Mendocino County Today: Monday, Nov 2, 2015

• Local Football
• Annex KochBros
• Chow Down
• Poe Walnuts
• Dollar General
• Stabbing Suspect
• FB Water
• DST Preview
• Ghost Train
• Highway Funds
• Farmworker Survey
• Housing Homeless
• Heroin Addiction
• Trump Reagan
• Big Brother
• Impact Investing
• Economic Recovery
• Yesterday's Catch
• Drone Radio
• Tunnels Opposition

BIG FOOTBALL WEEKEND for Mendocino County as our two best teams, Fort Bragg and Boonville, took huge wins, Fort Bragg's coming over a very strong St. Helena team, Boonville mopping up Tomales, 44-6. Fort Bragg is certain to be moving on to the playoffs, Boonville will play Upper Lake, the only team to beat the Boonville boys this year, a defeat that occurred as three Boonville starters were in Sacramento to take college entry exams. That championship game is next Friday, November 6th, 7pm, at the Boonville Fairgrounds. It's certain to be a barn burner.

LISTEN UP, FORT BRAGG. Isn't it about time the City annexed the Koch Brothers. Not them personally. Hell, what would we do with them after we annexed them? I mean the mill site. Eminent domain that sucker. Are we going to wait forever while those two characters hold hostage the town's spectacular 420 oceanside acres? Go for it, FB!

JOHN KENNAUGH passes along this headline over a story in the San Francisco Examiner: "Death Penalty Likely On Table For Chow." Which can be interpreted at least three ways. Chow may choose to eat a meal called death penalty; Chow can take it or leave it; a criminal named Chow may be tried for murder.

TEN POUNDS of unshelled walnuts for $25? Ho hum, you say, what's so special? The deal is special because the lady selling them, Loretta McCarthy, weighs each nut to make sure it's good. Bad walnuts, you see, weigh less. And how often do you find this kind of scrupulousness in modern retail? Find it for yourself at Dancing TreePeople Farm in Upper Lake. (707) 245-9076. Ps. Loretta always refers to them as "Poe" walnuts. She only got 15% good ones out of last year's crop this year. And she'd sold out, which is understandable. I bought fifty pounds of walnuts at Frisco's Farmer's Market a few years ago and only half of them were good. Poe is a midseason to late leafing cultivar from Lake County. Poe was selected by Oscar Poe near Lakeport around 1900. It is terminal bearing, protogynous and low yielding. The nut is thick shelled and the kernel is small. One gourmet food writer described Poe as less astringent than other walnuts and tasting slightly like butterscotch. (Poes are no longer being planted but older trees are still being maintained.)

THE SUPERVISORS are expected to turn down a Dollar General Store for Redwood Valley, overturning the County's Planning Commission vote to allow the destructive retail chain market to touch down here. The Planning Commission voted to approve because the County's zoning, as is, would allow a chain to set down in Redwood Valley, a mostly rural area just north of Ukiah. The Planning Commission saw their vote for the chain store as inevitable, not because they wanted to plunk down a chain store dedicated to undercutting existing markets.

BY VOTING to delay Dollar General's building permit the Supervisors, i.e., the County, is certain to be sued by Dollar General and will almost certainly lose, although there's some weasel room at the end of the Supes’ resolution that will allow them to nobly vote for the resolution but only because Dollar General will have to jump through one more hoop prior to a delayed construction. “Because the issuance of Building Permit #BU 2015-0104 is the only point at which the environmental impact of the project may be publically considered, the Board of Supervisors hereby reverses the decision of the Planning Commission and grants Administrative Appeal AA 2015-0002. Building Permit #BU 2015-0104 is hereby suspended until such time as the proposed development has undergone review pursuant to CEQA.”

SUSPECT IN UKIAH STABBING ARRESTED; BAIL SET AT $450,000

An 18-year-old Ukiah man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of stabbing a Willits woman in Ukiah earlier this week, the Ukiah Police Department reported. According to the UPD, Michael Gerry Daniels James, 18, was arrested at his residence in the 300 block of Plum Drive by officers assisted by the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force and the Fort Bragg Police Department. (Ukiah Daily Journal)

Background: On October 27, 2015 at approx. 8pm, UPD officers were dispatched to Ukiah Valley Medical Center (275 Hospital Dr.) regarding a stabbing victim at the location. Upon arrival, officers contacted an 18 year old female with multiple stab wounds on her upper torso and head. The victim was subsequently transported to an out of county hospital with serious injuries. The victim stated she was walking with a friend in the downtown area of Ukiah, when she was suddenly “hit” multiple times. The victim didn’t see or hear anyone at the time of the assault. The victim realized she had been stabbed multiple times and sought medical attention. The victim resides in Willits and is not familiar with the Ukiah area. The victim was unable to specifically articulate where she was at when she was attacked. Officers were unable to locate a crime scene.

