"No Water, No Development?" No Thinking Here.

If things go according to plan, tomorrow’s LA Times letters section will carry a brief letter from me responding to an LAT editorial that ran last weekend, No Water, No Development.

Because letters to the editor are necessarily brief, I decided to spend some time today to do a more complete fisking of the editorial — even though many of my readers may not find this overly interesting. I do because my business handles public affairs assignments for land developers and water districts.

As background, supplying enough water to all the folks who like calling SoCal home has always been a dicey affair at best, and it’s getting worse.

• California’s population is growing fast — it’s expected to grow from its current 28 million to 38 million by 2030 — and more mouths need more water.
• There’s been a prolonged drought in the Colorado River basin, along with a lot of growth in Arizona, and that’s put pressure on our Colorado River resources.
• The Sierra snowpack’s about average this year, but this is the first time in a few years that it has been, so that supply source is not too reliable.
• Aquifers need replenishment they tend not to get in dry years, so they’re getting over-drawn.
• Global warming advocates read their tea leaves computer models and forecast hotter, drier weather for SoCal.

Then there’s the Greenies. Strip it all away, and their core mission is to stop the growth of the human presence on the planet, and if possible, dial it back some. They’ve discovered that water is one powerful way to do this. As Kieran Suckling, founder of the environmental litigation mill Center for Biological Diversity put it in a 1998 interview with Range Magazine,

Walley: “But what about those people who are suffering during this change?”

Suckling: “As I say, it is not a simple thing. We have entire communities that have grown up in this system of land-based government subsides. To change that is not a painless thing.”

Walley: “You, are creating rural refugees!”

Kieran’s ego finally shows, his speech picks up speed and emphasis: “It’s more than rural. I’m dealing with the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and Los Angeles. Thirteen million people are used to getting their water this way, I say that’s great, but we are going to show them a different way to do it!“

Walley: “You are forcing change on society and you are aware of it?”

Suckling: “Yeah! Isn’t that what an activist is! What do you think an activist is? We change society!”

Walley: “Can’t you do this in a humane and gentle way?”

Suckling: “It is sad, but I don’t hear you put that in a direct relationship to the effect on the land. I hear you talk about the pain of the people but I don’t see you match that up with the pain of the species.”

Walley (dumbfounded): “What?”

Suckling: “A loach minnow is more important, than say, Betty and Jim’s ranch-a thousand times more important. I’m not against ranching, it is a job. My concern is the impact on the land.”

A loach minnow is a thousand times more important than Betty and Jim’s ranch — not the loach minnow species, but a single loach minnow.

Backing up this extreme belief with litigation, the Center used the Endangered Species Act to sue to stop the pumps that bring water to SoCal from the San Joaquin/Sacramento Delta, our primary water source. They triumphed, and the result is a 30% reduction in the amount of water coming from NoCal to SoCal.

The fix is a re-tooling of the Delta, which it needs if it is going to survive its current ecologically tenuous condition. Combined with that would be a canal that would bring water south without impacting the Delta — a proposition the Greenies are fighting tooth and nail, natch.

Against that background, the LAT opined that because water is in short supply, development should stop in the suburbs.

During the 20th century in Southern California, city founders made a religion out of building bounteous — and sometimes boundless — suburbs in the most unlikely locations. They assumed that the water their new communities needed to thrive would somehow flow to them.

For the most part, if they made their claim early enough, they were right. Because the state and federal governments poured billions of dollars into dam and canal systems that carried water over vast distances, past far-flung burgs, engineers could almost always find a way to get a little more of it to thirsty towns. In tract after tract, water followed development, rather than the other way around.

Left unsaid in this little history lesson is that there was no greater champion of these programs than one Harry Chandler, the publisher of a little rag called The Los Angeles Times. He had the good sense to realize that if he was ever going to have a world class media empire, he was going to have to get water to LA.

In the 21st century, this ethos of expansion must come to an end. …

It’s a matter of common sense: It is time for development in California to follow the water. Even as our state continues to grow, sprawl can no longer be our birthright. Hydrologically remote regions cannot depend on new sources of imported water for human needs, much less for verdant lawns.

