Diane Beck

The water-bagging scheme of Ric Davidge of Aqueous, Inc. in which 13.2 million gallons a day of Mad River water would be bagged and towed by tugboat out of Humboldt Bay to points south has been "put on the back burner" by the Humboldt Bay Municipal Utilities District (District). After a lively meeting of the District's Taskforce, before which the standing-room only audience offered numerous (primarily negative) comments, the District announced it would proceed slowly and cautiously to study the legal issues involved in water rights as well as how to retain rights in an era dominated by transnational corporations.

After failing in his plan to bag up and tow away water from the Albion and Gualala rivers in Mendocino County in 2002, Davidge moved north and presented his "concept" to the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District last December. From where the Water District is sitting, the concept makes some sense. Since one pulp mill went belly up in 1993 and the other one is using only half the water it contracted for, the District has a huge amount of surplus industrial water on its hands. And the Humboldt Bay Harbor District wants the tugboat business, and the Longshoremen want any jobs that might become available.

Davidge's "concept" includes 180-200 jobs, but how many job openings for locals will there be after those 12 to 14 tugboats arrive with their own crews? How many jobs are involved in turning on the tap at the old Louisiana Pacific facility on the Samoa peninsula in order to fill the bags parked next to the old dock? He says "maybe" a bag-assembly factory would come later, but don't hold your breath.

Huge 200-foot diesel-driven tugboats would be used to pull 800x200x25-foot water bags. No one we know of has indicated whether this assemblage can even safely navigate day in, day out the notoriously tricky bar entrance of Humboldt Bay or the ocean conditions of the North Pacific, especially in winter.

concern to all Humboldt County, not merely the District Board and its eight customers (and even they may only advise the Board, not make decisions).

A bothersome concern about any proposed water export away from Humboldt county is that the District, formed 45 years ago, was set up for reasons that largely no longer exist, and that no creative process exists for reevaluating the best use for Humboldt County of the "surplus" industrial water. On the other hand, General Manager Carol Rische has expressed an obvious willingness to work with the community.

The Municipal Water District has made it abundantly clear that it will continue to entertain water export proposals. But historically, Humboldt County has lacked utterly the ability to ensure that water once removed from our rivers would not be gone forever, and our rivers and fisheries and citizens have suffered mightily because of it. One after another - the Eel, Klamath, Trinity - our rivers have been devastatingly dewatered, and we shake our fists, go to court, plead with agencies, and empty our pocketbooks in vain. In the face of this historic inability to protect north coast rivers, what makes anyone think we may be able to do so given the additional threatening implications of NAFTA, GATS, and the WTO and the overweening power of transnational corporations in this age of globalization?