Remember Owens Valley

The movie "Chinatown" dramatized, but did not exaggerate, the chicanery and greed of 1920`s developers who grabbed the water rights in the Owens Valley for Southern California. The Owens Valley was once a rich agricultural community on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. With its water piped to Los Angeles the jobs and people of the Owens Valley dried up and blew away.

In 1928 history was repeated when the Colorado River was tapped so that Los Angeles could expand. Las Vegas also sucks up water from the Colorado, so much that the river barely trickles into the Gulf of California. Southern California growth and the subsequent political power then pushed through the California Aqueduct in the 1950's. Now Northern California water flows four hundred miles south to LA.

Governor Jeb Bush has been advised by his political friends that Northern Florida water should be piped south to allow more development. If that advice is followed, urban growth will continue to mushroom and rural communities will lose political representation. Furthermore, water resources for irrigation, recreation and commercial bottling will be lost.

Hello: Tampa, Orlando and Miami, should we help make you all reach gridlock? We would like to keep our water for irrigation, recreation and bottling. This is not a partisan issue. State Representative Will Kendrick (D) told Cedar Key News that he is "very much opposed to shipping water south." State Senator Nancy Argenziano (R) and the Levy County Commissioners have opposed sending our water south. This is protecting natural resources versus greed.

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