Kesterson: a Microcosm of Government Corruption [9] by D.A. Tuma

Conserving available energy

Actually I doubt that a big pipeline alternative ever was considered. At that time, prior to the current conquest of government by environmental socialists, getting Sacramento river water to the other side of the Delta was just a hydraulic problem, not a religious problem. Energy used for construction is energy that could be used in some other effort during the same time. So in the interest of not wasting opportunities, least cost methods of construction won contracts to build.

In any situation for any of us, individually or collectively, our access to useful energy is limited. It may be naturally limited as in the frozen desert climate that kills off much of the insect life in more northern latitudes every winter. It may be legally limited by our moral constraint to not steal someone else's property. It may be limited in its capacity to be used in the quantity and duration of time at the place we wish to use it. And we know this from the Second Law: once used, we can't get its usefulness back. The cost of construction is the cost of opportunity for the next best thing we could have gotten with the energy we used.

Alternative to CVP: fond memories maybe

The cost of building CVP was the opportunity to use the useful energy - the labor, fuel, and hydroelectric power-that was spent on construction on some other activity. The cost of building CVP was the opportunity that our lives would be better if we spent that same useful energy on something else. Some would argue that our lives would be better if we could float down the San Joaquin River from Fresno to San Francisco. And because we can't, we are worse off.

Well, floating down a lazy river could be fun. And if the mosquitoes don't bite and the fish do, it could yield plenty of fond memories. But memories not translated into print or picture eventually fade into nothing anybody can use. Like energy eventually fades into nothing anybody can use. The lessons we learn from our memories, if not passed on to others in a way that contributes to our inter-generational flow of recorded wisdom, is nothing anybody can use.

Why teach our children?

Why would we pass our lessons on to others? Why do we teach our children? Because we are human. Other species, especially those close relations in our ape family, teach their children. But with language, we do far better. Our life is easier, we have more freedom, because the discoveries of our parent's generation, and of their parent's generation, and of all generations back to the beginning of recorded language have been saved for our benefit. We don't have to rub sticks together to make a fire. We don't have to haul water in jars from the river to our kitchens. We don't have to walk to the outhouse for personal drainage. We conserve human energy. We gain freedom.

We can make new discoveries with the freedom we were given by the lessons we learned from the discoveries of earlier generations. Each of us is connected by language to a flow of memory code that defines who we are as a species in how and why we individually choose what we want in ways far beyond what we feel as instinct from our genetic code. We are easily conditioned to memory code. We are easily programmed. Especially if our potential sources of alternative knowledge are censored. Socialist propaganda that denigrates individual decision-making of private property ownership is programming minds to self-censor ideas of individual liberty.

Mistakes of so few

Environmental socialist programming replaces preservation of humans as first priority with preservation of humans as last priority. It is programming for species self-extinction. To the extent that individual people fall for limited human potential, they deserve to be allowed to fulfill their own prophesied doom. Mistakes are made by individuals, and individuals either learn or perish from them. The danger of national socialism is that so many perish from the mistakes of so few.

Mistakes of so many

Participation in learning and teaching our memory code is an individual act that is easiest when done voluntarily. Forcing people to pay for forced attendance in forced mixing of ethnic heritage has nothing to do with education. It is social programming to obey authority without questioning its legitimacy. In the name of education, the value system of the prevailing political power-like wetlands good, dams bad-is hammered into the minds of captive audiences. Young minds with limited exposure to alternative values are especially vulnerable and may carry such mental programming baggage long into their later life.

In their later life, they may pass on their values to the next generation the way they were programmed. And so the practice of group thinking, consensus by coercion, continues as long as children are forced into schools, then forced into many more years of employment than necessary to retire in financial independence in order to pay the taxes for forced school programming of their own children.

Libertarian literature

Those of us fortunate enough to reach financial independence and gain the opportunity to discover what is not being taught in public schools can voluntarily search and discover lessons in whatever memory code remains uncensored. With the guidance of Libertarian Party membership discussion of the ideas of liberty after my retirement, I discovered in the literature of the founding fathers of our nation the reasons why they wanted a limited government with no more power than specified in its Constitution. Their reasons were based on a memory code of political horrors of failed governments that had grown corrupt.

