Salazar plans Fresno meeting Sunday on ESA & water supplies

One person who may have enough juice to help flip on the federal water pumps in the delta plans to visit Fresno Sunday for a town hall meeting on drought. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, along with Deputy Secretary David J. Hayes, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor and members of the California Congressional delegation, will hold the meeting on Sunday from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. at a location yet to be disclosed. Local growers have lobbied hard for the attention of federal officials to relax Endangered Species Act regulations to allow more water to flow through U.S. Bureau of Reclamation pumps to Valley farms. The last time Salazar was in the area was in April, when he took an aerial tour of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta with Gov. Schwarzenegger and announced $260 million in federal stimulus aid for drought related projects — a gesture derided by local farming advocates as hollow. Salazar in his position would be included in the so-called "God Squad," a committee of cabinet-level White House administrators who could decide if federal actions would be exempt from the Endangered Species Act. BusinessJournal