Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018

• Curry Out
• Eligible Bachelors
• Hammer Search
• Little Dog
• Ed Notes
• Grape Crop
• Lewd Acts
• Yesterday's Catch
• Global Warming
• Poppy
• Threatening Letters
• Act of Reading
• Library Events
• Tunnels Delay
• Marco Radio

COMMISSIONER CURRY’S SWAN SONG

by Mark Scaramella

At last Tuesday’s meeting of the Supervisors, (former) Interim Ag Commissioner Diane Curry defended her department’s slo-mo handling of pot permits by essentially saying the process was and is just too complicated.

Curry made an uncharacteristically blunt and exasperated assessment of the convoluted pot permit process after which she found herself in an abbreviated argument with Supervisor John McCowen, the Board’s Pot Permit Point Person. And, by late afternoon Diane Curry was no longer the Interim Ag Commissioner.

Curry: “I had an opportunity to go back and look at the recording of the last board meeting which I could not attend. Life happens. It was discouraging. I feel like I am always in front of you defending this program which I will remind you is the County's program. But here's a little reality check. State licensing is here. We have temporary licenses. If our cultivators cannot get a state license they don't have a local license. And in order to get a state license you need a Lake and Streambed Alteration permit from Fish and Wildlife or a statement that you don't need one. We have been instrumental in pushing our cultivators to get those documents because without them there is no state license. There is no state license without already going through the State Water Board to get the water right and your discharge permit. Again, we have been instrumental in pushing those cultivators to get those licenses. No state license, no local license. So I would say that myself and my staff have been on the ground vetting these properties. We have been working with the state resource agencies to come into a partnership so they are confident in our program. I have talked with Fish and Wildlife and they are happy with what we are doing. The vetting is going on. So I would ask the Board, what part of this process do you want for us to not do? Because this is really important. The state is giving temporary licenses. No fees, you just get one. You just apply. But when the rubber meets the road if they don't have all this documentation they are not getting a state license. And frankly you have a lot of people out there who are never going to make it. How are we going to vet them? So we get 100 people — we get their permit fees. What does that do for us if it's not sustainable? It's a false sense of, Oh, we got $600 from 800 or 900 cultivators. But if only 50% of those get through, if we are lucky… We have to do due diligence. The state agencies are looking at us. They want us to have a robust program, something with integrity. How do we not fulfill that by not fulfilling the ordinance? We prepared our ordinance based on state legislation. So what part of that can we just pick and choose to get these people permitted? I ask you?”

Supervisor McCowen: “I appreciate the newfound sense of urgency. But out of the 800-some applications submitted, how many have had their initial pre-site inspection?”

Curry: “Almost 500.”

McCowen: “And of the 500, how many have had their annual compliance checks?”

Curry: “They don't need their annual compliance check.”

McCowen: “That's part of the ordinance.”

Curry: “No, not until they have the permit.”

McCowen: “Exactly. So if you don't inspect them, they never get into the system, they never get permitted.”

Curry: “No…”

McCowen (interrupting): “I'm sorry. We are not going to agree. But you are saying, what part of the ordinance do we want you not to do? I would think you would prioritize your work so you could do the pre-site inspections. I believe that would be an important part of the process.”

Curry: “But again, we only have a total of maybe 150 approvals from Planning and Building. So still, those people are not going to get a permit yet. The annual inspection is tied to the issuance of a permit. We have a year. And the annual inspection also says that we will plan that inspection when we actually have plants in the ground, which we don't. We want to time those inspections so that we have mature plants so we can do the canopy survey. So we can actually get something that's accurate. … I don't have any control over Fish and Wildlife and when they are going to determine, when they submit, or when they are going to issue their Lake and Streambed alteration permit. According to my staff and Fish and Wildlife if a cultivator even submits that paperwork there is still a lot of back-and-forth with those agencies because they don't have enough information. So again, if we go back to our ordinance, it also said we wouldn't accept an application until cultivators had all of that. So basically if we would follow our ordinance we would have nobody in the program. Because there's about one person who has their final Lake and Streambed alteration permit. … I have been in touch with the state Ag Department and we have talked about those issues. Yes, I'm sure other counties are having that problem. When we are talking about Yolo, say, they only have 70 cultivators they are allowing. It's only a pilot program. But there, you are talking about an area that is not impacted by meeting Fish and Wildlife approval requirements in the statute. I have reached out to Senator McGuire telling him some of these issues. But in Mendocino County, because of the geography here, I would say that 90% or our applicants are going to need that.”

