County seeks further study of nitrate issue [Porterville Recorder]
Tulare County Supervisors Tuesday agreed to send a letter of concern to the State Water Resources Control Board that is considering steps to address the nitrate in drinking water issue. County officials are concerned the state will take action, possibly a surcharge on ag chemicals, without a full study of what is causing the nitrate problem… Recently, the University of California Davis spent $2 million studying the issue and made recommendations for regulatory action. However, county officials pointed out, the study did not look at the source of nitrates, but rather assumed it came from ag chemicals… Lindsay-area supervisor and board Chairman Allen Ishida said the source of nitrates needs to be defined before any solutions can be effective. He said just imposing a fee is not the answer. “We need sound science and reasons to impose those fees,” he said.
http://www.recorderonline.com/news/county-52758-nitrate-study.html
EPA finds Bay Area waters far more polluted than once thought [KTVU TV/San Francisco]
A powerful state agency is poised to start taking action on recent findings that California's rivers, streams and lakes are far more choked with poisons, trash and other pollution threats than previously known.
What the guardians of the state's all-important water supplies will do will have a direct effect on the 25 million Californians who drink from these waters everyday and the millions more who eat from the bounty of California's farm fields… Hydrogeographers such as Peter Vorster of the Bay Institute are on one side… Vorster and other environmental activists argue that since 80 percent of the water mother nature provides California is siphoned off, most of it for agriculture, putting some of that back will dilute pollution -- and help purify our water. Then there is Jim McCloud, a third-generation farmer near the banks of the San Joaquin who says Californians gain far more than they lose the way the water is allotted now. "Five of these trees will take 2,000 pounds of carbon -- CO2 -- out of the atmosphere,” McCloud said…
McCloud also points out the highly efficient underground drip irrigation tomato fields next door to his walnut grove.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/water-special/nN67B/
Company wants to tap Mojave's public lands for Southland water [Los Angeles Times]
Three decades ago a group of businessmen pored over NASA satellite imagery as part of a worldwide hunt for large groundwater reserves they could tap to grow desert crops. They found the signs they were looking for here in the sun-blasted mountain ranges and creosote-freckled valleys of the Mojave Desert, 200 miles east of Los Angeles… But by the mid-1990s, Cadiz had a new business plan: Sell water, not lemons. The company is pushing ahead with a proposal to pump enough groundwater every year to supply 100,000 homes and sell it to urban Southern California at prices that could, over the project's 50-year life, reap $1 billion to $2 billion in revenue. If the plan succeeds, it will turn ancient desert groundwater, a public resource, into a fountain of private profit, blazing a new — and some warn ominous — path in the state.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water-cadiz-20120516,0,391990.story
California bullet train chief seeks environmental exemptions [Los Angeles Times]
The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight. At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government. In the past, Richard has insisted the California High-Speed Rail Authority would not seek an outright exemption from state or federal environmental laws, including the California Environmental Quality Act. At the hearing, Richard said that if the project ends up in a lawsuit he would hope the matter would involve mitigations rather than an injunction.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bullet-hearing-20120516,0,3420535.story
Report says female farmworkers suffer sex abuse [Associated Press]
Female farmworkers across the United States are commonly sexually harassed and assaulted, in part because their immigration status makes them fearful of calling police, according to a report being released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch. The survey by the international rights group mirrors two previous reports on the risks facing women and girls that had focused on California, where most of the nation's farmworkers reside. "Our research confirms what farmworker advocates across the country believe: Sexual violence and sexual harassment experienced by farmworkers is common enough that some farmworker women see these abuses as an unavoidable condition of agricultural work," said the report.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/15/4493061/report-female-farmworkers-suffer.html
SD Farm Workers Concerned for Beetles [NBC San Diego]
A beetle, known as the "tea shot hole borer" is destroying crops in the Los Angeles area, and the pest could be headed to San Diego. The beetle attacks avocado trees, spreading a fungus that makes the branches of the tree die… "Right now growers are getting educated so they'll know what it looks like because they growers are the ones who are in the avocado groves everyday," says the Executive Director of the San Diego Farm Bureau Eric Larson. He adds that this insect was seen in the San Diego area years ago and affected crops, but never in avocado trees.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/SD-Farm-Workers-Concerned-for-Beetles-151641075.html
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