Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Mar 29, 2015

• Sleep v Grape
• Price of Justice
• Tow & Blow
• Milky Lake
• 65% Bypass
• 118 Years
• Need Snow
• Girl Beater
• Catch of the Day
• Good Coffee
• Juanita’s Apartment
• Frat Party
• Johnson
• No Contest
• I Get Along
• Drought & Tunnels

THE LEAD STORY in Saturday morning's Press Democrat story by Glenda Anderson was about Man vs. Machine, specifically Mark Scaramella vs. the Frost Fan Nuisance.

GLENDA'S FIRST SENTENCE was wrong: "The giant fans towering over Anderson Valley vineyards have stood mostly still and silent for years, with farmers preferring sprinkler systems to protect their grape crops from freezing temperatures in late winter and early spring."

IN FACT, most of the 88 fans were installed only last year. They are freshly introduced. They have not "stood mostly still and silent for years." On frost mornings, of which there were 23 last spring, about a thousand residents of Anderson Valley could not sleep between midnight and 8am. This year, only certain areas were wrenched from Dreamland when the Big Huey-equivalents hovered for 8 hours on three mornings. So far.

THE MACHINES are so loud sweet Morpheus thrusts us all from his vivid embrace. Or, prosaically, you can't sleep through the goddam things with ear plugs, fancy Bose headphones, white noise antidotes, a pint of Jack Daniels, whatever pharmaceutical downer you might name — the noise overpowers all.

MIDNIGHT TO 8AM is not the time most people want to be awake. Music events at the Boonville Fairgrounds are silenced by midnight. Boonville couldn't sleep through the powerfully amplified music at these summer concerts if they went on all night. No exaggeration. The frost fans are much louder than the professional amps at the Boonville Fairgrounds, which are so loud they shake nearby houses, and so loud all of downtown Boonville has to stay up until they go off before we can nod off.

IT SEEMS FARCICAL that an obviously industrial enterprise is considered agriculture, but it is, and Mendocino County says these freshly installed noisemakers are allowed under the County's Right To Farm Ordinance, a logic which would also allow grape growers to inflict whatever other pain on neighbors they felt necessary to protect their crop.

WE THINK we have a strong case that will compel this arrogant minority of bad neighbors to modify the noise they make during the latest of late hours.

THE SUPERVISORS? Silence. No help whatsoever. No leadership on the issue. AWOL when they should be lobbying the wine industry for meaningful compromise. Or, at a minimum, instructing their bureaucrats in Planning and Building and Ag to enforce the rules already on the books.

REAL ESTATE PEOPLE naturally fear talking about frost fans, but privately they'll concede that the things are a major negative for property values, a definite buyer beware before any money changes hands. This new hazard to property values has not been addressed, but plenty of people are talking about it.

WE'LL BE IN court Friday morning, 9am, April 10th, and we shall see what we shall see. Big money never has lost in Mendocino County, and this is a large and powerful industry everywhere on the Northcoast. We live in hope.

LAST WEEK MENDOCINO COUNTY COUNSEL Doug Losak formally replied to our request for an injunction to require that wind fan permits address noise by submitting the below new argument to the Superior Court.

IN ESSENCE, the County is saying that if you want to do something that might cost the wine industry some money to comply with an existing regulation, compliance in-effect might “damage” the wine industry and the petitioner should pay for the “damages” if the final injunction is ultimately denied. This is not only prior restraint, and a major barrier to otherwise legitimate lawsuits, but it allows the court to penalize an ordinary citizen for simply asking that existing laws be enforced. It’s also a ridiculous amount of money since there’s no way our suit could cost that much even if all the County fan permits were screened for possible excessive noise impact. Your County government at work — and an indication of how thoroughly the County is controlled by the wine industry.

