Home > Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood    Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood "California's Delta In Crisis" 04 July 2007 "Selenium Poisoning the American West" 08 May 2007 "Subsidy Gravy Train" 28 March 2007 "Westlands Water District" 20 March 2007 "Down in the Valley" Monthly Radio Show October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2006 March, 2006       Lloyd Carter, an attorney in Fresno, California has taught water law at San Joaquin College of Law. For more than two decades he served as a prize-winning reporter for United Press International and the Fresno Bee in Fresno and San Francisco. He continues to speak out and write op-ed pieces on California water issues. He won the best environmental coverage award from the San Francisco Press Club for his stories on the poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the mid 1980s.       He is currently on the boards of three non-profit watchdog water groups: The California Water Impact Network (www.c-win.org), California Save Our Streams Council and Revive the San Joaquin (www.Revivethesanjoaquin.org)       He can be reached by e-mail at lcarter0i@comcast.net "California's Delta In Crisis" by Lloyd Carter ====>Click to hear "California's Delta In Crisis"       In his fourth episode of Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood, California water expert and writer Lloyd Carter talks about the ecological crisis facing the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary in the long hot summer of 2007. Los Angeles is experiencing its driest year on record and increasing water exports of Northern California water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California have caused the collapse of the Delta's fishery. The three-inch Delta Smelt, a critical part of the Delta fishery food chain, is teetering on the brink of extinction. Experts say it could be the beginning of what may become "the Perfect Drought." A Congressional subcommittee overseeing federal water policy recent held a field hearing in the Bay Area to gather information on what some experts say is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Copyright © 2007 Lloyd Carter, All Rights Reserved. "Selenium Poisoning the American West" by Lloyd Carter ====>Click to hear "Selenium Poisoning the American West"       In his third episode of Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood, California water expert Lloyd Carter talks about the threat posed by the trace element selenium to farmland, rivers, wetlands and wildlife in the western United States. Using the selenium poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the early 1980s as an example, Carter shows how little has been done by the federal government or state governments to halt selenium contamination caused by irrigation and mining activities. Copyright © 2007 Lloyd Carter, All Rights Reserved. "Subsidy Gravy Train" by Lloyd Carter ====>Click to hear "Subsidy Gravy Train"       In his second installment of "Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood" California writer and water expert Lloyd Carter talks about the enormous water and crop subsidies flowing in disproportionate amounts to huge factories in the field in Central California's irrigation country. While California big agribusiness operations hide behind the "family farmer" label, they continue to rake in half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money, according to reports by the Environmental Working Group. Surprisingly, conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, also favor major reform of the farm and water subsidy system now in place. Copyright © 2007 Lloyd Carter, All Rights Reserved. "Westlands Water District" by Lloyd Carter ====>Click to hear "Westlands Water District"       In his first podcast of "Tales of the Hydraulic Brotherhood" California water expert Lloyd Carter talks about the Westlands Water District, at 942 square miles the largest and most politically powerful federal water district in America.       Westlands has a drainage problem caused by selenium, a trace element inherent in the soils of the western San Joaquin Valley in Central California, the nation's most productive farming region. Drainage water from Westlands poisoned ducks and shorebirds at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the mid 1980s triggering national headlines.       Now Westlands wants to take over solving the drainage problem from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in exchange for forgiveness of a half billion dollar debt the water district owes the federal government AND control of the Bureau's state water permit which is annually worth $500 million. Copyright © 2007 Lloyd Carter, All Rights Reserved. "Down in the Valley"        Lloyd Carter, veteran journalist and observer of California water politics, offers his monthly assessment of the current hot issues in California's Water World.        Listen to "Down in the Valley" live on the second friday of every month at 3 p.m. Pacific Time on Radio KFCF 88.1 FM, Fresno, California. October, 2007 ====>Click to hear the October, 2007 radio show ============== ============== ============== September, 2007 ====>Click to hear the September, 2007 radio show ============== ============== ============== August, 2007 ====>Click to hear the August, 2007 radio show        This month show's top issue is a proposal by the nation's largest federal irrigation water district, the mammoth Westlands Water District, to garner 15 trillion gallons of California's precious water over the next 60 years. That water has a potential value on the retail market of $20 to $40 billion dollars although Westlands will be buying that water for perhaps 15-20 percent of its true market value. ============== ============== ============== July, 2007 ====>Click to hear the July, 2007 radio show ============== ============== ============== June, 2007 ====>Click to hear the June, 2007 radio show ============== ============== ============== May, 2006 ====>Click to hear the May, 2006 radio show ============== ============== ============== March, 2006 ====>Click to hear the March, 2006 radio show Copyright © 2007 Lloyd Carter, All Rights Reserved.