Supervisor Carre Brown: “1600 permits has always been a problem. Getting them in a timely manner is — It’s been a problem for the last 15 or 20 years. Certainly I was thinking of the other Ag commissioners.”

Curry: “I will tell you Supervisor Brown that most Ag commissioners do not want cannabis. So the majority of counties are not allowing cannabis. There’s only a handful of us. So when it comes to the Commissioners Association, we are kind of in the minority. It's not a priority for them for most of the commissioners because they don't want it.”

CEO Carmel Angelo, in her usual guarded fashion, clearly wanted to distance herself from the more blunt comments of Ms. Curry because they tended to imply that the County’s permit program was essentially unworkable.

Angelo: “I appreciate most of what the Ag Commissioner is saying to the board. But I think some of it is anecdotal. There is a lot of work and a lot of activity happening with cannabis. I am not an Ag commissioner. I hear what you're saying about statewide and the position of the Ag commissioners. I spoke to two Ag commissioners last week who support this cannabis. I only bring that up because I think that everything you are saying, we should form our own opinions. Our state representatives are interested and want to help our region get through this. We have had multiple meetings, we have had cannabis working groups, there is a lot happening. I think your update has probably gone far enough. I don't know that there is any more that needs to be added. Thank you.”

Angelo turned her mic off with a flourish and Ms. Curry was finished.

The discussion then devolved into a general discussion of state agencies and representatives and legislative options on a whole host of separate pot related problems that the County wants to ask the state to consider, one by one by one. Which actaully seemed to confirm the kinds of problems Ms. Curry was talking about.

In the afternoon, the board went into closed session and came out around 5pm with the announcement that they had hired Joe Moreo of Modoc County as the next Pot Fall Guy, er, Ag Commissioner.

PETS OF THE WEEK

We currently have three extremely handsome roosters available for adoption. Do you have hens who  desire a Valentine's Day date or life partner? Come down to meet these eligible bachelors today!

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah; adoption hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10 am to 4:30 pm and Wednesday till 6:30 pm. To view photos and bios of our adoptable dogs and cats, please us visit online at www.mendoanimalshelter.com or visit the shelter. Join us the 2nd Saturday of every month for our "Empty the Shelter" pack walk and help us get every dog out for some exercise! For more information about  adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

A COMMUNITY SEARCH PARTY gathered at the Petrolia Fire Hall at 9 a.m. to search for Hana Hammer who was last seen in late January. Volunteers are meeting at the hall and being briefed before heading out on an extensive search of the river bar area.

According to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, Hanna is described as a white female adult, 5’00” tall, 100 lbs, brown shoulder length hair, and brown eyes.

Anyone with information for the Sheriff’s Office regarding this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707)445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

UPDATE 11:26 a.m.: According to Petrolia Fire Captain Drew Barber, the search has become even more serious as phone records came in that indicated that a phone call that was previously thought to have been on the 28th of January actually occurred on the 24th.

The last time Ms. Hammer was seen which was on the 25th, Barber said, she showed up unannounced at a home in the area without a light and saying that she was going for a swim. The search today, therefore, is centering around the river.

“We’ve got about 25-30 people on the ground,” Barber said. “We broke into teams with a member of the Petrolia or Honeydew Fire Departments on each team…People are in the field, on the ground, or in boats on the river.” He explained that the searchers are examining the river itself and up the bank on either side.

(Courtesy, RedheadedBlackBelt/KymKemp.com)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Skrag's a country cat. He oughta know better than to tangle with the night critters. He's young, though, but I think he's learned his lesson. A good beating does it every time.”

