(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report-September-12%2C-2024.pdf
A Note to Readers
Following this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor for California, we have a 35 minute video: “California is about to dump 114 billion gallons of water into the ocean.” While that is the headline grabbing attention-getter, the video is an excellent presentation of the California water management system– its history, how it works, and what must be done to ensure cities and agriculture have the water they need into the future. Being interviewed is Geoff Vanden Heuvel, Director of Regulatory and Economic Affairs at Milk Producers Council.
Despite a very wet winter this year, and increased intention by the state and federal water authorities to restrict water supplies to agriculture, we have a serious eruption of the famous, or infamous “water wars” of California.
Driven by both environmentalist and bureaucratic dominance of the agencies heads and personnel, the largest agricultural producing state in the country is immediately threatened. California produces 50%, or more, of all the fruits, vegetables and nuts grown in the U.S.
Decisions made 50 years ago to not continue to build the water infrastructure the future populations will require, began to affect the water supplies of the state in the 1990s. From 1967 through 1999, farmers and cities received 100 percent of the water that contractors requested. Since 2000, the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project just once delivered the full 100 percent requested. And in many years delivered just 5 to 20 percent requested.
Now the fight for water, especially for that needed by farmers, is threatened with further restrictions, fines and environmental/ bureaucratic restrictions, and even cutoffs.
Several articles are included in the section of the report titled, “Water Wars– the fight for sanity escalates.”
Next is, “Fires: An Explosive Eruption of Wildfires the Past Few Weeks.” There have been 6,078 fires that have burned 977,932 acres in the state this summer. And we are now in the most intense fire period of the year. The main article in this section describes a “weather whiplash” driving the huge fires that have erupted the past few weeks. The whiplash is defined as how very wet winters have driven the growth of abundant grasses (some several feet tall), and that being the fuel that drives the rapid spread and intensity of fires– both over the grassy plains and into the heavy fuel of dense forests.
The Feature this week: is titled, “Presidential Campaign News.”
Since Kamala Harris presents little of substance in her so-far statements of an overall policy on the the economy, outside of a few soundbites, this week we will cover the policy of Donald Trump as he presented it a week ago to the The Economic Club of New York. The article is from Promethean Action. I will gladly give space to any substantive statement Harris presents in the weeks before the election.
