(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report-July-25-2024.pdf
A Note to Readers
This week’s report begins with the U.S. Drought Monitor’s current map of California and its national drought summary.
Next, are a series of articles on water policy for the state. As opposed to the California Water Board’s fixation on conservation, not only are their policy recommendations irresponsible and destructive of California agriculture, but will result is as much as 600,000 acres of the best agricultural land in the world being permanently fallowed.
That section below begins on page 2, “Water Policy: Build More Water Infrastructure, or Conserve Ourselves to Death,” includes four articles:
As I have proposed for many years, finally, an official proposal and study to build desalination plants in San Francisco Bay has been undertaken to do so. Desalination plant proposed for San Francisco Bay. While my proposal has always been much more ambitious than the proposal by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, it is a start.
The article by Edward Ring, who also promotes building more desalination plants as one of three areas to deal with the California perpetual water problems, and as an alternative to the State Water Board fixation on more and more “conservation” and rationing, also in his article preceding the report on the Santa Clara Valley Water District proposal. His article is titled, “California’s Water Economy: The Three Biggest Choices.”
And a further article on the insane “only conservation” policy of the Water Board follows the article by Edward Ring. That article is titled, “CA’s New Mandatory Water Conservation Rules Punish Inland Cities and Agriculture.”
And finally, in this section, a personal statement by a Central Valley farmer provides the reader with the consequences of the “conservation only” policy of the State Water Board.
Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Western Montana and California Are Burning Up: A report on Western U.S. Wildfires is the next section.
The fire season is off to a destructive and dangerous start. Oregon has the largest fire in the country now. The Durkee Fire in eastern Oregon has burned around a quarter of million acres after lighting started the blaze around July 17. Two major freeways have been closed off and on the last few days due to this out of control fire.
More articles on the fires in the West are included in this section.
Finally, the report concludes with this: “Silicon Valley billionaires get a kick in the teeth in Solano County.
