Water Board’s Penthouse-View Meeting: More transparency please, and save some food for the water buffaloes

Water Board’s Penthouse-View Meeting: More transparency please, and save some food for the water buffaloes

17 May 2012

A “special” meeting of the Board of Directors of the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC), originally designed by Best Best & Krieger of Irvine– the largest public agency law firm in California – to schmooze its new clients, became a public embarrassment Tuesday when the plush solitude of its penthouse-view executive board room was invaded by a small band of transparency advocates. At issue was a closed session originally scheduled for MWDOC’s penthouse-view meeting to negotiate prices and other financial arrangements for water that Poseidon Resources Inc. wants to sell to MWDOC.

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Posted in Environment, Headlines, MWDOC, Poseidon, Water, Water Boarding0 Comments

Comment: Water Agency Should be More Transparent on Huntington Beach Desal Plant

Comment: Water Agency Should be More Transparent on Huntington Beach Desal Plant

16 May 2012

Joe Geever is the Water Programs Manager for the Surf Rider Foundation, which works to protect ocean resources. He made these comments at the May 15 meeting of the Board of Directors of the Municipal Water District of Orange County. Originally, the directors had planned to go into closed session to discuss pricing arrangements for water to be delivered from an as yet unpermitted and unfinanced ocean desalination plant proposed by Poseidon Resources Inc. to be built in Huntington Beach, California. The meeting was criticized as a violation of California’s open meetings law, the Brown Act, and postponed until September.

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Posted in Environment, Headlines, MWDOC, Poseidon, Water, Water Boarding1 Comment

Comment: Former Surf City Mayor says Closed Water Agency Meeting Violates the Brown Act

Comment: Former Surf City Mayor says Closed Water Agency Meeting Violates the Brown Act

16 May 2012

Former Huntington Beach mayor Debbie Cook has been monitoring government transparency at local water districts. She made these public comments at a special meeting held by the Board of Directors of the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC), May 15, 2012, in the penthouse floor that lodges the offices of MWDOC’s legal counsel, Best Best & Krieger. She addressed the board's postponement of a closed session item concerning water rate negotiations between MWDOC and Posedion Inc. after receiving protests that such a meeting would violate the Brown Act, which requires government agencies to hold meetings open to the public.

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Posted in Environment, Headlines, MWDOC, Poseidon, Water, Water Boarding1 Comment

GM Nixes Secret Desal Talks with Poseidon After Brown Act Complaints

GM Nixes Secret Desal Talks with Poseidon After Brown Act Complaints

15 May 2012

Confronted by complaints of illegality, the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) dropped a scheduled closed session section of a meeting of its board of directors scheduled for today. General Manager Kevin Hunt had scheduled the closed session in order to meet with officials of Poseidon Resources Inc., the company that proposes to build the as yet unfinanced and unpermitted $750 million ocean desalination plant that would convert about 100 million gallons of ocean water into 50 million gallons of drinking water every day. The problem, according to former Huntington Beach mayor, Debbie Cook, who opposes the desalination plant, is that “Not only are water contracts (emphasis added) not real property—transferred by virtue of a deed—but Poseidon has no title to property with any associated water rights that can be transferred.”

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Posted in Environment, Headlines, MWDOC, Poseidon, Water, Water Boarding4 Comments

L.A. Poised to Ban Plastic Bags: Surf City Vote Hinges on EIR Cost

L.A. Poised to Ban Plastic Bags: Surf City Vote Hinges on EIR Cost

10 April 2012

Los Angeles might soon be joining a growing web of California jurisdictions banning single-use, plastic carry-out bags.The Huntington Beach City Council first considered a local plastic bag ban last August. The biggest sticking point in Huntington Beach, however, is the $29,000 tab for the EIR.Another sticking point with some council members is that they want other cities to take the lead before Huntington Beach should act, if ever, to ban plastic bags. Among plastic bag ban supporters, however, there is hope that with the continued passage of local bans, especially the one in L.A. city, a tipping point will be reached soon for a successful run at a statewide ban.

