Badlands Journal

 Last year Greg Hostetler, doing business as Baxter Ranch, graded and filled the floodplain of Fahrens Creek upstream from Fahrens Park, putting several hundred homes downstream in danger of flooding the next time we have a wet winter in Merced. It is not the first time Hostetler has ignored environmental or public health and safety regulations and dickered for the amount of fines with whatever agencies dare to confront him after the fact. Mr. Hostetler belongs to the “Sin now, ask for forgiveness later” School of Business.

Hostetler, whether doing business as Baxter Ranch or as any of his other corporations, (1) seems to have a grudge against Fahrens Creek. His graders crossed it repeatedly preparing land for development near the Merced County Club during the height of the building boom^. and he planted an almond orchard around it near the new El Capitan High School on G Street two or three years ago. The wells he installed for that orchard have been drying up domestic wells in the posh, unincorporated County Club section. Hostetler is a persona non grata to some residents of Poshville.

And he did it all without once quoting the dreary professoriate.

George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times is a state treasure. He writes as well about the water wars as he does about the Calderon clan, addicts on the "mother's milk of politics,"  and sponsors of our own Assemblyman Adam Gray, $-Merced. --blj

2-19-14

Los Angeles Times

 We are absolutely delighted that the EPA is launching a NEW TOOL “to Estimate Emissions Benefits of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Policies‏.” We also see it as yet another example that great profit center so frequently touted as a reason for our own “public research university” in Merced – “high-tech/bio-tech engine a’ growth,” as the UC executives put it. In this arena, there seems to be a potent mixture of public funds, regulatory non-enforcement, and university research-for-(economic) growth.

The San Joaquin Valley public, concerned in this drought year for its collective human respiratory system – not to mention pets and livestock – don’t, and let us repeat this strenuously, DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT NEW MEASUREMENT TOOLS.

 What if President Obama had gotten his speeches mixed up and mentioned in Los Banos Friday that he thought the top priorities for Congress should be “increasing the minimum wage and overhauling the immigration system” while telling the participants in a House Democrats retreat the day before: "California is our biggest economy. California is our biggest agricultural producer, so what happens (there) matters to every working American, right down to the cost of food that you put on your table," therefore we must spend whatever it takes to subsidize California agribusiness losses because there is almost no water to subsidize this year and America would collapse without Westlands Water District.  -- blj

 But what god would care to come down to the Valley to turn wine into water? -- blj

2-15-14

Yahoonews.com

Calif. wine-grape growers celebrate bumper crop

With the climate warming and snow levels climbing higher, at least $100 million needs to be invested in more precise snow measurement, said engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California at Merced.

Bales is director of the university's Sierra Nevada Research Institute, which has been experimenting on better snow measurement for years.

Whether by intention or incompetence, the variously named plans – Merced Water Supply Plan (all phases), Merced Groundwater Basin Groundwater Management Plan, Merced Irrigation District Groundwater Management Plan, and Regional Groundwater Management Plan – are incomprehensible to the public, alleged beneficiaries of them, even to a public as familiar with such documents as we are. --Badlands Journal, Re: Opposition to Groundwater Basin Groundwater Management Plan Update, 7-1-08, Letter to Chairman ElTal and Vice-Chairman Kelley

At the big Merced Irrigation District meeting at the Merced County Fairgrounds on Friday, Feb. 7, we were somewhat alarmed to here MID General Manager John Sweigard and his staff refer a number of questions from the packed audience to yet another water management plan. Yet this plan, dubbed by MID management, "the Master Water Management Plan," has apparently not even been drafted yet or at least the public is not permitted to see what drafts may exist. 

In this post, we take the lede from the bottom of the article to the top where it belongs. (Parentheses ours)-- blj

This is either really bad lawyering by (California Attorney General Kamala) Harris — or a face-saving way for (Gov. Jerry) Brown to give up on the doomed (high speed rail) project. I believe it’s the latter. – Chris Reed, Cal Watchdog, Jam 30, 2014

 If Jonah, rather than going to Nineveh to preach repentance, had gone to Stanislaus County CA and set up outside the Gallo Center in Modesto, and the county, like Nineveh, had not been destroyed after his fervent preachings, the Lord might have given him roughly the same excuse:  You expected  me to destroy a half a million people and all those nuts?

 1-31-14

Merced Sun-Star

Supervisor tries to intervene on behalf of aide stopped by police