Greens to governor: You will fail because you won't take big money out of politics : LA IMC

The Greens are known for making both Republicans and Democrats look bad, especially in CA. During the debates between Arnold Schwartzenegger and Grey Davis during CA's total recall elections, Green party candidate Peter Miguel Camejo was banned from any further debates following his successful ability to make both Democrats and Republicans lose numbers in the polls. Guess a little bit of facts in place of the usual phony bipartisan rhetoric (development uber alles) is enough to upset the apple cart of public opinion..

Either way it seems like Arnold's shift to embrace Democrat-esque values of public education, prison reform and CO2 reductions is another needed PR appeal to the growing populist sentiment held by the majority of Californians sick and tired of GW Bush regime's military occupation & attack on Iraq, global ecosystem, prison-industrial complex, sprawl development, etc..

Arnold's request for additional water storage in CA may literally be water under the bridge if global warming continues. The continuous rise in sea level and decreasing snowpack in Sierras may well result in flooding and other seasonal inundations of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley. Here's where restoration of wetland ecosystems can help with both summer water storage capabilities, additional surface area for downward percolation into aquifer (instead of runoff into ocean) and a flood prevention buffer. The loss of wetland buffer zones in Louisiana from petroleum shipping canals & suburban sprawl infill increased flooding damages to New Orleans from Katrina..

Here's a situation where taxpayers of Lousiana are handed the bill of wetlands' restoration following damage from petroleum canals while big oil execs drive away with their billions in salary intact..

"Now, AMERICA WETLANDS with it's mega-industry sponsor, and it's mega-politically connected spindoctors is convienently omitting key issues from its rhetoric. Such as...

1. The Corps of Engineers Mississippi River Gulf Outlet must be filled in immediately. This MR-GO has destroyed over 20,000 acres of wetlands that once served as a buffer to hurricane tidal surges hitting St. Bernard, Plaquemines and Orleans Parishes. MR-GO served as a funnel-funeral for Hurricane Katrina's tidal surges.

2. AMERICA WETLANDS demands federal tax payers fork over billions of dollars to restore the Louisiana costal zone. However, they fail to mention the liability of oil companies for the dredging of thousands of miles canals, or the Corps' disasterous MR-GO. But Landrieu has no problem pointing out that it's the levees not canals that are the cause for coastal erosion.

During an interview on NPR Radio she takes the side of big oil and makes it clear that the burden of the restoration of wetlands in Louisiana falls in the lap of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the federal government. She then plays down the documented research that over 50% of the reason for coastal erosion is because of the thousands of oil company canals created by gulf coast petroleum industries.

3. Finally, Two questions are raised. How can Shell Oil sponsor a save AMERICA WETLANDS campaign and proceed with their killing field-open loop LNG facility proposal that will slaughter the fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico and also be considered eco-friendly? And how can AMERICA WETLANDS lie in bed with Shell Oil Co. and be considered a proponent for environmental conservation and restoration?

Since AMERICA WETLANDS fails to bring up the known fact that oil company canals are in large part the leading cause of coastal erosion. And since AMERICA WETLANDS has this partnership-sponsorship with Shell Oil that supports this false image of Shell Oil as a wetland-conservation supporter it lends credence to the idea that AMERICA WETLANDS is a straw man created to take the heat off of Shell Oil by ignoring key issues.

By aligning itself and accepting sponsorship from Shell Oil Co. AMERICA WETLANDS helps promote the concealment of the fact that there is an obvious and immediate necessity to convert from the stinking-polluting oil and gas industry to a solar-wind-alternative-economically viable energy industry with a massive energy conservation program. "

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read on @;

http://www.saveourwetlands.org/hofmeister.html

Let's not allow the same mistake to happen here in CA's central valley. The developers who duped public officials into allowing them to build on either wetlands or seasonal floodplains (ie., vernal pools) are directly responsible to flood damages to older urban neighborhoods. Maybe building those sprawled-out suburban gated communities in the Natomas floodplain wasn't such a great idea after all. What remains unanswered is which developers bribed city/county/state officials to reconsider Natomas as being located in a flood plain..

Here again we witness similar patterns near Sacramento when compared to New Orleans;

"For decades pipeline canals, shipping channels, and oil platform access canals were built willy-nilly across the coastal marsh of Louisiana, giving the oil industry carte blanche to decimate the coastal wetlands that protect New Orleans from storm surges. Public policy kept the Mississippi River bounded in a swift and fast channel that precludes the necessary deposition of mud and silt that built Southeast Louisiana in the first place. This was done for shipping, refining capacity, and real estate development. Siphoning some of the flow of the river to replenish wetlands was considered anathema to free enterprise. Public policy -- not nature, not God.

