
$10,786,949 in grants while opponents of the controversial measure received
none.

Supporters of the water bond getting money from the Walton Family
Foundation in 2013 include the Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society
(the parent organization of Audubon California, a bond backer), the Ocean
Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, American Rivers, Defenders of Wildlife and
Ducks Unlimited. The Foundation lists their environmental contributions in
three categories: freshwater conservation, marine conservation and other
conservation grants. (http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/...
<http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/2013-environment-grants>)

National Audubon Society, the parent organization of Audubon California,
received $2,570,767, including $312,100 for freshwater conservation on the
Colorado River, $2,058,667 for freshwater conservation on the Mississippi
River and $200,000 for marine conservation.

The foundation gave the Ocean Conservancy, a strong supporter of the
privately funded Marine Life Protection Act Initiative to create
questionable "marine protected areas in California, $1,552,083 for projects
in the Gulf of Mexico.

Trout Unlimited was awarded $610,650 for freshwater conservation on the
Colorado River.

American Rivers received $424,400 for freshwater conservation on the
Colorado River.

Defenders of Wildlife got $100,058 for freshwater conservation on the
Mississippi River.

Finally, Ducks Unlimited, Inc. received $46,292 for freshwater conservation
on the Mississippi River from the Walton Family Foundation.

The Walton Family Foundation dumps many millions of dollars every year into
corporate environmental NGOs, including the Environmental Defense Fund,
Conservation International, Nature Conservancy and the Ocean Conservancy,
that promote the privatization of the oceans through "catch shares,"
questionable "marine protected areas" and other projects.

“It is highly troubling to see the impact that Walmart and a few big
foundations are having on the conservation of our resources, as well as the
protection of our artisanal and traditional fisheries including tribal
fisheries," said Zeke Grader, Executive Director of the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA) and opponent of Proposition
1.


On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 12:36 PM, karinajoy <karinacotler at gmail.com> wrote:

