(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report-April-4%2C-2024.pdf
A Note to Readers
The Feature this week is titled, “The Francis Scott Key Bridge, Part II.” And it presents an article by my associate Brian Lantz: “Sinking the USA? Free Trade Brought Down the Francis Scott Key Bridge.” He summarizes the argument thus: “The real problem exposed by the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was free-trade, financialization lunacy.”
Yesterday I had an account problem and called customer service. The service person was a woman in South Africa. She inquired about my Web page, where these reports are published, and we had a brief discussion, mentioning the ongoing water crisis in South Africa.
I looked into the situation there, and you will find a brief report on page 8: “A Case Study: Water Crises in Much of the World Is Due to Lack of Infrastructure to Deal With Drought– The Case of South Africa”
I have a series of articles highlighting the current snowpack and water supply in the reservoirs. This is the second winter that precipitation and the snowpack have been above average. While that ensures no drought this year in California, and actually, much of the nation is now out of drought, drought is continuing in the Northwest states, Texas, Idaho and Montana.
While this state will avoid drought, we know it will return, thus the issue of conservation is politically dividing the state, with Gov. Newsom now releasing the state’s annual report of looking forward. As usual, with the woke governor, the top priority in water policy is ensuring “equity.”
This week’s report on the Colorado River has just one item, posted by jfleck: “With the submission of two additional proposals last week, we now have five major proposals for post-2026 Colorado River management.” The article provides links and background to all of the proposals.
