After Council Member Andrae Gonzales led a choreographed Q&A with city staffers to show that Bakersfield had run through its share of river water by the end of August, City Attorney Ginny Gennaro jumped in.
“I’ll be even more blunt,” she said. “Go to Kern Delta (Water District) and tell them about why you want water in the river. Go to North Kern (Water Storage District) and be as direct with them as you have been with us.”
After the city’s rights petered out last month, staff explained, the bulk of the river’s water is now going to those districts, who take it out of the riverbed east of Manor Street.
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“More than 3,000 dead fish is a failure,” he said, in reference to comments by Rae McNeish, a California State University, Bakersfield biology professor who’s been studying the river through this summer. She said she and her students had counted more than 3,000 dead fish within the 1.5 mile Bakersfield Environmental Studies Area, which includes the river from about Calloway Drive to Coffee Road.” [Read More]