* * *

Item “E. Petitioner should be required to post a bond of $1 million. County respondents strongly oppose petitioner’s request for a preliminary injunction and firmly believe that he has not met the required standard for a preliminary injunction to be issued. However, if this Court grants the requested injunction, it should require petitioner to post a bond in the amount of $1 million, as petitioner is requesting an order that will affect all agricultural business in Mendocino County that use or want to use fans for frost protection. If the trial court grants an injunction, it must require an undertaking by the applicant. Civil Code procedure [citation]: A ‘preliminary injunction ordinarily cannot take effect unless the applicant provides an undertaking to ensure it will pay any damages attributable to the temporary injunction if the court ultimately denies a permanent injunction.’ [citation] Without the undertaking bond, a preliminary injunction is a nullity [citation]. The amount of the bond is committed to the courts sound discretion. [citation] Petitioner is asking that this court prohibit the county from ‘granting any further construction or use permits involving frost fans for commercial vineyards and requires them to revoke any existing permits when permission was given without any assessment of noise levels where current noise levels exceed county standards.’ Such an order could easily result in a substantial loss of income to the named real parties in interest as well as to any other residents of the county who have obtained building permits for frost protection fans. Therefore a substantial bond should be required. Petitioner cites case law relating to cases brought under state and federal environmental statutes. This is not an environmental lawsuit in which the petitioner is attempting to prevent irreparable harm to the environment. Therefore the case law he cites is inapplicable to this situation.”

SOUR GRAPES

Dear Editor,

I saw this article in my recent Farm Show issue [the second best thing I get in the mail], and thought you might find it pertinent. 45 db at 1000 feet. Obviously there are solutions to the noise.

Peter Prunuske

Occidental

http://www.farmshow.com/view_articles.php?a_id=1576

ON MARCH 28, 2015, at approximately 3:30am Dana Montgomery, 57, of Corning, was driving a 2008 Kenworth cab with 1999 tanker trailer westbound on Highway 20 near milemarker 20 at an unknown speed. For unknown reasons Mr. Montgomery allowed the vehicle to leave the roadway to the north of Highway 20 where it collided with a call box and continued out of control until colliding with an embankment and overturning. The tanker trailer ruptured and lost its load of approximately 5,000 gallons of milk. The milk entered a culvert that lead to Clear Lake and entered the water. Mr. Montgomery was trapped in cab of his Kenworth until heavy-duty tow trucks arrived on the scene to lift the Kenworth so that Mr. Montgomery could be freed from the wreckage by our department personnel. Reach helicopter transported Mr. Montgomery from the scene for his injuries which included a head laceration and pain in his right leg. The Lake County Health Department and Fish and Wildlife responded to the scene to attempt to deal with the milk that entered like Clear Lake. Caltrans responded to provide traffic control during vehicle recovery. Highway 20 was opened to two-way traffic at 9:30am.

— CHP Press Release

CALTRANS DECLARES WILLITS BYPASS TO BE “65% COMPLETE”

http://www.willitsnews.com/general-news/20150325/willits-bypass-project-is-65-percent-complete

ACCIDENT TURNED INTO FELONY BY LAKE COUNTY

Dear AVA,

First let me say that a lot of us at San Quentin really enjoy your paper and please feel free to publish this letter.

I received 118 years from the Lake County judicial system for an accident which occurred on September 22, 2013 at Redbud Park in Clearlake, California. At 4:28 in the morning I was traveling down Lakeshore Drive when I noticed a car's headlights in my rearview mirror approaching superfast. I pulled into the parking lot of Redbud Park which was full of SUVs with empty boat trailers. (There was a bass tournament underway.) I stopped and Katherine Jackson (the owner of the Tahoe I was driving) and myself were looking behind us anticipating the car with the headlights to pull up. The SUVs and empty trailers were parked side-by-side in the center of the parking lot. I was parked north of the SUVs and instead of the car that was behind us pulling in behind, it entered the parking lot south of the SUVs with the SUVs between us. Katherine started to say something and when I looked at her, lights illuminated her face and the whole cab lit up. She exited the Tahoe and I looked to my left and the car was coming straight at my driver's side door. I immediately put the Tahoe in reverse and backed up the way I came in to avoid getting t-boned. Had I gone forward I would have hopped a curb onto the grass then hit a retaining wall. My front wheels were turned slightly to the left, so I backed up and hit one of the SUVs which in turn hit a Ford-150. Dazed from the impact, I looked forward and saw nothing but bright white moving lights. (They were later determined to be spotlights at my jury trial.) I saw an opening to my left so I took it and exited the park and turned left on Lakeshore Drive toward the police station. When I wasn't followed I backtracked towards Redbud and parked Ms. Jackson's Tahoe about two blocks from Redbud. I had met Ms. Jackson and her boyfriend two days previously at a mutual friend's house. Two days earlier we all went to San Jose and San Francisco with me driving on the way back from San Francisco. Jackson and her boyfriend were fighting so we dropped him off in Lower Lake. Four hours later the drama with the headlights happened. Her boyfriend left a lot of his property in the Tahoe so we both assumed it was him behind us. It wasn't — it was a cop.