ED NOTES

THE HYDROLOGISTS out there might flesh out my unfounded opinion that one big rain year last year after five dry years isn't enough to replenish aquifers. In Boonville, at my address anyway, we seem to be sitting on an inexhaustibly miraculous fount of the stuff of life, so pure it requires no filtering and tests out Edenic. We're lucky. An easy majority of outback Mendolanders live with water on their brains, constantly struggling with their inadequate wells, precarious gravity flow "systems," rain catchment apparatuses, filtration schemes, and so on. And many of the little municipal systems aren't ever the solid sources many communities take for granted. Expect water shortages. Expect larger Mendo water disputes as groundwater regs kick in. Further, expect wine interests to dominate the regulating.

AN OMINOUS NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY called "Water & Power: A California Heist" — highly recommended — clearly describes the wholesale theft of public water in the San Joaquin by, primarily, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, lauded in Sonoma County for re-directing a small percentage of their accumulated fortune to a music center at Sonoma State University. But given all the givens of increasing population and disappearing aquifers, never mind the sharks of water privatization, we're on the verge of an even more intense argument over the resource.

(FOR MORE on the Resnicks see Dan Bacher’s fine coverage here and here.)

* * *

ALSO highly recommended as revelatory viewing is the riveting story of Andrew Cunanan, the homicidal maniac who murdered, among others, the famous clothes designer, Versace. Not for the squeamish and certainly a not so gay look at the gay life. It's playing out in serial form on the FX Channel as "The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story."

ANOTHER great series, this one on Netflix, is "Babylon Berlin," a German television series based on the tumultuous Weimar period culminating in Hitler. The cabaret scenes are absolutely stunning and the political story lines coincide with the historical record. Brilliantly acted, the depiction of the decadent social side of Weimar reminded me how much more creative and interesting the pre-fascist German decadence was than the proto-fascist decadence we've got going here in Liberty Land.

* * *

“YOU ARE OLD, Father William,” the young man said,

“And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head –

Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,

“I feared it might injure the brain;

But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

Why, I do it again and again.”

Etc.

I MUTTERED the opening stanzas of the venerable reminder Saturday morning as I walked into the Drake High School gym for an all-ages free throw contest. I was five for ten during the warm-up throws, but fired up three air balls in a row to begin my for-the-record allotment, winding up at eight for twenty. Launching the third of the three air balls, I said to the two bemused kids doing the rebounding, "I don't remember the free throw line being this far back." I slunk out of the gym vowing to practice before next year's contest.

* * *

FOR THE BOOK READERS still out there, I can, in good faith, suggest "Hemingway, Dos Passos and a Friendship Made and Lost in War" by James McGrath Morris. Their split began over the Stalinist murder of their mutual friend, the Loyalist Jose Robles, in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War where the two writers were present as correspondents sympathetic to the Loyalists. (The best book on the subject remains Orwell's. "Homage To Catalonia.") Robles was executed as a spy, which he turned out not to be. The politics were complicated, but Dos Passos was correct that Robles wasn't a traitor and argued with Hemingway that the communist faction was so intent on the ends of revolution they'd lost sight of the corrupting means to accomplishing it. Lots of interesting history in this book, including a detailed description of how Hemingway was severely wounded in Italy during the First World War where both he and Dos Passos served as ambulance drivers, Dos Passos to elude the American draft, Hemingway because he wanted to get as close to the action as possible.

* * *

BEFORE I READ "The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran" all I knew about the Shah of Iran was that he was a more benign version of his neighbor, Saddam Hussein, but nearly as villainous. This book put a big dent in my ignorance and is a big help in understanding Iranian-American relations as they threaten to add exponentially to the violence raging in the Middle East today. (The Shah wasn't all that bad a ruler, and he was certainly far more humane than the mullahs who followed him.)

* * *

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: I was in Iran on assignment for several months while in the Air Force in 1976-1977 while the Shah was in charge. I even made an air-defense radar presentation to him near the culmination of my time there. (I was responsible for the “Cost, Schedule, Staffing and Logistics” section of the study/report we prepared. The Shah slept through most of it.) Iran was more westernized and “modernized” than other middle-east/Arab countries, but it didn’t always fit well. (Oh, the stories I can tell.) The Shah did have his secret police, the Savak, a legacy of the group of very nasty thugs who helped Kermit Roosevelt and his CIA pals oust the genuinely liberal nationalist Mohammad Mossaddegh and install the Shah in the early 50s. One of the best books on the period before, during and after the Iranian Revolution is Ryszard Kapuscinski’s outstanding book “Shah of Shahs,” which covers the period before, during and after the “revolution” (first drafted while Kapuscinski lived in Tehran working for a Polish newspaper) which nicely summarizes the gripes that Iranians had with the Shah and why they initially supported Khomeini and his ultra-religious crowd, only to have their hopes dashed when they discovered that the Khomeini regime was much worse than the Shah ever was as it brought a Saudi-style dictatorship based on Sharia law to replace the Shah’s semi-democratic (but very corrupt) monarchy.

