Watercolor of Russian Fort Ross by Il'ia Voznesenky, 1841
by Wayne Lusvardi
Something like the purges of the Kulaks during the Russian Bolshevik Revolution is about to happen to many of California's Central Valley farmers. Only in a Capitalist society like ours the government just adjudicates the de facto taking of your property only without additionally hanging you like Lenin did the Kulaks. But why are California's coastal cities not joining with agricultural water districts to appeal the court order which has blocked 85% of water deliveries through the California Aqueduct to both farmers and Southern California? Don't they both have something to lose?
For those who haven't been following what is happening, in 2007 Federal Judge Oliver Wanger, responding to a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, ordered an 85% reduction of water shipped through the pumps of the California Aqueduct to downstream farmers in the California Central Valley and to thirsty cities in Southern California. Judge Wanger's purported reason was to to protect the tiny Delta Smelt fish. But the science behind the court decision to reduce water deliveries to protect the Smelt was always flimsy.
The population of the Smelt has drastically declined during the natural drought of the last two years. Environmentalists blame the huge pumps on the California Aqueduct, natural predators such as the Striped Bass fish, and agricultural pollution for the problem.
But as recent research in the Egyptian Nile Delta shows, sewage and fertilizer helps fish populations thrive http://www.physorg.com/news151608461.html. And the Striped Bass fish spawn best in fresh bodies of water without salinity and without high or low amounts of organic matter (TDL's). Water quality improvements demanded by environmentalists may have both reduced salinity and altered organic content so as to inadvertently provide a spurt to the Striped Bass - the natural predator to the Smelt. Perhaps the water quality improvements to the Sacramento Delta in the past five years have affected the Smelt population. How's that proverb go?: "water that is too pure has no fish."
Under Judge Wanger's court order in California about one million acres of farmland will be fallowed this year. Agricultural communities like Mendota, Firebaugh and Huron may become like former Midwestern Rust Belt cities where the industry disappeared. Without reliable water, California central valley farmers could default on any outstanding agricultural loans and would be hung out to dry in the poor house of bankruptcy. Agricultural land values, which serve as collateral for any loans, would be decimated which could cause a meltdown of the agricultural finance system. Statewide there would be devastating impacts to the tax revenues from agriculture to an already over stressed State budget.
Concurrently, just about every city in Southern California is preparing to either adopt draconian water policing regulations on water consumption or increase water rates to discourage consumption due to the curtailment of imported water from Northern California. Water usage will have to drop 10% to 40% for urban Southern California to make it through the summer no matter if the recent two year natural drought ends. And that assumes that the Metropolitan Water District will also draw down its reserves in underground water banks dotted across central and southern California. Once those reserves are gone we will be looking at what we might call a Russian communist-style drought brought about by government rather than nature.
Farmers north of the Sacramento Delta have offered excess water to thirsty California cities this year due relieve the two-year old concurrent natural drought. Little good that would do because Judge Wanger's court order would stop any shipments of water through the Delta.
To stop the ruination of farmers two agricultural water districts, the Westlands Water District and the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority, have finally filed appeals to free up the water from Judge Wanger's ruling. But why aren't desperate urban water districts and cities also filing appeals or helping out central valley water districts in their court appeal? And why did these appeals take two years?
Is it just a coincidence that state Republicans recently caved and went along with a Democratic Party proposal to resolve the protracted California state budget deficit log-jam? And is it merely coincidental that now after two years court appeals have been initiated to free up water for Red county farmers? Is there some behind the scenes quid pro quo going on, to wit: "you want your water, you vote for our budget?" Now that the Democrats have their budget, subject to voter approval, perhaps the Coastal Blue County cities believe the water siege is over and there is no reason to join ag water districts in appealing the judicial blockade of water. All this smacks of conspiratorial thinking. But maybe it is just how the Great Game of Water Politics in California is played like a Russian chess game: check mate!
What other explanation could there be for why desperate cities and urban water districts haven't been helping agricultural water districts in appealing this disastrous water blockade? Even leftist California columnist Thomas D. Elias asks in a recent column: "why didn't anyone even try to overturn the ruling?" (see "Now It's Definitely a Man-Made Drought," March 10). Who knows what's really going on backstage, but things sure look awfully "fishy."
Which brings us back to the Russian Kulaks. The "Kulaks" were the property owners of Russia. They were the farmers who were the propertied classes. They were too preoccupied with making a living in 1917 to join forces with the White Russian forces during the Russian Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. So the Soviet forces prevailed and passed laws tightening the screws on the Kulak propertied class. By 1928, the Kulaks revolted whereupon Vladmir Lenin decreed that they should be hanged and their property seized.
A different kind of political war is being raged in Kulakafornia against the Red county farmers or Kulaks. The current California political civil war is between the Red agricultural counties and the Blue urban counties rather than the White Russians and the Red Bolsheviks. No one is being hung. But nonetheless ag land is about to be indirectly seized. Environmental lawsuit brinksmanship is about to decimate a large sector of Red county farming business.
We forget that in 1812 a contingent of Russians showed up along the California coastline at what now is called Fort Ross to establish a Russian colony. California's Russian River gets its name from this early Russian colony. After 1839 the Russians abandoned the Fort Ross colony. Little known to most modern Californians, however, the Russians have been back for quite a while and continue to wreak political havoc on its Kulak population.
The so-called public utilities are in the business of selling a commodity, so there is benefit to them in shorages as it keeps the prices high. There is no incentive to allow capture or use of the water that flows down the flood control channel as it reduces demand for the commodity. An example is the attempt of the Brookside Golf Course to get a permit to pump water out of the channel to use to refill the golf course lakes. I am told that they hit a wall every direction they turned, including with a special consultant they hired. Nobody with any say over that flood control channel water flowing to the ocean apparently wanted it used for the lakes in place of the drinking water that has been traditionally bought and used for that purpose. Why allow folks free water when you are in the business of selling it? It is a shame, in my opinion.
Posted by: Pasadena resident | March 11, 2009 at 06:20 AM