Field Training Officer Thomas Riley was training Michael Dietrik who was driving when they saw the Tahoe had a taillight missing. They followed at a high rate of speed without the siren or roof lights. (Dietrick claims he activated the roof lights when he entered the parking lot but admitted he never activated the siren.)

When Dietrik drove into the parking lot, Officer Riley jumped out of the patrol car and ran in between the SUVs and empty boat trailers. I believe he ran into an empty trailer, low to the ground, black in color, at 4:30am in the dark. They claim I backed into Riley from 30 feet away using my side mirror to target him. The district attorney claimed that Riley jumped out of the patrol car to chase Ms. Jackson. Thomas Riley never wrote a report. (He was discharged from the hospital the next day.) When Riley testified at my trial he said he couldn't remember anything. Three different medical reports say his memory was intact. Police reports state that five minutes after the accident he was directing trainee Dietrik to turn on his recorder, interview Jackson, call certain people, etc. Nobody witnessed Riley getting hit. Of course by the time of the preliminary hearing Ms. Jackson (who they let go with drug paraphernalia, needle marks over her arms) suddenly saw him get hit while in police reports she didn't. From the time I entered Redbud Park to the time I exited was maybe 15 or 20 seconds. From the time I saw the headlights coming towards me to the time of impact to the SUV was five seconds. All of this is on record, a matter of public record; look into it, or if I can send something let me know.

My first public defender was Doug Rhoads who has since been transferred to the Mendocino County Public Defender's Office. I believe I was his last Lake County victim. It took three Marsden motions to fire him. With the jury pool out in the courthouse hallway and parking lot, Judge Martin finally fired Rhoads and appointed Barry Melton who did great until jury instructions, jury selection, and the trial itself. He refused to cross examine officer Riley, allowed Postmaster Tracy Lane (Lakeport) to remain on the jury with 12 peremptory challenges left. I kept on telling him to get rid of juror number 10 and he dismissed the lady next to Ms. Lane. "No, not her." Then he dismissed the guy on the other side of her.

Since the accident, Thomas Riley has been promoted to Detective. At first all the papers claimed I crushed him in between my Tahoe and an F-250. At the prelim, district attorney Art Grothe claimed I crushed him between the F-250 and the F-150. Experts (CHP) testified he wasn't crushed between anything. They removed gravel from Riley's cut on his head. If you're running full blast in the dark, it is going to mess you up if you run into an empty boat trailer. A black eye, nondisplaced rib fractures, no tissue swelling (I believe from prior injuries he has a history of blunt force trauma) and a head laceration is not consistent with being crushed between two vehicles.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Riley was able to walk out of Sutter Hospital the next day. I myself spent three days at St. Helena Hospital due to "Dex," a canine unit mauling my arm while on the ground complying with the arrest — not resisting.

Granted, I'm a convicted felon with two prior strikes, 55 years old. I was convicted on my past. When you wake up the whole police department in the middle of the night and their average age is 25 years old, what did I expect?

Not 96 to life plus 22 years.

Feel free to edit this letter anyway you need to and if you ever need any information on prison life I'd be glad to help. If you publish this please send me a copy. Thank you for your time.

Danny York

San Quentin

PS. The case is on appeal. PPS. I didn't know an officer was injured until on my way to the County Jail from the hospital two days later.

CALIFORNIA SNOWPACK AT RECORD LOW

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-drought-Sierra-Nevada-snowpack-hits-a-6164391.php

SANCHEZ FINALLY GETS PRISON SENTENCE

Mendocino County District Attorney's office:

On August 18, 2014, a mistrial was declared in the second of two cases the DA filed in 2014 against Ivan Sanchez, age 24, of Fort Bragg.

Back then, a jury reported to its trial judge that it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the felony assault with a deadly weapon charge it had been asked to decide. The jury was split 9 for guilt to 3. The case against Sanchez was reset for a trial before a new jury which was to commence this past Wednesday.

However, with pretrial motions not going his way, Sanchez decided to shortcut things and admit criminal liability. Sanchez now stands convicted of the felony assault with a deadly weapon that occurred on August 26, 2013.

But there's another chapter to the Ivan Sanchez story.