lrb.co.uk/v07/n12/malise-ruthven/the-fall-of-the-shah

Andrew and Leslie Cockburn’s excellent book “Out of Control” gets into some of that material too, although mostly it focused on the Iran-Contra scandal.

law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/747/779/1479821/

* * *

ME TOO-ISM has gone too far. The two "men" complaining that  California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia groped them are either making it up or are a whole new model of Candy Ass. One guy accused Garcia of "stroking his back, grabbing his buttocks and trying to grab his crotch" in the dugout after a legislative softball game. The other wimp-twit said that Garcia made "a crude sexual remark" and tried to grab his crotch at a fundraiser. The horror, the horror!

GRAPE CROP HITS RECORD WITH 2017 HARVEST

Despite lower yields from a difficult harvest between heat spikes and wildfires, North Coast vineyards produced a record $1.51 billion of grapes in 2017 as prices continued to climb to new highs, according to preliminary figures released Friday.

pressdemocrat.com/business/7972583-181/2017-harvest-yields-record-15

RETURN TO SENDER

On Friday, January 12, 2018, Officers of the Fort Bragg Police Department were forwarded a report from the Mendocino County Child Welfare Services office containing allegations that Jonatan Sastre-Cordova, age 40 of Fort Bragg, had committed lewd acts with multiple victims under the age of 14.

Following receipt of the report, Officers simultaneously initiated an investigation while also ensuring that the alleged victims were protected from further incidents. Over the last month, Officers have conducted multiple interviews during the course of this investigation. On Wednesday, February 7, Officers arrested Sastre-Cordova for the above allegations and transported him to the Mendocino County Jail. Anyone with any information related to this case may contact Officer Wilder at (707) 961- 2800 ext. 166 or at awilder@fortbragg.com. You may also leave anonymous information on the Crime Tip Hotline at (707) 961-3049.

(Fort Bragg Police Press Release)

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 10, 2018

DAVID AMADOR, Willits. Controlled substance, county parole violation.

MICHAEL BARNES, Redwood Valley. Under influence.

JOSE BUCIO-BUCIO, Ukiah. DUI.

LUKUS BUZZARD, Willits. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, suspended license, under influence, paraphernalia, false ID, failure to appear.

NICHOLAS HALVORSEN, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

JOSHUA HAYWARD, Point Arena. Grand theft, bad checks, ammo possession by prohibited person, embezzlement, burglary, failure to appear.

RICK HEWITT, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

CHRISTINA MCGREW, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, false impersonation of another, resisting, battery on peace officer, probation revocation.

OSCAR PANIAGUA, Redwood Valley. DUI-drugs-alcohol.

CRAIG PHIPPS, Laytonville. Paraphernalia, resisting.

JACOB REDDING, Lucerne/Ukiah. DUI-drugs-alcohol.

MARGARITO RUIZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

BELINDA SCHAFER, Ukiah. Vandalism, probation revocation.

NATHANIEL SECKER, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

GERALD SIMPSON, Willits. Arson: Offender registration upon discharge of parole, county parole violation.

KEVIN VASQUEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Global warming is not really that complicated scientifically in principle nor that hard to understand. It is simply the same greenhouse effect that heats the inside of your car to over 100 degrees on a sunny day as the light comes in through the glass and gets converted to heat trapped by the glass. Carbon dioxide and other gases like methane act just like glass in a closed car to trap heat. I dare anyone who challenges this to hang out in a car on a sunny summer day for a few hours….

So the trapping of heat is just that simple.

How that heat is dispersed, the changes it causes in weather and climate and their precise outcomes is more complicated.