FORT BRAGG WATER

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife sent the letter linked below to the Fort Bragg City Council last week saying that their water conservation plans don’t go far enough to protect endangered fish and that the City lacks a long-term water conservation plan. The letter “recommends” that the City take steps to resolve their water problems. But the “recommendations” appear to be a veiled threat to intervene or interfere with the City’s plans to divert more water into their present and future reservoirs.

https://www.theava.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Fort-Bragg-City-Council_water_10_28_2015.pdf

DAYLIGHT SAVING, The Movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4EUTMPuvHo

THE SMART TRAIN, which much public opinion says is the Dumb Train, but smart or dumb it's now supposed to roll between San Rafael and the Sonoma County Airport just north of Santa Rosa by "late 2016." SMART (Sonoma-Marin Area Rapid Transit) will eventually run to Healdsburg and on to Cloverdale, where a brand new train station has been waiting for a train to arrive for 25 years. But smart is out of money to connect to Healdsburg and Cloverdale along existing but un-rehabbed track and, of course, "late in 2016" loosely translates as "the twelfth of never."

SMART is called a "commuter line," but lacks capacity to carry much of the north-south commuter horde. It's also inconvenient for most commuters because it bypasses population centers. Day trippers will like it, however, for a leisurely ride through suburban backyards.

A HALF-CENTURY AGO, the train ran to Eureka. Farther back, two trains a day ran between Eureka and Sausalito where Frisco bound passengers caught a ferry for the bright lights. In 1950, you could board a train in Fort Bragg and transfer in Willits to south and northbound trains.

MENDOCINO COUNTY, always a political stepchild, is unlikely to ever see a train other than the Skunk line again.

TOMMY WAYNE KRAMER, writing in Sunday’s Ukiah Daily Journal, seems to blame local “progressives” and their propensity for opposing things for the dangerous one-lane stretch of Highway 101 between Hopland and Ukiah. There are plenty of things to blame local progressives for: Supervisor Dan Hamburg, to name one. But the main reason this particular segment of Highway 101 remains dangerous is Caltrans and their local enablers at the Mendocino Council of Governments which funneled all the local share of highway improvement (STIP) money into the Willits bypass which, while desirable in the abstract, has nowhere near the level of traffic as the Hopland-Ukiah route.

The bypass could have been done for much less money via former Supervisor John Pinches’ idea to build a truck route along the unused railroad right of way, routing through-traffic big rigs out of town traffic. Instead we got a very dubious project costing well over $300 million for a few miles of bypass (a third of it raised on costly piers and it doesn’t even have a Fort Bragg on-off ramp). The Caltrans/MCOG decision to allocate all the local money to that bypass left no money to widen the Hopland-Ukiah portion of Highway 101 where — as Kramer correctly points out — it really needs it. We doubt local “progressives” would have opposed widening that stretch; most of them are north of Ukiah or on the Coast these days.

SONOMA COUNTY RELEASES FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND SURVEY OF FARMWORKER HEALTH

by David Gorn

On Monday, Sonoma County officials released results of a first-of-its-kind survey of farmworkers in the county.

It found that most workers in the county weren't really migrants, that most of the workers live in the area and many have established families here. And according to survey results, about 23% of farmworker children who are eligible for health care coverage still remain uninsured.

"This is the first time anyone at the county level has done this kind of in-depth evaluation of the health indicators in the farmworker population," said Brian Vaughn, director of the health policy, planning and evaluation division of the Sonoma County Department of Health Services.

"This is really a first step to put data behind our impressions of farmworkers' health," Vaughn said. "We want to get these findings out there so [stakeholders] can see the landscape of farmworkers' health. Then everyone can decide what they want to do about it."

