Kesterson: a Microcosm of Government Corruption [6] by D.A. Tuma

Highly toxic: "little or no data"

Porgans' citation of EPA's interpretation of "water quality contaminated area" seems to presume agricultural drainage is "highly toxic" by virtue of constituents identified and unidentified of unknown dosage of concentration, timing, and duration to an unspecified receiving environment. Therefore, we have no way to guess the marginal increase in harm to the receiving environment. Porgans seems to agree on page 7.

The short- and long-term impacts associated with the bioacculmative [sic] impacts of selenium discharge on the San Joaquin River and the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are relatively unknown. Little or no data are being gathered to enable decision makers to make an informed decision.

People die of all kinds of causes. If any mortician ever finds a cause of death due to selenium toxicosis in California, I expect a whole army of environmental socialists will let decision-making juries and voters know about it. Even though eco-facists carry on like they care more about wildlife than people. Which might be why Porgans failed to mention all the people in Southern California served by MWD - about half the population of the State.

Better quality water for ducks than for people

Yet Porgans claims the drainage discharge violates state and federal laws. We've got so many, he's probably right. But that is a problem of too much government. Not a drainage problem. On page 8 he is a little more specific.

The water quality standard of 5ppb selenium, promulgated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for the SJR had been violated 82 percent of the time from 1988 through 1992. In 1993 and 1994 the selenium standard was violated 11 out of 12 months. In addition, numerous government reports have been published documenting that the SJR is suffering from serious adverse environmental effects attributable to toxic agricultural drainage water. In the CVRWQCBs recently released Basin Plan, it states that 130 miles of the SJR has been classified as a "Water Quality Limited Segment" and has been "impaired".

If I remember correctly, the City of Davis - located in the southern end of congressional district 3 - has a water supply well or two with selenium concentrations above 5 ppb. But the drinking water standard for selenium has been 50 ppb, so this water is okay for people. I have trouble getting excited over wildlife not getting water that's better than what people drink. I have trouble with a government that forces us to pay for water for wildlife that is held to a higher standard than drinking water for people. I have trouble understanding why drainage water that is okay for MWD potable supply to people is not okay for ducks to sit on, even when mixed with the sea water in San Francisco Bay.

Endangered species: people

Porgans claims the drainage discharge will "exacerbate and threaten the future viability" of river, delta, and bay "while... destroying threatened and endangered species." Well, who isn't threatened and endangered?

Reptiles reigned supreme until volcanic activity split the world's single continent and pushed the crusty plates floating on the surface of this planetary ball of liquid rock so far apart a lot of us refused to see anything more than coincidence in the matching shorelines of the Atlantic Ocean. Dinosaurs reigned supreme until this planetary ball of liquid rock with a thin shell of continental crust collided with an asteroid.

I still haven't seen a good reason for why the earth froze during the first 99 percent of the last million years. With a lot more of the world's water trapped in continental ice, leaving sea levels a couple hundred feet lower than present, San Francisco Bay must have been as dry as the Central Valley.

Who are we to presume God's will for how far inland ocean water should flow-as currently decreed by CalFed, an out-of-control adaptive management communist central plan instigated in December 1994 by out-of-control State and federal governments. Who are we to presume that relatively fresh Central Valley watershed drainage should outfall and mix with salty sea water only in Suisun Bay?

Who are we to presume the past 10,000 years of recent global warming is okay because we didn't do it? Who are we to presume earth's environment is threatened more by human civilization than any non-human activity? Who are we to presume we are not all threatened and endangered by the next natural cataclysm? We don't know when it might happen. It always could be tomorrow.

We do know what happens when people do not prepare for adversity. While measures are not being taken to protect people against recurrence of known natural cataclysms, we are certainly threatened and endangered by a government that protects wildlife before people.

Viability: river, delta, and bay

How can water and land forms lose "viability" without first being alive? "Viable", according to Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1983, is defined

able to live; specifically, (a) at that stage of development that will permit it to live and develop under normal conditions, outside of the uterus: said of a fetus or new-born, especially premature, infant; (b) able to take root and grow; as, viable seeds.

