Word: delta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
From the Mississippi Delta, which opened off-Broadway last week after extensive regional tryouts, blends folktales, childhood memories, salty down- home sociological observations and blues and gospel standards with Holland's unabashed "confessions." Raped in childhood, a prostitute as a teenager, she eventually earned a Ph.D. and now teaches American studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The first act, about the world she came from, is diffuse, as much panorama as autobiography. The second is more tightly personal, yet it too derives from the oldest notion of the theater -- as pure storytelling. Three stunningly gifted women...
Because their peaty soils oxidize when exposed to air, delta islands converted to farmland have been sinking, leaving humans and wildlife increasingly vulnerable to flooding in the next earthquake. Giant pumps powerful enough to reverse the flow of the Sacramento River stun and kill young striped bass and other fish. Encroaching urbanization, flooding, and conversion of marshes to farmland have destroyed 90% of the state's wetlands, most of which were linked to the estuary. As freshwater is diverted into canals, the zone where freshwater and salt water meet has moved upstream, starving young staghorn sculpin that in turn were...
...enviros have been pimps for water marketing," says environmental consultant William Kier. He notes that Yuba City uses less than 10% of its water entitlement from the New Bullards Bar Reservoir, then sells the remainder to Southern California rather than allow it to replenish the fragile delta system...
Rehabilitating the region will not be easy, but the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and others have sued the EPA to force the state to protect fish like the delta smelt. Efforts are also under way to restore flow to the San Joaquin and Trinity rivers. Water consultant Mark Reisner and the Nature Conservancy have worked with rice growers, the most water-intensive farmers, to promote a plan to store water on paddies, creating wetlands and riverside habitat during the winter. Perhaps the most important aspect of Reisner's project is that it has got the warring water users...
...think you've got parking problems? Try finding a place to stash a 747. Airline bankruptcies and declining passenger traffic have created a tangle of unused jetliners that can't be stored in overcrowded airports. USAir, British Airways, Delta and other carriers have parked nearly 100 of their 767s, 737s, MD-80s and other jets out in the Southern California desert at Mojave Airport. Cost: about $200 a month...