BONE DRY

By Ruth Musser-Lopez

I am an archaeologist by training and I am determined and demand to get Sacramento to throw District 16 communities MORE THAN A BONE. We need to get our WATER, COURTHOUSES, SCHOOLS, HIGHWAYS, and JOBS. We, the people of our District have been losing out...We're "bone dry" READ WHY.

I am an archaeologist by training and I am determined and demand to get Sacramento to throw District 16 communities MORE THAN A BONE. We need to get our WATER, COURTHOUSES, SCHOOLS, HIGHWAYS, and JOBS. We, the people of our District have been losing out but I want to dig in to Sacramento to dig us out of this mess.

I am Ruth Musser-Lopez, the California Democratic endorsed candidate for the office of Senator in California Senate District 16. Senate District 16 includes portions of three counties, Kern, Tulare and San Bernardino, specifically the lower Central Valley from Visalia/Tulare to Bakersfield to the southern Sierras, Tehachapi, to Barstow, the Yucca Valley/Morongo Basin area of 29 Palms and then spans the entire length of the Mojave Desert to Needles and the Colorado River. I am for sustainable water use, restoration of our courts, quality schools that prepare students for employment in today's world, meaningful quality jobs and PEOPLE.

Though I have been a community activist for almost 30 years, what sent me reeling into this campaign is the ongoing corporate water heist proposed by the Cadiz Corporation to pump the precious east Mojave desert ground water and pipe it to Orange County gated communities and their wasteful evaporating man-made lakes, swimming pools, car washes and golf courses. The desert environment relies upon the ground water; animals rely upon springs in the desert.

The East Mojave groundwater is like the Delta smelt of the desert, the canary in the gold mine...desert water grabs show that there is something drastically wrong with water management in the State. It was unacceptable that during the primaries, nobody filed papers to run for State Senate District 16, so I ran as a write in. We need someone one who is not going to get low scores on conservation and the environment, particularly, animal protection; we need somebody who will legislate to stop the Cadiz heist; we need someone who is for key water conservation measures that would have required urban and rural areas to develop and implement water conservation plans such as crop sprinkling at night, drip irrigation, planting drought tolerant crops, reconditioning old water pipe infrastructure to avoid leaks and pipe bursts and prohibiting wasteful industrial uses.

For example, backed by big oil companies, a moratorium on fracking was not passed; thereby allowing this oil & gas drilling process. This process involves shattering the ground and the wasteful turning of billions of gallons of water into unusable toxic sludge, shoved underground into deep wells to forever be lost to our hydrologic system of evaporation and rainfall and never again be available for farming. Worst yet, it can leach into the soil and water we drink. I support a moratorium on fracking until studies are completed to understand the long-term impact. I also support an oil and gas extraction fee, similar to fees charged by other large oil producing states, generating 1-2 billion dollars in annual state revenue that can be used to for infrastructure maintenance like reconditioning old water pipe works to avoid major leaks as we saw occur at UCLA last month in the midst of the July drought.

I am a progressive Democrat who knows that the minimum wage increase wasn't enough to bring us out of legalized poverty and slave wages. I support a National minimum wage of $10.10 now, adjusted for inflation in following years. As a journeyman welder and former Southern California Edison employee, my husband was a member of the AFL-CIO and we know how important unions are to workers and their families. My husband spent time on the union front lines striking for better working conditions and I will continue to be committed to safe work environments, family friendly leave laws, worker benefits including health insurance and livable wages.

Interference has been run against job creating Federal funds that support Governor Brown's plan for a statewide high speed rail system. I will fight for a sustainable future for our district's economy by supporting the Governor and his plan for the creation of thousands of peace time jobs, jobs for veterans and union workers, 20 to 30 years to come at just a fraction of the cost of war. Building for the future with energy efficient high speed mass rail transit will raise our communities and California up in national and global stature.

We need to learn from laws passed in Colorado and Washington. City's don't need to zone for medical Marijuana sales, but recreational use should not be equivalent of a violent crime as Republicans would have it. What we need to legalize, promote and fund is drought tolerant hemp paper and textile cultivation and industries that will use less water than tree paper pulp while creating less pollution, more jobs and a larger tax base.

As a Democrat, I want our State to keep "Raising Community, California and Country UP" for people and the environment, for quality of life, air, water and the food we eat, for healthy peacetime jobs, for personal constitutional rights and liberties, personal choice concerning one's own body including reproduction, and freedom of speech.

