[env-trinity] Need to protect northern California groundwater from SoCal interests

[Mark Dowdle - TCRCD]

Chico News and Review opinion article:

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/protect-our-groundwater-now/content?oid=4717625



  Protect our groundwater now

Powerful Southern California interests want to make use of it

By Nora Todenhagen


This article was published on 12.29.11 
<http://www.newsreview.com/chico/2011-12-29/archive>.

The author is a retired Chico State lecturer who serves on the board of 
directors of AquAlliance. She lives in Chico.

*It rained last year; it may rain this year, but the* health of the 
Tuscan and other Northern California aquifers depends not only on rain, 
but also on the actions of the state and federal governments driven by 
powerful corporate farmers and developers to the south.

The federal government and a water authority south of the Delta are 
preparing an environmental review to transfer up to 600,000 acre-feet of 
groundwater /each year/ over 10 years to the western San Joaquin Valley. 
That's more groundwater than Chico would use in 200 years. There is also 
a bill in the House of Representatives that would guarantee industrial 
farms in desert lands water /no matter how dry the year/.

The state government is just as dangerous. Two proposals, the Delta 
Stewardship Council's Plan and the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, seek to 
do the impossible: protect the Delta and export massive amounts of water 
to Southern California. They've promised more water than there is. Here 
is how a staff geologist of the state Department of Water Resources, 
Carl Hauge, wants to solve the problem. In September of this year at the 
state Water Commission he made these points on a slide:

Under the heading "Full Aquifers in Sacramento Valley," he listed five 
steps in the process of making use of our groundwater: one, "export 
surface water"; two, "irrigate local land with groundwater---called 
groundwater substitution"; three, "aquifers are emptied"; four, 
"recharge with future surface water"; five, "may affect existing surface 
water rights."

Taken together, these government programs represent a massive transfer 
of wealth from the family farms of Northern California to the corporate 
interests to the south. Emptying the aquifers would kill the oaks and 
dry the creeks with all their fish and wildlife. Think of Bidwell Park 
looking like the Owens Valley with a trickle of water in the creek, no 
fish, and the land without vegetation. Years of litigation there have 
failed to put that water back. Like the Owens Valley, our region could 
suffer economic depression and environmental blight.

What should you do? Get and keep informed. The AquAlliance website at 
www.aqualliance.net <http://www.aqualliance.net/> has information on and 
links to these government proposals. Make sure your 
representatives---city, county, state and federal---are protecting your 
groundwater. Consider joining AquAlliance, the only organization 
dedicated to the groundwater of the Sacramento Hydrologic Region.

We can work together by using our voices and using the law to demand 
that our interests be protected.


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