Valley Headlines

Bird flu surge gets worse

Merced Focus. Merced County confirms first human case of bird flu this year.
Synopsis: A dairy worker is the first human case of H5N1 in Merced County and the 13^th in the state. Everyone who has gotten the flu in CA has worked on a dairy; a few of the cases in other states have come from those working in hen houses. The risk to humans is small and symptoms mild.
MAD Note: Headline writers should take more care. Adding the words “this year” to end of the headline was superfluous. No human had ever gotten bird flu until “this year” or any other year.  

LA Times. As bird flu outbreaks rise, piles of dead cattle become shocking Central Valley tableau.
Synopsis: Suzanne Rust reports on carcasses being land-filled or piled up in front of dairy farms. It’s a gruesome picture, and quite alarming if you live in a city. She adds impact by quoting Western United’s Anja Raudabaugh, saying that “this thing is not slowing down.” A rendering company source confirmed additional pickups throughout the Valley; but his Kerman facility is not overwhelmed. A few cows died from the flu, but others have been “culled” for loss of production. Holsteins seem to be getting sicker than Jerseys or Brown Swiss. Younger animals are likely to get sick first. Another source said the infection rate for humans is being severely under reported. Getting sick means being quarantined, which means economic hardship. So, workers refuse to be tested. Rust spoke to a woman in Tipton who said, “A lot of people have it.” But, “the symptoms seem pretty mild; people keep working.”

Fresno Bee. Avian flu, heat caused ‘sudden rise’ in CA dairy cow deaths.
Synopsis: Robert Rodriguez reports with appropriate restraint on the surge in cow infections and deaths: “A blistering hot summer coupled with a never-before-seen virus in dairy cattle has caused more cow deaths than anticipated in California.” He says that from 1% to 2% of infected cows do not recover to former production levels, which results in their culling. This combination means about 10% of cows on farms with infections are dying. Farmers with strict bio-safety protocols are faring better than those without. Tom Barcellos of Porterville says his production has fully recovered.

Latinas pick Valley winners

Fresno Bee. Latinas of the Valley will decide who represents us in Sacramento, DC.
Op-Ed: Yasmin Navvab and Ileana Juarez say this election will prove that women hold the power to shape the future – especially Latino women. Of the Valley’s 2.77 million registered voters, 505,614 are Latinas. And they’re not following anyone’s orders. “The days of politicians coasting on party loyalty are over. Latina voters no longer feel at home in either major party.” Then this, “In CA-13 and CA-22, local representation isn’t the only thing at stake – it’s control of Congress. In 2022, these tight races were decided by a total of just over 4,000 votes. And these votes are once again poised to decide the control of the House.”

Trying to meet carbon goals

Cal Matters. First CA project to bury climate-warming gases wins key approval.
Synopsis: After having taken all the oil out of the ground, the proposal to put spent carbon back into the holes has gotten its next-to-last green light. CA Resources Corp. is the state’s largest oil and gas producer but now plans to capture carbon from the air at the point of extraction, concentrate it then bury it at Buttonwillow in the Carbon Terra Vault. Environmental justice activists insist it won’t work. If the US EPA gives its final blessing, work can begin. Funding came from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
MAD Take: The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and Earth Justice all fought the carbon-sequestration plan, saying any good that it does will be offset by continued use of fossil fuels. Once again, these groups appear to be against something good now because it hasn’t yet become perfect. The story notes that CA is already falling behind in its ambitious climate goals, and CARB says that without such projects we cannot possibly meet them.

Taking vote security seriously

GV Wire. Voting in Fresno County: How secure is your ballot; how accurate is the final tally?
Synopsis: David Taub looks at the myriad checks and rechecks every registration and ballot endures before being counted. Already, 60 election workers are processing ballots in Fresno – though none have been actually counted, just confirmed. By election day, that will be 600 workers, says Elections Clerk James Kus. He shows off the warehouse protected by locks, 24-hour surveillance, alarms and barbed wire where voting machines and ballots are kept. Each ballot is checked in, verified and counted within two hours. In a day, the county can process 60,000. So far, 21,000 ballots have been returned of the 511,713 that could be cast.

Finally, solar panels in place

Modesto Bee. Turlock Irrigation District is putting solar panels atop canals; the world is watching.
Synopsis: John Holland writes about work done by UC Merced and TID to install solar panels above separate 2-mile stretches of canal near Keyes and Hickman. This project was well publicized a year ago but is finally being completed. The panels are expected to generate power, reduce evaporation, reduce aquatic weeds and keep water cooler – a benefit to crops. If all canals were covered, we could save 55,000-acre feet each year. Machado & Sons of Turlock is doing the work. UC Merced is working on a project near Santa Nella that will have panels floating on canal water, not on canopies above it.