In February 2014, Sanchez was convicted by a jury of a separate felonious assault with a deadly weapon, along with a sentencing enhancement that the assault was committed for the benefit of a criminal street gang. This ADW occurred on May 16, 2013. Formal sentencing on this first case has been trailing the disposition of the second case for over a year.

As part of the resolution this past week of the second case, Sanchez reluctantly accepted the prosecution's demand that required him to stipulate to a combined state prison commitment of nine (9) years between the two cases.

The stipulated sentence of 108 months will be formally imposed at a sentencing hearing now calendared for May 4, 2015 in the Ten Mile Division of the Mendocino County Superior Court.

The trial prosecutor on both Sanchez cases was DDA Tim Stoen. The investigating law enforcement agencies were the Fort Bragg Police Department, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, and the District Attorney's Bureau of Investigations.

DA David Eyster notes that sending Sanchez to prison should help slow down some of the illegal gang activity that has been occurring in and around Fort Bragg. He hopes it also sends a loud and clear message that gang members are going to be shipped out of county for state prison warehousing as often as legally possible!

* * *

BACKGROUND (AVA, November 13, 2013)

Ivan Acoltzi Sanchez, 22, was arrested on Monday the 26th of August on charges of beating and stabbing his 20-year-old girlfriend at an intersection in the middle of Fort Bragg. He'd pummeled the kid in their home for two hours before she was able to run outside, which is when Sanchez caught up with her and beat her and stabbed her again. Sanchez is looking at multiple counts of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and domestic battery. The question is why is this roving menace was out of jail to commit his latest atrocities.

Sanchez's Arrest History:

2/4/09: Probation violation, age: 18 (no bail)

6/19/09: Assault with a deadly weapon (ADW). Bail: $50k

7/11/10 ADW, Bail: $30k

10/20/10: ADW, Bail: $30k

12/10/10: ADW, Bail: $80k

5/18/13: ADW, Bail: $55k

1/1/2013: Contributing, obstructing, destroying evidence, Bail: $15k, $15k, $15k.

This Punk, a member of a Fort Bragg street gang known to the Fort Bragg Police as the Crazy Vatos Controllas, has five assaults with deadly weapons plus two other lesser offenses [that was as of November of 2013; there have been more since then].

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 28, 2015

BASILIO ANGUIANO, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MICHAEL CARUSO, Delray/Ukiah. Drunk in public.

SHANKARA CASEY, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

DAVID CHAVEZ, Ukiah. Domestic assault, possession of drug paraphernalia.

ASHLEY ESPINOSA, Ukiah. Domestic assault, violation of protective order resulting in injury.

RUDOLPH ESQUIVEL JR., Willits. Resisting arrest, probation revocation.

STEPHANIE GAMMONS, Willits. Unpermitted communication with prisoner.

HERSEL HARWOOD, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JAMES JENKINS, Ukiah. Petty theft.

JACOB JONES, Ukiah. Under influence of controlled substance, probation revocation.

AARON KOSKI, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

JAMES MATTERN, Ukiah. DUI-drugs, under influence of controlled substance.

DEBRA SHOEMAKER, Willits. Under influence of controlled substance, probation revocation.

EDWARD STEELE JR., Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DANIEL TAYLOR, Ukiah. Resisting arrest, probation revocation.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The only time I’ll enter a Starbucks is when I’m traveling and can’t find a decent cup of coffee elsewhere. I’m not fond of Starbucks or their coffee — it’s over-roasted resulting in a bitter aftertaste. But, it’s better than McDonald’s coffee so I settle on it for my morning cup when I can’t make my own. I make excellent coffee, by the way. It’s taken years of practice and experimentation, but I’ve pretty much perfected it. My family’s addicted to it. In fact, I’m convinced it’s now the only reason they still want me to live — for my coffee because they can’t live without it.

You still need the machinists to run the machines as automated as those machines are these days. I have an acquaintance who’s in the tool dye manufacturing business and they jumped on the outsourcing to China bandwagon a couple of decades ago before bringing it all back because China just couldn’t get it right at those tight tolerances.

WHAT'S UP WITH MARCO?

You might want to close your eyes for this.

punts rotisserie chicken

At http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find the recording of last night’s (2015-03-27) KNYO Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show ready to download and keep or just play with one click...

Another live remote from Juanita’s apartment, in my pyjamas, and in my bedroom voice (as far down from indoor voice as indoor voice is from outdoor voice) to avoid disturbing the neighbors. I understand some network dropouts occurred on the order of once an hour or so, resulting in incongruous music from the covering automation stepping in for a few seconds here and there on the web stream and on the over-the-air signal.

