CALIFORNIA TO SEIZE FARMS FOR JERRY BROWN’S WATER TUNNELS

The State of California is planning to use eminent domain law to acquire hundreds of farms in the Delta for a controversial, multi-billion-dollar underground water tunnel project proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

According to documents obtained by environmental group Restore the Delta, state water exporters and the Delta Design Construction Enterprise (DCE) division of the Department of Water Resources are planning to acquire 300 pieces of land from Delta farms to ensure right of way for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan tunnel project.

The $15 billion project, under development for the last eight years, has long been favored by Brown, who wants to use the twin underground tunnels to move water from the northern part of the state to the south by diverting it around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

But the project has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups like Restore the Delta and others who say the tunnels are not environmentally sustainable.

In a statement, Restore the Delta executive director Barbara Barrigan-Parilla blasted the “arrogance” of state officials for using eminent domain to acquire farmers’ land.

“While Delta and good-government activists are busy mobilizing comments in a democratic process, we discover state agencies view public oversight as simply a distraction,” Barrigan-Parilla said. “These documents arrogantly envision groundbreaking ceremonies as early as July 2016. Bulldozers and cement trucks are ready to roll! Red ribbons are budgeted! All for a $60 billion boondoggle without even one permit. Clearly, water officials under the Brown Administration view the Delta as a colony.”

Brown has tussled with environmental groups over the tunnels before. In May, the governor told critics of the proposal to “shut up, because you don’t know what they hell you’re talking about.” Brown said that “millions of hours” had gone into poring over every aspect of the tunnels, and has called the project an “imperative” that “must move forward.”

Yet despite the governor’s enthusiasm, the tunnel project has not yet been approved.

Water exporters and some agricultural interest groups support the tunnels. Californians for Water Security, a group made up of the California Chamber of Commerce and various farm and labor groups, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television and radio advertisements in support of the project.

But California’s plan to use eminent domain to acquire the land has created an increasingly rare moment of unity between environmental groups and Delta farmers.

“It is wrong and premature that the Department of Water Resources has a unit creating a secret land acquisition plan to take 150-year-old farms, like ours, through condemnation,” Courtland farmer Richard Elliott said in a statement, noting that his family has never sold any of its land. “The entire plan doesn’t make for sustainable food policies, smart land use practices, or even common sense.”

According to the documents, the state would make Delta farmers one offer to purchase their land, after which the farmers would have 30 days to accept or reject a deal. But after those 30 days, the state could still plan to force the owners to sell using eminent domain law.

The plan also calls outright for minimal “external” oversight.

“All transactions are conducted, reviewed and approved internally by DCE staff and managers to maintain control and avoid unnecessary delays to schedule,” the documents state. “DCE shall seek to minimize external review and approval requirements.”

Tony Francois, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who specializes in water and property rights, tells Breitbart News that the use of eminent domain does not allow for a proper system of “checks and balances,” even for controversial state infrastructure projects.

“The fact that they don’t have the project approved has generally not been a bar to acquiring the property,” Francois said. “If the project is controversial, they don’t need any special approvals to acquire the property, and that starts making the project look more inevitable. [State contractors could say] ‘Hey, we’ve already spent the money acquiring the property, we better get started building it.”

Francois added that the use of eminent domain exempts the state from being subject to California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) environmental impact reviews, which havecaused stalling on some infrastructure projects for years, or even decades.

“If these reports are correct, then we have further confirmation that the tunnels project has been a foregone conclusion,” state Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) told the Associated Presson Monday. Wolk said the environmental impact review, “which should be used to choose a project, is simply being used to justify a favored project.”

Francois says the state is on solid ground for claims of eminent domain to acquire the property, as long as it can prove the water tunnel project constitutes a “public good.” Less clear, he says, is the issue of “just compensation” for the land the farmers will be giving up.

“Are they only taking the property they need for the underground tunnels, or are they taking the surface estate as well?” Francois said. “It’s the cutting [the land] up that creates a significant problem that farmers think they are not getting properly compensated for.”

According to the AP, the tunnel project is officially in a public comment phase until October.

Via: Breitbart

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Forced Unionization on Farm Workers

Thousands of farm workers in the Central Valley object to unionization under a collective bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers. But they’re being forced into the agreement anyway.

On Monday, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board turned down the farm workers’ petitions, delivered last Friday, to decertify the UFW. The farm workers also will not be allowed a vote on union representation, despite an ALRB rule which stipulates, “Under the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, farm workers have the right to choose whether or not they wish to be represented by a union by voting in a secret ballot election.”

Gov. Jerry Brown appointed all the current ALRB members. And a former UFW lobbyist, Martha Guzman Aceves, was appointed by Brown as his deputy legislative secretary for agriculture, environment and natural resources, working in Brown’s Capitol office. As I detailed in an Oct. 14 story, Guzman-Aceves has a long history of working for the UFW and has close ties to other pro-UFW organizations. Yet Brown delegated to her dealing with the pleas of the rebel farm workers. Monday’s petition rejection was the second time the ALRB rejected a petition by the farm workers. The first time was on Sept. 19.

Questions have been raised about the relationship between the ALRB, a government agency, and the UFW. During an August 21, 2013 court proceeding, Judge Jeffrey Y. Hamilton said, “So the Court is very suspect of, one, the ALRB’s position here.  It almost seems like it’s in cahoots.  And the Court finds it very troubling that the ALRB is taking such a position, especially sitting in a prosecutorial role.” (See copies of excerpts of the court transcript, below.)

The new Cesar Chavez

Because of her relentless championing of the rights of farm workers, Silvia Lopez has been called the new Cesar Chavez. Ironically, she is fighting against the union Chavez co-founded; but which has fallen far from his lofty ideals, according to a 2012 article in The Nation, a liberal magazine, “Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers: What Went Wrong?”

Via: California Political Review

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'MILK CLIFF' COULD MAKE PRICES $8 PER GALLON

If Congress fails to pass the Farm Bill before January 1st, milk prices could rise to $8 a gallon.

America could go over the “milk cliff” because of an arcane 1949 provisionthat could more than double the price of milk:

At the heart of the trouble is an old provision designed to create a floor for how much dairy farmers are paid for milk — a kind of minimum wage. The formula for calculating that price, however, is based on assumptions that are a century old, predating the improvements in dairy farming. That old formula, if not replaced by a new farm bill, would push prices higher.

The dusty law was implemented “as a poison pill to get Congress to pass a farm bill by scaring lawmakers with the prospect of higher support prices for milk and other agriculture products,” says Montana University Professor Vincent Smith.

Some conservatives like Charles Krauthammer say going over the milk cliff would “actually be a good idea”:

I do think if we went over the milk cliff it would actually be a good idea. [If] people actually saw the milk price double, it would be less abstract than watching a debt clock. They would finally understand that we have the insane laws, that acquire barnacles over the decades. And the farm laws are the worst. They are all kind of pressure, special interest favors, pay offs which make no economic sense. I'd like to wipe them out and start all over again, and it would be good if the law expired. People would actually be awakened to how insane our system is and how much we really need tax reform. It wouldn't be an abstraction, it would be real.

On Thursday, the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack urging him to “consider other legal authorities that are available to mitigate the impact of the 1949 Act.”

Presently, a gallon of milk costs $3.65 per gallon.

Via: Breitbart

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