by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20220714-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
A Note to Readers
We begin with the U.S. Drought Monitor. For the West generally, we see a continuation of the drought becoming more intense. With states in the Mid-west reporting poor crops and other consequences.
Ranchers in the top cattle state of Texas can’t sell their herds fast enough, with 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures making it too expensive to sustain animals.Costs for feed, fertilizer and fuel have been soaring. There’s also a lack of water in the state, and little hay. That’s resulting in a firehouse sale of cattle getting auctioned at Texas sale barns. Texas has also had blackout warnings and rationing of electricity this week as the windmills are only producing ten percent of their rated output.
For California, the category of “Exceptional Drought” continues to expand steadily, with more area of the San Joaquin Valley falling into that category.
On May 12, two months ago, the California Coastal Commission of the state government voted unanimously to reject the Poseidon company’s application to build a 50,000 acre feet per year desalination plant at Huntington Beach in southern California. Poseidon’s response was to say that would kill the building of any significant desalination plant forever in California.
I don’t think so. This drought and water crisis requires a reversal of that decision. In fact at least 30 such plants should be built. And they should be built on an emergency basis. The model would be what the state did when the Oroville Dam spillway collapsed in 2017. Within one week of the collapse, contracts for replacing the spillway were signed and construction began in another week. It was rebuilt in one year with a seven day per week, 24 hour per day work schedule.
My article on the criminal foolishness of the State Coastal Commission is part of the section on “Desalination in California.”
Some readers may object, but the final item this week is a petition titled, “Hands off Trump.” Here are a couple of excerpts from the petition:
“….As the economy collapses all around us, Washington’s Republicans shout and rage against the catastrophe which is the Biden Administration, while proposing absolutely nothing which will stem the collapse and put the nation on the road to recovery and sustained economic prosperity.
“We now need to create and empower a Republican Party in the mode of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln, making our nation sovereign and economically self-sufficient again. This can only be accomplished if we reclaim our place as the world’s foremost industrial and scientific power, defeating the globalists in the process. This is what Donald Trump forcefully advocated in 2016 and thereafter.”