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Posted in Environment, Headlines, Water0 Comments

Is Your God an Environmentalist?

Is Your God an Environmentalist?

19 March 2012

For the first time in history, leaders of five major world religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam) gathered in 1986 at the United Nations to unite in developing a means to inform North American congregations about the serious environmental problems facing life on Earth. The result was a formal pronouncement from each faith tradition declaring how its followers are called upon to care for nature.

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Posted in Environment, Headlines1 Comment

Commentary: Public Officials Have an Obligation to Leave No Doubt

Commentary: Public Officials Have an Obligation to Leave No Doubt

19 March 2012

Last week I sent a complaint to the California Fair Political Practices Commission asking it to investigate what I believe are serious violations of the California Fair Political Practices Act, including failure to report income and conflict of interest voting, by John V. Foley, Chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). Those details have been ignored by the OC Register and the Los Angeles Times even though they have been contacted repeatedly by myself and other concerned citizens. That is why I feel compelled to take action as a public citizen: our public officials and our largest self-proclaimed watchdog institutions have failed us, so concerned citizens must act to take back control of their government. But doing so was partly the result of a frustrating process that started 10 years ago.

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Posted in Headlines, MWD, MWDOC, Poseidon, Water Boarding0 Comments

Complaint Filed Over Water Board Chairman’s Alleged Conflicts and Failure to Report Income

Complaint Filed Over Water Board Chairman’s Alleged Conflicts and Failure to Report Income

19 March 2012

A Huntington Beach activist has filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission against the chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), John V. Foley, for alleged violations of the Fair Political Practices Act. The complaint, submitted by Merle Moshiri, president of Residents for Responsible Desal, alleges a spate of violations by Foley, including multiple failures to report income—totaling at least $640,000—that he received through his wife’s consulting businesses and another $15,000 earned from his own consulting business. The complaint also alleges Foley cast four votes since 2005 that were illegal because they related to his wife’s consulting contracts with MWD, MWDOC and other water agencies.

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Posted in Headlines, MWD, MWDOC, Water, Water Boarding0 Comments

MWDOC Director Proposes Self-Policing after MWD Chairman’s Failures to Disclose

MWDOC Director Proposes Self-Policing after MWD Chairman’s Failures to Disclose

26 February 2012

Following recent revelations by the Surf City Voice that one of MWDOC’s own failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars of consulting income and voted on projects that could affect his wife’s business, Director Brett Barbre is proposing a novel change in policy designed to prevent conflicts of interest by the agency’s staff and public officials. As first reported by the Surf City Voice, John V. Foley, MWDOC’s appointed representative on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), failed to report an estimated minimum of $248,000 of income his wife, Mary Jane Foley, earned as a consultant from various southern California water districts, including MWDOC and the MWD.

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Posted in Headlines, MWD, MWDOC, Poseidon, Water, Water Boarding0 Comments

Opposition to Santa Margarita Water District’s Plan to Suck Desert Water Grows from the Desert to the Sea

Opposition to Santa Margarita Water District’s Plan to Suck Desert Water Grows from the Desert to the Sea

16 February 2012

Through the arrangement with the Cadiz Land Company, the Santa Margarita Water District will receive the lion’s share of the water. The public hearings related to the Cadiz Valley Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project were held in Yucca Valley, which is 85 miles from Cadiz, and in Rancho Santa Margarita, which is 217 miles from Cadiz. Many people directly impacted by the project were not notified of the hearings. “This is one of the most outrageous proposals I have seen in my 25 years as an environmental activist,” Cook said. “That in this day and age a private developer would come in and extract groundwater from an ecologically sensitive desert aquifer without any kind of recharge is unbelievable."

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Posted in Headlines, MWDOC, Water, Water Boarding0 Comments

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