Photographs from "Real Rural" by Lisa M. Hamilton

On Monday morning, many BART riders will look up from their newspapers, iPads, Kindles, and smartphones to see the faces of farmers, rodeo riders, young smalltown boxers, and country poets staring back at them, thanks to an innovative public information campaign designed to connect urban Californians with their rural compatriots.

"Real Rural" is the product of a collaboration between writer and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton, the nonprofit organization Roots of Change, the Bill Lane Center for the American West, and the Creative Work Fund, which supports artists working in the nine Bay Area counties. On a media fellowship from our Center, Hamilton spent much of 2011 criscrossing California, capturing offbeat portraits of the state's remarkable scenery and seeking out stories about the diverse residents of what she calls "the rest of California."

Hamilton writes:

Real Rural is meant to start a new conversation, between two parts of California that are at best disconnected, and often at odds. Many people in our cities think they already know the story of rural California: who’s there and how they think, their values and their struggles. I have aimed to demonstrate that in fact this place and its people are far more diverse and dynamic than most of us from outside realize.

Working with Geoff McGhee, the Center's creative director of media and communications, and the San Francisco design firm MacFadden and Thorpe, Hamilton has crafted an elegant, interactive and multimedia rich website — realrural.org — that tells the stories of 20 rural Californians, as well as posters on BART. Later this year, the project will be featured on mass transit and billboards in Los Angeles and Sacramento, and in exhibition at the California Historical Society in San Francisco.

"Real Rural" is featured in the "Insight" section of the Sunday San Francisco Chroncle and will be featured in other media this week, including KQED Radio's "Forum" on Tuesday from 10 to 11am and public radio's "California Report" magazine on Friday afternoon.

We hope you can join us to celebrate "Real Rural" California at the California Historical Society in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday, January 31, from 5 to 7pm, where Lisa will talk about the journey she took to find these extraordinary stories from the rest of California. Please click here for more information and to RSVP.

Last modified Mon, 30 Jan, 2012 at 9:36

The Central Arizona Project carries Colorado River water to Phoenix. (Photo: John Fleck)

By John Fleck

As western water leaders converged on Las Vegas in  December 2001, Southern California’s inability to contain its voracious appetite seemed finally to be bumping up against reality - there is only so much water in the Colorado River.

Shared among seven states and Mexico via a shifting, uncertain set of bargains, the river was running up against the era of limits.

For years, California had been living large off the surplus of others. It slurped Colorado River leftovers other states weren’t using, pumping it 250 miles to rapidly growing coastal cities. But as the rest of the southwest grew and began taking its rightful share of the Colorado, California faced an urgent deadline. It had to come up with a plan to cut its use or see a large share of its water supply simply cut off on Jan. 1, 2003.

Testifying at a Dec. 10 House field hearing, Larry Anderson, head of Utah’s Division of Water Resources, was blunt. If California did not tame its appetites, the other states dependent on the Colorado River expected the federal government to step in and enforce the “Law of the River”, the maze of laws that govern distribution of the river’s water. “Appropriate enforcement is critical to protecting our rights,” Anderson said. ¹

In response, Southern California Congresswoman Grace Napolitano's question to the federal government’s top water official sounded more like a plea. If California is making a good faith effort, she asked, could the Golden State have more time? Coming from a representative of the region’s largest state and economic powerhouse, the plea also contained a hint of a threat: “California cannot afford the immediate reduction by that amount of water,” she said. “Our economy reaches out to the neighboring states so that if we suffer, so do the rest of the states around us.”

Sitting at the witness table, Interior Department’s assistant secretary Bennett Raley responded with what, in the coded language of western water law, amounted to an ultimatum. His boss, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, was ready to cut California’s share. If the state missed the deadline, “the Secretary will have to use all means at her disposal to ensure that she is in compliance with the Law of the River.” ²

Carving a course

The Colorado River carves a defining course through North American geography and history. Winter snow falling in the Rockies, mostly in Colorado and Wyoming, feeds it. The Colorado and its longest tributary, the Green, spend much of their lives in the deep, arid canyon country of the arid interior western United States.

The river and its tributaries pass through seven U.S. states – Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California – before making a short run between the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the Gulf of California.

Last modified Thu, 19 Jan, 2012 at 11:40

(Photo: John Amos via Flickr)

By Dustin Bleizeffer

True to the frontier attitude still prevalent here, oil and gas officials say there’s a treasure of fossil fuels in the West that will take America closer to energy independence than any plan conceived in Washington D.C.

While speaking to a group of energy industry leaders in Wyoming recently, Chesapeake Energy’s John Dill said his company — and other oil and gas developers — fully intends to implement their own American energy plan.

“The country has waited long enough for a national energy policy,” Dill told attendees of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority’s October meeting in Laramie. “So we’re going to take the bull by the horn and do it ourselves.”

(Petroleum Consumption, Production and Import Trends)

Chesapeake Energy’s plan, “A Declaration of Energy Independence,” proclaims America’s “$400 billion a year” in foreign oil imports is “fiscally insane.” Toward American energy independence, Chesapeake created a $1 billion venture fund to convert transportation fleets from gasoline to compressed natural gas (CNG), aiming at the No. 1 driver for oil imports. The company invested another $150 million in Sundrop Fuels, which is developing what it calls a non-food biomass “green gasoline.”

“We believe American energy needs to be supplied 100 percent by domestic resources,” said Dill, director of Chesapeake’s corporate development and government relations.

With a huge presence in America’s current onshore drilling boom, Chesapeake Energy is the second largest natural gas producer in the nation. It’s recent acquisitions in the Denver-Julesburg Basin and Powder River Basin are part of an industry-wide shift toward developing shale oil.

Last modified Tue, 6 Dec, 2011 at 12:16

Ag and Oil: Can They Coexist?        

By John McChesney

I should have known what it would be like here when I could not find a motel or hotel room within a hundred-mile radius of Williston, North Dakota.

Even after a year of reading about the oil rush on the Bakken field in western North Dakota, nothing had prepared me for what I found when I drove in. It seems that nearly every 18-wheeler tank truck in America is on the road here, making tens of thousands of trips , hauling water, fracking fluid, waste water, oil, and oil well condensate. Then there are the semis hauling fracking sand, gravel for drilling pads, gravel for roads, drill casings, pipeline sections, drilling rigs, huge oil tanks, and more. Dozens of small – we’re talking really small – rural towns with one main street dot the area, and those trucks rumble through the towns at all hours, creating monumental traffic jams and deep potholes.

Oops! Still Learning to Turn.

Tankers by the hundreds blanket huge lots on the edges of towns. On the two-lane roads linking towns, you stare up the tail end of the tanker ahead, and flinch as the massive grills of Kenworths, Peterbilts, and Macks whoosh past on your left. It’s brutal out there. Last October through June of this year saw 1,142 crashes involving trucks, with 16 fatalities and 242 injuries. One official told me that some workers come here, take a two-week course in big rig driving, and hit the road as amateurs. 

Last modified Wed, 2 Nov, 2011 at 15:01