The latter issue has become increasingly important as more and more local community governments fall away from using Robert's Rules of Order thereby denying citizens the right to put their comments on the record after a motion is seconded at local public meetings and hearings. For example at many county and city council meetings dominated by Republicans, citizens are allowed to speak on the record only at the beginning of the meeting before it is known what motion is going to be made. While local Republicans spend public funds worrying about our sexual preferences and how they are going to keep people from obtaining affordable health insurance, they are quietly creating local rules that deny the public important fundamental speech and protest rights while attempting to heist and make private to control for themselves (privatize) our now public resources and services like water, hospitals, recreation, rehabilitation and prison facilities.

One of the greatest wake up calls is that we have lost three of our justice court communities--Tulare, Barstow and Needles. We have lost those district courthouses plus all of the judicial community jobs, judges, clerks, marshals, attorneys, etc. that local courts require. Needles citizens must now travel over 8 hours for the most minor judicial needs. Obviously my Republican opponent has difficulty caring and seeing our district's needs and negotiating with Democrats. I care, I am directly and adversely impacted by decisions that are being made in Sacramento and as a Democrat, I don't have to "cross the aisle" to get what we need...I will be able to work with majority Democrats to direct funds toward restoration of our district's satellite courthouses.

I pitched in to make a difference and signed up as the Democrat write-in candidate. A significant number of informed voters wrote my name in during the primaries, making me one of the top two vote getters thereby putting my name on the November ballot...but to win now, I desperately need your help before early voting begins. I am writing to request your endorsement and support.

My husband Robert and I are life-long San Bernardino County residents, who have been married 31 years and have three successful adult children. I attended Chaffey and Western Christian High School, Chaffey College, UCLA and UC Riverside obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in the field of Anthropology in 1976. While attending the university I was employed as an archaeologist there, then was hired by the U. S. Forest Service. In 1978 through 1986, I served as the Bureau of Land Management's east Mojave archaeologist. Later, I founded and now own AHA - Archaeological Heritage Associates a research firm that prepares environmental reports for land and water agencies. By profession, I am an archaeologist, but I want more from Sacramento than just a bone. I want Sacramento to restore our water, courts, schools, highways, and jobs lost on my opponent's watch.

The publication of a letter I wrote in 1987 launched a 15-year campaign against national nuclear waste disposal into unlined trenches near Needles (Ward Valley). In the midst of the 1990s controversy, while a Girl Scout and Boy Scout leader, I was elected to the Needles City Council to fight the nuclear dump and I was appointed to the San Bernardino County Association of Governments.

Meanwhile, years before the Erin Brockovich movie was released about Hinkley, I was publicly exposing Pacific Gas &Electric's (PG&E's) dumping of the same deathly toxic, hexavalent chromium (Chrome 6), in washes near Needles, adjacent to the Colorado River. Energy industry fueled attempts were made to silence me by waging strategic litigation and a recall effort. I triumphed by switching strategies; as Director of People Against Radioactive Dumping (PARD), I authored a countywide voter initiative to prohibit the disposal of radioactive/toxic waste over aquifers. Volunteers successfully gathered 20,000-plus signatures to help stop the dump.

Hinkley and what almost happened in Needles at Ward Valley, are examples of another type of water heist: corporate contamination of water aquifers to the point that they are unusable. Since 2002, I have actively fought corporate heists of public desert water including direct pump, drain and pipe away such as that proposed by the Cadiz Corporation. Recently, I been active in seeking a moratorium on another type of water heist occurring in the Mojave Desert where massive solar plants are situated directly over water aquifers, pristine, fragile desert wildlife habitat. Instead of corporate solar, I support incentives for affordable, localized roof-top solar and solar in previously disturbed, road and utility corridors. In some communities in Europe, all homes are fully equipped with solar. We need to get up to speed and stop this backward thinking that rich and powerful gas and oil corporations should control energy and the laws that are supposed to be protecting us.

In brief, I want to restore our water, courts, schools, highways/rail system and jobs and I have a track record that proves that I can do the job. Please help me bring positive change to our state and district. As you might have guessed, I do not accept contributions from oil and gas corporations. Please consider contributing a little to my campaign so I can give a lot back to you and the communities we serve.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Best Regards,

Ruth Musser-Lopez

Candidate for Senator

California Senate District 16