(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/California- Water-and-Infrastructure-Report-June-20%2C-2024.pdf
A Note to Readers
You are invited to my presentation in San Francisco next Saturday, June 29, 2024, livestream at 7:30pm.
The Water and Energy Policy California Urgently Needs to Revive Itself
Livestream will start Saturday, June 29 at 7:30pm.
https://youtube.com/live/xTslYR21uuU
First, a brief history of the beginning of serious water infrastructure construction, which includes water not only for agriculture and flood control, but also, importantly, hydroelectricity generation.
Then: a brief history of the California water management system— the largest and most complex such system in the world.
Since our state swings between drought and flooding, the shaping of water policy is one of the most critical areas of government responsibility. It has been a disaster for decades, directly connected to the transformation, through financialization, of the US economy into something indistinguishable from a gambling casino.
50 years of legislative policy preventing the building of water infrastructure created this avoidable crisis. Anyone running for office today must be aware of this, and know what projects California needs to move forth to leave an insane environmentalist, eugenicist bureaucracy to a growing country once again.
The rest of this week’s report
As regular readers know, I usually provide just a few paragraphs of the articles I feature here, along with the link to the original. This week some of the articles provide in-depth information and analysis, so I urge those who wish to get a more full picture of the topics to go to the links.
The climate shall change once again in the months ahead, as it usually does. El Nino is over and La Nina shall soon be upon us.
With a $56 billion state budget deficit this year, the cuts proposed by both the Newsom administration and the Democratic lawmakers aims at crucial and life-saving programs, but not the woke culture programs. They propose to cut off 20,000 people from emergency water aid in the San Joaquin Valley.
The fire season has gotten off to a near record start. With 90,000 acres already burned, more than five time the 5-year average.
Edward Ring provides the policy necessary to both prevent fires and conserve water for agriculture and the cities.
On the Colorado River, both Lake Mead and Lake Powell have stabilized, with both lakes rising from the winter’s precipitation. No longer are they below 30% capacity now, but a little above that figure. Not only the snowmelt, but the U.S. Government payments of billions to farmers to fallow their crops has contributed to a dramatic fall in the water being diverted from the river.
It is clear that the government agencies know only one solution to every problem: Conservation and rationing. Not what the Roosevelt administration thought as it engaged in the biggest dam building projects in human history. Once again it is only by providing new water to the regions that need it can the U.S. thrive once again as an economic and industrial powerhouse.
The Feature this week is: “China Shall Soon Far Surpass the U.S. in Nuclear Power.”
Not only in the number of nuclear power plants, but in innovation, small nuclear reactors, and the ability to quickly gear up Fusion plants once the technology is ready.
I provide an excerpt and link to a lengthy report by the Information Technology & Innovation Foudation’s “Hamilton Center.” which promotes a practical approach to competitiveness policy that enables U.S. technology leadership in global markets.
Among other topics in the report, the author blows away the narrative that China only steals technology and does not innovate.
