Posted on 01/15/2017 9:29:21 AM PST by Mariner
After a half-decade of drought, California has been buffeted this winter by a series of powerful rain and snowstorms that dumped countless billions of gallons of water on the state’s watersheds.
Some of the deluge was captured in the form of mountain snows that will feed rivers and streams during the annual spring melt. But at lower elevations, it was rain, some retained in man-made reservoirs that had become seriously depleted, but most flowing swiftly to the Pacific Ocean.
At one point last week, flows on the Sacramento River and its American River tributary were more than 130,000 cubic feet each second, much of which was diverted into bypass channels to protect the state capital from flooding that periodically devastated the city during the 19th century.
Let’s put that flow in perspective. Each cubic foot is equates to 7.5 gallons, so that meant nearly a million gallons were passing through, or around, Sacramento every second – enough water to fill an empty Folsom Lake-sized reservoir in about four days.
As the Sacramento River was running high, fast and dirty last week, a few blocks away, in the state Capitol, Gov. Jerry Brown was unveiling a new state budget. He renewed his annual pitch to build financial reserves so that when recession hits, as it inevitably will, the impact on the state budget will be cushioned.
It’s good advice, whether it involves a state budget or a family’s finances. Having a cushioning reserve is, as Brown terms, it “prudence.”
But what is prudent in a state’s budget also is prudent in a state’s water supply, which is at least as volatile and unpredictable as tax revenue.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
He's a senior "moderate" lefty.
The day Sacramento politicos actually do something FOR the state and to do it so all legal residents benefit will be the day the Big One hits..
advice: Don’t hold your breath.. but hold onto your pocketbook.
Most civilizations in deserts built huge cisterns to store water for the dry times. Even the American Indians did this. So, is California digging big cisterns? No. They are spending billions on a bullet train nobody wants, to go between places nobody goes.
Can individuals collect rainwater? Or is that prohibited?
California needs more storage.
No no no we must spend the billions on the high speed rail system got to pay back the vote hustlers.
We can’t build more reservoirs, since they cause global warming.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3513287/posts
That’s one possible conclusion. Me, I think Trump ended the drought.
The left in California quit building dams. To the contrary they want to destroy them to hell with the citizens
If they didn’t spend all their money on illegal aliens they’d be able to build some reservoirs.
They could at least build spreader dams which allow the water to soak into the ground rather then running off.
“Drought and storms prove again California needs more storage”
very low priority. $100 billion dollar 19th century tech fake “bullet” trains to nowhere are a FAR more important priority to “progressives”/Democrats than life-giving water essential for food production, industry and sanitation.
They want everything to be pristine
Percolating ponds are used by many local water districts. They fill and do not drain fast enough in this kind of weather
Add tanker cars on the bullet train!
Love, Willie
UN Agenda 21 ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
The Auburn dam project has been on the books since I broke in as a tunnel miner on the upper American River project in 1963. The Auburn dam has the diversion tunnels completed and the proposed submerged land was cleared in the 60’s.
It is a perfect site for a dam and would greatly contribute to flood control and water storage, but no, the lefties have made careers out of opposing the Auburn dam.
I have little patience with complaints about drought and flood control.
Had we done what we should have done decades ago, and provided more reservoirs – such as the long-delayed, off-stream Sites project on the west side of the upper Sacramento Valley – or built systems to recharge depleted underground aquifers, we could have retained some of those heavy flows on the Sacramento and other rivers this month. Even a tiny percentage would make a huge difference when drought once again hits.
I have wondered why we don't try to refill depleted aquifers using flood water. We could even adapt evil fracking technology to the task.
I was just going to question California’s spending priorities. So thanks for posting that.
Are the feds helping to fund the bullet train with unconstitutional federal funding, such funding arguably stolen state revenues?
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
CA should have it’s irrigation systems in the Valley going full blast.
Encourage every farmer to flood his fields to the greatest extent he can. That’s one simple change that could make enormous difference.
Just put the water into the ground during wet winters.
You mean replenish the aquifers? That seems logical, hence it would never be considered by the politicians.
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