Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
March 25, 2009
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Crowd unleashes flood of comments at peripheral canal meeting
New
Desert Sun
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Crowd unleashes flood of comments at peripheral canal meeting
By
STOCKTON - Same issue, same building, different decade.
About 120 people gathered Tuesday night at the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium for a chance to vent to the powers that be over plans to build a peripheral canal.
Fifteen years ago, some of the same folks met in the same auditorium as part of the CALFED process, which was supposed to fix the ailing Delta but today is viewed by many as a failure.
On Tuesday, state officials displayed new maps showing a proposed canal taking water from the Sacramento River and shipping it down the east side of the Delta, tunneling under the San Joaquin River at Rindge Tract, west of Stockton, on its way to the massive pumps near Tracy, and from there to the Bay Area and Southern California.
"Didn't most of that land use to be desert anyway?" asked 25-year-old Blake Joaquin, a wakeboarder. "Why should we give them our water? I don't understand."
The meeting was one in a series hosted by state officials and water users as part of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, which would basically give water users continued authority to divert water from the Delta. The plan includes restoring habitat and funneling water around, rather than through, the heart of the estuary.
"It's an effort that impacts all of us, you in particular," California Secretary of Resources Mike Chrisman told the largely unhappy audience before fielding questions and pointed comments.
Dante Nomellini Jr., representing Delta farmers, asked state Department of Water Resources Deputy Director Jerry Johns what assurance he would give that only surplus water would be diverted into the canal, even during a drought. "We are a system of laws," Johns said, at which the crowd laughed.#
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090325/A_NEWS/903250323
New
Desert Sun – 3/24/09
· By Jake Henshaw
The latest campaign for a council to oversee restoration of the
The Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee approved Senate Bill 51 by Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, to create a 14-member panel of local, state, federal and tribal officials to direct what's estimated to be a 75-year effort to prevent the salty lake from drying up.
``I think it was good on a bipartisan basis that people recognized you can't do nothing,'' Ducheny said.
No one opposed the bill, but committee members raised questions about the cost of restoration -- estimated $8.9 billion by the state -- and authority of the council to revise the recovery plan.
Ducheny promised to work with other interested lawmakers to address these issues.
The bill next goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee.#
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20090324/NEWS0701/90324023/1006/news01
By NICOLAS TABOREK, Staff Writer
The Imperial Valley’s longstanding environmental disasters — the New River and the Salton Sea — got a new champion Tuesday in the person of Verne Nobles, who brought his ambitious proposal before the Imperial County Board of Supervisors.
Nobles, who is 70, is something of a fresh face in the decades-long battle to restore the waterways. A movie maker-turned renewable energy entrepreneur, his vision is as grand, and bewildering, as the problem he proposes to tackle is daunting.
With a combination of government grants and private financing he hopes to launch a for-profit enterprise that would include an emission-free electricity plant that runs on old tires from
The profit-generating projects would pay for a water purification system that would heal the polluted New River and help restore the dying
“No one has come in here and said in order to (succeed) you have to make money,” he said in an interview.
His ambition and his energy have earned him the wary enthusiasm of politicians including U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-Chula Vista.
“I’m not putting any money into it until I get a far better understanding from independent experts, but it’s really exciting,” Filner said of Nobles and his company, EcoDynamics. “Here’s a guy who talks about it with excitement and optimism and energy and I think that’s great.”
Filner has been in touch with Nobles for more than a year about the proposal and said he plans to continue working with EcoDynamics. At least once, though, the congressman said he’s wondered, “Are you geniuses or are you crazy?” It’s a question he’s still trying to answer.
Nobles, meanwhile, has remained diligent and committed to his vision.
“Whatever I’ve asked, he’s done and he does it with a flair,” Filner said.
The project could eventually cost $1.4 billion, but Nobles said his group needs just $46 million to get started. Some of that could come from federal grants, but EcoDynamics is asking
Wally Leimgruber, who chairs the Board of Supervisors, called that a “peculiar request.” Backing a large loan by a private company, he said, would be unprecedented.
“In fact, it would even be considered as a gift of taxpayers’ money and board members could be held personally liable,” he said. Leimgruber directed county staff to review the company’s proposal before the matter is brought back to the board.
Miguel Figueroa, executive director of the Calexico New River Committee, said he’s collaborated with EcoDynamics for the past year but also is waiting to learn more about the feasibility of the company’s plan.
“It’s a very nice solution. We commend them for that,” he said.#
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2009/03/25/local_news/news05.txt
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