Karen Laslo

The California Water Commission will hold a public meeting “to provide information on the Water Storage Investment Program” on Monday, April 13th, 5:30, Elks Lodge, 1705 Manzanita Place, Chico.

Because the majority of the people of California voted for Prop. 1, the Water Bond, in the last election, we now have 2 wacky schemes that, supposedly, will help us get through the current and future drought conditions.

Scheme #1 Build the “off stream” Sites Reservoir over in Glenn/Colusa counties. This scheme will depend on pumping water out of the Sacramento River, dumping it into existing irrigation canals and pumping it up hill to the “reservoir.” The billions spent on this wacky scheme would be better put to use by using it, for example, to restore our wetlands. Wetlands are much more efficient at storing water than big holes in the ground that leak, are subject to evaporation and clogging silt, engulf valleys, are expensive to maintain and dry up during droughts.

Oroville Dam pumps sticking out of water.

San Luis Reservoir in San Joaquin Valley.

Sacramento River

Scheme #2 is the most wacky and dastardly. I’m no expert but, from what I’ve been able to learn, this is the gist of it: In dry years, big rice farmers would pump huge amounts of ground water to flood their rice fields, with the goal of totally draining the Tuscan Aquifer dry, which would, supposedly, create an empty space for “below-ground water storage.” The rice farmers would then be free to make lots of $$ by selling their allotment of Sacramento River water to the “farmers” down in the San Joaquin Valley so they can irrigate their puny, desert almond orchards, while productive almond growers up here watch their wells go dry.

San Joaquin Valley “almond orchard”

Almond orchard along the Midway near Chico

Then, in “wet years,” the rice farmers would flood their fields with Sacramento River water, which, supposedly, would seep down into the Tuscan Aquifer and refill it.

Rice field in Sacramento Valley

Rice silos in Richvale

Doug LaMalfa, U.S. House of Reps., District 1 and rice farmer

They sell water.

The Delta Mendota water canal – how our water is “transferred.”

It might be the only strategy left for southern California, where they’ve already wiped out their aquifers, but are we willing to sacrifice one of the only intact, natural aquifers left in California to such a wacky scheme? I have questions: Does anyone really know what will happen when this precious water resource is totally drained? Will the whole water system collapse? What, exactly, is a “wet year”? And who would have access to this “stored” water? Wildlife? Valley Oaks? Small, organic family farmers? Urban dwellers? Local fruit and nut farmers? And——– what if there isn’t another wet year for a long, long time?

If you have question too, please attend this meeting.

Small, organic, family farmers at the Farmers' Market

Small, organic, family farmers at the Chico Farmers’ Market

Small, organic farmer loads up his truck for the Farmers' Market

Small, organic farmer loads up his truck for the Chico Farmers’ Market

Chico Avenues neighborhood as seen from on top of Enloe building

Urban dwellers, Chico Avenues neighborhood

Mallard pair on Chico Creek, Bidwell Park

Young Valley Oaks, Bidwell Park, One Mile

Valley Oaks, Bidwell Park

Nutall's Woodpecker on Valley Oak, Bidwell Park

Nuttall’s Woodpecker on Valley Oak, Bidwell Park

Valley Oak, south side of Sutter Buttes

Pounding water flows over fish ladder at One MIle in Bidwell Park.

When I heard that KZFR was sponsoring a concert at the Chico Women’s Club last Friday night, featuring Eliza Gilkyson along with Nina Gerber, I’d never heard Eliza Gilkyson’s music before. But I got interested when I learned that she played acoustic folk music and was nominated for a Grammy Award. And when a friend told me that Nina Gerber was going to accompany Eliza on guitar and that she had played with Kate Wolf’s band I thought, “I’m going!”

Being a photographer, I took photos of the two women, Eliza Gilkyson in color, thereby capturing something of the warmth of her voice and lyrics, and Nina Gerber in black and white because I thought the neutral colors would better show the intensity of her concentration on the guitar – the combination resulting in a sound that can never be adequately duplicated.

The song I liked best was Fast Freight by Eliza’s father, singer and songwriter, Terry Gilkyson. Perhaps I gravitate toward train sounds because I grew up adjacent to a San Fernando Valley railroad track or because of the long railroad journeys to Denver for summer vacations. Now, in Chico, I hear the distant sound of a late-night train as it passes through town telling me, “If you go you can’t come back.”