Lynn Morgan says Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
In my Lynn Morgan’s “Buckhorn Community Plan Effort and Her Ideological Beliefs” posted both on Facebook and on Amador Community News, I said that Lynn Morgan was a member of the Foothill Conservancy. Katherine Evatt, president of the Foothill Conservancy, replied on Facebook that Lynn Morgan was not a member. Since I have no reason to doubt Katherine Evatt, or my friend who was told by Lynn Morgan that she was a Foothill Conservancy member about two years, there is only one logical conclusion. Lynn Morgan dropped her membership in preparation to become an “unbiased” candidate and so called Upcounty advocate. But I doubt that her adherence to their beliefs has changed. This all smells duplicitous to me.
This same on the fence post attitude continues in her recent website statements on water policy. Since this is a severe drought year full of the gray skies from forest fires her prior ambiguous positions and procedural machinations on the gravity supply line, UpCounty fire hydrants, wild and scenic and water issues, in genera,l have come to haunt her. So she has developed a “please everyone” position that perhaps raises more questions than it answers. She refuses to directly support wild and scenic, and didn’t say if she did in its prior form, but asserts that if it passes, existing water rights and/or amendments to the bill will give us enough water for future residents. But the deal includes surrendering rights beyond those agreements. What about water for a biomass plant, expanded gold mining and expanded agriculture? She has made some controversial statements about curtailing agriculture during drought years on Facebook. Are future residents to sit in their well-watered homes and collect welfare since no water for employment possibilities exists?
She proceeds with “More information” about wild and scenic that supports it without stating it directly. She states that wild and scenic will prevent “large, outside urban water agencies from building new dams on those 37 river miles.” Does she realize that this is one of the two best dam sites in California, and is rumored to have Jerry Brown’s support? That a Devil’s Nose Dam could be a cost effective solution that prevents building several other dams at less desirable locations as substitutes? Is the phrase “large, outside urban agencies” supposed to make us feel that we, the powerless are now protected by this designation? Isn’t the opposite true, given generous foundation funding for wild and scenic promotion, and the environmental lobby in the legislature? Why does water development have to mean what she implies? What about PG&E or the county(s)? A local project could be easily financed by tax exempt project revenue bonds in today’s market. It could even be owned by county residents, and pay everyone an annual check the same way Alaskan oil revenues do. While I am not proposing any of these ideas, I am saying that those decisions belong to future generations, and that it is selfish to straight jacket them from dealing with future circumstances of which we have no knowledge.
Lynn Morgan has chosen to ignore the fact that the State designation with the compromises she seems to endorse, can become with the stroke of the governor’s pen, the much more restrictive federal designation. So almost everything she has stated is meaningless at the very least, but mentioning that likelihood is beyond her campaign persona. She partly supports her case with the 5-0 vote in support by the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors. But that vote was for general support and not for SB119, and was engineered by Supervisor Chris Wright, former Foothill Conservancy president, in violation of their standard procedures. Since that vote, one supervisor has changed his mind and two supervisors lost their re-election bids. Certainly the vote next year will be different. While some Lynn Morgan supporters may not know this, she certainly does. This omission apparently meets her definition of transparency.
She continues with: “Wild and Scenic proponents include thousands of local residents and many local businesses as well as regional economic development organizations.” Who are these thousands of local residents? The petition numbers claimed by the Foothill Conservancy, but never seen, have been discredited several times. They are said to be cumulative over a decade therefore containing people who may have changed their minds and with possible serious double or more counting. Are these the thousands she is referring to? I really wonder who the tourist and regional economic development organizations she cites are. My suspension is that they are environmental organizations masquerading themselves under the guise of economics. A simple Internet search of Sierra Nevada + conservation shows so many of these groups that they seem to outnumber the trees, dead or alive. But a closer look reveals that they are often the same people financed by the same foundations. Could Lynn Morgan tell us who these groups really are?
She reminds us that dams could be built on other parts of the Mokelumne. If we were to build more dams, do we want three to five inefficient ones that also submerge more land or one efficient one on the best site?
Did she support wild & scenic before the current amendments? She seems to support it now with the possible amendments, but it’s all vague under “More Information”. But it seems apparent since she implies that it should have been accepted by decrying the Amador Water Agency’s participation in killing SB1199. While she bemoans what they spent on lobbyists, she ignores the vastly greater sums spent by environmental groups. Often these funds come from tax exempt “charitable” foundations and sometimes they are public tax money gained through the sue and settle scam. And totally forgotten are the millions lost to defend the Water Agency from environmental lawsuits. I am glad the water agency is doing its job and defending our water rights.
What she neglects to mention is that if wild and scenic doesn’t pass, nothing will change. FERC required discharges of impounded water to create a faux wild river will continue. If anyone proposed a new dam the environmental review and ensuing litigation will probably last longer than the lives of most people reading this.
As illustrated repeatedly above, does Lynn Morgan represent the straight forward leadership we want in Amador County?
Mr Bennett again hits a key issue concerning Lynn Morgan and her supporters. How truthful is she, and can we trust our lying eyes? As to her claim not to be a member of the Foothill Conservancy, one can only laugh. Yes, she may have dropped her membership, but if you visit her Facebook page, view pictures of her "Meet and Greets", follow who her supporters are, etc, you can only conclude she does everything with the Conservancy and its leadership except pay dues. I remember when Mel Welsh was playing the Morgan role for the Conservancy eight years ago. Welsh also claimed she didn't belong to the Conservancy, but her positions, like Morgan, were a mirror image of the Conservancy and its policies. Chris Wright, the current supervisor in Calaveras County, used the same tactics. In the Calaveras paper while running for office, he never mentioned he had worked as the Foothill Conservancy's Executive Director, and magically it was he who pushed Wild and Scenic through that county in a semi-underhanded way.
