“It’s not easy to be an environmentalist in the valley—because you’re costing people money, right? And money’s the god they worship.” So begins an interview with Lloyd Carter in 2013 on the Resources Renewal Institute program “Environmental Elders Speak,” www.theforcesofnature.com.
Lloyd Carter was one of this valley’s heroes who died in August, too young, of Parkinson’s. Although I did not know him well, I attended his celebration of life Saturday to pay homage and bear witness to the openings he created by standing up for the birds and against Westlands Water District, openings in what previously looked like an impenetrable wall.
Some may remember the story, which broke in 1982. Selenium, a naturally occurring mineral, was leaching from Westlands’ desert soils, carried off-farm in irrigation tailwater, dumped into Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge from an unfinished drain, where it concentrated to poisonous levels and killed millions of birds as well as other wildlife and domestic animals. It was an atrocity to anyone looking at it from the outside; it was an unfortunate cost of doing business from the inside, a cost no one had to pay.
Except those living in the middle of it. In that 2013 interview, Lloyd told the story of his turning point. He’d received a call from some ranchers whose lands abutted the refuge. When he went to investigate, the smell was sulfuric, the normally sound-filled marsh was silent, and there were dead birds everywhere, including on the lawn and porch of the woman he went to meet. “Welcome to my world,” she said.
“As a young journalist, I wasn’t interested in the farm beat. No self-respecting journalist wanted to cover this dull stuff,” he said. But after being there, Lloyd said “the scales were lifted from my eyes. I couldn’t turn back,” and he began writing news stories about the selenium problem every day, then every year for another three decades. “The thing is, of course, it’s the most important thing of all—how we grow our food.”
Big reports by the San Jose Mercury News and 60 Minutes followed up Lloyd’s reporting, reaching people in the Bay Area and across the country. He felt that photos of bird embryo deformities were the pictures that moved mountains. “It was like the thalidomide scandal of the natural world,” he explained. In those photos anyone could see that the entire ecosystem was being deranged, an existential threat to humans as well as other members of the animal world.
Taking the lid off the selenium pot exposed a whole host of other problems caused by industrial agriculture, especially that kind of farming on waterless desert soils. Physical problems were topped by political problems, like the suppression of governmental reports on the bird die-offs. Another was the realization that elected officials of both political parties received major contributions from Westlands’ farmers, and that government bureaucrats at both state and federal levels were in sympathy with big ag, not the environment or the citizens who have to live in it.
“How in God’s name can the State allow Westlands to keep farming these toxic soils thirty years after Kesterson?” he asked rhetorically. What he discovered is that the state has no capability of stopping them, at least not without receiving major public input, enough to overcome a century of undue influence.
I want to ask: “How can we keep delivering water to them?” The answer used to be: “If we don’t, they’ll just keep pumping groundwater.” Now that we’re trying to regulate that form of water abuse, we might think there’s hope—but the hydraulic brotherhood (Lloyd’s favorite term) still meets behind closed doors.
I have found hope, however, reflecting on the hard work of this good man, this valley native, whose heart was shocked into action by the sight, smells, and sounds of death. If it were not for the birds, Westlands Water District (and all the other mega-farm districts that function the same way,) might still think they have a right to destroy Creation by serving their god.
And if it were not for Lloyd’s persistent telling us otherwise, we might still think they’re right.
Trudy Wischemann is a birthright nature lover who writes. You can treat yourself to an amazing five-minute Lloyd Carter memorial by Vic Bedoian with Mark Arax, two more fantastic valley son journalists. You can send Trudy your thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.