"Viability", according to the same source, is defined

1. the state or quality of being viable.
2. the state of being able to survive under conditions of wide geographical distribution , as a species of animals and plants.

If we are to accept Porgans' claim that Grasslands drainage will "exacerbate and threaten the future viability of the San Joaquin River and the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta", don't we have to accept his inference that these geologic features are living? Or will be living in the future?

If Porgans' perception of a viable river, delta, or bay is anything like what I've seen described in numerous vilifications of diversions and dams, then I must dispute such a notion of living bodies of water. Just because something moves, doesn't mean it is alive.

Life is knowledge

My perspective of life is much like the following description by Michael Rothchild on page 1 of Bionomics, 1990.

Stripped to its core, a living organism is nothing more than the packet of information recorded in its genes. And yet, if the very essence of life is information, one has to wonder why a column of numbers or a line of words isn't alive. Obviously, when digits or letters are arranged in a particular sequence, they convey information. But just as clearly, information, in and of itself, is not alive.

Genetic information is special because it alone can make copies of itself. This remarkable ability is the basis of all the other differences that distinguish the living from the nonliving.

Although I have not read much of his book, I can surmise Rothchild's thesis from this concluding perception.

Genetic and technologic information, despite manifest differences in the branching patterns of their evolutionary histories, are nonetheless members of the same class of natural phenomena. Both are living, evolving information systems.

Technologic information, as might be found in a "viable long-term salt management plan", would be included among the living, according to Rothchild. In contrast to human use of memory code, a body of water does not use its information to reproduce itself. It might have lots of information. We might even read its information. But it is no more alive than a book.

Facts of life: hostile habitat: corrupt knowledge

The epigram Rothschild selected for the opening remarks quoted above from page 1, following "Introduction: Genes and Knowledge", expresses an important insight on the nature of life.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
-Samuel Butler (1885)*

* Clark, Ronald W.,The Survival of Charles Darwin: A Biography of a Man and an Idea (New York: Random House, 1984), p. 217.

We could just as well say "A drake is only a sperm's way of making another sperm." The common fate of individual sperm, much more so than eggs, is to perish without making copies of itself. In other words "unsuccessful reproduction". As can be attributed to the facts of life, the chances of sperm finding a non-hostile habitat are very slim. Even the fortunate few sperm that find a fertile egg in which to grow take a chance that the genetic codes they share will contain uncorrupted knowledge for growth of a healthy copy.

Corrupt knowledge perishes. It may wiggle before it dies. It may be held in the hands of a Service environmental assessment specialist looking to sensationalize whatever could be found as evidence of environmental abuse by rich, greedy, and huge agribusiness corporations. It may be photographed and published as evidence of environmental disaster caused by agricultural drainage from unnatural irrigation of desert farms-a corrupt, incomplete knowledge of human morality. And our corrupt, demented Kesterson morality will surely perish like the corrupt genetic knowledge that produced deformed bird embryos. Nothing to get excited about. Either we recognize human moral corruption or stupidly slouch to our own extinction.

Obligation to protect: not non-viable tissue

I dispute any inference that we people have an obligation to protect all life, including sperm, eggs, and any combination thereof that may survive to some later stage of non-viable tissue. And that is exactly what deformed bird hatchlings happen to be. Non-viable tissue. They are living only to the extent that their genetic knowledge allows them to live. Like the multitudes of sibling eggs and sperm that perished in a hostile environment, so too do they.

Objection: forced to support religious creed

Each of us has an inalienable right to choose which life we wish to save. I object to being forced to support a government that subsidizes agendas based on a premise that a life of a bird embryo, hatchling, or nestling must be saved no matter where it may intrude on human infrastructure. I object to being forced to support a government that subsidizes agendas based on a premise that a life of a body of water must be saved no matter how its useful energy may be claimed by owners of rights of access to its capacity to generate power and assimilate drainage. I charge such premises to be religious creeds perpetrated by demented environmental socialists bent on leading humanity on a crusade against market supplied consumers.

