by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20220609-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
A Note to Readers
As the drought intensifies, the forecast is more of the same. The snowpack for most of the west is gone and the reservoirs are at record low levels for this date of the year.
So we were greeted this week by the State Water Board announcing even more drastic curtailment of water access for both farmers and cities, including San Francisco. The City depends for most of its water on the Hetch Hechy Aquifer, which brings water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir located in Yosemite National Park.
Then taking advantage of the pressure on agriculture they have begun to carry out what some environmentalists have attempted to promote for years– the shutting down of all agriculture in the Central Valley. Now some of their friends in the State Assembly have introduced legislation to buy out the water rights of farmers, who have already been cut-off from water they normally receive from the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.
Please recall that California voted in 2014 to approve more than $8 billion for water infrastructure, including water storage. That was eight years ago, and still not one project has been funded nor built. The proposed Sites Reservoir, and off-stream storage project has been planned for more than 20 years. The water bureaucracy of the state has approved just a few months ago some of the money from the 2014 referendum to go to the construction of Sites. Had such been approved by 2015, then the abundant rain and snow of 2017-2019 California experienced could have been stored in Sites, which will have a capacity of over one million acre feet. The drastic cutbacks just announced by the Water Board this week could have been avoided.
Blowback From the California Coastal Commission’s decision on May 12 to reject the application from Poseidon Water to built a desalination plant in Huntington Beach includes an extensive article (excerpted) by Edward Ring on the general topic of desalination. I recommend going to the link for the entire article.
On the Colorado River, emergency meetings and discussions are occurring daily as the level of Lake Mead has fallen for the first time below 30 percent of capacity. This section includes an article from a reporter, Joanna Allhands, that I believe is probably the most optimistic pessimist or most pessimistic optimist I have ever read. Her article asks the question: “Why is almost no one planning for a future without the Colorado River?”
The Feature this week continues our coverage of the LaRouche PAC campaign to abolish the Federal Reserve and re-establish National Banking. “The Fed’s Façade is Crumbling” by Bruce Director is our article for this week.
