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<font size=3>Well-contrasted views here, -Arnold
Whitridge<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Dear Editor,<br><br>
I could not disagree more with the op-ed piece about the value of
dams<br>
that you printed recently from Assemblyman Doug LaMalfa. Underlying
the<br>
gratuitous partisan attacks on environmentalists in the Assemblyman's
piece<br>
was a very important substantive misconception-that California needs
more<br>
surface water storage. Nothing could be further from the truth. The
old,<br>
out-dated, destructive paradigm that all water shortages are solved
with<br>
ever more expensive dams has been debunked thoroughly by science
and<br>
practical money management. Contrary to what Assemblyman LaMalfa would
have<br>
you believe, dinosaur dams have been eliminated by cost more often
recently<br>
than by environmental opposition. No one, particularly farmers, can
afford<br>
to pay the huge costs of building dams in the marginal places where new
dams<br>
are proposed to be located. No one, other than Uncle Sucker, or badly
led<br>
state taxpayers, would be willing to pay $300 per acre foot (Sites<br>
Reservoir) or $1000 an acre foot (expanded Los Vaqueros) for water
that<br>
would only be available on occasion.<br><br>
As for the proposed Shasta raise, how will pouring additional
concrete<br>
make it rain more? Shasta's problem is that it is not full often
enough,<br>
something like one year in 8 over the last 30 years. Assemblyman
LaMalfa<br>
should know that there is plenty of water available for Sacramento
Valley<br>
farming today and far into the future if more cheap North State water is
not<br>
"re-sold" to continue the present outrageous waste of water in
Southern<br>
California and in industrial agriculture on the westside of the San
Joaquin<br>
valley. What is the motivation for a Northern California politician to
be<br>
blaming environmentalists for opposing additional financial and<br>
environmental waste on new dams when there are financially sound
water<br>
solutions readily available for Southern California-recycling, reuse of
the<br>
approximately 2 million ac/ft pumped into the sea in Southern
California<br>
each year, capture of more of the 1.2 million ac/ft of stormwater
run-off<br>
that rushes uninterrupted into the sea in Southern California in an
average<br>
year, de-salination of polluted groundwater, and retirement of
contaminated<br>
farmland on the westside of the San Joaquin valley? These cost
effective<br>
measures should be fully utilized before the politicians fleece the<br>
taxpayers to pay for marginal dams that no water user in Northern
California<br>
would or could afford on their own for local use.<br><br>
If Southern California water users need water they should look to
their<br>
own resources first, not Northern California rivers and groundwater
basins.<br>
They presently use 60% of their water on outside water uses while living
in<br>
a desert. They only drink one per cent of their water. They live within
a<br>
few miles of the largest water source on the planet, the Pacific
Ocean.<br>
They don't need more North state water, except that it's very cheap and
some<br>
of our politicians aren't very good at protecting it.<br><br>
Michael Jackson,<br>
Quincy, California<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Too much water under
the bridge for Northern Californians<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>By DOUG
LaMALFA-Special to the DN<br>
Red Bluff Daily News - May 2, 2005<br><br>
What a thirsty California needs now is storage, more storage<br><br>
It's spring. Our hillsides are green. After a year of record rains
in<br>
Southern California, the desert has bloomed. And, once again, in the
North<br>
State, precious water is rushing under our bridges and out to the
sea,<br>
lost forever. Why?<br><br>
We all try to put away some money for a "rainy day." Then why
don't we<br>
store more of this year's precipitation for the dry days that are sure
to<br>
come? The answer is as simple as it is outrageous: Self-appointed<br>
"protectors of the environment," aided and abetted by liberal
allies in<br>
the bureaucracy and Legislature, have managed to put their own
peculiar<br>
obsessions ahead of the needs of the people of California.<br><br>
The simple facts of water life in California are these. We have dry
years<br>
and wet years, but over the long haul, a plentiful supply of rain and
snow<br>
falls on our state. The problem isn't a natural shortage of
precipitation<br>
it's a manmade shortage of water storage.<br><br>
Earlier generations of Californians understood those facts well. For
over<br>
a century, they built dams and reservoirs not only to store water but
to<br>
control floods and create clean, renewable hydroelectric energy.
Their<br>
foresight turned California into the nation's number one
agricultural<br>
state and helped it become the most populous state in our nation.
Without<br>
our remarkable manmade water system, California would never have grown
and<br>
prospered so.<br><br>
In the last four decades, however, as environmental radicals have waged
a<br>
relentless propaganda campaign, many in California have lost sight
of<br>
those realities. Since the Oroville Dam was completed in 1967,<br>
California's population has doubled. In the same period, these
extremists<br>
fought every effort to increase water storage in the North State,
even<br>
though we are the source of most of the state's water supply.<br><br>
If that isn't bad enough, the people who for decades have stopped us
from<br>
building new dams are now lobbying to blow them up. First they went
after<br>
a few small ones, here and there. Now they are targeting O'Shaughnessy
Dam<br>
at Hetch Hetchy, a 360,000-acre foot reservoir that has provided water
to<br>
San Francisco for nearly a century. Without its water supply, the Bay
Area<br>
would never have grown and prospered.<br><br>
Now environmental extremists are telling us San Francisco doesn't
really<br>
need Hetch Hetchy. Ironically, the groups who so vigorously oppose
all<br>
other water plans are proposing an elaborate engineering project to<br>
replace Hetch Hetchy. It's an interesting but hard-to-believe role<br>
reversal.<br><br>
The plan seems more like a shell game. Here's how it works. One group
of<br>
environmentalists, calling themselves "Restore Hetch Hetchy,"
wants to<br>
restore the valley that was flooded to create the reservoir. In
exchange,<br>
it proposes, among other things, a new pipe from the Sierra to
supply<br>
water to the Bay Area. At the same time, however, another
environmental<br>
organization, American Rivers, opposes the pipe, saying it would harm
the<br>
Tuolumne River.<br><br>
Which group do you believe? Neither one, as far as I'm
concerned.<br><br>
In Yolo County, Friends of the River is also pushing a bill in the<br>
legislature that would slap a "wild and scenic" label on 31
miles of Cache<br>
Creek. In the name of protecting natural resources, this bill could
very<br>
well threaten human lives and property by making it difficult to
provide<br>
flood protection for the growing Woodland area. Of course, that makes
no<br>
difference to extremists more concerned with the fate of delta
smelt,<br>
kangaroo rats and their next fund-raising letter, than people.<br><br>
It's a gloomy picture but a ray of sunshine is breaking through. It
comes<br>
from, of all places, San Francisco. The leaders of that ultra-liberal
city<br>
are beginning to feel pinch. They don't like it. Environmentalists
be<br>
damned, they say, as they launch an all-out battle to keep Hetch
Hetchy.<br><br>
We in the North State have known this truth for a long time. For once,
San<br>
Francisco has gotten it right. Now, all Californians must recognize
the<br>
need for more water storage that will serve our state for generations
to<br>
come.<br><br>
Assemblyman Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, represents Tehama County.<br><br>
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