Kesterson: a Microcosm of Government Corruption [7] by D.A. Tuma

Market surplus: communist famines

I've heard environmental socialists complain that these crops are surplus as if they are really in excess of what our market demands. You would get the impression that having an excess of food and fiber is bad. It's as if shortages were okay with them. It's as if they think any moron with half a brain should be able to figure out when they plant a field what its yield will be so that it will perfectly match market demand. It's as if they think they could do it in a second, and would if we let them be king or communist party leader. Which is no doubt why communist countries seem to be plagued with famines.

Yet I bet some of these same environmental whiners are whining for more foreign aid to stop world hunger. And whining for government forgiveness of foreign government debt to trade for conservation easements on rain forests to protect them from agricultural development growth in response to global population growth.

Who picks up the tab for all this government charity? Not the whiners. They are the elite class of our society. They use government to force the rest of us to pay. They are the ruling class. They have the divine inspiration of kings and use the faulty Marxist mantra "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to fool workers (the proletariat) into letting let them, as caring communists, decide the abilities and needs of others, including fish and wildlife, rivers and wetlands, canyons and coasts. The needs of people are now placed in a common field with the needs of non-people, indeed non-life forms, to be graced with shares of common wealth according to the monitoring of communist adaptive management. Nobody knows the cost of anything in communist redistribution of wealth, because there is no market.

I swear, if market demand was not growing, Grasslands farms as well as other San Luis Unit farms could not possibly afford to construct new wells to replace the Delta diversions taken by CVPIA and Endangered Species Act enforcement. That cost is paid by consumers in higher market prices. It is a tax to subsidize the whims of federal officials. With no market of environment assets to determine diminishing returns on investment in any environmental protection or restoration project, federal officials are just pissing our prosperity into the wind. Federal government communism in the expenditure of taxes for environmental purposes is completely without moral virtue and federal claims otherwise are absolutely corrupt.

National Environmental Policy Act violation: exclusion of world-wide impacts

By excluding assessment of global market demand for food and fiber and its effect on habitats more precious (tropical rain forests) than the San Joaquin Valley (a desert "dry as the Mojave"), federal officials violate the National Environmental Policy Act's direction to include assessment of world-wide impacts consistent with other federal foreign policy programs in the preparation of environmental impact statements.

Mean, eco-facist xenophobia

I'm not making this up either. I swear a Ph.D. ecologist expert on wetlands once exclaimed to me that California crops are exported! I was dumbfounded! Am I to suppose that because crops are exported, they are surplus to anybody's "need"? That implies that the "needs" of consumers who buy our exported commodities are trivial compared to the "needs" of domestic fish and wildlife mangers. The egalitarianism among people so championed by other socialists doesn't seem to extend beyond our nation's borders for environmental socialists. They would put domestic wildlife before foreign people in a queue for food supply! What can be more isolationist and xenophobic than that?

Can you imagine what these environmental socialists will say to foreigners just as soon as they finish nationalizing American farms? "We will feed all our salmon and ducks before we ever feed you." What could be meaner? Will we not eventually suffer ourselves if we treat people worse than common game?

Legitimate corporations don't use government enforcement

We might not have a good handle on how much the environmental movement has cost us in lost opportunity for greater prosperity and how much that lost prosperity has diminished our collective capacity to protect and restore environmental assets. But we know this. Legitimate corporations don't use government enforcement to fleece victims. They deal strictly with willing and informed customers, free to enter the market or leave. And they don't monopolize the market. They don't rely on fraud. They don't rely on government prohibitions on competing beneficial uses for resources, like assimilative capacity in public water. They honor contracts and property rights. They are more honest and trustworthy than thieves, robbers, kings, communists, corrupt government officials, and our current plague of demented environmental socialists.

To the presenter of the Coordinated Resources Management Plan for Panoche/Silver Creek Watershed I said "There is a political advocacy group that needed a contaminant to advance its agenda for reallocation of water rights. It is all politics. Which is why I am now in politics."

