Wealthiest are buying up farms and our water rights.

http://www.alternet.org/books/how-millionaires-buy-farmland-and-hoard-all-our-water?akid=12560.294211.Jwp60t&rd=1&src=newsletter1028422&t=23

I grew up in southern California, in a part of the country hit by the nation’s worst dust storms, deadly storms full of heavy metals that blow from dry Owens Lake. Studies have shown that I will not live as long as others because of this. I have accepted this, while at the same time hoping that these studies are wrong. Where I grew up, the city of Los Angeles diverted water away from Owens Lake, slowly draining it starting in 1913. It took more than ten years for the lake to dry up and turn into a toxic dust bowl, when naturally occurring heavy metals like aluminum and cadmium that had concentrated in the salt lake over centuries became airborne. This dust has been shown to cause cancer and respiratory failure, among other ailments. I grew up experiencing water inequity in my own body.

Book cover of 'The Price of Thirst' by Karen Piper.

Photo Credit: 

University of Minnesota Press

Click to enlarge.

So when I saw Sean Hannity on Fox News broadcasting from another California valley allegedly drained of its water, I must admit I became curious. In September 2009, Hannity broadcast from Huron, California, in a weeklong special titled “The Valley Hope Forgot.” He was broadcasting from the poorest congressional district in the nation, in California’s San Joaquin Valley. According to the 2009 U.S. Census, 39 percent of Huron’s close to eight thousand residents live below the poverty line. It is a migrant labor town, a cotton-picker town, and is 98.6 percent Latino/a. Huron has no medical services, no high school, and no voting booth during elections, because most of the residents are undocumented. Some 80 percent of Huron residents have not finished high school, and children who are born there have more birth defects than children anywhere else in the country—most likely due to pesticide exposure. One resident of Huron said she shut the windows when the wind blew. “What good is the wind?” she asked. “It’s all poison.” The water quality is no better, ranking 490 out of 502 cities in California, with fecal coliform bacteria, E. coli, and nitrates found in dangerous levels. The water system is built and run by Tri-City