The statement is absurd. If we are to follow the water, then all of the development in California would be along the northern coast, in the northern Central Valley, and in the Sierras — all of which are sparsely populated.

“Follow the water” is an utterly ridiculous concept also because we have the capacity and infrastructure to move water. Any development that is near existing water infrastructure — say the city of LA in its semi-arid desert environment — is as well situated, if not better situated, than one along a natural water source.

Calling for an end to suburban development to fix our water problems is no more a solution than would be a call to have the clouds drop more rain. Neither is realistic.

The LAT then goes through a three-paragraph exercise in diminishing the consequence of environmental and anti-growth laws it lobbied hard for itself. Thanks in part to the LAT’s support, we now have laws in CA that require new development to prove that there is a 20-year supply of water sufficient to meet the community’s dry weather demand.

This water can’t be “paper water,” i.e., contracts for water that isn’t there; it must be provable as real water that isn’t committed elsewhere. Yet the LAT forgets what it lobbied for:

Individual water districts generate the estimates. And some of these districts, in preparing reports for land-use planners, may rely too heavily on “paper water,” flows that exist in legal allocations but aren’t really on hand and may never be. As one former state legislator explains, “If people point to paper water, there’s always enough for everybody.”

But that’s already been litigated, and the case law says the water has to be real. Water districts know this and know they will be sued if they allow development for which there isn’t sufficient water, so they’re serious about their water management plans.

Still, the LAT is negative:

Put bluntly, it makes little sense to depend on new water imports — even if they “exist” as allocations — when planning thousands of new homes in an isolated region. But depending instead on more secure local water supplies — responsibly managed groundwater, gains from conservation, wastewater recycling and reuse — is anomalous to California culture and will be a hard sell.

It is correct that relying on the Colorado River aqueduct and the State Water Project for new water imports isn’t wise; the Hell has been allocated and litigated out of that water.

But what is this about responsibly managed groundwater, conservation and recycled water being a hard sell? The LAT simply does not know what it’s writing about; it’s making things up to create dread instead of optimism.

The dread comes from a fundamentally negative view of authority, which is pretty much a prerequisite for being an editorial writer.

Critics of building-friendly local governments frequently complain that water and land-use officials are controlled by developers, who have long been enthusiastic contributors to political campaigns. Whether that is true or not, it’s almost certainly the case that California water agency culture is loath to say no to developers for a less-pernicious reason: Water districts are in the business of delivering water to local communities — they don’t see their job as determining water use policy — and they don’t like to say no to their customers.

If developers are so powerful, how come the homebuilding industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the country? When I speak on the subject, I usually start with the line, “Did you know it’s easier in California to get permission to cut open someone’s chest and stick a new heart in there than it is to get permission to build a house?”

Builders’ whims are summarily crushed by the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the environmental quality acts of the federal government and various state governments, and regulations that require no runoff to leave construction sites, no grading during bird nesting season, no construction noise near nesting birds, strict building limits in fire zones, and that they fund roads, parks and schools.

Clearly, the idea that developers buy influence has plenty of proof against it and precious little for it.

And as for water districts, their mission is to provide a reliable source of safe water and an environmentally sound treatment of wastewater; it is not to grow. They have done wondrous things to account for growth, applying specialized engineering expertise creatively to bring water to people who need it, and to conserve it as much as possible.

In district after district throughout California, an emphasis on conservation and water recycling has allowed them to meet growing demand with the same amount of water. That goes for LA too, by the way.

But the LAT thinks it’s all a wasteful game, especially when it comes to how the editorial writer thinks we should live; not with the suburbs’ safety, cleanliness and recreation, but as the editorial writer him/herself no doubt lives, in a dirty and dour urban setting that oozes with “more green than you” snottiness. (More in a bit on why that’s false snottiness.)

The editorial wants us to “follow the water” to these environments, shunning the suburbs because they have, horror of horrors!, lawns.

Even as our state continues to grow, sprawl can no longer be our birthright. Hydrologically remote regions cannot depend on new sources of imported water for human needs, much less for verdant lawns.

What silliness. First, there is no development in hydrologically remote regions. If there’s an aqueduct or pipeline serving an area, it’s not hydrologically remote. That goes for downtown LA, which steal its water from the Owens Valley and pipes it down to what was a rather hydrologically remote area.