Politics is a drain on our prosperity. The cost of an unfinished San Luis Drain is the cost of politics. I aim to drastically cut the cost of politics by shrinking the federal government and letting our market grow. I aim to privatize drainage rights and let property owners trade their assets for their mutual benefit. Rather than central planning government bureaucrats anticipating the whims of hysterical mobs, I believe free people should have the choices that let them decide what will bring them a better life and vote for those choices with their dollars.

What is the problem?

It took me a year to figure out "environmental disaster" at Kesterson was a hoax. But I'm a slow learner. I sincerely believe that most people can quickly grasp the concept of a hoax facilitated by federal officers to advance a political agenda common to a majority coalition of communist and environmental socialist Democrats and a few confused Republicans. Their agenda was designed to remove the primary purpose of water diversion rights bought by the CVP by reneging on a congressional promise to renew water delivery contracts at the request of water users.

The lies told in unverifiable claims about alleged CVP adverse impacts to the Valley's pristine environment are as simple as omitting the impacts of natural drought, prior water developments, and the introduction of a multitude of exotic species which have overwhelmed native species. No matter how many simple inconsistencies fill this fabric of lies, it remains a blindfold to federal government exploitation of our society. I've got nothing better to do than to help people remove this blindfold.

Once upon a cold and windy winter day I faced the low noon-day sun and looked into the big lens of a Japanese video camera operated by a British public education crew. For dramatic effect they asked me to stand next to a warning
sign that ominously implied something must be dangerous in the field beyond. I consented.

First question: "How did you solve the problem?"

I recoiled. A solution presumes a defined problem. The only reasons I had found for shutting down Kesterson looked like a hoax to me. And a hoax is a real problem. A problem so morally corrupt, I presumed the absence of its possibility from every thing I had read and heard was just ominous validation of my suspicions of wide spread conspiracy. I couldn't conceive any solution until people were ready to quit being hysterical about malformed bird embryos in a waste water tank and get real.

From previous discussions with this crew, I sensed they were resolved to validate their hypothesis of how nature is abused by brutal water projects, a common theme among eco-facists. And asking me about a solution to get me to confirm their perception of "the problem" was admirably devious. Government spokesmen typically explain government action as a means to a solution. If I were to speak of government action at Kesterson as a means to a solution, I would have to explain what it solved.

But we hadn't solved anything. As far as I could tell, we were just stalling with research until political hysteria abated. And I figured that response would get me fired.

The only out I had was to refuse to define the problem. "The solution depends on what you say the problem is. What exactly do you say was the problem?"

Nothing. Not a word was said. The producer told the camera man to turn the video camera off. "Do you mean that you can't say what the solution is unless the problem is defined?"

"That's right." I waited to see if he was going to ask me to define the problem. If he did, my federal career would, no doubt, be ended by public outrage to my answer. He nodded like he understood. Maybe he sensed that he didn't want to hear my definition if it wasn't as obvious to me as it was to him.

What happened to the selenium?"

Easy question. The mechanics of how things happen are what technicians are trained to explain. In contrast, government policy is presumed to be less than fully disclosed by virtue of compartmentalized information restricted to chains of command, especially in a country engaged in a decades long ideological struggle with communism, a truly devious and evil influence at work overtly and covertly through the environmental movement.

When management spouts fashionable sentiments to support policy without reference to natural laws of morality, gravity, and the second law of thermodynamics, I understand the expedience of management policy to use whatever works. And as a government civil servant, understand my ethical
obligation to preserve the appearance of government integrity by not publicly questioning its honesty. When I was spared the challenge of being honest about why Kesterson was considered a problem, I postponed the day when I would be fired for uttering accusations challenging official reasons why Kesterson was closed.

What happened to me?

Fortunately for me, I reached retirement eligibility before I got fired. And now with five years of political study, I feel much better prepared to testify about my findings to the only people who really make decisions in our society-jurors, voters, and those who are or would be property owners with rights defended, not usurped, by our government.