But the overall global warming is just basic physics and also the capture of this heat energy in the Earth’s atmosphere does have some general effects which we have seen – more energy means more powerful storms like the triple Hurricane whammy last year, more likely desertification, more volatility in rainfall patterns and hence the unprecedented wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and California.

Climate change disasters cost the US economy over $300 Billion in 2017

POPPY

(Photo by Judy Valadao)

LETTERS REPORTEDLY POSTED AT SF TENT ENCAMPMENT THREATEN TO BURN, BEAT HOMELESS PEOPLE

by Michelle Robertson

A man reportedly posted threatening, expletive-filled letters on tents at a Mission District encampment Friday afternoon, a human rights organizer said.

Shortly after 1:45 p.m., a homelessness service provider found letters on multiple tents at an encampment beside the Duboce skate park between Mission and Valencia streets, according to Kelley Cutler of the Coalition on Homelessness.

Dated Feb. 9, the letter read in-part, "If you are still here after dark tonight, the hunters will become the hunted. We will pound you, burn you, beat you and f-- you up if you are within 100 yards of the park starting after sun down tonight." Signed, "The neighbors."

Cutler said about five people at the small encampment had the letters. One man said he was awoken after a man posted the note to his tent, and the man with the letters pepper-sprayed him. The homeless man had traces of colored spray on his body, Cutler said. She was uncertain if others had witnessed the altercation.

Encampment residents told Cutler that the man with the letters got into a black SUV that they had frequently seen around the neighborhood. The residents recorded the individual's license plate number, which the Coalition on Homelessness forwarded to San Francisco police. Police could not immediately be reached to comment.

Cutler says the man was not a member of the encampment.

"Folks that are experiencing homelessness are targeted a lot," she said. "[Being threatened] is not that unusual, though this sort of letter is."

(SF Chronicle)

A BOOK does not posess an independent or sensory existence but must be opened and fathomed. We enjoy the heady power of being necessary to its life. The real book is the prince hidden inside the frog. We open it and our eyes view the kiss of regeneration. This power is what intoxicates. The thinking of others does not interfere with our own free thinking, but meshes with it in a splendid rite of recovery. If we make books happen they make us happen as well. Reading teaches receptivity, Keats’s negative capability. It teaches us to receive in stillness and attentiveness a voice possessed temporarily, on loan. The speaker lends herself and we do the same, a mutual and ephemeral exchange, like love. Yet unlike love, reading is a pure activity. It will gain us nothing but an enchantment of the heart. And we as we grow accustomed to receiving books in stillness and attentiveness, so we can grow to receive the world, also possessed temporarily, also enchanting the heart.

Reading is a context for experience, a myriad of contexts. Not that we will know any better what to do when the time comes, but we will not be taken unawares or in a void. When we are old and have everything stripped away and grasp the vanity of having had it and of grieving for its loss, yet remain bound in both vanity and grief, hugging the whole rotten package to our hearts in an antic, fierce embrace, we may think, King Lear: This has happened before. I am not in uncharted territory. Now it's my turn in the great procession.

Lynn Sharon Schwartz, A Life in Books

LIBRARY EVENTS

Bibliotherapy Book Club for Teens (12-18)

meets every 3rd Tuesday of the month at 4pm:

• January 16th
• February 20th
• March 20th
• April 17th
• May 15th
• June 19th
• July 17th
• Sept. 18th
• Oct. 16th
• Nov. 20th
• Dec. 18th

The Ukiah Branch Library has partnered with Tapestry Family Services and Project Sanctuary to create a new book club for teens: Bibliotherapy Book Club! Starting in January, the Bibliotherapy Book Club for Teens (12-18) will meet monthly & focus on a variety of "tough topics" including anxiety, depression, grief, sexual abuse & rape, racism, bullying, suicide, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bulimia, & issues surrounding gender identity - to name a few. Some titles we will read include:

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky (trauma, grief)
• Hyberbole and a Half, Allie Brosh (depression)
• Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher (suicide)
• Say What You Will, Cammie McGovern (OCD)
• Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell (sexual & physical abuse)
• Speak, Laurie Halse Andersen (rape)

Teens will be able to discuss tough topics in a safe environment with trusted librarians and counselors from Tapestry & Project Sanctuary, as well as receive assistance for service referrals if requested.

