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Today's Stories

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

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Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

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Of Whiners and Poor Losers

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Victor M. Rodriguez
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Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

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Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

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The Militarization of Space

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June 3, 2008

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Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

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The Hope of a Victimized People

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Obama's VP Quandry

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Death on the Salmon Highway

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Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

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The Olmert Scandal

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Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

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Bailing Out Wall Street

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Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

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Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

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How McClellan Prettifies Bush

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Broken Agriculture

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A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

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Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

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Bush, Rice and McClellan

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Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
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Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

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From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

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Of Gas and God

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Suicide at Guantánamo

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And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

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Robins Weep

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McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

 

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

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How We Got Into This Mess

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Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

 

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

 

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyrann
y

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

 

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

 

 

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

 

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism
: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

 

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

 

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

 

 

 

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June 5, 2008

Schwarzenegger Declares Drought, Calls for New Dams

The Parching of California

By DAN BACHER

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a drought proclamation and called for "immediate action" at a press conference at the State Capitol in Sacramento on Tuesday, using the event to campaign for his plan to build more dams and "improve conveyance"- a euphemism for the construction of the peripheral canal - to increase water exports from the California Delta to agribusiness and southern California.

“For the areas in Northern California that supply most of our water, this March, April and May have been the driest ever in our recorded history,” Governor Schwarzenegger said. “As a result, some local governments are rationing water, developments can’t proceed and agricultural fields are sitting idle."

The final snow survey of 2008 in May by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) showed snowpack water content at only 67 percent of normal and the runoff forecast at only 55 percent of normal.

Before gathered members of the press and the governor's staff including DWR Director Lester Snow, and Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy, the Governor signed an Executive Order proclaiming a "statewide drought" and directing the Department of Water Resources and other entities to take "immediate action" to address the situation.

The Executive Order does not mandate water rationing, but relies on voluntary measures, so it is largely symbolic. The order directs the DWR "to facilitate water transfers to respond to emergency shortages across the state and work with local water districts and agencies to improve local coordination and help local water districts and agencies improve water efficiency and conservation."

The order also directs DWR "to coordinate with other state and federal agencies and departments to assist water suppliers, identify risks to water supply and help farmers suffering losses, and expedite existing grant programs to help local water districts and agencies conserve."

The document also encourages local water districts and agencies to voluntarily promote water conservation. "They are encouraged to work cooperatively on the regional and state level to take aggressive, immediate action to reduce water consumption locally and regionally for the remainder of 2008 and prepare for potential worsening water conditions in 2009," according to Schwarzenegger.

After touting voluntary measures as the way to supply water to Californians in a drought year, Schwarzenegger used the drought declaration to highlight "the state’s need for infrastructure improvements to capture excess water in wet years to use in dry years like this one."

“This drought is an urgent reminder of the immediate need to upgrade California’s water infrastructure," Schwarzenegger stated. "There is no more time to waste because nothing is more vital to protect our economy, our environment and our quality-of-life. We must work together to ensure that California will have safe, reliable and clean water not only today but 20, 30 and 40 years from now.”

The Governor then renewed his call for more dams and conveyance as proposed in his $11.9 billion water bond boondoggle for "water management investments" that he claimed will "address population growth, climate change, water supply reliability and environmental needs."

The proposal includes $3.5 billion dedicated to the development of additional storage, including the controversial Sites Dam in the Sacramento Valley and the Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River that a coalition of recreational fishing groups, commercial fishing organizations, Indian Tribes and environmental groups are opposing.

The Governor said he would prefer to get his infrastructure plan passed through the Legislature, but did not rule out putting it on the ballot as an initiative "if that's what it takes."

"But let me tell you, I prefer to do the same thing as we have done successfully in 2006, where we sat down and we negotiated and we worked together and out came $37 billion of infrastructure. And now we are rebuilding our roads and we are building extra classrooms, expanding our universities, building career-tech educational facilities and also fixing our levees," he said.

