(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report-April-11%2C-2024.pdf
A Note to Readers
The discussion of drought this week gives a larger national and North American picture of drought and the lack of it. As the U.S. Drought Monitor’s discussion of the national picture states, “Following the
El Nino winter and an active early spring pattern, drought coverage is at its lowest since the spring 2020.”
The western states last winter did receive about 50 atmospheric rivers, and virtually wiped out the drought in California and some isolated areas of the western states, yet parts of Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Montana missed out on the bounty.
Meanwhile in Canada, the Prairie Providence remain in serious drought conditions, and the record acreage of fires in Canada last year may be surpassed this year.
Edward Ring once again presents an article on how California can produce and distribute abundant water for all users in the state. His articles are always “outside the box” of the accepted narrative of the California State Water Board, the governor, and most of the political class that runs the state. As he writes in his article, “How Much Water Will $30 Billion Buy?”
“Specifically, there is potential for water agencies and water users in California’s rural, agricultural San Joaquin Valley, to stand alongside water agencies and water users in Southern California’s megacities to promote a shared list of water supply projects that will eliminate water scarcity in the state forever. An incentive for this unity, and its urgency, may be found in what is about to be the greatest waste of money in California water history, the construction of the Delta Tunnel. A realistic, if not wildly optimistic cost estimate for that mega-project is $30 billion. That money could be used instead to help fund massive regional water projects. Split it 50/50: $15 billion for the farms, and $15 billion for the cities.”
Following a report on the Colorado River and Rocky Mountain snowpack, we have a report of a major problem at the Glen Canyon Dam. “Key backup tubes inside the Glen Canyon Dam might be damaged, potentially threatening the delivery of water to Lake Mead in the future if water levels ever dip too low in Lake Powell, according to a Bureau of Reclamation memo.”
Highlighting the weakness and non-maintenance of U.S. Infrastructure, is an article on “Water pouring out of rural Utah dam,”
The news reports conclude with this article: “Federal officials moved to cancel commercial and recreational salmon fishing off California as the fish still aren’t thriving.”
This week’s Feature is an article by my associate Brian Lantz: “America’s Labor Force & the Immigration Crisis.” What I include here from the article is just its first section. While the immigration crisis is presented later in the article, the primary intent of the article is a discussion of the nation’s labor force. How and what is required to make the U.S. once again a manufacturing superpower.