CVRWQCB actions: significant threat

A crusade is a war. Those waging war raise bogus threats to motivate followers with fear. But in this war, Porgans doesn't mention any threats to people from CVRWQCB actions. In contrast, I find CVRWQCB actions symptomatic of out-of-control government-a really significant threat to people.

According to Porgans on page 5 of his petition:

In addition, it is no coincidence that the largest single contiguous "high water quality vulnerability area" in the nation is within the regional board's jurisdiction, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.* (Refer to Exhibit 5.) Lastly, P&A reminds the State Board of the fact that 130 miles of the San Joaquin has been listed by the state as a "water quality impaired segment," which is also attributable to the Regional Board's failure to perform its "public trust" responsibilities to protect the waters of the state. The regional board's actions constitutes a significant threat to public resources in California and throughout the Western United States.

*U.S, Environmental Protection Agency, The Index of Watershed Indicators, (EPA-841-97-010, National Watershed Characterization, Sept., 1997, p. 6.

Porgans claims the "significant threat" of CVRWQCB actions is to "public resources". Perhaps he means the "threat" is to purposes he wishes to designate for those public resources. As inanimate or inhuman material, I am skeptical that such resources have much perception, if any, of the kind of long term protection from harm Porgans would have us forced to provide by means of government "responsibilities". Such protection is not appreciated by "resources". It merely responds to the demands of kings and communists.

The use of scarce property withdrawn by government from private ownership is jeopardized by public access. Public resources are common resources, subject to Garrett Hardin's "tragedy of the commons". The only way to protect common resources is to privatize them. Give them to somebody who cares.

Waters of the State: drainage of Porgans

What exactly are the waters of the State? Doesn't all drainage eventually reach waters of the State? Has Porgans done a water quality lab analysis of his own personal drainage and found it to be completely free of all the constituents he complains about in agricultural drain water? I find it hard to believe that Porgans has never personally "contaminated" or "degraded" waters of the State.

Attributing water quality contamination to "imported water" is bizarre. Porgans might understand his drainage is dependent on his body's imported water. Therefore, he attributes his contaminated drainage to the water he drinks other than what naturally falls and runs off his own body. If he finds himself running short of water that falls on his own body's watershed, would he abstain from trading with others who have surplus water? Would he rather shrivel up like a raisin or choose to live and trade his services for imported water?

As sure as Porgans lives, he has chosen to import water to save his own life. His choice for trade is a choice he would deny for San Joaquin Valley farms.

Source of selenium contamination: imagination

Soon after I received Porgans' petition I listened to a presentation of a Coordinated Resources Management Plan for Panoche/Silver Creek Watershed. The forum was a joint meeting of the Bay-Delta Advisory Council and the Ecosystem Restoration and Watershed Work Groups. During the course of the presentation I got the distinct impression that this watershed was being blamed as the source of selenium problems.

After the presentation I introduced myself to one of the presenters. I asked her if she was sure the Panoche/Silver Creek watershed was the source of selenium "contamination". Yes, she was sure. I asked "Is it possible that the source is our imagination? Could we be imagining that selenium is a contaminant?"

I could see no sign of acknowledgment in her reaction. She referred me to some unspecified U.C. Davis research at the former Kesterson Reservoir Site. I could be wrong, but that's not a good sign that she recognized me for someone who might already know who's research says what. In addition, it's possible she wasn't listening when I explained just a minute earlier that I was familiar with much of Kesterson research because I was the contracting officer's authorized technical representative (COATR) who approved payments for the research.

Obviously, just being the COATR and signing the approval for technical adequacy of Kesterson research for federal payments doesn't necessarily lead to a presumption that I bothered to read or understand the research methodology and findings. That disconnect could be symptomatic of a general public perception that government work is by definition, at best, marginally acceptable. Maybe that perception is deserved in some cases, especially if the government work is for a project that has no socially redeeming value, like desert wetlands.