He emphasized, " And I don't see water as a political issue. I think that there are Democrats that want to drink safe and reliable water and there are Republicans that want to drink safe and reliable water and they want to have a guarantee that they'll have water 20, 30 years from now. So I think it shouldn't be a party issue, it should be a people's issue and it should be an issue that is facing farmers and business people. Ordinary people, everybody is suffering when we have no water. So this is why I think Democrats and Republicans must get together and solve this problem once and for all."

Traci Sheehan Van Thull, Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League, criticized Schwarzenegger for using "outdated strategies" to deal with the water crisis.

"Governor Schwarzenegger's drought proclamation offers up a challenge - and an opportunity - for all Californians to conserve water and to work together to find new solutions to solve our water problems," she said. "Unfortunately the Governor's executive order relies heavily on outdated strategies that have created the very problems we now seek to solve."

She encouraged the Governor to embrace measures that will allow California to grow without increasing demand on already over-allocated water sources. "We need strong policies that can decrease water demand, provide climate-resilient water supplies, and truly provide relief for the communities, fisherman, businesses and ecosystems that are suffering from lack of reliable water," noted Sheehan.

"More and more residents and businesses are facing severe water rationing in California, while water demands and communities continue to grow. While the Governor's proclamation references the need to provide water for our growth, his executive order relies heavily on the same sources of water that are now in decline," she said.

She urged the passage of measures such as Assembly Member Krekorian's Water Efficiency Security Act, co-sponsored by the Planning and Conservation League, that would help prevent rationing by ensuring growing California communities have the water they need without further increasing water demand on over-burdened water resources. However, this measure failed to gain traction in the State Assembly.

"Ensuring that new growth in California will not lead to increased rationing and exacerbate the pending water crisis is a critical step to solving California's water crisis," Sheehan said. "

I found it revealing that Schwarzenegger failed to mention the impact of the salmon fisheries disaster now ravaging California and Oregon coastal and inland communities, the result of abysmal water management by the state and federal governments, in his press conference, press releases and the executive order. While agribusiness, industry and municipalities face water shortages this year, Central Valley fall run chinook salmon and California Delta fish species have faced a "man made" drought, in spite of some good water years, since 2002.

The Sacramento River fall run chinook population has declined from over 800,000 fish in 2002 to less than 60,000 this year, prompting the complete closure of salmon fishing off the Oregon and California coast for the first time in history, along with the closure of Central Valley rivers to the take of salmon except for one small stretch of the Sacramento River in November and December.

Some of the largest annual water export levels in history occurred in 2003 (6.3 million acre feet), 2004 (6.1 MAF), 2005 (6.5 MAF and 2006 (6.3 MAF). Exports averaged 4.6 MAF annually between 1990 and 1999 and increased to an average of 6 MAF between 2000 and 2007, a rise of almost 30 percent, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. For the fish, this massive diversion of water from the Delta amounts to a manufactured drought, engineered by the same state and federal governments that are supposedly are entrusted with protecting fish and other natural resources.

The sudden and unprecedented decline of Sacramento River fall chinook salmon parallels the collapse of delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile shad and threadfin shad. These Delta "pelagic" - open water - species have declined because of three reasons (1) increases in water exports, (2) toxic chemicals and (3) invasive species, according to a team of state and federal scientists. More recently, studies point to high levels of ammonia in Sacramento River water as a factor in the collapse of salmon and other California fish species.

There is no doubt we are in a drought. However, we need to use this crisis as an opportunity to mandate increased water conservation and to consider retiring drainage impaired land on the West side of the San Joaquin Valley. Sheehan's characterization of the Governor's water plans as "outdated strategies" is absolutely correct.

Rather than relying on outdated strategies such as new dams and "improving" conveyance - building the peripheral canal- we need to adopt new strategies based around water conservation, sustainable agriculture and developing new sources of water such as desalination, provided it is done in an environmentally friendly and energy efficient manner.

Dan Bacher can be reached at: Danielbacher@fishsniffer.com



 

 

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