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Dear friends, We are concerned that a water bond contrary to UU values of equity, compassion, and interdependence may get rushed onto the November ballot this weekend. A call from you today, would be meaningful. As our UU principle counsels: we are part of an interdependent web of existence. Perhaps nowhere is this more profoundly demonstrated than in the complex "systems" that transport water from the north and eastern parts of California to cities and agriculture that are hundreds of miles south and west. Those who built the dams and canals and pumps that haul water from one end of the state to the other saw the creation of wealth, the expansion of population, the production of food and flood control for communities as an unambiguous good. Much was created and many people were fed. The major water projects created the California we now know. However, 20-20 hindsight has taught us that taking and moving water has also had major negative consequences and now faces real limits. Newly irrigated former desert land created patterns of development that favored vast tracts of corporate agriculture over family farms. Towns that lost their water lost their livelihood. Aquifers were overdrawn. Trees died. Dams filled with sediment. Levees broke. Ecosystems collapsed. Salmon could not get upstream. The delta, through which 22 million Californians get their water, is in crisis. Consequences have been cultural as well as environmental. Our recent UULM Young Adult Water Justice Road Trip (see our blog) heard directly from the Winnemem Wintu of the McCloud River. Winnemem Wintu means "middle water people" - their life, their religious practice, their purpose as a people is based on being keepers of the precious water of the middle fork of the McCloud at the headwaters of the Sacramento Valley. When the Shasta Dam was built in the early 1940's, 90% of the Winnemem's ancestral homeland was lost, their burial grounds dug up and moved, and their ceremonial sites flooded. One of the two water bond proposals now circulating (ABX2 9 - Plescia) leaves open the possibility of raising the Shasta Dam and drowning out the Winnemem's remaining sacred sites. Imagine putting the Vatican under water. How can the obliteration of the cultural and religious practice of one of California's native tribes be an option? Have we learned nothing since the gold rush? 400 miles south of the Shasta Dam, we toured the Westlands Water District where miles upon miles of corporately farmed cotton, alfalfa, and industrial strength tomatoes are grown with subsidized water that comes, in part, from the drowned out homeland of the Winnemem. About 70 miles east in Tulare County, small rural towns at the base of the Sierra watershed can't drink their ground water due to nitrate contamination. How can water contracts promise more water than the natural environment can deliver? How can previous billions of bond financed infrastructure still leave communities so poor that their residents do not have safe drinking water? Who gets to make decisions on what water can be taken or sold and for what uses? California faces serious water issues. It is also clear that we can't solve our problems by simply moving more water around without dealing with the underlying questions of who should have access to how much water for what purposes. As a seasoned staffer for the Bureau of Reclamation told us, "in the face of climate change, this problem is too big to be able to just build our way out of it; it requires a new way of thinking, a new way of planning, a more sustainable way of living." This time, we will need to think and plan more locally. With the encouragement of the UU Legislative Ministry's Climate Change and Water Justice Team, the UULM Action Network Board of Directors has joined a broad coalition of environmental justice, environmental, fishing and community organizations that have signed onto a letter opposing the current version of the $9.3 billion water bond proposal. "Coalition Says Governor's Bond Will Worsen State's Water Crisis" The coalition has proposed a SET OF TEN PRINCIPLES FOR COMPREHENSIVE WATER POLICY REFORM that we include in our letter to Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Feinstein. View the letter and signatories. Asking California to spend billions more without first addressing the underlying water management and policy problems in the state is like trying to build on quicksand. It is a sinking proposition. Please call your legislator today to ask that they oppose placing the current water bond proposals on the November ballot. Not this bond, and not this ballot. There is money still in the pipeline from water bonds passed in 2006. Before we create another huge investment, we need a thoughtful policy that meets basic needs, rejects waste, and serves the Public and Tribal Trust into the future. We can't go forward with piecemeal water policies that allocate more water than can be distributed and tax low-income rural communities while leaving them without drinkable water. ABX2 8 (Huffman, Caballero, and Wolk) version of the bond is better than ABX2 9 (Plescia). But in both versions, disadvantaged communities get pennies on the dollar This is an environmental justice issue. We need allies from all parts of the state to speak up. Please call your legislator today. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html Thanks for helping us to be stewards of this life giving resource, and allies to communities in need. Rev. Lindi Ramsden PS Be very nice when you call! They are also in the midst of the budget crunch with the ballot deadline looming.
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