Second, let’s look at what’s going on with those “verdant lawns.”

First, of course, they get played on and lived on, and they help diminish the asphalt heat island effect of the city. But more than that, they are watered in ways the LAT feels is a “hard sell,” but is not.

California’s water providers and community developers are far ahead of the Times in recognizing the water shortage and creating solutions, and many of these solutions focus on landscape irrigation. In fact, solutions the Times refers to as “potential” already exist, thanks to the cooperative efforts of water districts and land developers.

For example, we helped win approvals for a new planned community that tripled the size of the town of Calimesa, on the eastern edge of the LA metropolis. The developer worked with the local water district to receive permitting for a water recycling plant that will deliver reclaimed water to the front yards of homes, where it will be used for irrigation.

In South Orange County, both the Irvine Ranch Water District and Santa Margarita Water District (the county’s largest and second largest) have been recycling water and using it for irrigation since the 1970s. At IRWD for example, recycled water:

• Irrigates 5,650 acres of parks, golf courses, school playfields, athletic fields, and many common areas,
• Irrigates over 1,000 acres of crops,
• Is used in industry, where one application at a carpet mill saves 500,000 to one million gallons of drinking water per day,
• And now is being introduced into office buildings for toilet flushing.

SMWD, which also provides millions of gallons of recycled water a year for irrigation use, recently launched a program that captures urban runoff and recycles it for irrigation use. Its runoff capture facility near Dove Canyon not only makes about 100 acre feet of water available for irrigation use, it also has successfully eliminated much of the environmental damage the runoff was causing in the Starr Audubon Ranch, a nature preserve.

Innovation like this is happening all over California. Districts in the Central Valley with brackish groundwater are putting in desalters. Orange County just launched a toilet-to-tap program which required no “hard sell” to area residents because it’s safe and will protect our aquifer. And on and on.

To the LAT, this innovation appears to be a thing of the future, something speculative, something not to be counted on. They would rather mandate how we live:

Californians’ devotion to the easy suburban lifestyle (or at least, the easy suburban lifestyle as we know it). Thirty-nine percent of residential water use in California occurs outdoors, mainly when homeowners water their lawns. One way to secure “additional” water for growth is to cut yard sizes and impose landscaping restrictions on new and existing neighborhoods.

Apparently the LAT hasn’t toured a model complex lately and seen the small yards, the common areas landscaped in drought-tolerant plants, and the sophisticated irrigation systems that measure ground moisture and only water as necessary.

No new regulations are required to accomplish this. Land prices have forced the private sector to respond with smaller yards, the environmental review process brings in water conservation methodologies, and the regional water quality control board mandates runoff controls, so landscape is irrigated sparingly.

But the LAT knows none of this. The editorial writer sits in downtown LA, surrounded by concrete and asphalt, and thinks the worse, as he/she should, because the environment there is the worst. Buildings are stuffed with inefficient toilets and fixtures. There is no runoff control. There is no recycled water. There is no toilet to tap program. There is infrastructure that’s undersized and in need of major upgrading — and we’re supposed to move there?

Surrounded by the urban stupidity that is LA, the writer lashes out at the suburbs in some sort of tribal battle of urbanites against suburbanites. Sorry, though; we’re not picking up this club because there’s a better, two-fold solution.

First, we need to address the infrastructure issue with bonds that will fix the Delta and provide new conveyance and storage systems. Second, we must continue to let people choose where they wish to live, and let water districts and developers respond to existing conditions and regulations with ever more innovative approaches to acquiring and conserving water.

Just because the LAT says we need a state-controlled system that subjugates free will to the whims of urbanists doesn’t mean we have to be so thick-headed and so uninnovative as to follow them.

LA Times: "No Blood For Oil" Lackey

The “no blood for oil” simpleton-ideologues should all buy copies of today’s LA Times because its story, Greenspan: The Iraq war is largely about oil, will become the new talking points for this contingent. Here’s how the article starts … and you don’t really have to go any further than this, if you’re on the Left and looking for convenient belief systems:

WASHINGTON — “The Iraq war is largely about oil,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his new book — an assertion disputed by lawmakers and the U.S. Defense secretary.