ReplyDeleteMorgan's water statement reads exactly like Katherine Evatt's defense of Wild and Scenic when she was defending it recently. I don't think Morgan helped Evatt come up with those statements.
Again, under transparency, where is Morgan's campaign money coming from. Today another expensive Morgan flyer arrived in my mailbox. Postage and printing isn't cheap. As of today, I've heard she has only listed about $300 in printing costs, and I'm not sure if that includes the primary. Mr.Spence mentioned, during the primary, that all of her campaign signs came from out of the county. The large glossy flyers do not have the name of a printer which is usually the case. So are these flyers being printed in the county? Are they being paid for or are they a freebie? Will the paid amount or gratis amount show up in required paperwork for the elections commission?
Ms Morgan seems to want to fly low, be all things to all people, pretend she never heard of the Foothill Conservancy or "Wild and Scenic" including SB 199. That may work as a campaign strategy, but it says a lot about her integrity and those who backed her or even talked her into running. I didn't expect a sequel to the Mel Welsh movie, but I hope this one fails at the box office also.
Mark, if you're going to opine on dams and the Mokelumne, it's time for you to get your facts straight. It may have escaped your notice, but there is no local water agency planning or even fantasizing about a dam on the 37 miles of the Mokelumne River that would protected with Wild and Scenic River designation. None. In fact, no local agency has proposed a dam there since the county dropped the Devil's Nose Project in the mid 1990s, after spending millions of dollars only to find the project economically infeasible. So as far as the North Fork being someone's favorite dam site, I'd say that it may be yours, but it's no one else's.
ReplyDeleteThe onstream dams proposed on the Mokelumne in the last 35 years, except for Devil's Nose, were all proposed by the East Bay Municipal Utility District or San Joaquin County water interests. They were all for flooding the lower segment of the upper Mokelumne immediately upstream of Pardee Reservoir. And they have all been defeated by the hard work of yours truly and others who value the river.
The water agency is looking at possibly raising Lower Bear Dam, which has been on their potential project plan for more than 20 years. They could get an equal amount of water for much less money by buying storage in PG&E's Salt Springs Reservoir. While the agency is concerned that Wild and Scenic designation would stop the expansion of Lower Bear, a larger Lower Bear might well be compatible with the designation - it's all in how the dam is operated. And again, the least costly option for the AWA and Amador County is working with PG&E to get water already stored in Salt Springs.
One of the problems with building a new dam on the Mokelumne is that most of the water is already spoken for. The only years in which water can be stored in a future dam are the relatively infrequent high-water years in which Camanche Reservoir spills. A local water agency could never afford a dam that only stores water in maybe three of every 10 years. Only big agencies like EBMUD and Westlands Water District could.
Right now, AWA is sitting on an actual water rights application that has been pending for nearly 10 year. Why? Last spring, they told me they can't afford to do the EIR needed to complete the water right process. No environmental group challenged their water right application, but they did have to resolve a challenge from a fellow water agency.
While you're a dam advocate for the Moke, there are plenty of people who realize that the river -- dam-controlled as it is -- is valuable to locals and our economy. The only way to stop big agencies like EBMUD from proposing projects that will harm it is Wild and Scenic designation. That is the least expensive, most permanent solution around.
I posted here earlier about facts regarding local water, the Mokelumne and Wild and Scenic designation, and maybe it'll show up later. If not, I'll add that information again. But want to add a few things now. One, the litigation against the water agency tends to come from directly affected ratepayers and landowners, and the agency has a history of prolonging suits that they eventually settle. That makes their legal fees much higher than they need to be (the largest suit, re the Amador Canal, was settled in a way that could have been done early on). As far as the Conservancy's Wild and Scenic list, it numbers around 12,000 individuals and businesses, 7,000 of whom have signed on in the last four years. The Conservancy does not make that list or its business list public because people have been harassed when their names were made public. A number of local businesses endorsed SB 1199, some testified in Sacramento, and others signed letters asking legislators to support the bill. As far as Mark's remark re nothing changing on the river if Wild and Scenic designation is not put in place, I would remind him of the dam proposals that have been fought off over the last 20 years on the Mokelumne. It's not easy, it's not cheap, and there is no guarantee that waiting to fight a bad project will protect the river.
ReplyDeleteKatherine – You have built such a good case for the impossibly of dams on the Mokelumne it makes Wild & Scenic seem useless. The decisions about the Mokelumne should be up to future generations to decide in the context of their needs. To prevent this, as I have stated repeatedly, is simply selfish. The goal of planning, generally, is to provide opportunity in the future, not preclude it.
ReplyDeleteI have also said repeatedly that viewing this designation in isolation is a mistake. Taking into account all the W&S designations, conservation easements, land trusts, etc we are reverting to the land tenure system of the middle ages. That system drove most of our ancestors to America and is not only a reason for the value we put on freedom but the literal basis for it though private property ownership.
You spoke of the environmental costs of the water agency inhibiting the acquisition of water rights. Tom McClintock has spoken of some cost effective dam height increases as a sensible solution for more water storage, but noted that the excessive environmental overhead has made them too expensive. Environmental protection has grown from a necessary effort to protect us from primarily industrial pollution to an out of control behemoth that needs complete rethinking. I come from a city where the dogs die of cancer from playing in the dirt and understand the difference between stopping pollution and the micro management of the natural world so prevalent presently.