Justifying the Delta tunnel

Local News Matters. Tunnel Vision: A look at CA’s $20 billion solution to its water crisis.
Synopsis: This is a three-part podcast/story series from reporter Ruth Dusseault, who relies almost entirely on the perspective of former Water Board chair and environmental activist Felicia Marcus. It is a very one-sided justification for the 44-mile tunnel proposed by Jerry Brown, embraced by Gavin Newsom and funded by Metropolitan Water District.
MAD Note: The reporter is ambitious, but her work is marred by some basic mistakes – saying “in times of excess flow, (Delta pumps) could siphon up to 6,000 cubic feet of water per second” south. That’s only true because the state has throttled back the pumps, which are capable of siphoning 15,000 cfs, literally changing the direction of the tides. She says the tribes, environmentalists, commercial fishers and farmers stand united. Really? Which farmers? She quotes John Garamendi saying even the tunnel can’t alter CA water law, then voices her fear that people in the “fast-growing” San Joaquin Valley and Southern California will change those laws. Huh?

Good, bad dairy news

Successful Farming. A paradigm shift in measuring dairy demand.
Synopsis: The magazine does a Q&A with banker Corey Geiger. He notes that, “Consumers today are eating their dairy instead of drinking it.” And “Producers are not getting paid for the water, they are getting paid for the components.” But is the industry growing? “There is a collective $7 billion investment in new dairy plants that will be coming online through 2026, and there’s going to be a billion pounds of new cheese production coming online in three years.”

Farms.com. Dairy farms – and economy – can’t thrive without the essential labor of immigrants.
Synopsis: Dairy states like CA, Idaho, Utah, Vermont and Wisconsin produce most of the milk and cheese eaten in America. These farms are huge and can be dangerous, especially during winter. The only people who seem to want to work on them are immigrants, often undocumented. They like it because dairy work is year-round, not seasonal like harvesting crops. Not just anyone can do the work; you have to know how to work with cows, which can weigh 1,500 pounds. If you deport the workers, you shut down the farms … and the yogurt factories, milk producers and ice cream makers. “Immigrants have been essential to our economy and with many US-born workers steadily retiring, immigrants will remain critical to our continued growth,” wrote the National Foundation for American Policy.

Spendlove Prize winner: Tsitsi

Central Valley Voice. Zimbabwean filmmaker, activist chosen for Spendlove Prize.
Synopsis: Tsitsi Dangarembga is the 16^th Spendlove Prize recipient, following in the footsteps of Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama, President Jimmy Carter and others. Tsitsi gained prominence with her 1988 novel “Nervous Conditions” and by founding the International Images Film Festival for Women and the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa. Awarded by UC Merced, the prize of $15,000 is from Sherrie Spendlove, daughter of Alice and Clifford. The ceremony is Nov. 13 at UCM at 5 pm.

Big Green water grab

Tuolumne River Trust. The fight for fish & flows: TRT organizes around new instream flow plan.
Synopsis: The TRT’s Patrick Koeple and Peter Drekmeier have enlisted five other groups in an effort to enforce the forgotten 1987 Kirkwood Agreement which focuses on the 12-mile stretch of river between O’Shaughnessy and Don Pedro dams. Since 1967, roughly 65% of the river’s flows have been diverted away from the stretch into the Canyon Power Tunnel to create power. The groups are beseeching the SFPUC and National Park Service to restore water for the sake of the river’s “salmon” population.
MAD Take: Interesting, if duplicitous, effort from the TRT. Drekmeier writes in this story: “The same low flows that harm salmon and steelhead along the upper Tuolumne also contribute to toxic algae blooms lower down in the watershed as well as the collapsing San Francisco Bay ecosystem …” Do I have this right? The Tuolumne River provides less than half the water that flows into the San Joaquin River which provides only 20% of the water that flows into the Bay. And Pete Drekmeier thinks the problems with algae blooms and a collapsing Bay ecosystem are OUR fault? Meanwhile, the SFPUC sues the state and federal governments to be allowed to continue dumping inadequately treated effluent from 47 sewage-treatment plants straight into the Bay. So, Pete, are you agreeing with he SFPUC that “dilution is the solution” to the Bay Area’s pollution?

Yet more water news

Maven. Fixing CA Aqueduct subsidence: A multi-billion dollar problem.
Synopsis: The CA Aqueduct runs 444 miles, providing water for over 22 million people and to grow the food that feeds hundreds of millions more. Due to over-pumping of groundwater, the ground beneath the canals is sinking – aka, subsidence – taking the canals lower and disrupting gravity flow. One of the worst stretches is from the Dos Amigos pumping plant down to Buena Vista through the San Luis Canal, which begins at San Luis Reservoir in Merced County. The canal has lost 46% of its carrying capacity, jeopardizing water delivery to nearly 1 million acres. Tracking pumping and subsidence is essential to solving the problem. This very, very detailed report talks about how the state is addressing the issue of collecting data.
MAD Note: As shown in the Friant-Kern Canal, fixing any canal is useless if we don’t solve groundwater pumping problems first. SGMA regs are onerous to many farmers, but without enforcement much of our water infrastructure will become useless.