In the last 60 years, the floodplain around New Orleans sunk by an average of 2-3 feet. The subsidence was especially problematic in difficult-to-drain backswamps. These backswamps are geographically distinctive from the natural levees --like the slither of higher ground along both banks of the Mississippi, where, for example, the French Quarter is located. Incremental filling of the backswamp began in the early 1900's, took off in the 1920's during the first auto-oriented housing boom, and then accelerated rapidly after World War Two, driven by white flight, anti-urbanism, subsidized highways, mortgages, and flood insurance. Metairie, Chalmette, the West Bank, and eventually New Orleans East emerged -- all mostly in backswamp."

read on @;

http://www.planetizen.com/node/17467

Further social injustice is committed by developers when their sprawling McMansions and other recent infills result in older urban neighborhoods flooding. Where once a wetland stood and soaked up water like a sponge, now exists the non-permeable surface of a Wal-mart parking lot, or another McMansion elevated with infill. When the water doesn't soak into the wetland soil/plant roots, it joins the floodwaters downstream. This applies additional pressure to the levee system, causing localized flooding events in lower elevation neighborhoods. Similar to New Orleans, public housing in Sacramento is next to the levees..

It is misleading to promote dam building as being a safe means of flood prevention. All rivers of the Sacramento Valley are dammed to the maximum possible extent yet flooding downstream remains a regular event. Many of the floods occurring in the valley were not prevented by the presence of dams, as the levees gave way despite dams being at their full capacity. Raising dams (ie., Shasta, see that nearby volcano?) in a seismically active region isn't safe nor culturally sensitive (Wintu people's ceremonial grounds upstream flooded) either..

Looking at the state's water issues from an indigenous perspective may result in the most logical option, returning human society to a symbiosis with valley wetlands. Restoration of valley wetlands also provides wildlife habitat, food for humans (starchy bulbs, wild rice, migratory waterfowl, fish, etc..) protects humans from flooding, stores water for summer aquifer, and provides plant materials for basketry, crafts, etc..

Salmon are most severely impacted by diversion dams on regional rivers. The presence of two obstructive diversion dams on the Feather River may no longer be needed if people can discover other means of flooding rice fields, possibly by joining the fields to nearby flooded wetlands. An expansion of the Llano Seco wetlands could help the Lundberg rice farmers with aquifer recharge and additional water storage. The conservation easement of additional land for wetlands providing access to migratory waterfowl on rice fields. The replacement of outdated diversion dams with pipes could provide salmon, rice farmers and migratory birds with enough water and access to riparian habitat..

"The Western Canal Water District, where I had begun my good-will tour, was the one entity in the rice region that had managed to pick a clean route through this obstacle course.

The district had a couple of million dollars in the bank and it offered to invest it in the demolition of its two diversion dams and some relatively inexpensive piping. Whatever it took, the district said, in addition to helping migratory birds, it was going to do salmon more good than harm.

I had taken a liking to this district, in whose offices I had been roasted in 1991. Western Canal’s most prominent board member, Homer Lundberg, was the angriest of my 19 adversaries, but ultimately I understood why: The Lundberg family runs the largest organic rice-growing operation in the United States and maintains a winter bed-and-breakfast for huge flocks of waterfowl - their droppings are the farm’s principal fertilizer - by permitting no hunting on any of its land. (-It hurts," Homer told me later, "when we run what amounts to a pesticide-free wildlife refuge and people still don’t think of us as environmentalists." )

Gary Brown, the district’s general manager, whose physique is extra-large and who looks faintly undressed without a holster and gun, is one of the most tireless conservationists I have ever met. Brown is also a rice-region rarity: a male in a hunting culture who doesn’t hunt.

"I couldn’t shoot at a duck," he once told me. "I’d feel too sorry if I actually hit one."

Western Canal’s water supply flows by aqueduct from Oroville Dam, a gigantic state-financed structure on the Feather River, the Sacramento’s biggest tributary. But as the canal meanders west and north, it irrigates only about half its district before running into Butte Creek, which drains another watershed. To get water to the district’s 30,000 acres on the other side of the creek, two small retention dams block the creek. The dams keep Oroville water from going downriver and allow big pumps on the other side of the creek to suck it right back out."

read on @;

http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=3725

Llano Seco is a wetlands complex that provides waterfowl with wetlands habitat while also remaining an active floodplain buffer zone and aquifer recharge;

"Almost directly across Ord Ferry Road from the gravel driveway leading into the Llano Seco Rancho, a mile or so on the Chico side of the Sacramento River, is a nearly new house set back about 75 feet from the road. Although this is farm country, it's not a farmhouse.

"See that ranchette," Jim Saake said, pointing to the house. "That's what Llano Seco could have become."

Saake is president of board of directors of the Northern California Regional Land Trust (NCRLT), and in the past few months he's completed negotiations with the owner of Llano Seco to put the last remaining acres of the 18,000-acre spread in a conservation easement guaranteeing that it will never be turned into ranchettes, subdivisions or anything like them.