“I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows,” Greenspan, 81, writes in “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.”

Greenspan writes that the attention given by developed nations to the political situation in the Middle East is directly tied to oil security.

“Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy,” he writes.

The reporter is pulling quotes directly from the book, so it must be accurate and true, right? Well, before we jump to such conclusions, let’s look to another source. No, not a conservative Republican source. Let’s look one of the two papers the LA Times so unsuccessfully emulates, the Washington Post, which much more carefully titled its story Greenspan: Ouster of Hussein Crucial for Oil Security:

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been “essential” to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Greenspan, who was the country’s top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that “the Iraq War is largely about oil.” In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”

He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, “I have never heard them basically say, ‘We’ve got to protect the oil supplies of the world,’ but that would have been my motive.” Greenspan said that he made his economic argument to White House officials and that one lower-level official, whom he declined to identify, told him, “Well, unfortunately, we can’t talk about oil.” Asked if he had made his point to Cheney specifically, Greenspan said yes, then added, “I talked to everybody about that.”

Just after the LAT paragraphs I quoted first, the article switches gears for a bit, referencing the WaPo interview and Greenspan’s “clarification.” Yes, that’s right. The LATimes went with obfuscation first and clarification second. Surprised? Didn’t think so.

Then, after picking up only a wee bit of the WaPo interview, the LAT story wraps up with two quick grafs. First:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Sunday rejected the idea that oil was a reason for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Students, what is the purpose of this paragraph? That’s right! Paint the administration to look like liars! Of course, it actually paints the LAT to be the liars, since the paragraphs in the WaPo article make it clear that Gates was 100 percent justified in his comment. Oil was not the administration’s motive.

And finally:

Before the war, Iraq supplied on average 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to the U.S., or about 8.6% of total U.S. crude oil imports, according to the U.S. Energy Department. That made it the sixth-largest supplier to the U.S., after Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Canada, Venezuela and Nigeria.

What’s missing from this paragraph, class? Right! Current Iraqi oil supply to the U.S. If we are to assume that the war was all about oil, we would expect there to be much more Iraqi oil coming to the U.S. today than in 2003.

But no. After cranking through some dollars and percents of sales to millions of barrels per day calculations, we find it’s roughly the same. (Which also disputes the Lefty argument that we’re wrecked the Iraqi oil industry and the national economy with our invasion. My, how they like to butter both sides of their bread.)

Oh, and by the way, the oil is sold to us, not taken by us.

The real point about Iraq and oil is two fold, which I don’t have to tell you, since everyone except the Village Idiot gets this. But I’ll tell you anyway, just in case any Village Idiots happen by.

First, Iraq’s potential production is about five times more than its current production, so it is important to have a government in Iraq that is capable of exploiting it. (For the Village Idiots in the audience, let me point out that in this case, “exploitation” is a good thing. Yes, even with global warming. Because there are no economically viable alternatives to oil yet, that’s why.)

And second, much more importantly, Hussein was not content to sit placidly on his oil. He had invaded both Iran and Kuwait and was a full-time saber-rattler, making all his neighbors (our oil suppliers) very, very uncomfortable.

Yes, of course you could read those two points and come away saying, “No more blood for oil!” because in hyper-abbreviated mode, we are spilling blood for oil. But the truth — and truth often takes longer to say than do cute Leftist slogans — is that “oil” is shorthand for the stuff that keeps the economy of the world going and stops people from fighting each other over scarce resources, so the Left really should be shouting, “No blood for global stability, peace and wellbeing!”

All the Middle East oil barons, the aloof and anti-American oil suckers in Europe, everyone in Asia (including the Chinese) and yes, we SUV-lovin’ Americans should be kow-towing before Bush’s desk.

We all understand that. But there’s a big building in downtown Los Angeles that reporters show up at every day where this simple understanding is way, way over everyone’s heads.

A Stink In The Ink At The LA Times

Rarely does one see the Left grab and twist a story as rapidly as AP jumped on the story of Fred Thompson, abortion lobbyist. Oh, did we forget to say “alleged?” So sue us.