Selenium not a contaminant

I swear selenium contamination is a preconception demanded by environmental socialists. It is a preconception that can be optional. It can even be refused. In the natural context of the San Joaquin Valley, selenium in drainage is not unusual. And ever since the uplifting of the marine sediments that form the coastal range, selenium and other minerals which precipitated with those sediments from an ancient sea have been eroded by runoff and carried through alluvial fans and meanders of the San Joaquin River back to sea for millions of years before people arrived to decide what minerals should be in which water at what concentration.

I don't suppose that the selenium that precipitated from the ancient sea was a contaminant at that time, nor is it a contaminant now when it returns to sea. I don't suppose that selenium in any natural context is a contaminant. I don't suppose that selenium in the artificial context of drainage disposal is a contaminant unless it adversely affects drainage disposal. Kesterson was not shut down by selenium contamination. It was shut down by contamination of our society's civil morality by corrupt government.

The natural geomorphic processes of erosion and food chain delivery of minerals to both wildlife and people is well understood by many geologists and ecologists. The evidence of anthroprogenic perturbations in these processes, without comparison of relative magnitude to contextual natural and alternative impacts, does not in isolation make a case for government intervention in markets.

On the other hand we should recognize that without alarm, there can be no chance for personal fortune and fame for heralding eminent doom. And a gullible public and pragmatic politicians are an easy mark for those who monopolize forums of discussion and literature and pass themselves off as informed as they are eloquent. While much of the public fails to recognize that their pockets are being picked while sideshow barkers dazzle their eyes with horribly deformed bird embryos, the Kesterson scam continues.

Market potential for assimilative capacity

Not only can a religious problem be redefined by changing religion, a government problem can be solved by changing government. As government interference with markets is shrunk, the government problem disappears. In its place, owners decide how to manage and under what terms they voluntarily agree to trade their own property. That means assets held by government in "public trust" must be sold or granted to private ownership to get the market started. If assimilative capacity has value to potential drainers, that value can best be determined by a market of assimilative capacity rights. Not tradable discharge permits.

Tradable discharge permits have been proposed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) - another group of shyster experts at making others squirm through arbitrary regulatory constraints. In the pork barrel metaphor, tradable discharge permits are nothing but scraps thrown to slaves. Pretending to coach beleaguered drainers on the civilities of market behavior, EDF presumes no one notices that the created market of scarce assimilative capacity is the sole result of its greedy grab of most of the capacity for its own special interest benefits-waterfowl reproduction. In the pork barrel metaphor, EDF is the laughing slave owner.

Structural alternative for drainage

Based solely on my own perception, there are a multitude of structural alternatives in a mind trained in structural and civil engineering. Porgans may call "out-of-valley" drainage relief ludicrous. My perspective is that it is no more ludicrous than "out-of-valley" water supply choices. Like the Hetch Hetchy and South Bay Aqueducts. There is no reason I see why these aqueducts could not be paralleled by a drain-water conduit.

Drainage collection from throughout the Delta, Stockton, Sacramento, and the whole San Joaquin Valley could be lifted with an additional pump adjacent to the State and federal pumps at Tracy and sent along the right-of-way for the South Bay Aqueduct. The Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct crosses San Francisco Bay on its way to San Francisco. A drainage pipeline could follow the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct right-of-way and merge with San Francisco's ocean outfall. This outfall could be extended as far as our government can force us to pay.

Beyond the sea coast, desert ocean

Out beyond California's continental shelf, a substrate for abundant coastal sea life, is a large desolate ocean that happens to be generally flowing away from the coast as it is displaced by a Northern coastal current. The next land mass on this flow path is thousands of miles away. Compared to the teeming life in coastal habitat, the rest of the ocean is relatively desolate. It has lots of assimilative capacity with little risk to marine life from any foreseeable drainage from human activities.

Drainage from the San Joaquin Valley watershed to the Pacific Ocean is an effect of gravity. Erosion of exposed clay deposits in the Panoche Creek watershed is an effect of gravity. Selenium, being chemically similar to sulfur, might be expected to be as soluble as sulfur is in hydrated calcium sulfate, a.k.a. gypsum.

Selenium in our gypsum

I wouldn't be surprised if trace quantities of selenium are found in the gypsum board walls of most American homes built in the last fifty years. I wouldn't be concerned. I don't sprinkle gypsum on my potatoes. Although some people, including myself, take it in daily mineral supplements.