It’s not a huge deal, but Bob and Ken are working on solving it for next time, and for others, not just for me, and I appreciate it.

Everyone’s invited to Uncle Rusty’s retirement-from-radio bash at the KNYO storefront, 325 N. Franklin, Fort Bragg (CA) tomorrow (Sunday, 2015-03-29, 2pm and forward). Russ has been at KNYO since before the beginning.

Actually, Russ is responsible for my being at KNYO. I was talking with him in the Safeway at about 2am in November of 2012, complaining about how KMFB had been killed and KZYX was not receptive to carrying my show, and he said, "Call Bob Young. Here's the number." And I called Bob Young the next day and was on KNYO that Friday.

Also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com there are scads of wonderful but not necessarily radio-useful items that I found while putting my show together. Here are just a few:

Determination and pluck. Also moxie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxKYo1kM0o4

Pictures of humans.

http://higherperspective.com/2015/01/29-photos.html

The computed tomography of animals.

http://www.izw-berlin.de/computed-tomography.html

And a capybara in a bathtub with baby ducks. Are you sad? Lonely? Is anything even slightly wrong in your world? This will solve that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SVBUdPjDWk

FRAT PARTY

by Jeff Costello

Campus fraternities are in the news. The "Greek system." All most people know about them is what they saw in Animal House. One thing from the movie is dead-on: the biggest asshole in the frat, played by John Belushi, winds up a senator. They don't all end up in politics, but many do, although more are in the business world. And they aren't down on the corner selling potatoes. Fraternities are little training grounds for "entitled" men, entitled in the sense that they grew up as privileged citizens, destined for positions of power, money, influence.

In the mid-60s, I was a working musician in New England, a region packed with colleges and universities. Most of them have or had a street nearby, a "fraternity row," dedicated to houses with three Greek letters displayed in front. My band played for frat parties at colleges in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont... I saw fraternities from the bottom, the seamy side, and without wanting to, closely observed the behavior of future power brokers, banksters, lawyers, congressmen, the people we were conditioned to respect and admire.

The guys in the band were decidedly not from the upper classes. We'd had menial, low wage jobs and were attempting our escape from that world by means of music. I learned at the frat parties that the 'brothers" regarded musicians, like most everybody that did things, as servants. Well, that was okay. These guys apparently never thought about where their food or any other necessities came from. Same with entertainment. We provided a service and got paid for it.

The point of these parties was to get drunk and get laid. That's why we were there, so they could invite girls to dance and "have lots of fun." Alcohol consumption at these affairs was prodigious. I recall one toga party (yep, they really dress in sheets, to emulate ancient Roman decadence), with a huge vat of punch consisting of grape kool-aid and 190-proof grain alcohol. We made the mistake of drinking some of it and all threw up out the car windows on the way home, leaving purple streaks all over the gray & white '56 Pontiac. These classy frat guys really knew what the good stuff was

The big song at all the frats was "Louie, Louie." In those days everyone thought the lyrics were dirty, obscene, whatever, because the lyrics to the popular version by the Kingsmen were undecipherable. In fact the song is about a sailor going home to his girlfriend. For the record:

Louie, Louie, oh, oh, me gotta go

Louie, Louie, oh, oh, me gotta go

Fine little girl she waits for me

Me catch the ship for cross the sea

Me sail the ship all alone

Me never think me make it home

Louie, Louie...

Three nights and days me sail the sea

Me think of girl constantly

On the ship I dream she there

Me smell the rose in her hair

Louie, Louie...

Me see Jamaica moon above

It won't be long, me see my love

I take her in my arms and then

Me tell her I never leave again

Louie, Louie...

— Richard Berry

But in the frats, it was a dirty song and therefore the favorite.

The Frat boys' lack of respect for working people was nothing compared to their attitude towards women. One frat party at the University of Connecticut had the theme "Pig Party." Pig referred to any girl who showed up. The "pig" theme was emblazoned all over the walls for everyone to see, and it seemed all the girls who attended accepted the premise without a problem. Were they fishing for well-to-do husbands? At one point I went to check out the frat next door and the band was singing "Sloppy Seconds," possibly an original composition of theirs. The theme was not, apparently, uncommon on campus.