> Since our ordinance is about water, thought you might like to read a
> negative review of prop. one.
> Karina
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From: *"Freddie Long" <longfreddie at gmail.com>
> *Subject: **PROPOSITION ONE! NO! NO! NO!*
> *Date: *October 31, 2014 at 11:36:53 AM PDT
> *To: *"BIG SOLLV List" <sollvbig at sollv.org>
> *Reply-To: *longfreddie at gmail.com
>
>
> *Published in Anderson Valley Advertiser*
> *California's North Coast Water Relics*
> *Will Parrish, October 15, 2014*
>
> In roughly three weeks, the relatively slim percentage of Californians who
> vote in the Nov. 2014 election will decide on a politically contentious (is
> there any other kind of water politics in California?) $7.5 billion state
> general obligation bond, Proposition 1, entitled "THE State Water Bond"
> [emphasis added]. A creature of the dominant political response to
> California's panic-strickening drought, the bond issue would provide a
> greater level of financing for new water projects than any in the state's
> recent history.
>
> Although the bond includes funding for everything from bike trails to water
> recycling to wetlands restoration, its most pivotal line item is $2.7
> billion that would be allocated to expanded water storage. That likely
> means dams, and it especially likely means help with construction of the
> Sites Reservoir, a vast new facility just east of the Mendocino National
> Forest, about 10 miles west of the town of Maxwell. The bond singles it out
> for special mention.
>
> Sites Reservoir would involve two large dams on the mainstem Sacramento
> River, each around 310 feet high. The water would be ferried through the
> Tehama-Colusa and Glen-Colusa canals, as well as a third canal that would
> be built specifically for the project and originate north of Colusa. All of
> this liquid gold would thereby be plumbed into the Antelope Valley,
> drowning an estimated 14,000 acres of grassland, oak woodland, chaparral,
> riparian habitat, vernal pools, and wetlands (including 19 acres of rare
> alkali wetlands). The water bond, it should be noted, would only cover part
> of the cost of constructing these enormous new installations. Sites would
> be California's first massive water infrastructure project since the 1982
> completion of Lake Sonoma, a huge reservoir that is nevertheless less than
> one-fifth as large, which dams the headwaters of Dry Creek: a tributary of
> the Russian River that runs off the opposite slope of the Navarro River’s
> headwaters southeast of Anderson Valley. As of this writing, the state
> water bond enjoys strong support, especially from the state's political
> leaders:  Only one state legislator voted against placing the bond on the
> ballot.
>
>
> The growing specter of California's first massive dam in more than three
> decades brings up a major point about the State of California's long-term
> planning process. The state's infrastructure agencies tend to develop their
> water supply, transportation, and other projects based on 25-, 50-, and
> 100-year plans. With the persistence of Banquo's ghost, projects conceived
> before many voters were born can quickly come back to life after political
> alignments change in response to big events, such as big droughts. For
> their part, California water infrastructure planners have long envisioned
> capturing virtually every single drop of free-flowing water in this state
> behind a dam, enabling them to control exactly where water goes and who
> receives it. I have sitting on my computer desktop a PDF of a 1964
> California Department of Water Resources document entitled "Possible
> Additional Facilities to the State Water Resources Development System in
> the North Coastal Area and West Side Sacramento Valley." The document is
> compelling exactly because of how shocking it is to the sensibilities of
> most people who would view it today: an era in which it is widely
> acknowledged that unlimited exploitation of the natural world is a death
> sentence for the planet. By contrast, this document is the product of an
> era
> in which California's highways, dams, canals, electrical grid, suburban
> housing, and industrial manufacturing capacity grew recklessly and without
> restraint.
>
> For perspective here, consider that the largest reservoir currently
> existing
> today in California, the Shasta Reservoir, holds 3.5 million acre-feet of
> water, and consider further that California has altered its natural
> watersheds to a greater extent than any area of equivalent size in the
> world. This map features at least four reservoirs that would be
> considerably
> larger than Shasta Reservoir. The map is color-coded. Installations drawn
> in red are an intermediate priority, meaning they are feasible to build in
> the
> next 25 years. Those drawn in green are a priority to build in the next 50
> years.
> <http://theava.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ca-watermap.jpg>
>
>
>
>
>
> The largest of the reservoirs this document envisions, the so-called
> "Humboldt Reservoir" (which appears on the 50-year plan), would span much
> of Humboldt County's interior, including an enormous swath of the Six
> Rivers National Forest. It would capture water from the Eel and Klamath
> Rivers via a dam on the lower Klamath, for the purpose of shunting that
> water via a network of tunnels and canals into the so-called Helena
> Reservoir - a huge add-on to the existing Trinity Reservoir. From there, it
> would be on to Whiskeytown Reservoir and thence to the Sacramento River,
> which would virtually pipe it down to the main beneficiaries of this
> unparalleled plumbing system: San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and the water
> districts that provide Southern California's megalopolises. What did state
> water infrastructure planners have in mind for Mendocino County? Well, if
> you like Lake Mendocino now, you may just learn to love the so-called
> "Enlarged Coyote Valley Reservoir," which would expand the current
> reservoir by a factor of five. Five!
>
> But there's so much more.  A new dam on the Eel River would expand the
> present-day Van Arsdale Reservoir and Lake Pillsbury Reservoir above Potter
> Valley - currentlyseparated by a distance of more than 12 river miles -
> into one continuous reservoir known as English Ridge Reservoir. The
> reservoir would extend even further than that, though, encompassing a
> significant expanse north of Potter Valley. (The US Bureau of Reclamation
