Corporate Enviros get press's ear on water wars...

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Do California Environmentalists Want another Mega-Pipe to Send more Northern Calif. Water to So-Cal?

The L.A. Times' Sacramento correspondent thinks so:

"There's a growing consensus among farm, urban and many environmental interests -- but still not delta farmers who rely on fresh Sacramento River water -- that some peripheral canal is needed. Or perhaps a peripheral tunnel. Or a combo of both. Or both combined with a more secure water route through the delta -- a route that could devastate one of the estuary's most scenic boating areas."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap25-2009aug25,0,5395588.column

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ENVIROS DISAGREE:

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2009/07/will_peripheral.html

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/25/18619234.php

http://www.ewccalifornia.org/home/

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Dear Editor, L.A. Times,

Columnist George Skelton (8/25/09) never said which "environmental interests" support the governor's hair-brained and fake save-the-fish and send-more-water-to-L.A.-developers plan for Northern California's rivers. That's because none of them are based here.

The fact is that no California-based environmental groups support Schwarzenegger's plan. There are some corporate out-of-state groups that have cut deals, but they always cut deals and sell out the locals. They are irrelevant.

California has only a finite supply of freshwater and it's all being used by someone or something, be it fish, agriculture or people. If you ration it to the fish, they die. If you cut off agriculture's supply, we get less food. And in L.A., adding insult to injury, when we let our lawns go brown, our planning department and city council hands that water to a developer.

Building new and expensive ways to distribute the water ignores the basic fact that there's only so much to go around, and California has reached its limit. We can let Wall Street control our precious environment, or we Californians can refuse to spend our tax dollars to fund another wave of urban sprawl and traffic jams that this fake new water supply will bring. Let's adapt to the limit. We can't build our way out of it.

Rex Frankel
director, http://connectingcalifornia.org