Rather than some exotic mineral added to the Grasslands landscape, selenium has been part of the natural flow of salts and suspended silt and clay from the coastal range to the delta, bay, and ocean ever since erosion began. Which was millions of years before people ever arrived on the scene. Which probably accounts for much of the selenium found in delta and bay sediments.

Selenium before Kesterson

Water conductivity and solute analysis published in the construction specifications for Kesterson Reservoir describe pre-project ground water with salinity ranging up to five times the salinity of drain water later impounded at Kesterson. It stands to reason that salty, clay deposits in Grasslands, too alkaline to farm but okay to flood and attract ducks to shoot, would be found downstream of the Panoche Creek alluvial fan.

It stands to reason that water wells developed in the North Grasslands Wildlife Management Area, China Island Unit, would recover ground water several hundred feet below ground, and therefore upstream in a vertically rising artesian flow path, with selenium concentrations exceeding EPA standards for wetlands. Such standards fault Grasslands farms for drainage that has been going on for a long time before we got here and will probably go on a long time after we leave.

Stopping the San Luis Drain did not stop this drainage. It continues to flow subsurface. Some of it escapes the valley in flood water. Some accumulates in unsaturated soils, waiting for the next flood to flush it to sea. Some accumulates in evaporation ponds, which will eventually crumble after we are gone.

But a lot of the drainage through Grasslands finds it way back through the federal and State pumps that take the whole flow of the San Joaquin River and a little of the Sacramento too. Except when those pumps are shut down to save some minor run of salmon returning to sea. Then the San Joaquin can flow on downstream to the intake of the Contra Costa canal as well as the Delta outfall to Suisun Bay and thence to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

So the only time Grasslands selenium rich drainage can possibly get to San Francisco Bay, which is one of the bodies of water Porgans feels is threatened by such drainage, other than during infrequent San Joaquin River floods, is during the time the federal and State water project pumps are shut down. Which is, as I understand, what Porgans aims to have the WRCB do. As if that would stop the natural gravity flow of selenium rich drainage from the San Joaquin Valley.

Stopping the recirculation and concentration of water

Porgans' petition doesn't indicate how much selenium rich drainage from the San Joaquin Valley would be reduced by his proposal to shut down farms. It could have speculated that such action might well reduce the amount of salt re-circulation in the Delta-Mendota canal and lower San Joaquin River loop, with substantially improved water quality then available to the upper San Joaquin Valley and southern California.

The substantial improvement would not be from selenium drainage that would continue naturally. That would continue to be exported through the California Aqueduct, MWD, and eventually flushed through southern California toilets into the Pacific Ocean. The improvement would come from the removal of the concentrating effect of evapotranspiration on solutes imported with Sacramento River water and occasional high tide flows.

Of course that improvement could be had without shutting down farms with a bypass drain about the Delta export pumps as described in Central Valley Basin, A Comprehensive Departmental Report on the Development of the Water and Related Resources of the Central Valley Basin, and Comments from the State of California and Federal Agencies, 1949, Senate Document 113, Eighty-first Congress, First Session, p. 125. A San Luis Drain would do the job too. Even a peripheral canal would be built to let San Joaquin River and low flow drainage pass the Delta export pumps.

But then instead of going through nearly every household in southern California, that demon selenium would go through San Francisco Bay. And Porgans and the rest of the eco-facist congregation would have none of that, even though the Bay naturally supports a selenium rich waterfowl food chain now. And for all we know, always will.

Structural solutions are easy. The politics of who decides the management of common property, like the assimilative capacity of the Pacific Ocean, are never easy.

Maybe a private consortium could provide drainage disposal service and pay for it with user fees. But government - international, federal, state, and local - would have to release its monopoly on assimilative capacity for the ocean. And here is where environmental protection political advocates will no doubt raise every conceivable scare story to thwart growth of our collective prosperity. And if we can't come to agreement on whether Kesterson was environmental disaster or moral debacle we are doomed to live with plugged drainage until our civilization drowns in its own filth.

Part 7