The survey found that:

The majority of farmworkers do not migrate, but are permanent residents of Sonoma County and live with their families;

Wages in Sonoma County are slightly higher than other counties, but the cost of housing is much higher and farmworkers in the county spend a greater percentage of their income on housing than those in other counties;

In general, farmworker families live in unaffordable and overcrowded housing;

Almost all of the Sonoma County farmworker families earn insufficient incomes to meet their family’s basic needs;

Even though all children in Sonoma County are eligible for health insurance coverage, only 77% of them have insurance; and

Farmworkers have poor access to medical care in the county, particularly preventative care -- due in part to limited health insurance coverage.

The Sonoma County Farmworker Health Survey was produced in partnership with California Human Development, a not-for-profit agency that provides job training, education and housing for the underserved. Chris Paige is its CEO, and he said the demographics are farmworkers in Sonoma County are consistent with many counties in California.

"We believe the disparities we noted are common to other counties in California," Paige said.

This survey paints an accurate picture of the community so that a plan can be created to reduce farmworkers' health disparities, he said.

"For instance, the farmworkers cited the high cost of transportation here," he said. "There's a vanpool program that was started in King County, and Sonoma has not signed on to that program yet. That could help."

He said Sonoma and Napa counties have already acted to provide some housing for peak harvest workers, by forming an assessment to help build three farmworker housing centers, which he said has provided about 53,000 bed nights for farmworkers.

"There are things that can be done to ensure these marginalized populations have a home somewhere," Paige said. "Everyone says these people are critical to the state's food supply, but on the other hand we're not going to ensure they're in the state's health system. I think there's a disconnect there."

(Courtesy, California Health Line)

* * *

The full report:

http://www.sonoma-county.org/health/publications/pdf/farmworker-health-survey.pdf

* * *

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat put names and faces to the report.

“Some 4,000 to 6,000 farmworkers form the backbone of the Sonoma County wine industry. A new study provides an unprecedented look at their lives.”

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/4676534-181/sonoma-county-farmworkers-struggles-include

TINY HOMES FOR SONOMA COUNTY HOMELESS — CAN IT HAPPEN IN MENDO?

Sonoma County supervisors this week are expected to take another next step toward creating villages of tiny homes on county-owned properties to house homeless people.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/4685531-181/sonoma-county-supervisors-to-consider

DEAD RECKONING: Addicts Among You (Yes, You)

by James Faulk

Eureka rots with addiction.

Under every rock, behind every edifice, in almost every bush, is the shivering, hungry, sweat-stained son or daughter of good people. Often, they’ve stolen from you, rifled through your garbage for recyclables, begged change from passersby at Eureka Natural Foods, and tried hundreds of times to stop stabbing themselves with the dull needles they carry in their socks, their coat pockets, or their vaginas.

This was not how they wanted to be.

Many were prescribed narcotics for injuries, as happened to me, only to discover that, clinging to the intertwined vines of DNA down deep, there lurked a series of genes — like those that cause cancer, or excessive body hair, bad teeth — that rendered them almost helpless against the wiles of the beguiling Papaver somniferum.

This disarmingly pretty flower has evolved quite effectively over the millennia to manipulate, and ultimately destroy, people of every stripe. Enslaved by the avalanche of ecstasy brought on by its weeping wounds, they ensure its continued survival through means fair and foul, all over the globe.

It took only a year for me to fall from a position of local prominence to homelessness. Flower power, indeed.

Every night, exhausted by the chase — the lying and cheating, stealing when possible, sleeping as best I could on the blood-stained floor of some local shooting gallery — I’d cry myself to sleep and promise to God and everyone that the morning would bring change. I never wanted anything more.

Yet somewhere in the night, as the cold sweats crept over me, foul with the scent of vinegar, and anxiety rose like murky floodwater, my soul would quiver quietly in the dark until I’d failed yet again before I ever even got started.

I hear folks talking shit about people on the street, people lost in the agony and futility of drug addiction, and cluck their tongues about choices made, God, boot straps, and good character.

They have no fucking clue.

This isn’t a character issue. Addicts aren’t bad people. Most often they come from trauma, live in trauma, and cope the only way they know how: By self-medicating the pain, the fear and hopelessness, until the gigantic holes in their souls are plugged momentarily by the fleeting swell of illicit chemistry.