AP wrangled its story out of an LA Times piece this a.m. alleging that Thompson, while working as a lobbyist at Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, was hired by National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. to lobby the White House, specifically John Sununu, against a Bush proposal to prohibit abortion counseling in clinics that receive federal funds.

Making the allegations is the abortion group’s CEO, Judith DeSarno, a flaming lefty pictured on the right. She’s a bigtime Hillary supporter (not that you’d get that tidbit from the LAT), and, as an abortion rights advocate, someone well seasoned in ignoring the truth (“Embryos are just protoplasm!”) and spreading lies (“There are medical reasons for partial birth abortion!”).

While the LAT story is in the long tradition of that paper’s hit pieces against anything with GOP chromosomes, the paper at least played like journalists and put info countering the abortionist’s claims:

• Quotes of denial from a Thompson spokesperson
• No billing records exist supporting the abortionists
• Quotes from Sununu saying doesn’t remember ever being lobbied by Thompson on the matter and finds it highly unlikely

Now here’s the AP story, in toto:

Thompson says no recollection of lobbying to ease abortion rules

Associated Press – July 6, 2007 8:23 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) – Fred Thompson says he “has no recollection” of lobbying on behalf of a family planning group.

The LA times reports that back in 1991 Thompson lobbied then President George Bush to relax a regulation that prevents federally funded clinics from offering abortion counseling.

Minutes of a 1991 meeting, cited by the Times, said Thompson had been hired to help in discussions with the president’s office.

A spokesman for Thompson says it’s “not unusual” for lawyers to be asked to give advice to colleagues for clients with whom they personally disagree.

But the former head of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association says she specifically remembers discussing Thompson’s lobbying work with him in phone conversations and during meals at Washington restaurants.

The former senator is weighing a Republican presidential bid as a social conservative.

AP leads with “no recollection” from Thompson, not the aide’s strong denial; in fact, the aide’s weakest quote is the only quote AP goes with. And where are the denials from Sununu? Nowhere to be found.

NewsBusters focused nicely on the last line:

I wonder how many times they have used such language to describe any of the Democrat candidates? Have they ever said that Hillary is running as the “social liberal candidate”? I doubt it. Additionally, how many Republicans are NOT running as a social conservative, anyway? (Even Rudy tried to run as a social conservative at first, until called upon it)

The AP story, though, is the one that will move across the nation, not the LAT piece, because nearly all broadcast and print outlets subscribe to AP, while the LAT wire is far less popular. One would think that would give AP a greater sense of responsibility and a stronger commitment to fairness, but instead, they’ve assumed the role of news bully, owning the playground and doing what they darn well please.

But AP wouldn’t have a story if the LAT hadn’t gone first, and on that score, there’s a lot of stink in the ink, says NewsBusters:

Of course, there’s more. Nearly every person mentioned in the Times story has a heavy left-wing activist and/or Hillary Campaign connection, yet this is never once mentioned. When one discovers the backgrounds of those making these claims against Thompson, it smells more and more like a pure Hillary dirty trick swallowed whole by the AP and promulgated by the L.A.Times than a purely honest story.

The Clintons have a long history of crushing opponents under innuendo and false claims, actions that should be easy enough for a great big, serious newspaper like the LAT to investigate. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be seeing that story any time soon.

Geffen Still In Hunt For LA Times

Yesterday, I mentioned that David Geffen was still interested in purchasing the LA Times. Today, the WSJ reports Geffen and new owner Sam Zell are meeting tonight:

The conversations are informal, say people close to the situation. The two men know each other and have spoken about the newspaper before. Tribune, which agreed to a Zell-backed buyout earlier this week, has said it has no immediate plans to sell any assets except for the Chicago Cubs. But Mr. Geffen expressed interest in the Los Angeles newspaper last year, and said he was prepared to spend $2 billion in cash. This week, he said he continues to be interested.

Selling The Times would help Zell liquidate TribCorp’s considerable debt, but at the cost of breaking up a potential media empire.

It would also transfer ownership of LAT from a GOP-leaning, Israel-supporting Zell to a staunch pillar of the Hollywood liberal elite who’s ranked as the most influential gay man in America by the gay-agenda mouthpiece, Out magazine.