But except for the last couple years of my federal career, I was pleased to work in the good company of conscientious, knowledgeable, talented, diligent, ethical, and apolitical co-workers. My pleasure ended when I was asked to review a draft environmental assessment for reallocating CVP water instead of renewing contracts at the option of client water users. And the reason for reallocation was nothing more than the federal government's perception that other "needs" for the water must be met.

Apparently, "need" was the only reason for reallocation my co-workers could find-as if it wouldn't be recognized as the corrupt Marxist central planning criteria for wealth redistribution that had been tried for a couple generations and rejected by the people of the Soviet Union. I was in the company of die-hard communists. I hadn't just stumbled on some isolated covert cell of subversive operatives. This environmental assessment of CVP Friant-Kern contract renewals was evidence that the federal government had succumbed to the environmental movement's ideological war on private property rights.

Contaminant brain-washing

So why is selenium a "contaminant"? I have a theory. We didn't just imagine it. We have been overtly and subliminally brain-washed with media advertising. The Madison Avenue programming that consumerism antagonists bemoan as aggravating natural resource depletion works just as well for environmental movement fund raising. In fact Madison Avenue subsidizes environmental ideological programming by validating its merit whenever such validation can be used to sell its client's product. Between Madison Avenue validation and government validation we are all conditioned to environmental theology. Most of us don't think to question it.

Free federal water for hunting clubs: lost opportunities

We don't question if corporate subsidies are greater or smaller than the environmental socialism subsidies, like free federal water to private duck hunting clubs which have been paid by the Service over half of their real estate market value for conservation easements. For duck clubs owned by corporations, this free water is a corporate subsidy. For duck clubs owned by environmental protection political advocacy organizations, is the free federal water any less of a subsidy?

Check out the names listed on property ownership records in Merced County and compare the number of privately owned acres to government withdrawn parcels. My impression is that the federal government lands, withdrawn from private ownership, cover about half of the total 160,000 acres in the federally designated "Grasslands Ecological Area". Much of this area is flooded from September to February with "free" CVP water diverted from the Delta, transforming this desert playa into a vast inland sea, its horizon meeting the sky except on a few days clear enough to see the distant Sierra and coastal ranges.

But this water is not free. There is no free lunch. The lift of about 193 feet for this water by the Tracy Pumping Plant consumes electrical power. That is a cost. It is a lost opportunity to spend that power for some other purpose, to possibly gain a better life from some other benefit. It is hard to know without a market if artificially flooded desert wetlands are the best use of that water for our society. The potential for market allocation of that water was destroyed by government reallocation specified by the CVPIA, a government central planning action no different than the central planning of any other communist country. It is a lost opportunity to conserve the ground water now being used by farms for long term protection against California's frequent droughts. It is a cost not acknowledged by Kesterson morality. Blind to these costs, the federal government refuge empire relentlessly expands its "public trust" communism authority by hook or crook.

What is the opportunity cost of keeping government "public trust" assets out of private enterprise? Without a market to find out we will never know. When the government first acquires property, we can guess the acquisition cost might be close to market value. But as time goes by, we don't know what opportunities for beneficial use might be discovered by an enterprising private owner.

Except for the portion protested by Porgans, the unfinished federal San Luis Drain, a "public trust" asset, has been sitting idle, plugged at Mendota, since 1986. How much more crop value could have been grown on better drained and less salty soils if the farms that could have been served by the San Luis Drain didn't have to resort to evaporation ponds for disposal of their drainage? Is the lost production capacity of land occupied by waste disposal ponds a cost to our collective prosperity?

Why farms stay in production

According to Porgans' petition on page 7

In addition, the BMPs [Best Management Practices] allowed the drainers to expand their respective acreage from 65,200 acres in 1986 to 79,700 acres in 1994. (Refer to Exhibit 9, Regional Board's Staff Report: Table B-4.) Currently it has been estimated that there are more than 80,000 acres of land in production within the problem drainage area, according to Joseph McGahan, consultant for the drainers. No land has been taken out of production and/or retired in the entire Grassland area because of agricultural drainage problems.

If this is true, then somebody must be encouraging these farms to stay in production. Could it be market demand?

Part 6