It's All About The Water

By John Martinez
Assembly Candidate District 2

Pioneer Press

Fort Jones , CA

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

page E16, col. 1

pioneerp@sisqtel.net
 
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has listed toxins from blue-green algae as another pollutant of the Klamath River behind the hydroelectric dams that Indian tribes, fishermen and conservation groups want removed to make way for salmon," wrote the LA Times this week.  The LA Times and other major press controlled by large industrial and water concerns fail to report the whole truth about the Klamath River water quality issue.

Historically the Klamath River was never clean fresh water as the major press has misleadingly portrayed to the public.  The historical record of the Klamath during first contact between western explorers and the Native population paints a picture of a smelly and slow moving river.  The smelly state of the river as described in "Gibbs Journal" was prior to any western economic activity including mining, timber or agriculture.  Thus, the Klamath River in its pre-western European configuration was a smelly and nearly unfit algae-laden soup.  This algae soup of a river owed its smell to the marshlands above the current lakes and the high levels of phosphorous due to volcanic activity upstream.

The LA Times and other major news sources have either failed to fully investigate the truth or are misleading the public in order to satisfy their large business clients.  The LA Times is in the same category of truthfulness as the California Department of Fish and Game and other corrupt agencies that seek to control western water at the expense of small local communities.  Controlled by the Westland Water District outside of Fresno and thirsty clients in the south state make it nearly impossible for the Water Quality Control Board, Fish and Game, the LA Times and grant dependent tribes to tell the truth about the Klamath. 

The real truth is that the Klamath dam removal process is another Trojan horse designed to harm the local economy thereby making willing sellers out of water rich farms in the north state.  With the press and the California Department of Justice in the back pocket of Westland Water District interests expect the fraud to continue.  The big rice farms in the Sacramento Valley are in bed with water interests in Fresno and Fresno water interests like to sell water south.

I challenge the LA Times or any other southern California-controlled press outlet and the California Department of Fish and Game to print the Gibbs Journal or hold hearings on that journal.  They can not do so as it will expose the massive corruption between the Westland Water District and state government agencies that want to steal North State water.

State Assembly Candidate John Martinez can be reached at 530-598-6896

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