Pumping water and cash

Got to read these articles....really?! Great work by this Contra Costa Times writer.

Pumping water and cash from Delta
By Mike Taugher

As the West Coast's largest estuary plunged to the brink of collapse from 2000 to 2007, state water officials pumped unprecedented amounts of water out of the Delta only to effectively buy some of it back at taxpayer expense for a failed environmental protection plan, a MediaNews investigation has found. Read more.

Paper shuffle allows for vast supply of easy money
By Mike Taugher

It must have seemed like easy money.
The state was delivering more water than ever to its customers, and in Kern County some of those customers sold some of it back, through a simple trade, at a higher price. Read more.

Water ownership murky, complicated
By Mike Taugher

Kern County water users who sold millions of dollars worth of water to a program meant to help the environment said the arrangement made sense because the water was rightfully theirs.

Few would dispute that water that was purchased and stored in Kern County could be sold to the environmental water account.

But the sales were made easier by the fact that the state Department of Water Resources was cranking up water deliveries to unprecedented heights at the same time it was buying water back for the environment. Read more.

The Resnicks: farming's power couple
By Mike Taugher

Stewart Resnick is not your typical dirt-under-the-fingernails farmer.
The Beverly Hills billionaire's companies, according to tax records, appear to own more than 115,000 acres in Kern County, about the size of four San Franciscos and more than all of the East Bay Regional Park District's parks combined. Read more.