Should be quite a show at Restore the Delta’s “Over Troubled Waters” documentary screening tomorrow night in Fresno.
That’s because Gayle Holman, a spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, distributed an email alert earlier this week urging south Valley growers to attend the screening and “provide factual answers and comments as they (Restore the Delta) attempt to distort the truth in our own backyard.”
“This is their version of a film documentary which opposes water deliveries for south of the Delta agricultural water users and includes numerous fallacies and lies,” Holman wrote. “… The negative rhetoric is old and tired which is why I encourage you to attend this FREE screening…”
“…This may be our only opportunity to set the record straight,” Holman wrote in the email.
The alert, as it was obtained by Restore the Delta, carried the letterhead of the Central Valley Tea Party. In a phone interview Wednesday, however, Holman clarified that she did not send it out that way; rather, it was redistributed and relabeled by the Tea Party.
Holman said that as Westlands’ public affairs representative she keeps an email list of people in the community who she regularly keeps informed about issues that affect them. This email had neither the letterhead of the tea party nor of Westlands, Holman said.
“Of course it’s an issue that we’re following,” she said. “The screening tomorrow in Fresno is of interest.”
Restore the Delta issued its own statement Wednesday:
“It is hilarious that Westlands — huge growers who receive millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize their unsustainable practices – wants to hide behind anti-tax groups,” Restore the Delta director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla said in a statement. “What utter hypocrisy.”
The film will be followed by a question-and-answer panel, which should be entertaining. Here are the details if you want to check it out.