Advance registration is required. If you are interested in the program or want to find out more about the Bibliotherapy Book Club, please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us  This book club is free and open to all interested teens.

* * *

A Special LOBA Reading Series

featuring Kara Vernor!

(Open Mic follows)

Saturday, February 17^th 3 pm

Join us for a reading with Kara Vernor, author of Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song! Open mic follows. Teens & adults are invited to share poems or micro fiction in any form or style.

Kara Vernor’s fiction chapbook, Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song, is available from Split Lip Press. Her stories have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, PANK, Green Mountains Review, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere, and have been included in Wigleaf’s “Top 50 Very Short Fictions,” the Best Small Fictions finalists, and Outpost 19’s Golden State 2017 anthology. A receipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Scholarship, Kara completed her MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and taught a flash fiction seminar at the 2017 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. She lives in Napa and co-hosts Get Lit, a quarterly reading series in Petaluma.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information – please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us

A feminist epic by Diane di Prima, LOBA is a visionary epic quest for the reintegration of the feminine, hailed by many as the great female counterpart to Allen Ginsberg's Howl when the first half appeared in 1978. Loba, "she-wolf" in Spanish explores the wilderness at the heart of experience, through the archetype of the wolf goddess, elemental symbol of complete self-acceptance.

* * *

Planning a Seed Saving Vegetable Garden

On Saturday March 3rd from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch is hosting Planning a Seed Saving Vegetable Garden.

Professional gardeners Carolyn Brown and Jen Lyon will help participants plan their vegetable gardens for eating and seed saving.  Learn about locally adapted seeds and how they help to create sustainability in our community. Sign-up by calling 707-463-4490. Sponsored by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library.

WATER BOARD DELAYS DELTA TUNNELS HEARING UNTIL FEB. 22

by Dan Bacher

After hearing Delta Tunnels opponents and proponents testify regarding whether or not they believe the Department of Water Resources new plan to build the project in two phases is a changed project, hearing officers for the State Water Resources Control Board on February 8 postponed a critical hearing needed to implement the project.

Hearing officer Tam Dudoc announced the first day of Part 2 of the process would be delayed until February 22, beginning with the evidentiary portion of Part 2.

Dudoc also directed the petitioners, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, to respond to the Natural Resources Defense Council, et al.’s February 7, 2018 renewed motion for a stay of the hearing, as well as the other comments and issues raised during the hearing that day.

She gave the petitioners until 5:00 PM on Friday, February 9, to respond. Dudoc also set a deadline of 12:00 noon on Tuesday, February 13, for all other parties to respond to the petitioners’ forthcoming submittal.

The Water Board is currently considering the petition by the DWR and Reclamation to change the points of diversion of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project required for the building of the two massive tunnels under the Delta.

After months of talk and speculation, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR)  on Wednesday announced plans for a two-stage implementation of Jerry Brown’s controversial Delta Tunnels project, also known as the California WaterFix.

In a letter to water agencies, Karla Nemeth, DWR Director, said the option for the first stage includes two intakes on the Sacramento River in the North Delta with a total capacity of 6,000 cfs per second, one tunnel, one intermediate forebay and one pumping station.

The second stage would consist of a third intake with 3,000 cfs capacity, a second tunnel and a second pumping station. This would bring the total capacity of the project from 6,000 cfs in the first phase to 9,000 cfs capacity in total, a volume of water that would exceed the entire volume of the Sacramento River during low flow periods, according to Nemeth.

Doug Obegi, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attorney, was pleased with the decision.

“The hearing officers partially granted our motion by cancelling next week’s hearing, giving the parties time to brief them whether this (the two staged project) is a changed project,” said Obegi. “We consider this a major change and I hope the board will require a significant stay to address the concerns of the public who haven’t seen the voluminous models for the revised project that were sent out late yesterday.”

“The hearing officers are taking this seriously and I greatly appreciate their consideration in doing this,” he concluded.

During the public comment period, Pennie Opal Plant of Idle No More SF Bay urged the board to reject the petition required to build the California WaterFix.

