Modesto
Irrigation District leaders want water sale guidelines for future deals
[Modesto Bee]
It's
nice to make some money while helping a close relative, Modesto Irrigation
District leaders said Tuesday as they put final touches on a short-term deal to
sell water to the Turlock Irrigation District. It would be even nicer to have
in place formal water-sale guidelines, some said, that might ease the rancor
that accompanied a previous proposal to shop water to San Francisco. "I
really do believe it would be good for us to develop a policy on this
matter," MID board member Tom Van Groningen said after the board
formalized a previously agreed-upon sale to help Turlock-area farmers. The MID
could make up to $700,000 by parting with 7,000 acre-feet at $100 per acre-foot
this summer only. San Francisco would have paid seven times that rate for a
50-year deal, but the proposal met stiff public resistance. The TID "is
our sister agency," Modesto resident Joan Rutschow said. "To have a
small amount (sold) for a short time is very judicious, very wise. It's very
important that (water) stay in the valley." Tom Orvis, governmental
affairs director for the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau, noted that the Oakdale
Irrigation District's water-sale rules are helpful because "when someone comes
asking, a policy's already there." The time may come, he said, when
thirsty suitors offer more than $700 per acre-foot.
California
pledges to fix delays in passing out clean-water funds [Fresno Bee]
The
California Department of Public Health announced a plan this week to hasten the
stream of federal money to drinking-water projects, a move that could benefit
poor Valley towns with contamination problems. The plan comes at the orders of
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which scolded the state this spring
for leaving safe drinking-water funds unspent instead of investing them in
communities where drinking-water supplies are contaminated. Residents in such
rural towns as Seville in Tulare County and Kettleman City in Kings County are
forced to drink bottled water because they can't afford to clean what comes out
of their taps. The state Department of Public Health had until this week to
address funding bottlenecks identified by the EPA or risk losing federal
dollars. Under the plan submitted Monday, the department will dole out $84
million of some $455 million of unspent drinking-water reserves this month. In
the following three years, as more money pours into the revolving fund, the
department expects to disburse more than $800 million, four times what it has
given out over similar periods in the past. The plan also lays out ways the
department will better track its expenditures.
FID
water deliveries end in July [Fresno Business Journal]
Fresno
Irrigation District will conclude its water deliveries for the Fancher and Dry
Creek systems on July 15. It is an early end date resulting from this year’s
limited water supply. Water deliveries will end July 31 on the Herndon system.
FID directors voted on the end dates at the June 18 meeting after reviewing the
latest water supply forecast for a 35 percent Kings River hydrological year and
reports on the district’s remaining water supply. “It has been a challenging
supply year because of this year’s extremely dry conditions,” said Gary
Serrato, district general manager. By the time deliveries end and water in the
canal system is depleted, FID will have delivered approximately 380,000 acre feet
of water this season.
Commentary: Earth Log: Water
plan is more than tunnels, arguments, leader says [Fresno Bee]
After
hearing the state's top water leader talk about the Bay Delta Conservation Plan
last week, I went online to check some of his facts. I crashed my computer
trying to download a lot of files. So let's just go straight to the talk last
week at The Fresno Bee editorial board meeting, which broke little news. Mark
Cowin, director of the state's Department of Water Resources, said the hotly
debated plan — popularly known as the tunnels plan — is more than arguments.
Two huge water tunnels are being proposed at the sensitive Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta. The idea is to move Sacramento River water south through
the tunnels so the water doesn't pass through the delta. This is the epic issue
for California, easily on a par with the Peripheral Canal fight I covered 30
years ago. Some Northern Californians have told me it's simply a water grab for
Central Valley farmers and Southern California. The delta's ecosystem and
Northern California will suffer, they say. Some farmers and Southern
Californians argue it would give the state a more certain water supply. The
delta would get the chance to heal, they say. Cowin said he supports the $25
billion tunnels, but the plan is equally about restoring the faltering delta.
Commentary: Ground turkey is
actually safe, despite reports [USA Today]
One
of the hallmarks of the debate over antibiotic use in food animals is that
people of different perspectives can look at the same data and come to very
different conclusions. That's certainly the case with the recent Consumer
Reports testing of ground turkey. While the article attempted to cast the
results as alarming, and CR's parent company, Consumers Union, used the results
to advance its political agenda, the results actually should be quite
encouraging to consumers who expect food producers to deliver a healthful
product….Food safety and antibiotic resistance are important public health
issues, and the fact is that over the past 15 years significant progress has
been made on both fronts. Foodborne illness rates, the most important indicator
of food safety, have been reduced. Furthermore, the FDA's National
Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) program shows over the past
11 years that among isolates from humans, salmonella susceptibility to all
antibiotics tested has increased from 74% to 85%. Progress has been made and
more is needed. Chasing simplistic solutions based on misleading reports will
not produce more progress and could jeopardize both human and animal health.
Real progress will come from focusing attention and resources on real problems.
Ag
Today is distributed to county Farm Bureaus, CFBF directors and CFBF staff, for
information purposes, by the CFBF Communications/News Division, 916-561-5550; news@cfbf.com.
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