Lloyd Carter, an attorney in Fresno, California has taught water law at
San Joaquin College of Law. For more than two decades he served as a
prize-winning reporter for United Press International and the Fresno Bee
in Fresno and San Francisco. He continues to speak out and write op-ed
pieces on California water issues. He won the best environmental
coverage award from the San Francisco Press Club for his stories on the
poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the mid 1980s.
He is currently on the boards of three non-profit watchdog water groups:
The California Water Impact Network (www.c-win.org), California Save Our
Streams Council and Revive the San Joaquin (www.Revivethesanjoaquin.org)
He can be reached by e-mail at lcarter0i@comcast.net
In his fourth episode of Tales of
the Hydraulic Brotherhood, California water expert and writer Lloyd
Carter talks about the ecological crisis facing the San Francisco
Bay-Delta estuary in the long hot summer of 2007. Los Angeles is
experiencing its driest year on record and increasing water exports of
Northern California water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley farms and
Southern California have caused the collapse of the Delta's fishery. The
three-inch Delta Smelt, a critical part of the Delta fishery food chain,
is teetering on the brink of extinction. Experts say it could be the
beginning of what may become "the Perfect Drought." A Congressional
subcommittee overseeing federal water policy recent held a field hearing
in the Bay Area to gather information on what some experts say is a
catastrophe waiting to happen.
In his third episode of Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood, California water expert Lloyd Carter talks about the threat posed by the trace element selenium
to farmland, rivers, wetlands and wildlife in the western United States.
Using the selenium poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge
in the early 1980s as an example, Carter shows how little has been done
by the federal government or state governments to halt selenium
contamination caused by irrigation and mining activities.
In his second installment of "Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood"
California writer and water expert Lloyd Carter talks about the enormous
water and crop subsidies flowing in disproportionate amounts to huge
factories in the field in Central California's irrigation country. While
California big agribusiness operations hide behind the "family farmer"
label, they continue to rake in half a billion dollars a year in
taxpayer money, according to reports by the Environmental Working Group.
Surprisingly, conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and
the Cato Institute, also favor major reform of the farm and water
subsidy system now in place.
In his first podcast of "Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood" California
water expert Lloyd Carter talks about the Westlands Water District, at
942 square miles the largest and most politically powerful federal water
district in America.
Westlands has a drainage problem caused by selenium, a trace element
inherent in the soils of the western San Joaquin Valley in Central
California, the nation's most productive farming region. Drainage water
from Westlands poisoned ducks and shorebirds at the Kesterson National
Wildlife Refuge in the mid 1980s triggering national headlines.
Now Westlands wants to take over solving the drainage problem from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in exchange for forgiveness of a half billion
dollar debt the water district owes the federal government AND control
of the Bureau's state water permit which is annually worth $500 million.
Lloyd Carter, veteran journalist and observer of California water
politics, offers his monthly assessment of the current hot issues in
California's Water World.
Listen to "Down in the Valley" live on the second friday of every month at 3 p.m. Pacific Time on Radio KFCF 88.1 FM, Fresno, California.
In his July 2008 monthly radio show, California water politics activist
Lloyd Carter discusses the proposal by Governor Schwarzenegger to place
a $9.3 billion bond on the November ballot which discusses funding for
two highly controversial large dams.
In his June 2008 monthly radio show, Lloyd Carter talks about Governor Schwarzenegger's drought declaration for California and what can be done to conserve precious water supplies.
In his February 2008 radio show, Lloyd discusses the intensive lobbying
of California Senator Dianne Feinstein to support a proposed $12 Billion
California water bond measure being pushed by Agribusiness and Southern
California development interests. The proposal includes the construction
of two more large dams in California and construction of a controversial
"Peripheral Canal" around the Bay-Delta estuary which is bitterly
opposed by Northern Californians and environmentalists. Lloyd also
discusses the collapse of the salmon fishery in California the past
year.
In his December, 2007 radio show, "Down in the Valley", California water
expert Lloyd Carter discusses a proposed $11.6 billion dollar bond
initiative measure that the California Chamber of Commerce and the
California Farm Bureau Federation hope to put on the statewide ballot in
November of 2008. The proposed initiative calls for new dams and a
"peripheral canal" to pump Northern California water around the
problem-plagued Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Southern California.
Carter warns this will set off another north-south water war in
California. Carter also discusses other items of current interest in
California's water world.
This month show's top issue is a proposal by the nation's largest
federal irrigation water district, the mammoth Westlands Water District,
to garner 15 trillion gallons of California's precious water over the
next 60 years. That water has a potential value on the retail market of
$20 to $40 billion dollars although Westlands will be buying that water
for perhaps 15-20 percent of its true market value.
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