I know I failed to learn to recognize the signs of government corruption in public school. Based on the amount of government corruption I now see, I know I am not alone in this failure. This public education failure to teach our children to recognize government corruption is by design. Public schools are designed to not teach children to question their government but to obey.

So now we have in our society government leadership that makes decisions for others based on nothing but the power to win elections. Winning has replaced enlightenment. Because winning has enabled those in government power to force people to pay for propaganda that discredits alternative knowledge. Government leadership can make any unverifiable claim, like it is protecting unborn babies, unborn future generations, wildlife, rivers, and anything else that can't speak up for itself, with out being laughed out of office.

Saving rivers for future generations

At an informational meeting held May 5, 1999, by the CVRWQCB on its work to amend the basin plan for regulation of salt and boron on the lower San Joaquin River, I heard staff say they were considering a drinking water designation of beneficial use for the river. Not to protect any current drinking water use, because they didn't know of any. But to protect the river for drinking water use for future generations. Well, isn't that noble? Not when it's done by government law enforcement.

After seeing how much knowledge is left out of consideration for government central plans, we must acknowledge that the plans were put together by people no different than ourselves. People with limited knowledge. People who probably missed some of the hard lessons in life learned by those who lived close to the land. Lessons that are just observations of the Second Law in action. Even if we have been sheltered in urban amenities for our whole lives, we can learn from those who lived much of their lives outdoors. We can imagine their priorities and understand fundamental human values.

Hard lessons in trail tips

Even if our perception of pre-industrial survival by farming and ranching is based more on imagination than experience or literature research, we can guess the priorities in such life. More fiction than fact, no doubt, fills the new lyrics in songs about the old West. But we accept such songs with commercial success as validation of human values. Although commercial success is relatively limited for cowboy songs, some measure of validation is indicated by virtue of inclusion in a recording company release.

The 1995 Rounder Records release Always Drink Upstream from the Herd, includes "The Trail Tip Song" by Fred Labour, Too Slim Music, BMI. The following trail tips don't mention the Second Law, but it's there.

Always drink upstream from the herd.
Never look straight up at a bird.
And when you get bucked off, get back on.
And son, don't squat with your spurs on.

These tips are all observations of hazards present in choice of relative position with respect to other animals and inanimate objects in a gravitational field. The hazards are consequences of not taking a high position above the fallout of other animals and not resting one's weight on a comfortable foundation. These trail tips are safety precautions to avoid unpleasant consequences.

Here is where the Second Law is implied. The personal energy spent in coping with and perhaps recovering from avoidable consequences is useful energy that is lost forever. We can't get it back. Our life suffers from not having advantage of the benefits we could have realized from an alternative investment of our lost consumption of useful energy.

Assimilative capacity

And here is the prime implication for the Second Law. Something might be in the water downstream of the herd that wasn't in the water upstream. We might not ever know exactly what, but there is less chance of getting sick when there is less stuff in our water. So if water picks up stuff as it passes through the herd, what quality does it lose?

Some people call water upstream of the herd "clean", "pure", or "fresh". And downstream of the herd "contaminated", "toxic", or "drainage". But such names are all relative to just one specific herd. There could be other unseen herds further upstream and downstream. All along a long river valley, water passes through one herd after another. In the Mississippi River watershed, one city after another. And a downstream city like New Orleans or Los Angeles gets river water that has picked up a lot of stuff along the way.

Why don't these downstream cities just take the stuff out of the river water it diverts before passing it on to its residents? Consider why the biggest desalting plant ever constructed is mothballed. It was going to desalt drainage from Arizona farms along the Gila River, upstream of Yuma, to reduce its salt load to the Colorado River .

Reducing the salt load to the Colorado River downstream of its diversion through the Colorado River Aqueduct doesn't help MWD, water supplier to Los Angeles. But then neither does San Joaquin Valley drainage in the California Aqueduct. The MWD service area is where seventy percent of Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Project benefits accrue, due to less corrosion and scaling in municipal and industrial water use. To the best of my knowledge, federal funds are spent on Colorado River salinity control without even looking at how much MWD salinity could be cut with a drainage bypass around the Delta export pumps. This looks like another example of an out-of-control government.