> energetically pursued this plan for a time in the late 60s) Round Valley
> would have been entirely flooded, its current residents forcibly relocated,
> more or less, by a dam on the Middle Fork Eel River. In place of Round
> Valley, we would have the Dos Rios Reservoir, an enormous man-made (and, to
> a far lesser extent, woman-made) lake that would connect to English Ridge
> Reservoir by way of the so-called Elk Creek Tunnel. English Ridge, in turn,
> would drain into Clear Lake via the Garrett Tunnel, which would be bored
> through the mountains that comprise the southern portion of the Mendocino
> National Forest. Dos Rios Reservoir would feature a second outlet,
> providing a more direct route to the Central Valley, a tunnel feeding into
> another massive new reservoir also envisioned on this map, the Glenn
> Reservoir Complex in Glenn County. This enormous reservoir, far larger than
> Shasta Reservoir, would be just west of the actually-existing Black Butte
> Reservoir, which is roughly due east of Chico.
>
> And that's still not enough water for the good people of Glenn County to
> have on hand, either. Spencer Reservoir would capture the waters of the
> North Fork Eel River channel (remember, the Eel has four major forks - all
> slated for new dams here), shunting it off into the Glenn Reservoir Complex
> as well.
>
> And those are just some of the projects our state's water planners
> envisioned as possibilities worth considering in the ensuing 25 years.
> The 50-year plan would involve development of the Bell Springs Reservoir
> and the Sequoia Reservoir, which would flood most of the remainder of the
> mainstem Eel River's 192-mile channel, or at least the portion not already
> drowned under the aforementioned English Ridge Reservoir, beneath another
> reservoir about four times larger than the latter.
> Part of the reason these projects never came to pass is that when the Army
> Corps of Engineers and the State Division of Water Resources pursued
> construction of the Dos Rios Reservoir in the late-1960s, they were
> thwarted by vigorous grassroots opposition and Republican Governor Ronald
> Reagan, who vetoed state funding for the facility. The social upheavals of
> the time compelled Reagan and other leading politicians of the era to grant
> many of the demands of the burgeoning environmental movement, with this
> political dynamic leading to passage of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
> several years later.
>
> (Mark Scaramella's uncle, then-Supervisor and Mendocino County board
> chairman Joe Scaramella, also opposed the Dos Rios dam, not on
> environmental grounds, but on the grounds that the dam would take hundreds
> of square milesof prime ag land out of production and, even more
> importantly, off the County's tax rolls. Joe Scaramella helped Richard
> Wilson organize oppositionto the crazy idea in the months leading up to
> Reagan's veto. All of this is  documented in Ted Simon's fine book, "The
> River Stops Here.”) But once the wheels of an enormous bureaucratic
> machinery start turning on an idea, does it ever really die? Not entirely.
> The state transportation agency that prefigured CalTrans put forth a
> transportation infrastructure plan roughly two years prior to the State
> Division of Water Resources master plan, in 1962, which called for (among
> many other things) a four-lane freeway bypass around the tiny north
> Mendocino County town of Willits. For a time, the idea seemed entirely
> antiquated. Then, CalTrans and local politicians dusted it off in the
> early-90s. California voters approved general obligation bond money in 2006
> for transportation projects. CalTrans siphoned off a big chunk of those
> funds into the coffers of its Willits Bypass project, which will handle
> only 5,000-10,000 cars a day. And you all know what happened from there.
> There are other interesting parallels in California's history. In 1906, the
> conflagrations that consumed San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake
> provided renewed impetus for the Hetch Hetchy Dam project, which San
> Francisco-based engineers first developed in detail in 1864: exactly 100
> years before the Division of Water Rights developed its master plan for
> transferring North Coast water to the Central Valley and Southern
> California. If water tunneled into The City from the Sierra Nevadas had
> been available, project boosters asserted with little foundation, then the
> fires would have been extinguished before they grew out of control.
> In December 1964, the largest flood in the modern history of the Eel River
> caused what biologists refer to as a "mass wasting event." It was another
> case of North Coast ecosystems' sacrifice on the altar of reckless
> expansion elsewhere in the state. Clear-cut logging throughout the Eel
> River system had fueled the suburban construction boom in Los Angeles and
> the San Francisco Bay Area. The reckless logging had left deforested soils
> to run off into the river channel, with hundreds of miles of temporary
> roads also contributing to the problem. The Army Corps attempted to justify
> the construction of the Dos Rios Dam for flood control. However, among all
> the proposed dams on the Eel River, Dos Rios would have the lowest impact
> on flood control. The moral of the story: natural disasters create huge new
> political openings. Nowadays, California's water infrastructure boosters
> are saying this new set of proposals are the answer to the state's water
> supply problem. Of course, California's existing reservoirs sit empty in
> large part due to the loss of snow melt, not capacity problems; climate
> change is a huge new factor in all of this. Of course, the odds that any of
> the abandoned projects I've mentioned in this piece will be revived any time
> soon are slim. But if dams become a popularly supported political solution
> to the state's water woes, it remains to be seen which seeming relics from
> the past the water boosters will dust off.
>
> _______________________________________________
> To Unsubscribe, or Change Settings, go to
> https://lists.multitalents.net/mailman/options/sollvbig
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> crn mailing list
> crn at lists.mcn.org
> http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/options/crn
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.mcn.org/pipermail/crn/attachments/20141031/052e8430/attachment.html