We played at enough fraternity parties to see that these future pillars of the community were not what they were reputed to be - they were essentially the same everywhere: crude, rude, and socially maladjusted. Entitled to any and all pleasures without fear of consequence. Yet there they were headed for the corridors of power and influence. From what I hear lately, nothing has changed. It still reminds me of the frats whenever I see a guy in a business suit.

NO CONTEST

Imagine an economy in which the 0.1% own the machines, the rest of the 1% manage their operation, and the 99% either do the remaining scraps of unautomatable work, or are unemployed. That is the world implied by developments in productivity and automation. It is Pikettyworld, in which capital is increasingly triumphant over labor.

We get a glimpse of it in those quarterly numbers from Apple, about which my robot colleague wrote so evocatively. Apple’s quarter was the most profitable of any company in history: $74.6 billion in turnover, and $18 billion in profit. Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, said that these numbers are “hard to comprehend.” He’s right: it’s hard to process the fact that the company sold 34,000 iPhones every hour for three months. Bravo, though we should think about the trends implied in those figures.

For the sake of argument, say that Apple’s achievement is annualized, so their whole year is as much of an improvement on the one before as that quarter was. That would give them $88.9 billion in profits.

In 1960, the most profitable company in the world’s biggest economy was General Motors. In today’s money, GM made $7.6 billion that year. It also employed 600,000 people. Today’s most profitable company employs 92,600. So where 600,000 workers would once generate $7.6 billion in profit, now 92,600 generate $89.9 billion, an improvement in profitability per worker of 76.65 times. Remember, this is pure profit for the company’s owners, after all workers have been paid.

Capital isn’t just winning against labor: there’s no contest. If it were a boxing match, the referee would stop the fight.

— John Lanchester in the London Review of Books (The Robots Are Coming):

I GET ALONG WITHOUT YOU VERY WELL (EXCEPT SOMETIMES)

I get along without you very well

Of course I do

Except when soft rains fall

And drip from leaves, then I recall

The thrill of being sheltered in your arms

Of course I do

But I get along without you very well

 

I've forgotten you just like I should

Of course I have

Except to hear your name

Or someone's laugh that is the same

But I've forgotten you just like I should

 

What a guy, what a fool am I

To think my breaking heart could kid the moon

What's in store? Should I fall once more?

No, it's best that I stick to my tune

 

I get along without you very well

Of course I do

Except perhaps in spring

But I should never think of spring

For that would surely break my heart in two

—Jane Brown Thompson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgbPHTBiAVQ

THE DROUGHT & THE TUNNELS

by Dan Bacher

The Sacramento protest took place just days after Jay Famiglietti, the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine, revealed in an op-ed in the LA Times on March 12 that California has only one year of water supply left in its reservoirs. (http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-83043355/)

The protest also made the news as Governor Jerry Brown continues to fast-track his Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels to ship Sacramento River water to corporate agribusiness, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking operations.

The $67 billion plan won't create one single drop of new water, but it will take vast tracts of Delta farm land out of production under the guise of "habitat restoration" in order to irrigate drainage-impaired soil owned by corporate mega-growers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

The tunnel plan will also hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers. The peripheral tunnels will be good for agribusiness, water privateers, oil companies and the 1 percent, but will be bad for the fish, wildlife, people and environment of California and the public trust.

* * *

KWMR INTERVIEW about impacts of California drought with Tom Stokely and Dan Bacher

Listen to KWMR Post Carbon Radio
90.5 FM - Point Reyes, 92.3 FM - San Geronimo Valley, & 89.9 FM Bolinas

Streaming live at: kwmr.org

Archived at: wmpostcarbon.com

KWMR Post Carbon Radio - Aired Monday, March 23 at 1 PM - with co-hosts Bing Gong & Karen Nyhus

Impacts of the California Drought:

http://postcarbon.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-19T21_40_10-07_00

Featuring Dan Bacher - environmental journalist and editor of the Fish Sniffer magazine and Tom Stokely - water policy analyst and director with the California Water Impact Network.

A conversation about the many dimensions of the drought in California - impacts on fish, big agriculture, the Twin Tunnels, ground water legislation, fracking, and “paper water.”

There is a short segment with Preston Brown, a watershed biologist with the Turtle Island Restoration Network/SPAWN, reporting on the Coho Salmon in Lagunitas Creek in our local watershed.

The Environmental Water Caucus:

http://ewccalifornia.org/home/index.php

California Water Impact Network:

http://www.c-win.org