The Yuma desalting plant is not in operation because other water could be found to replace the drainage for less cost. The agricultural drainage could just bypass the Colorado River and go directly to sea in gravity flow. The lesson here is that useful energy is not always available in amounts we want, where and when we want it. Other uses for available power compete with the power we would use to take salt out of water. Taking salt out of water with a desalting plant might be cost effective in places like Saudi Arabia that don't get much rain and have lots of available energy.

But here in California, rain and snow falls at an average rate of a little less than 200 million acre-feet (MAF) a year. Annual Delta export averages for water years 1985 through 1991 (before CVPIA) for the federal and State pumps were 2.58 MAF and 2.49 MAF, respectively. Total water diversion for the State in all rivers amount to about 40 MAF. So from a State-wide perspective, we seem to have a lot of fresh water. A lot of fresh water that has been dedicated "wild and scenic" for the elite in our society to play in. A lot of fresh water for fish and wildlife to inhabit. Yet environmental socialists cry about farms getting too much. Only people who can't count will be fooled.

Only people who can't count will spend more of their own earnings to pay for the energy to take salt out of the water they drink while fresh water is saved for river rafters. Socialists say they want to protect the mentally retarded. But this example of out-of-control government imposed water scarcity at the expense of the working poor is how they do it.

The energy that is not required to take salt out of water is a potential energy savings stored in the water. It got it from the solar energy that vaporized it, leaving its solutes behind when it rose in our atmosphere. Thus, this capacity to not have to consume more useful energy from some non-solar energy source-this potential energy savings-is a source of available energy to us water users. And this available energy flows from the water as it assimilates stuff, as it flows from fresh rain or snow melt to salty sea. This is the flow of useful energy that flows in all activity in only one direction, from useful to less useful, according to the Second Law.

Water taken upstream of the herd has more useful energy in assimilative capacity than water taken downstream of the herd. Assimilative capacity diminishes as more stuff is carried by the water. Water has assimilative capacity beginning with its first condensation from vapor. As it falls though the atmosphere it cleans the air. As it runs across and through soils it dissolves soluble minerals, like selenium. As it flows past our taste buds, it cleans our palate. And as it leaves the herd, the herd feels refreshed and relieved. Assimilative capacity is an inseparable property of water from raindrop to ocean. And no regulatory agency, like the federal EPA, can prohibit its use.

People are confused about drainage when they let environmental socialists herd us downstream of fish and wildlife on the flow of useful energy in assimilative capacity. We are being deliberately impoverished with energy consumption needlessly expended on downstream water diversions to satisfy the whims of wildlife protectionists and outdoor recreationalists. They play while we pay.

No way for Kesterson to get upstream

So we know some consequences can be avoided with simple precautions, like drinking upstream of Grasslands farms. If the Service wanted to avoid adverse consequences for wildlife then it could seek to supply wildlife habitat with water taken upstream of farms and cities. Which is what it tried to do for Kesterson, apparently blind to the fact that Kesterson is located inside the recirculation loop of the lower west-side San Joaquin Valley. In blind avarice, the Service usurped the dedicated drain-water management purpose of Kesterson with deceptive allegations of drain-water contamination of a refuge to get water upstream of farms. It got Kesterson out of the dedicated drain it was meant by congress to be in, but Kesterson will never be upstream of farms as long as its supply from the Delta-Mendota canal includes the Delta diversion of the San Joaquin River.

Serving wildlife before people

Indeed, selenium toxicosis from feeding on a drain-water based aquatic food chain is but one consequence of not drinking water "upstream of the herd". In this respect, Kesterson has not revealed anything we, as a civilization, didn't already know. What we, as a civilization learned, is that our society is not immune to mass hysteria, government is too corrupt to protect property rights and contracts, government has been conquered by environmental socialists, and government now serves wildlife before people.

When government central planners make decisions to take drinking water supply from a downstream rather than upstream reach of a river so that wildlife and recreational uses can have the benefit of water better in quality than what people are expected to drink, we have government abuse. We have too much government. If we can't limit government to just protect people, then we must be addicted to government solutions.

Our life suffers from not having advantage of the benefits we could have realized from drinking water "upstream of the herd". We should know better than to pay for water not taken "upstream of the herd" to be treated-never complete nor fail-safe-to remove constituents with hazards never fully known while wildlife management takes better quality water "upstream of the herd".

