Free Republic

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown took a sarcastic approach to critics of his $15 million twin tunnel plan Wednesday, saying unless they have invested a million hours working on the problem as his staff has, they should "shut up." The Democratic governor made the comments while speaking to officials from California water agencies, who have widely varying views on the project. He said he asked his "water man" how many hours have been invested on efforts to build tunnels to send water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the answer was 1 million. "Until you put a million hours into...

Leak Mead – on your left, when you drive from Las Vegas across the Hoover Dam – is the largest reservoir in the country when at capacity. It’s fed by the Colorado River which provides water for agriculture, industry, and 40 million people in Nevada, Arizona, California, and Mexico, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. Now after 15 years of drought, the “lake” – a mud puddle surrounded by a huge chalky bathtub ring – is threatening to run dry. It’s considered “operationally full” when the water level is at 1,229 feet elevation above sea level. On May...

The present four-year California drought is not novel — even if President Barack Obama and California governor Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells — like those of 1929–34, 1976–77, and 1987–92 — are more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures. What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought — well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the...

The present four-year California drought is not novel -- even if President Barack Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells -- like those of 1929-34, 1976-77 and 1987-92 -- more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures. What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought -- well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the early...

Governor Brown is at it again. More warnings, more penalties as the crisis worsens, yet he never makes these warnings to conserve water in Spanish. He must know that illegals are also abusing the system, yet many of them probably have no idea that "California Is Dry"! What is the point of warning "Cally-Fornian's" of the crisis in English when up to 1/3rd or more speak Spanish! They all think that water is unlimited and free! Wait till the day comes when they wake up to a waterless apartment.

The federal government is calling for lower levels of fluoride in drinking water, the first update since the 1960s. The new recommendation is for 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water, which replaces the previous range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams, according to the Health and Human Services Department on Monday. Americans have access to more fluoride through toothpaste and mouth rinses than when the recommendations were introduced in 1962, the agency said. Because Americans are using more fluoride, officials are worried about increases in cases of fluorosis, a condition that stains teeth exposed to too much fluoride. "The...

A $150,000 prize has been awarded to the “Water Gandhi of India” for his wildly successful work that turns abandoned, impoverished “dust bowls” into lush villages bustling with life again using an ancient method of rainwater harvesting. For teaching thousands of villagers in India’s most arid region how to build earthen dams to catch the monsoon rains and revitalize their land, Rajendra Singh was honored Friday with the 2015 Stockholm Water Prize. 30 years ago, Singh went to the poverty-stricken state of Rajasthan with the aim of setting up health clinics. He was told by villagers, however, that their greatest...

As surely as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds bring blue skies to the coast and wildfires to the hills, severe California droughts bring calls to build desalination plants up and down the seashore. All that ocean water, begging to be converted to fresh and pumped into our pipelines, would solve our water supply problems instantly and permanently, boosters say. In the coming months, the drumbeat will only get louder. That's not only because the current drought is the longest and most severe in memory, but because a $1-billion desalination project scheduled to start operating in Carlsbad this fall will...

Spurned at the ballot box three years ago and facing an even more uphill battle now because of California's historic drought, an environmental group has filed a lawsuit attempting to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a linchpin of the water supply for 2.6 million Bay Area residents from San Francisco to San Jose to southern Alameda County.

Water is heated to make steam to heat City Hall and 170 other nearby buildings. Although City Hall reuses most of its portion, a quarter million gallons a day goes wasted. Good drinking water which ends up in the sewer. It’s a system that is more than 80 years old. “This system has been set up in the city for many decades, as far as this steam loop. It doesn’t rely on fossil fuels or natural gas to heat these buildings. So in that sense it’s good,” Jue said

Crazy and not-so-crazy ideas for solving the California drought 52 Photos The dried up lake bed of Huntington Lake which is at only 30 percent capacity as a severe drought continues to affect California. MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images California Gov. Jerry Brown has sounded the alarm over the state's historic drought, warning that it will take "unprecedented actions" to solve the crisis.That battle cry has produced a brainstorming session like no other - prompting celebrities, tech gurus, politicians and business leaders to offer a range of innovative and outlandish solutions for easing the dry stretch that is now in its fourth...

In a ruling with major implications for California's water conservation campaign, a state appeals court on Monday ruled that a tiered water rate structure used by the city of San Juan Capistrano to encourage conservation was unconstitutional.. The Orange County city used a rate structure that charged customers who used small amounts of water a lower rate than customers who used larger amounts. But the 4th District Court of Appeal struck down San Juan Capistrano's fee plan, saying it violated voter-approved Proposition 218, which prohibits government agencies from charging more for a service than it costs to provide it. "We...

California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior. California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes. The water situation...

California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes.

As if anyone actually needed another reason to move out of the crazy state of California, now it is being reported that conditions in some areas of the state “are like a third-world country” due to the multi-year megadrought that has hit the state. In one California county alone, more than 1,000 wells have gone dry as the groundwater has disappeared. The state is turning back into a desert, and an increasing number of homes no longer have any water coming out of their taps or showerheads. So if you weren’t scared away by the wildfires, mudslides, high taxes, crime,...

Having as few as five sips of water an hour while driving is equivalent to being over the drink drive limit. Drivers make more than twice as many mistakes when they are just mildly dehydrated, according to new research. The study revealed that drivers who had only had 25ml of water an hour made more than double the number of mistakes on the road than those who were hydrated - the same amount as those who have been drink driving.

William Shatner’s $30 Billion Kickstarter Campaign to Save California David Pogue April 17, 2015 William Shatner. Wow. He’s 84 years old, looks 65, and juggles a schedule that would exhaust a team of 10. Book projects, TV projects, tech projects, horse-riding projects, charity projects. And his willingness to embrace the tech world is impressive; he’s got YouTube channels, he’s conducted Kickstarter projects, and he has a huge Twitter presence: more than 2 million followers. (He’s tweeted 30,000 times so far — and yes, it’s really him.) The hour he spent with me in a Yahoo Tech Mix interview wasn’t even...

One water district manager says the plan fails to account for water-saving measures already in effect in some California communitiesCalifornia cities are pushing back against Gov. Jerry Brown's order for mandatory water use reductions, but it's not likely that regulators will retreat with the state in its fourth year of drought. The State Water Resources Control Board's proposal to meet Brown's order has some cities slashing water use by more than a third, and it will be updated in the coming days. Dozens of affected agencies say the expected reduction targets are overreaching, unrealistic and unfair. Calif. Sets Water Use...

The worst drought to hit California since the Middle Ages is already making indoor plumbing irrelevant in several Central Valley towns that exhausted their entire water supplies. Others are running low and rationing the precious resource. Despite the brown lawns and dire climate predictions, there’s always a silver lining to the non-existent rain cloud. Here’s why the glass is literally half-full:

The blistering drought that has Californians timing their showers, driving dirty cars and staring at brown lawns and empty swimming pools is a “man-made disaster,” according to critics, who say the Golden State’s misguided environmental policies allow much-needed freshwater to flow straight into the Pacific. In an average year, California gets enough snow and rain to put 200 million acres under a foot of water, but environmental opposition to dams over the last several decades has allowed the majority of the freshwater to flow into the ocean, even as the state’s population exploded to nearly 40 million people. ~snip~ “This...