A force against nature
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Re “J.G. Boswell, 1923-2009,” Obituary, April 7
All of those facts cluttering up the obituary of the agribusiness tycoon James G. Boswell II make the reader pause in admiration for a man who used his “combination of political clout and legal strategy to outwit many of the environmental groups that have tried to restrict water deliveries to California agriculture,” who encouraged “the building of the Pine Flat Dam to shut the flow of water to Tulare Lake, which at one point was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River” and who “helped farmers outflank state and game regulators and pump water from excessive snowmelt into the north fork of the Kings River, [introducing] the nonnative predatory white bass into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.”
Quite a testimony to one man’s domination of public natural resources. Is it no wonder that democracy comforts the comfortable?
Janis Knepp
Monterey
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