When CVRWQCB staff indicated it was not aware of any current use of the lower San Joaquin River for drinking water, I suppose they meant no current diverters from the main stem of the river were using their water for drinking use. This distinction is of no small matter in my perception of natural context for claims like Porgans makes on page 2.

This discharge constitutes a violation of state and federal laws and will exacerbate and threaten the future viability of the San Joaquin River and the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, while simultaneously destroying threatened and endangered species within these water bodies.

As long as self-appointed protectors of State waters claim concern about salty ocean water for ducks to sit on while excluding the natural context of drinking water for 40 percent of the State's people currently assimilating the entire San Joaquin River, complete with Grasslands drainage, uninformed public will be confused. Environmental socialists will continue to give wildlife a higher priority than people. Environmental socialists will continue to give embryonic wildlife a higher priority than people.

Embryonic wildlife: bird-brained

I have no recollection of life as a tadpole. I've never talked to a tadpole. Or for that matter, a bird embryo. Haven't talked to a hatchling. Haven't talked to a fledgling. The only adult birds I've had any kind of conversation with were some parrots. Or parrot-like birds. None of those conversations made a lasting impression. My experience tells me the expression "bird-brained" is an apt name for minds not much better than "brain dead".

Yet, possibly millions of people chase after birds just to read their body language. Amusing. And if you like that sort of thing, don't let me stop you. I just want to stop paying for your government subsidies. Because we've got no way to know when to quite restoring bird habitat, including wetlands, until all environmental assets have been privatized and are traded in a free market. Until then I cry foul! And blow my whistle! As a grocery buying taxpayer, I am being enslaved!

So if hatchlings are less rational than bird-brained adults, we are really talking about blobs of non-viable pre-fledgling tissue. The world is not going to lose a Shakespeare or Einstein if a bird embryo perishes. A lot of us are not really exited about saving all human embryos and even less excited about saving non-human embryos. George Miller would have us believe these "horribly deformed bird embryos" were like a coal miner's canary. A miner could be warned of possible asphyxiation and get out of the mine fast if his canary dropped dead.

Okay. I'll stay out of waste water tanks. And I bet lots of other people got this message too. They will stay out of waste-water tanks, especially if they are on someone else's property. They won't try setting up a petting zoo in a waste water tank. They won't search through the cattails looking for nests to see what embryos look like in a waste-water tank. They won't pick up a wiggling "horribly deformed" hatchling, hold it in their hands, and ponder the abuse of nature by people.

Ponder the fate of mankind

And anyone that does will be recognized as someone who hasn't long pondered the abuse of a property owner's liberty to manage her own property-like a woman's liberty to manage her own womb-when nature-loving communists trespass on her land. Or worse. Demand it for mitigation of adverse impacts to the environment. As if the environment owned the property and not her, not the land owner. And when her property, as a water right owner, a water supply renewable contract holder, and a natural drainage right holder is up for grabs whenever nature-loving communists want it, we will ponder the fate of mankind.

Someone who does pick up a deformed bird embryo and tell about what an emotional experience that was to strangers, including myself, hasn't pondered private property ownership other than its existence at the expense of more "public trust" property. Should I suppose if all property were "public trust" he would be happy? Some how I doubt it. His pursuit of happiness doesn't seem to be going well. May be he learned to be a socialist in public school and found a political home among other unhappy environmental socialists, like Porgans. Like a lot of people who have studied biology and learned a lot of confusion about mankind's proper place in the animal and plant kingdom.

Apparently lot of biologists suffer this low self esteem for humans as a species. All kinds of anthropogenic causes-ozone depletion, rising CO2-and I don't know what else were checked before much investigation of natural causes for extra legs on frogs. Seems like there was race on to find the next alarming contaminant! All the hoopla and fuss made over Kesterson could be repeated because we have not learned from our history. And we are condemned to hell by repeating Kesterson's moral debacle until we do.

Tell me that life for most people living anytime during the mental stagnation of the Middle Ages, a thousand years, wasn't hell by today's standards. We could stagnate for another thousand years in earth worship if we don't learn to identify "environmental disaster" scams like Kesterson.

Until we get over this "Humans Last" priority that deadlocks further construction of water supply and drainage infrastructure in common "public trust" government property by privatizing water resource decision-making, we are doomed to keep fighting water wars.

Part 9