Many were handed crank pipes and Oxy tabs in middle school, either by their parents or friends, or their parents’ friends. They never had the chance to learn a better way.

Others were prostituted by their addicted parents. Some were starved for both food and attention, swaddled only in the stained rags and roaches of a drug-house kitchen.

Of course, some have also had nice things — a clean house, loving parents, opportunities to learn and excel. Some are your spouses and siblings, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, imbibing to excess at every Christmas party, or not. Some show no warning signs at all.

Addiction is everywhere.

If you don’t believe it’s in your family, in your workplace, on your street, you’re blind.

Shattering my knee — literally shearing off the tibial plateau of my left leg — gave me the itch. When those shots and pills ran out, I found a guy. For months, this got me by. One morning, though, I woke up and decided to stop. I distinctly remember hours later staggering in front of the copy machine at the Times-Standard, shivering and cold, when only luck and a clear shot got me to the stall fast enough to avoid shitting my pants.

Yessir, that’s addiction.

When those pills ran out, and others became hard to find, I found another, grimier guy, and started, by necessity I told myself, chasing the dragon — smoking fingernail-sized chunks of tar heroin off tin foil.

The rationalizations came fast and furious — I couldn’t take the time off work, wouldn’t admit to my employers the extent of my habit, and each time I copped it was only to get through one more day, one more shift, until I could figure things out.

It all made so much sense back then.

Then one day my dealer told me he’d only front me a bag if I mainlined it. No problem, I told him, already taking off my shirt.

It turned out to be a major fucking problem.

In the few short months following, I lost everything. My wife took the kids and left, leaving me homeless and destitute. No one in my family would give me the time of day, and I began to seriously consider suicide.

Everyone told me to get some help. Go to rehab. Enter a program and get clean. Pull yourself together.

Heads up, Eureka: It’s not that easy. All the rehabilitation facilities in town cost thousands of dollars, unless you’re placed there by the courts. In other words, you have to get arrested to get free help. Otherwise, there’s virtually no rehab to be found.

There was one option, though, and I tried it — Teen Challenge. They call it a work- and faith-based drug and alcohol program. For me, it was Christian prison. You lived and breathed, ate and drank the Holy Bible, and never discussed your drug habit, its causes, its consequences, nor anything at all relevant to the disease of addiction.

If you broke a rule — such as turning around in church and looking (not staring, just glancing) at a woman — you were punished.

You might move a man-high stack of rocks from one place to another, and then back again.

Or, if you were lucky, you were simply put on a “word fast.” That is, for three days you could neither speak or be spoken to on pain of further punishment.

I believe in God, just not that kind of God. After nearly a week of this, I crept out the back gate late one night and eventually made my way back out into the streets. Something better would come along, I told myself.

It never did. In October 2010, exhausted by the game and the shame of my arrest and its resulting publicity, I finally checked into the county’s short-term detoxification facility. After the worst five days of my life there, I checked straight into a halfway house and began seriously attending 12-step meetings. No rehab, no therapy, no new life skills.

Through hard work and determined effort over several months, I proved to my wife that I was serious about my recovery. We eventually mended our relationship and today I continue the work of repairing the damage I did then. I thank my God for that opportunity.

Kicking heroin is most difficult thing imaginable. It’s no wonder that our streets and jails are still teeming with addicts of every stripe, given the lingering attitudes of many and the lack of real help. I still had a family, and hope — I knew that if I just got my shit together and acted right, I had a pretty good shot at rebuilding my life.

What if I — like most addicts — had nothing left to lose, and very little to regain? Luckily, I never had to answer that question.

Empathy is the only answer. And well-directed resources.

We’re fooling ourselves if we think this is a problem for others to deal with. Right now the sons and daughters of people you know, people you’ve elected, people you like, are doing whatever is necessary every day to scrape up enough cash to buy a bag and bang it up their arm, into their leg, their chest, their neck — any vein they can find late at night in the cold under the dim light of a street lamp near you.

Young girls sell themselves to get it. Young men will kill to get it. All of them find their angle, one way or another, or they quit. And to be frank, most of these people aren’t quitters.

Not yet anyway.

(James Faulk is a writer living in Eureka. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com.)

