(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20230209-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
A Note to Readers
The report, as usual, begins with the U.S. Drought Monitor map for California.
There is little to report on the California drought that is new this week, so just an article on groundwater and dry wells is all we shall post. Of course, the U.S. Drought Monitor map does show little change from last week, and 84% of the state remains in “Moderate” and “Severe” drought.
The focus again this week is the Colorado River crisis and the conflict between California and the other six states of the basin– Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. The major area of the conflict is that California, which receives the largest amount of the river’s water is invoking the
“Law of the River,” that originated in 1922 and set the priority system of water rights throughout the basin. That agreement then has been modified several times since, but the fundamental problem is that the river no longer has a flow of over 15 million acre feet annually. Today it is at about 12 million acre feet annually and falling toward 11 million acre feet.
If the Bureau of Reclamation shall take the conflicting proposals, tweaks them and does what appears to be necessary– serious cuts to especially the Imperial Valley of California’s allocation, then that will, perhaps, prevent Lake Mead and Lake Powell from reaching “dead pool” levels. Dead pools refers to the condition in which the dams would no longer produce electricity for five million people and no water could be withdrawn for five million acres of farm land and 40 million people.
The Bureau is expected to make a decision in the next few months on how a reduction of withdraws by two to four million acre feet annually will be achieved.
Of course, law suits by California should the “Law of the River” be set aside are expected, but not certain, for that could sabotage the necessary policy.
I have included in this section a wide variety of articles that discuss the crisis and the conflict. I have tried to make excerpts from the articles as brief as possible, and, of course, included links to the full articles.
The Feature this week is A New U.S. Industrial Policy
To build the needed infrastructure required if the U.S. is to once again to become the world’s leading industrial and scientific power, requires both a re-conversion of the Military Industrial Complex and a return to the American System of National Banking, government directed infrastructure projects and a mission for especially the younger generation to be inspired by and thus to want to participate. Two items present both ideas.
