Jerry Brown meeting with water agency and agribusiness leaders about drought

Jerry Brown meeting with water agency and agribusiness leaders about drought

by Dan Bacher

Governor Jerry Brown will be be holding a meeting today in the Governor's Office at the State Capitol with "water, environmental and agricultural leaders" regarding the drought.

The meeting is believed to be a response to widespread and scathing criticism in local and national media about the Governor's hypocrisy in mandating cities and counties to slash water use by 25 percent, while imposing no new restrictions on water use by agribusiness, who use 80 percent of the state's water while contributing only 2 percent of the state's annual economy.

I called the Governor's Office to find out what groups and leaders would be meeting with the Governor and I'm waiting for a response.

As usual, the Governor appears to be excluding Tribal leaders and fishermen - who are among those hardest hit by the record drought - from the meeting.

"When does he meet with the Tribes?" asked Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemen Wintu Tribe, who is now fighting against the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the twin tunnels and the federal plan to raise Shasta Dam.

That's a very good question, one that the Brown administration is avoiding.

The media advisory states, "On the heels of the lowest snowpack measurement ever recorded last week and the first ever statewide mandatory water reduction order, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. will meet with top agricultural, environmental and urban water agency leaders from across California today in Sacramento."

“As Californians, we have to save water in every way we possibly can and we have to pull together,” said Governor Brown at last week’s snowpack measurement. “We have to become more resilient, more efficient and more innovative and that’s exactly what we are going to do.”

The media is also excluded from the meeting, except for the final few minutes.

"The final few minutes of the meeting will be open to coverage by credentialed media at approx. 2:15 p.m. Reporters must check in at 2:00 p.m.," according to the advisory.

The media advisory states, "For more than two years, the state's experts have been managing water resources to deal with the effects of the drought and prepare for the next one. Last week, Governor Brown announced the first ever 25 percent statewide mandatory water reductions and a series of actions to help save water, increase enforcement to prevent wasteful water use, streamline the state's drought response and invest in new technologies that will make California more drought resilient.

Last year, the Governor proclaimed a drought state of emergency. The state has also taken steps to make sure that water is available for human health and safety, growing food, fighting fires and protecting fish and wildlife. Millions have been spent helping thousands of California families most impacted by the drought pay their bills, put food on their tables and have water to drink."

When the meeting is over, I will post information on the results of the meeting.

There was no mention in the media advisory nor the Governor's Executive Order issued last week about the alarming fact that the oil industry annually use three times as much water as the entire city of San Francisco while Big Oil pollutes precious aquifers with fracking wastewater.

After the State Water Resources Control Board announced that some California communities must cut water use by 35 percent or face fines of $10,000 a day, Ash Lauth of the Center for Biological Diversity, who will speak at the water board’s meeting today, issued a statement on behalf of Californians Against Fracking.

“California communities have been ordered to make huge water cuts to fight drought, but the state’s plan lets the oil industry completely off the hook," said Lauth. "Even as Gov. Brown and state officials vow to leave no stone unturned, oil companies that use and contaminate huge amounts of water are getting a free pass. In one year, the oil industry uses three times as much water as the entire city of San Francisco."

"Fracking and other unconventional extraction methods permanently poison and remove fresh water from our water cycle every day. It is indefensible that our governor is allowing the oil industry to continue with business as usual," Lauth said.

"Gov. Brown must also stop oil companies from contaminating California’s underground water. Hundreds of oil industry disposal wells are dumping toxic oil waste into scores of protected aquifers across the state, but the Brown administration has shut down just 23 of these illegal wells," Lauth noted.

Lauth revealed that these illegal disposal wells dump an average total of 27 million gallons of oil waste into protected aquifers!

"Gov. Brown must stop the oil industry from polluting our precious water supplies, or California will bitterly regret his inaction in the dry decades ahead," Lauth concluded.

Meanwhile, as agribusiness and the oil industry continue to use water during a record drought without the mandatory restrictions imposed upon people in the cities and counties of California, the Governor continues to push the construction of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels, the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history.

In the latest episode of the long saga of the BDCP, the Brown administration has chosen to drop the Habitat Conservation Plan section of the project. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/07/1376237/-Why-did-DWR-drop-the-BDCP-Habitat-Conservation-Plan)

While Jerry Brown continues to gush about "green energy" and "climate change" at press conferences and other photo opportunities, his record on fish, water and the environment is arguably the worst of any Governor in recent California history.

To discover the truth about Governor Brown's environmental record, go to: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/24/big-oils-favorite-governor-jerry-brown/