RICK WEDDLE WRITES:

Trump Is Perfect

'...Trump creates 'his own reality,' then believes it...' This was recently said, by one of his own party colleagues, about a front-runner Republican candidate for the office of President of the United States. Yes, really. If your own cousin behaved so, you'd not leave him alone with the kids, nor even let him have your car keys. Yet, here this overfed, disconnected bozo is near dominant in the GOP's race for America's highest office. It makes not a lick of sense to accommodate such deranged silliness. Further, to exalt crazies to any public office actually moves the voters into the loony bin with them.

Here's the deal: Trump is perfect. It's no wonder whatever that The Donald is the Star of the Right. He fits like a glove over the iron-spiked and toxic fist of Corpirate America. Making up our own 'reality' then believing it is what this country is really good at; celebrating 'Columbus Day' like he was some kind of heroic discoverer for instance, and for fuck's sake.

Maybe it's tiresome to keep stating the obvious, but denying the truth of our history firmly enslaves us to the lies of the past, dragging all that B.S. along with us. Go ahead, elect Trump president with all his zany 'ideas.' He'll take us right on along, double-time, down the poisoned shit-hole they're making, him and his pals. And Clinton is very little different, if any.

Don't worry. They can do worse, and they have. Remember Ronald Reagan? There they purposely elected an out-of-work B-movie dickhead sell-out with ongoing horrendous results, and they can't stop bragging about it. See what I mean? And the Democrats have since been trying to 'out-Reagan' the GOP! Nuts in; nuts out.

FORT BRAGG BOOKSTORE WINDOW

MENDOCINO COAST TRANSITION TOWNS will host a free public event entitled “Prospering and Flourishing in Unpredictable Financial Times.” The event will focus on “impact investing,” whereby investors come to know specifically how and where their money is being used. The event has four speakers who will address: (a) local business and local investing, (b) how to use Wall Street in a sustainable and responsible way, and (c) how local people can redesign our financial system so it works for all people, for nature, and for future participants. Sunday, November 15, 2015, 3-4:30PM; Community Center of Mendocino, 998 School St., Mendocino. More info: Barbara Fishelson at bfishelson@fwg.com.

THE EVIDENCE IS EVERYWHERE. In September the US Bureau of the Census released its report on US household income by quintile. Every quintile, as well as the top 5%, has experienced a decline in real household income since their peaks. The bottom quintile (lower 20 percent) has had a 17.1% decline in real income from the 1999 peak (from $14,092 to $11,676). The 4th quintile has had a 10.8% fall in real income since 2000 (from $34,863 to $31,087). The middle quintile has had a 6.9% decline in real income since 2000 (from $58,058 to $54,041). The 2nd quintile has had a 2.8% fall in real income since 2007 (from $90,331 to $87,834). The top quintile has had a decline in real income since 2006 of 1.7% (from $197,466 to $194,053). The top 5% has experienced a 4.8% reduction in real income since 2006 (from $349,215 to $332,347). Only the top One Percent or less (mainly the 0.1%) has experienced growth in income and wealth.

Paul Craig Roberts

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 1, 2015 (Booking photos not available.)

FERMIN BARRALES-GONZALEZ, Ukiah. DUI.

DYLAN BECK, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

PETER COLE, Santa Rosa/Redwood Valley. DUI, suspended license, possession of honey oil.

JAIME DALTON, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, destruction of evidence, resisting.

DESTINEY JOHNSON, Calpella. Drunk in public, resisting.

LEVI LAMOUREUX, Laytonville. Assault, battery.

RAMON MACIEL, Ukiah. Drunk in public, resisting.

ROBERT MAREK, Ukiah. Domestic assault.

ADRIAN MCWHINNEY, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

NAITHAN NORTON, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JONATHAN PEJANA, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

CHRISTOPHER PIEKARSKI, Ukiah. Resisting.

DESIREA RODARTE, Fort Bragg. Battery with serious injury.

ERIN SCHUELKE, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol & drugs.

VICTOR SILVA, Ukiah. Hit & Run with injury or fatality.

TROY WOOD, Willits. Community Supervision violation.

COCKBURN ON KMEC, Monday, November 2, 2015

KMEC Radio, 105.1 FM, in Ukiah, CA, presents a special edition show today, Monday, November 2, at 1 p.m., Pacific Time, on "Killer Drones: Analysis and Protest of the "Bureaucracy of Murder". Andrew Cockburn is our guest.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cockburn

Hosted by John Sakowicz and Sid Cooperrider.