Instead it will remain as it is, a few thousand acres of farming and cattle-grazing land surrounded by and interspersed with many more thousands of acres of riparian forest, a couple of small lakes and soft, undulating hillocks dotted with scrub. Once a vast Mexican land grant, it still looks much as it did before the settlers arrived.

read on @;

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=oid%3A68042

Aquifer recharge can occur anywhere there is enough clay soil available to store rainwater underground over time. A wetland habitat will increase pressure on downward water percolation, thus replenishing the aquifer quicker than impermeable dry ground as a result of additional pressure. Under current conditions a great deal of potential aquifer water is lost as a result of runoff from sprawl development..

"For the first time, water leaders are saying the county needs to be thinking about protecting areas that refill the underground aquifer from which Chico gets its water.

An estimated 30 million acre-feet of water is contained in the lower Tuscan aquifer. But if areas of key recharge are paved over, the resource could be diminished.

Groundwater is fairly simple. Rain falls onto the ground, percolates through the various layers of soil, and collects in a groundwater aquifer. Later the water is pumped up from the ground."

read on @;

http://www.watershedportal.org/news/news_html?ID=87

That's the beginning of the response to Arnold's speech about water storage. To add on, in support of education, how about providing indigenous people with self-teaching schools instead of for profit casinos? The D-Q University near Davis/Winters is one example of a struggling native run school that could help solve many of CA's ecological dilemas if only they remain open..

"D-Q University is a two-year college located on Road 31 in Yolo County, 6.7 miles west of California State Route 113. The school is facing imminent closure due to loss of accreditation, declining enrollment, and alleged financial mismanagement.

The full name of the school is Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University. According to some tribal members, use of the spelled-out name of the university can be offensive. People who want to be culturally respectful refer to the institution as D-Q University. Tribal members in appropriate circumstances may use the full name.

The purpose of D-Q University was to provide alternative ideas and methods of education to Native American people. Among its goals were the preservation and re-institutionalization of traditional Native American values, the perpetuation and exercise of Native American religion and beliefs, the establishment of a Native American Research Institute, the development of field-based educational delivery systems to Native Americans who cannot attend the school itself, and the maintenance of social and personal support systems for D-Q students and staff.

It is the only tribal university in California and has faced severe financial and accreditation issues. Founded in 1971, it is the only indigenous-controlled institution of higher learning located outside a reservation. The school was one of the six original tribal colleges in the United States, all founded between 1968 and 1972. That group created the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in 1972 to address common challenges such as fundraising and attracting qualified faculty. Nationwide, the U.S. Department of Education recognizes 34 tribal colleges, most of which are two-year schools.

The site of D-Q was previously used as a United States Strategic Air Command Communication Center. After the federal government decommissioned the site, the organizers of the school applied to use it, based on a law which required surplus federal land to be returned to Native Americans. The application was initially denied, but after a series of protests, the University of California withdrew its application to use the site for its Native American Studies program and a primate lab, and D-Q University was conditionally granted the land in 1970.

The school opened in 1971, and obtained accreditation in 1977, but lost it in 2005, after which it closed. However, disputed among the board of trustees were settled in a lawsuit which resulted in the re-opening of D-Q University later that year. Declining enrollment and lack of funds led the board to dismiss the president in June 2006, and the remaining students have left."

read on @;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Q_University

Wetlands are also important habitat source for plants used in basketweaving materials (ie., tule reed). Entire boats were made from the plentiful lightweight reeds of tule wetlands. California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA) in Woodland teaches basketweaving skills to people interested in maintaining indigenous culture throughout the region. Here's CIBA's vision;

"The purpose of the California Indian Basketweavers Association is to preserve, promote and perpetuate California Indian basketweaving traditions.

By promoting and providing opportunities for California Indian basketweavers to pursue the study of traditional basketry techniques and forms and to showcase their work.

By establishing rapport and working relations with public agencies and other groups in order to provide a healthy physical, social, cultural, spiritual and economic environment for the practice of California Indian basketry.

By increasing California Indian access to traditional cultural resources on public and tribal lands and traditional gathering sites, and encouraging the reintroduction of such resources and designation of gathering areas on such lands.

By raising awareness and providing education for Native Americans, the public, public agencies, arts, educational and environmental groups of the artistry, practices and concerns of Native American basketweavers.

By promoting solidarity and broadening communication among Native American basketweavers and with other indigenous traditional artists.

By monitoring public and private land use and encouraging those management practices that protect and conserve traditional Native resources.

By monitoring and discouraging pesticide use in traditional and potential gathering areas for the safety of weavers, gatherers and others in tribal communities.

By doing all of the above in a manner which respects our Elders and Mother Earth."

read on @;

http://www.ciba.org/vision.html

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Greens to governor: You will fail because you won't take big money out of politics

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