[env-trinity] Allocation of Developed water Resources

[Byron]

By VIC POLLARD, Californian Sacramento Bureau 
e-mail: vpollard at bakersfield.com 

SACRAMENTO -- Massive water projects have protected California's cities and
farms from droughts, but 
they have left many minorities and low-income residents suffering from too
little water or too much 
pollution, according to a report issued Wednesday by an environmental group.


The report by the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water condemned
developments like Klamath River 
irrigation projects, blamed for depriving Indians along the Northern
California stream of their traditional 
salmon food supply and disrupting their cultural heritage. 

Another example cited in the report is the influx of mega-dairies, driven
out of the Chino Basin by the 
crackdown on water pollution there, to towns like heavily Latino Wasco,
which seem powerless to block 
them. 

The report contends that powerful water agencies and government regulators
neglect or harm ethnic and 
low-income communities by failing to protect them from pollution and
blocking them from 
decision-making processes. 

"Water is the lifeblood of California communities; sucking it away from
native tribes and Latino 
farmworkers will only dry up their local economies, their rivers, their
fisheries, their farmland and their 
cultural connections," said Alisha Deen, an author who contributed to the
report. 

At a news conference in Sacramento, one of several around the state called
to release the report, officials 
said they do not have specific legislative proposals to remedy the problems.


However, the report called for more water conservation by farms and cities
to reduce consumption and 
greater involvement in the decision-making process by minorities and
low-income people affected by water 
policies. 

Officials of the Kern County Water Agency, one of the big agencies that
benefit from water projects, did not 
respond to a request for comment. 

The coalition is made up of a number of environmental and human rights
groups, officials said, and the 
report was funded by grants from charitable organizations. 

 

 

Byron Leydecker, 

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Consultant, California Trout, Inc.

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://caltrout.org

 

 

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