Tuolumne River isn’t healthy, it needs real help not just more talk

Tuolumne needs help, not just talk

Rather than work to increase the sustainability of our water supply, state-level leaders engage in deception and denial. Jeff Denham shows up at water rallies, then votes to fast-track the Delta tunnels water grab. California Farm Water Coalition spokesman Mike Wade publicly rejects good ideas to increase our water supply. He discounts the well-tested “pressurized pipelines” strategy (which increases water supplies about 25 percent) because “…it didn’t pencil out., code for “we won’t pay for it.” He rejects a groundwater bank (a no-brainer) because it makes up part of the impending shortfall (about 25 percent in dry years). With better leadership, we could have prepared for inevitable changes in water policy.

Everyone knows the Tuolumne River is unhealthy, and local folks are acting. The Tuolumne River Trust is spearheading “non-flow” restoration projects, like Dos Rios and Dennett Dam removal. Irrigation districts are coordinating on these efforts. Their Tuolumne River Management Plan contains innovative, new ideas. Even as he spoke against the state water board’s impending decision, Stanislaus supervisor Vito Chiesa admitted “we could do better.”

Local leaders can find a compromise that protects the river and improves water sustainability for farmers. It’s time.

Criminals ‘good,’ principles are not?

I do not understand. Paul Manafort is convicted on five counts of income tax evasion, three counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to report a foreign bank account. Yet, he is called “a good man” by our president after this “good man” is found guilty! Yet a man who kneels during the playing of the national anthem is called a “son of a b----” by the same president. This is not fake news; I saw and heard him make both statements. How could my thinking be so wrong? I would have thought it would be the other way around.

Judging Donnie through reactions

Hitler could take pointers from this guy. My lovely, intelligent soft-spoken wife of 30-plus years yells and swears like a sailor being thrown out of a bar whenever Donald Trump appears on TV. Thank God for the remote; click, no more Donny. A friend of mine’s wife cuts out the pictures of Donny from the morning Bee before he gets to it; Jack hasn’t read a complete paper in almost a year. The funniest reaction can be found on YouTube – videos of dogs lying in front of the TV and when Donny appears they jump up rushing at the screen growling and barking. Dogs don’t have to smell him to recognize him.