Posted on 01/12/2017 6:48:24 PM PST by Mariner
After five years, is the drought over? The feds seem to think so, at least as far as Sacramento and most of Northern California are concerned.
Thanks to an unusually wet winter, the closely watched U.S. Drought Monitor reported Thursday that 42 percent of California now is considered free of drought. That includes Northern California from the Bay Area to the Oregon border. When the “water year” began in October, only 17 percent of the state was drought free, and a year ago the figure was 3 percent.
Several other experts agreed that considerable progress has been made in alleviating the drought.
Gov. Jerry Brown, however, sees the rain gauge half empty.
Despite the heavy rainstorms of the past week, Brown’s administration stressed Thursday that because the state’s water needs are inextricably linked, the drought can’t be considered over as long as the southern half of the state remains seriously depleted.
“Drought conditions persist in a majority of the state, and the governor’s emergency drought declaration is a statewide declaration,” said spokeswoman Nancy Vogel of the Natural Resources Agency. Vogel added that the Drought Monitor “doesn’t give the full picture in California” and overlooks chronic problems such as the rampant pumping of groundwater in recent years. “They take a short-term view of how drought is defined.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
The state government says NO, it's not. The official drought here will continue, as will the governors exclusive control over the direction of water resources.
All the while, the Northern Sierra is on pace to have the wettest winter in recorded history.
And that's a LOT of water.
Buy some desalinization plants run by Nuclear Power.
No, there would have to be a biblical deluge before Jerry will declare the drought over. Too much power would have to be ceded back.
Three federal bureaucracies to do the same work? That is efficiency.
No problem. Cali will pinch off or import more illegals to spoil the water and milk the welfare dry. It’s what retards do.
It’s not stealing to take what is yours by agreement.
Brown should hire illegal immigrants to go north and carry water back to the south.
Don’t want to ship it in trucks because that’d harm the earth.
They can drag big tubs of it down just like the Egyptians did with stone blocks.
Trump wins and even the drought ends! Winning again!
This is typical.
But the liberals will never cede controls they implemented under the aegis of combatting the drought.
“No, there would have to be a biblical deluge before Jerry will declare the drought over. Too much power would have to be ceded back.”
That’s right and then they’d put in some sort of controls relating to too much water.
No, democracy allows theft.
This is not a Democracy. Sheesh! It’s a Constitutional Republic.
Second, there is no theft if something is bound by an agreement which all parties signed willingly.
Good bait for Stripers.
What is that supposed to mean? Carry the state in what sense?
If The Central Valley can claim their legal right to the water runoff first, I don't see the problem
Besides, only an idiot would claim that one year of excess rain and snow runoff eliminates a decades- long drought.
The subterranean aquifer recharge will take at least a decade.
Can't fix stupid.
And the only real last man standing area of drought is the region where I live in Santa Barbara and S to SE and we are expecting snow tomorrow in the Mountains 3-6 inches hopefully. I believe once we down here complete the saturation we are getting now the state will be truly out of the woods. Then the whack job, kool aid drinking fascists can scream all they want. But we already have taken care of the north of the state drought and closing in. Appreciate the post.
Here in the East we have to pay the gov't for getting rid of excess water. West of the Missouri peeps pay the gov't to get water rights
Mulholland was an ecological crook.
Aquifers notwithstanding addressing here.
The West is all about getting water. See what the State of Montana does with water "rights".
So. Calif needs to man up and pay more to get the water to irrigate their interstate interchanges rather than stealing water from far flung watersheds, SF is not far behind in the theft of water.
Such incompetence is breathtaking.
If NOAA, USDA, NWS and NDMC really believe that BS they should be eliminated for demonstrable incompetence.
The aquifers, which have been used as supplementary agricultural water sources for both valleys have dropped at least 150 feet.
Can't restore the water table after one good year!
The cost of deepening thousands of wells, both for agriculture and household and industrial uses must be mind-boggling.
Inevitable increases in the cost of food is definitely in our future.
We have yet to see the end of the rains! Floods, death, destruction, floating houses, mud slides,destruction and ruin are coming in the next 60 days. California will be like-—like Texas.
The delta smelt still prefer to go to the sea. The entire constituency doesn’t care about the Central Valley. All they care about is their selfish fishy desires. We need to disenfranchise them all.
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