Nov
6
Westlands Water District: Your Tax Dollars At Work
November 6, 2009 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Lloyd G. Carter just published this provocative article in the Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal.
Here are the first few paragraphs of Reaping Riches in a Wretched Region: Subsidized Industrial Farming and Its Link to Perpetual Poverty:
In the last few decades, well over a billion dollars in taxpayer aid has been provided to a few hundred growers in the Westlands Water District (Westlands), which is part of the San Luis Unit of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation‘s Central Valley Project (CVP) in Central California. The CVP is the largest publicly funded water-management system in the United States, and the Westlands is the biggest agricultural irrigation district in America. At nearly 1000 square miles, the Westlands is still dominated by a few pioneer dynastic families although congressional backers of the San Luis Unit half a century ago promised that 6100 small family farms would be created if Northern California river water was brought to the desert on the West Side of the San Joaquin Valley (Valley). The promise was never kept, and the larger landowners are still in control.
While Westlands, considered one of the nation‘s most politically powerful irrigation districts, has produced an undisputable bounty of cotton and field crops over the decades in western Fresno and Kings counties, irrigation of this mineral-laden desert has also created huge environmental problems, and the wealth generated has not trickled down to farmworkers or the surrounding poverty-stricken communities.
The Twentieth Congressional District, encompassing Westlands and a portion of the western San Joaquin Valley down through Kings and Kern counties, has the dubious distinction of being the poorest of the 436 congressional districts in America.
The region is rife with social problems ranging from high unemployment8 to gang and drug problems, high teen-pregnancy rates, an appalling high school dropout rate (25-35%), and other side effects of poverty.
Enjoy (or not)!
“The subsidized factory farm economy, it seems, doesn‘t have much of a trickle down effect for the families and communities of workers who bring in the harvest.”
“In fact, it appears as though this system has helped to foster a culture of unsustainable farming practices, caused large scale environmental degradation, and has created a massive socioeconomic rift between land owners and their primarily Latino workforce. ” – Lloyd G. Carter, from the article
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