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By LOIS HENRY
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Bakersfield residents packed the City Council chambers Thursday night in a show of overwhelming support for the city's quest to run water down the Kern River year round.
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The Kern River needs you again.
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hirty-six years is a long time to wait.
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The Kern River had water this summer for the first time in years. The lure of cool, clear water brought residents to its shores every day. Not to mention egrets, ducks, cranes, hawks and even some osprey.
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I'd love to point a finger and complain about how the city of Bakersfield hates trees and that's why whole groves along the Kern River were mowed down in the last few months. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
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It's funny what you pick up when you're not even looking. The other day I e-mailed the city of Bakersfield double checking whether volunteers should even muster an effort to re-establish an irrigation system along the Kern River Parkway to replace the dead trees cut down this summer.
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Maybe it's just me, but when an agricultural water district ships thousands of acre feet of Kern River water south to grow suburbs in Irvine, it kind of takes the oomph out of their argument that running water down the actual river bed right here in Bakersfield will devastate local farmers.
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Articles about the city's fight to get water back in the Kern River have generated a lot of controversy. Collected here are letters to the editor, editorials and other bits of local feedback.
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Editor's note: This article was first published on 6/5/2010. Water districts opposing the city of Bakersfield's efforts to get water in the Kern River filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the State Water Resources Control Board over its decision that water is available on the Kern River.
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At first, it was a trickle. Like a scout sent down the riverbed to see if it was safe to send more soldiers. If the trickle met with disaster, no use wasting good water to rescue a rivulet left writhing in the sand.
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Miller and Haggin battled in court for nearly a decade over the Kern River. The fight established two main principles of California water law, riparian, which are attached to land along the water and appropriative, belonging to those who use the water away from its source. Miller, who had riparian rights, won in court but divided the river with Haggin privately in a settlement known as the Miller-Haggin Agreement.
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The entities seeking forfeited Kern River water offered different requests and purposes in their applications to the State Water Resources Control Board.
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What Kern River water sells for (price per acre foot)
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For more than a century, fights over the Kern River have pitted ag against ag or, more recently, ag versus urban uses.
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If you're like most people in Bakersfield getting to and from work, ferrying kids, doing your shopping, you've probably gotten to the point you no longer even notice that big, bone-dry ditch running through town. You likely cross several times a day. And it never occurs to you that weed-pocked gully is a river. In fact, if you were born in Bakersfield in the mid-1980s and lived your whole life here, you can count on one hand how many times you've seen the once mighty Kern River run through town -- and I mean really run, not just a reluctant a trickle here and there.
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It could not be more clear that putting water in the Kern River was one of the goals of a series of projects proposed by the Kern County Water Agency back in 2000.
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To say Jim Nickel's great-great grandfather, Henry Miller, would be proud of the family's deal for "lower" Kern River water is an understatement.
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Two local ag water districts went to war 16 years ago, eventually battling to a draw in 2007 when a court ruled that one district had forfeited some of its rights to Kern River water but the other district didn't get those rights.
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When the City of Bakersfield bought its extensive water rights to the Kern River more than 35 years ago, it was a defensive move no one ever thought would be needed.