“I am a signatory to the Indigenous Women of the Americas – Defenders of Mother Earth Treaty Compact 2015. We can’t live without water and neither can our non-human relatives. The WaterFix is a water theft. You cannot approve the WaterFix,” urged Plant.

”From my heart to yours, especially to the women, our babies swim in the seas of our wombs. Please protect this water and the life that lives inside of our bellies. Please protect this sacred system of life that swims in the Delta. If we don’t protect the Delta now, it’s going to be damaged beyond the capability to maintain human and non-human life. It’s up to us,” she stated.

A large number of other Delta Tunnels opponents, including representatives of Restore the Delta, North Delta Cares, Friends of the River, the Center for Biological Diversity, Sacramento Valley water districts, Delta farmers, business owners, fishing groups, San Joaquin, Sacramento and other Delta counties and the City of Stockton, spoke on behalf of the motion to stay the hearing and against the California Water Fix.

Councilmember and Vice Mayor Elbert Holman of the City of Stockton said the California WaterFix would undo years of investment that Stockton has put into meeting state water quality standards. By choosing not to mitigate the adverse impacts to the water quality of 300,000 residents, DWR is treating the Delta’s largest city like “second class citizens,” he stated.

Project opponents say the project would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River spring-run and winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

ALL WILL BE REVEALED.

"What? says Toby, I thought it was Gert Schwankfelder. He put down his  fiddle and took a good look at me. Himmel! he says. I have hit the wrong  boy. It is not the new boy. Why are you not the new boy? Why are you not  Gert Schwankfelder!" — Rudyard Kipling

The recording of last night's (2018-02-09) KNYO and KMEC Memo of the  Air: Good Night Radio show is ready to download for free and enjoy at  any time of the day or night, via

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

*You don't have to even go there, though, if you don't want to. Thanks  to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost you can listen to the show with one  click, or download it and keep it with two:

https://memo-of-the-air.s3.amazonaws.com/all-will-be-revealed.mp3

But besides that, as usual also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com  you'll find a fresh batch of links to not necessarily radio-useful but  nonetheless worthwhile items I set aside for you while putting the show  together, things that wouldn't quite work on the radio. Such as:

An illustrated TED talk about the world as Dollar Street. They give you  a link to the interactive website of the project the scientist talks  about, so you can find out things for yourself. I found out that very  rich people are shy about publishing pictures of their illegal pets.

https://boingboing.net/2018/02/08/find-out-where-you-fit-on-the.html

A fascinating montage of countless vacationers' unwittingly perfectly  duplicated vacations. https://laughingsquid.com/instravel-tourist-selfies/

How we get marbles from recycled glass. Notice that there are people  whose career is to watch rivers of marbles pour past in a slot and pluck  out the ones that aren't good enough. That might be okay work if there's  music playing, and if it's not just one kind of music but all different  kinds at random. Except there isn't; there's just the din of the  hazardous machinery and the glass dust in your eyes and nose and mouth  and ears and lungs, and the searing heat of the furnaces, day after day,  night after night, until you want to scream, but that won't help,  they'll just demote you to marble wheelbarrow duty. This is what's  really happening when people bitch about China stealing American jobs.  Do you want your shiny marbles or don't you. You do? Here's your  marbles, friend.

https://laughingsquid.com/how-marbles-are-made/

Seven years of the eleven-year solar cycle, to put things in  perspective. That orange thing there is almost 900,000 miles across  (1,300,000 planet Earths could fit inside of it), and it's been there,  doing what you see it doing, for four-and-a-half billion years. It's one  of 100,000,000,000+ stars in just one of 100,000,000,000+ galaxies in  only one of a potentially infinite number of universes.

https://theawesomer.com/7-year-solar-time-lapse/464933/

So, our sun, the heating system. And here's how we move around and with  that sun, regardless of where we work, or which teevee shouter appeals  to our sense of authority or mob oneness, or which imaginary friend in  the childish part of our brain we wish our wishes of, or whether we wash  our hair every day or only once a week or never, or become a vegehoovian  or a Republican or get an abortion or a headache or fall off our roller  skates or learn to play the flute. This is the best graphic description  of our motion through the universe that I have ever seen (20 min.):

https://tinyurl.com/RealMotionOfEarthThroughSpace

–Marco McClean