COALITION SUBMITS 30,000 COMMENTS OPPOSING JERRY BROWN'S DELTA TUNNELS PLAN

by Dan Bacher

As the public comment period for the California Water Fix comes to a close on Halloween Eve, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued a two sentence statement praising the plan to build the massive Delta Tunnels, referring to them as "the Delta pipeline."

“The Delta pipeline is essential to completing the California Water Project and protecting fish and water quality. Without this fix, San Joaquin farms, Silicon Valley and other vital centers of the California economy will suffer devastating losses in their water supply," Brown claimed.

He then slammed opponents of the controversial tunnels plan by stating, "Claims to the contrary are false, shameful and do a profound disservice to California’s future.”

As the Governor was sending out the statement, a coalition of conservation, fishing and environmental justice groups and elected leaders gave their “closing argument” against the proposed Delta Tunnels at a press conference held on the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento. They said controversy over the project, which could cost upwards of $68 billion, has only grown the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers issued scathing comments blasting the draft EIR for the project in October 2014.

To refresh your memory, a "Recirculated Draft Environmental Impact Report/Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (RDEIR/SDEIS)" was released on July 10 and a new round of public comments began.

Today the coalition announced that 30,000 comments were submitted by California individuals and organizations AGAINST the re-proposed Delta Tunnels plan.

This is 18,000 more than the 12,000 letters of support for the California Water Fix that the corporate agribusiness-backed "coalition" called the "Californians for Retirement Security" announced the day before they had gathered from tunnels proponents.

The speakers explained how the new Recirculated EIR will violate an array of laws, including the Delta Reform Act of 2009, the federal Clean Water Act, the federal Endangered Species Act, the California Constitution, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA) and numerous administrative codes under CEQA and NEPA. They said the environmental report is once again incomplete and inadequate after nine years and one-quarter of a billion dollars has been spent.

Speakers asked Governor Brown to listen to Californians and end his push for the Delta Tunnels, once and for all. Speakers also explained how the Delta Tunnels will continue the trend towards centralization of the state’s water supply, at a time when regional resilience should be the goal.

They suggested redirecting state investment towards building and expanding local water sustainability projects like groundwater recharging, water recycling, and expanding urban conservation programs that have been so successful this year.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, kicked off the press conference by announcing, “Today we are proud to announce that 30,000 Californians, from every background, have submitted public comments against the Delta Tunnels! Governor Brown, the people of California are not convinced."

"We have done our homework and read the 48,000 pages you asked us to when you told us to 'Shut Up.' We have decided we do not want to spend $60 billion to export more water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary to the top one-percent of big industrial growers and special interest water districts," she explained.

"We do not want a project that does not meet Clean Water Act or Endangered Species Act standards. We do not want a project that will decimate our regional economy. What we do want is sustainable solutions to California's water challenges based on recycling, conservation, stormwater capture, groundwater recharge, and local water projects that create jobs," she said.

She also discussed a new document that exposes the real goals of the Kern County Water Agency (KCWA) - "unlimited water, on demand, with few environmental restrictions."

"In their drafted public comments letter on the Recirculated EIR/S for the Delta Tunnels, the Kern County Water Agency reveals the true goals of agricultural water exporters -- unlimited water supplies, even if it violates federal Endangered Species and Clean Water Acts," she noted.

In the letter KWCA declares appreciation for this revised draft because they believe it is “an important” first step toward creating a workable solution for their agency. Yet, they still want more; otherwise, the project is not “economically feasible," according to Barrigan Parrilla. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/29/1442205/-A-Real-Halloween-Horror-Show-Jerry-Brown-s-Delta-Death-Tunnels)

State Senator Cathleen Galgiani followed Barrigan-Parrilla, affirming her opposition to the Delta Tunnels Plan.

“Notwithstanding the recent changes to the tunnel plan, I must remain opposed to it for both economic and environmental reasons," she emphasized. "The research has convincingly demonstrated how the tunnel plan is not economically justified and is financially infeasible without a substantial taxpayer subsidy. Many of the reported benefits of the “WaterFix” project include unrealistic and inaccurate comparisons of conditions without the tunnels."

"It is imperative that we look at many options with regards to long-term water policy. Any long-term plan including Delta tunnels will need to provide much more compelling economic, environmental and increased water supply arguments in order to be beneficial to the Delta and the State," Senator Galgiani concluded.

Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman noted that the "tunnels do nothing to increase water supply. They do nothing but cause further conflict in California."

Robert Wright, Senior Counsel for Friends of the River, emphasized the extreme ecological crisis that the San Francisco Bay-Delta is in now, with winter Run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other species nearing the abyss of extinction.

“This is an emergency," said Wright. "The San Francisco Bay-Delta is in peril. Extinction is forever. This Tunnels project must either be dropped, or the ‘Water Fix’ agencies must issue new, honest documents under the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Policy Act that will disclose the cons of the Water Tunnels as well as tout the claimed pros and thus serve as a basis for meaningful review and consideration by the public. The lying has to stop.”

Tim Sloane, Executive Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, stated, ""It's not rocket science: our salmon and our Delta Estuary need fresh water to survive. The Tunnels would hijack that water and deprive all but a fraction of Californians of its benefits. It's just a big straw with public trust resources on the Delta end, and industrial agribusiness sucking on the other."

"This is our water," said Mike Hudson, commercial salmon fishermen and President of the Small Boat Commercial Fishermens' Association, referring to the water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River watershed. "The current administration of the water by the state and federal governments doesn't work for us. My industry is at the edge of collapse because of the way the water is managed. Every year, even in good years, we need to fight for water for salmon."

Espe Vielma, from Environmental Justice Advisory Group for the San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District, said the California Water Fix and Bay Delta Conservation Plan processes have been excluded many people of color and non-English speakers.

“It's sad that there were few public comments from the Environmental Justice community," she stated. "Forty percent of Californians speak languages other than English at home; twenty percent of Californians speak Spanish at home. Our communities cannot comment on what they cannot read."

"Did the Delta Tunnels agencies refuse to translate the plan because too many Spanish speakers would join the fight to stop the tunnels?” she asked.

Rogene Reynolds, the President of the Restore the Delta Board of Directors and Delta landowner, ended the press conference by stating, "We are reaching out to Governor Brown. We are not telling him to 'shut up' like he told us to several months ago - we are asking him to listen."

On the day before, Californians for Water Security, touted the alleged benefits of the California Water Fix in a press release.

“The broad and diverse coalition supporting the Governor’s plan to fix our aging water distribution system represents strong majorities of Californians who want to secure our state’s water supply,” said Cesar Diaz, Legislative Director of the State Building and Construction Trades of California. “Working families and all Californians need reliable access to water whether we are in a historic drought or saving water during wet times for the future.”

However, this "broad and diverse coalition" included only one "environmental" NGO, the Natural Heritage Institute, no environmental justice organizations and not one single California Indian Tribe. In a classic case of institutional racism against Indigenous Peoples, both federally recognized and non-recognized Tribes have marginalized and excluded in both the Bay Delta Conservation Plan and California Water Fix processes. The 150 organizations in the pro-tunnels coalition did include agribusiness groups, water agencies, Chambers of Commerce, business organizations, construction unions and some community organizations.

The Governor and his allies are pushing the Delta Tunnels Plan at a time when Sacramento winter-run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species are getting closer and closer to the dark abyss of extinction. If preliminary figures released by the National Marine Fisheries Service this week are confirmed, this would be the second year in a row that nearly all of the juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon perished in lethally warm water conditions on the Sacramento River, due to the over-appropriation of water to agribusiness.

“The bottom line is they (the state and federal regulators) ignored the law,” Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Projection Alliance told the Sacramento Bee. “We’ve over-appropriated and over-promised, and this is the result.” (http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article41684160.html)

Everybody who cares about West Coast salmon fisheries, the Bay-Delta Estuary and ocean ecosystem, the public trust, Delta and Sacramento Valley farming, environmental justice, Tribal water rights, fair water rates for Southern California ratepayers and future of California must help drive a stake into Jerry Brown's water-sucking plan by taking action!

If you haven't already, you should sign the Restore the Delta petition at Change.org, but you don't have much time left: http://restorethedelta.us3.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=06887fa70084fef8e939fef63&id=09bcd6ca08&e=120d0c2b69

Finally, you must check out the great Rage Against the Tunnels music video, "Get Fracked," about the tunnels scheme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi9UXcYPcas&feature=youtu.be