Judge approves water transfers [Stockton Record]
A
federal judge has cleared the way for water transfers from Northern California
to the thirsty south San Joaquin Valley, overruling environmentalists who
argued the transfers would harm threatened fish. U.S. District Court Judge
Lawrence J. O'Neill found that the case boiled down to a disagreement between
fish experts on both sides, and concluded that the court must defer to the
opinion of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the environmentalists. A
Fish and Wildlife spokesman said Monday that while smelt may indeed be in the
Delta while the water is pumped south, the fish during the summertime are
usually far from the export pumps near Tracy and are unlikely to be killed by
those pumps.
Westlands buying
water from Placer County [Hanford Sentinel]
The
struggle to find additional irrigation water for Kings County’s parched
Westside was on full display Monday as the comment period closed on a proposed
35,000 acre-feet water transfer from Placer County Water Agency to thirsty
Westlands Water District, 80,000 acres of which are in Kings County….The water
will make its way down the American River into Folsom Lake, then through the
delta and a series of canals to Westlands. It could be used immediately on
crops, or it might be stored in San Luis Reservoir…. Westlands is paying Placer
County $325 an acre-foot for the transfer, according to Einar Maisch, director
of strategic affairs for Placer County Water Agency….The retail cost to
Westside growers is estimated to be between $800-$1,100 an acre-foot.
IID working on
five-year strategic plan [Imperial Valley Press]
The
Imperial Irrigation District is in the process of drafting a five-year
strategic plan that formalizes the Salton Sea restoration and renewable energy
initiative as its signature organizational goal.…The outline presented to the
board of directors recently has five broad goals: water rights and
reoperations, balancing authority optimization, repositioning of the
organization, “the initiative and the enterprise” and communicating the IID
agenda….The IID is racing against the clock to fulfill its obligations under
the Quantification Settlement Agreement, the 2003 agreement that started the
transfer of water from the Imperial Valley to San Diego and the Coachella
Valley. The QSA requires a cohesive water conservation effort on the IID’s
water delivery canals and on the farmers’ fields. The district is also required
to stop fallowing land in 2017 as a means to make water available for the
transfer. It will also stop delivering water into the Salton Sea that year as a
means to offset the reduced inflows caused by the transfer.
Congressmen demand
information about Petaluma slaughterhouse [Santa Rosa Press Democrat]
Six
months after federal regulators closed a Petaluma slaughterhouse and initiated
a nationwide beef recall, two North Bay congressmen are calling on the U.S.
Department of Agriculture for answers about the still-ongoing investigations.
“Six months has been ample time,” Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, said Monday
of the probes into Rancho Feeding Corp. “They should have been able to give us
information, and they haven’t.” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said USDA
officials “are using pending investigations as a convenient foil for complete
secrecy and radio silence. … And that is simply not acceptable.”…An unknown
number of local ranchers had meat from Rancho deemed unfit for sale. Of those,
Bill Niman and Nicolette Hahn Niman of BN Ranch in Bolinas have more than
$300,000 of affected meat in frozen storage. The Nimans still are awaiting
answers on what went wrong at Rancho in the hopes they can prove to regulators
that their beef remains safe to eat.
Supreme Court is
asked to review Calif. ban on force-feeding birds [Sacramento Bee]
California’s
ban on force-feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras is on the Supreme
Court’s summer menu….Thirteen states _ including South Carolina, Missouri,
Kansas and Georgia _ are urging the court to review California’s prohibition.
Serious constitutional principles are on the line, they and other critics of
the law say. “The Supreme Court should take the case because it raises an issue
of extraordinary national importance in terms of whether one state, like
California, can dictate the farming methods to be used by farmers in other
states,” attorney Michael Tenenbaum said in an email interview Monday.…Based in
Santa Monica, Calif., Tenenbaum is representing opponents of the state’s law.
These include a California restaurant company, a New York state foie gras producer
and a Canadian organization of duck and goose farmers. The 13 states filed a
separate brief making similar arguments.
Farm adviser
additions explored [Stockton Record]
Public
comment is being sought on what University of California Cooperative Extension
posts - farming, nutrition and family life experts who would share their knowledge
and conduct research in service to the public and California agriculture - most
urgently need to be filled. Extension officials from throughout the state have
proposed more than 120 such experts be enlisted. The comment period ends
Monday….Bruce Blodgett, executive manager of San Joaquin Farm Bureau, said
extension advisers have kept area farmers appraised of the best practices for
the past century. "It's still critical to this day," he said.
"(They supply) the latest knowledge, latest technology in anything from
how to grow the crop to how to be more efficient with water, you name it."
Ag
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