(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
A Note to Readers
This week’s report heavily focuses on the Delta Conveyance Project, promoted and sponsored by the State Water Resources Control Board. Advocated for decades, since the first term of Governor Jerry Brown more than 40 years ago, the project now has a price tag of $20 billion, and would, if actually built, be a 20 year project.
So, what is the project?
In an article from the San Jose Mercury News, which is linked below, it is a “plan to build a 36-foot-diameter, 45-mile tunnel through the Delta that would pump as much as 7,500 cubic feet of water per second from the Sacramento River — enough to cover 11,000 football fields with a foot of water daily.”
The “Delta” is the San Francisco Bay Delta where both the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River enter the Bay, creating the largest estuary on the West Coast of the U.S.
The purpose of the plan is to protect fish, while being able to pump water to the agricultural land of the Central Valley and to Southern California through the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project aqueducts.
Several major water districts are supporting the tunnel, while most environmentalist organizations oppose it. Farmers in the Delta area are strongly opposed, while construction interests look forward to the contracts and jobs. But, I think, the most rational approach is that put forward by Edward Ring, who has presented the alternative generally to the “conservation only” policy of the entire political class that runs the state. Ring has written both lengthy studies and many articles on how the state can create “water abundance,” as an alternative to the “conservation only” approach of the state’s political class. He has demonstrated that the tunnel project is both a waste of money, won’t do what it is claimed it will do, and has presented an array of policies and projects that will actually create “water abundance.”
There are three articles in this section of this week’s report that illustrate some of the present battles that are a part of the ongoing “water wars” that have plagued the state forever.
The Rest of This Week’s Report
The U.S. Drought Monitor for California continues to show the growing drought now taking hold in the state.
The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, is in a more intense drought than California is presently. An article on that follows the Drought Monitor for California.
Then an agriculture sector gets some coverage this week with an article from Wisconsin: “The Truth Behind Wisconsin Losing 455 Dairy Farms.”
The Feature this week is titled, “What Will Be the Economic Policy of the Nation If Trump Wins the Election?” The media has highlighted the smorgasbord of policies that Kamala Harris has presented over the past few weeks, but has had little, if any, coverage of Trump’s actual policies. Instead, there has been a concerted attempt to falsely claim that the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” is Trump’s policy, despite his repeated denunciation of their project.
On September 6, President Trump gave a remarkable presentation to the Business Council of New York City. In the presentation, and his response to questions, he echoed past presidents, including William McKinley, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. There is much more to that presentation, and a summary of it is provided in the introduction to the article: “Trump’s Platform vs Project 2025—What’s the Deal?”
