SECRETARY OF INTERIOR MISLEADS ON CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal Letters to the Editor: Your editorial "California's Man-Made Drought" (Sept. 2) about the severe drought and water crisis in California argues that California's water problems could be wished away if our nation were only willing to sacrifice an endangered three-inch fish, turn on a few pumps to move water from Northern California to the Central Valley, and wave a magic wand. The trouble is: The fish are a sliver of the problem, the pumps are already on, and pointed fingers can't make it rain.

California's water crisis is far more troubling than your editorial suggests. The state is in its third year of a devastating drought, caused by a lack of precipitation. In California's Central Valley, where half the nation's produce is grown, many farms and fields are bone dry, unemployment has surged, and the state's inadequate water infrastructure—built 50 years ago for a population half as large—cannot handle the stress. Moreover, California's Bay Delta, upon which 25 million Californians depend for drinking water, is in a state of full environmental collapse.

As a proposed response, your editorial asks the Obama administration to ignore science and convene a so-called "God Squad" that would override protections on watersheds and turn California's water crisis over to the courts. Trying to force more water out of a dying system will only cause more human tragedy, while diverting attention from the governor and the legislature, who face a Sept. 11 legislative deadline to decide whether to fix the broken water system in California after decades of neglect.

Rather than more finger pointing, we need real solutions. After eight years on the sidelines, the federal government has stepped in to help. The Obama administration is investing over $400 million through the president's economic recovery plan to help modernize California's water infrastructure, including over $40 million in emergency assistance to help water-short Central Valley farmers. We have helped move record amounts of water to communities in most need and are taking steps to prepare for a potential fourth year of drought. And perhaps most importantly, the federal government is now engaging as a full partner in the collaborative process that the governor launched two years ago to restore the Bay Delta, and modernize the state's woefully outdated water infrastructure. Though what we need most is rain and snow to fill the reservoirs, these actions will help mitigate the devastating impact of the ongoing drought and deliver help to the families and communities suffering most.

This is the type of locally-driven, solution-oriented, collaborative approach that we must all support—and to which we must all contribute.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar's statement that California "is in its third year of a devastating drought" is misleading. "Drought" is normal in California over a 3-year period. California depends on very short term monsoons and floods to fill reservoirs to meet human demands for several years.

Many Californians remember the "March Miracle" of 1991 where late season monsoon rains suddenly changed a "drought" into a wet season. In 1985-86 there was a monsoon and floods for just 10 days out of 180 days that bailed California out of a drought. What we typically mean by a natural "drought" is the missing of a peak precipitation event.

California calls the sea temperature which influences its precipitation an "El Nino" (Little Boy). What we should call "drought" in Spanish is an Apunta - meaning the lack of a peak precipitation event (punta means peak in Spanish and the prefix "a" means lack of something).

Logically, if everything is a drought, nothing is. Drought is an overworked term. A disbelieving public won't buy the natural "drought" explanation for California's current lack of domestic water supply until policy makers use more accurate terminology. Moreover, what is a "drought" in a managed water system such as California's: a "managed drought?"

We have been in a serious drought here in Lake Jackson Texas for 1.5 - 2 years. It has been raining all day, and we were gone to D.C. for a week and had 1.5 inches in rain gauge. I hope our drought is GONE like Van Jones.

Just another Obama Nation idiot. I have lived in CA for 39 years and have reviewed the annual rainfall charts all the way back to the late 1800s. The annual average rainfall figures convincingly demonstrate that the so-called average annual rainfall is practically meaningless. For example, while the average annual rainfall in LA County may be 14 inches, that figure results from years of 2 to 3 inches to years of 20 to 25 inches or more. In other words, the standard deviation from the mean is quite large. All it takes is one or two years of well above average rain or snow, and the reservoirs become full again.

So Cal and the San Joachin Valley farmers are being held hostage to the environmentalists and the liberal judges who continue to refuse to allow water to flow from the north to the south. This is not about one fish. It is about the halting of growth. They want us to suffer.

I’ve noted with interest that in the past 10 years or so, California has reverted to being a desert while Puget Sound and New England have swapped weather: WA is becoming colder and wetter while New England has become milder and drier.

There are only 3 solutions to SoCals water problems: Desalination, desalination, desalination!

There is an endless supply of ocean water, which cannot be said of land based water supplies. A powerful pro-environmental case for desalination can be made in that the impact of desalination is much, much less than the diversion of land based supplies.

California’s problem isn’t not enough rain, it’s too many people...’community organizers’, non productive, criminal welfare types, including several million illegal aliens, some of which are burning the state down with their plantations on our public lands. Get rid of the enviro freaks with them and California would be SO much better off.

Here is what one study concluded about oceanwater desalination:

The annual water needs (326 m3) of a typical Californian that is met with imported water requires 5.8 GJ of energy and creates 360 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions. With seawater desalination, energy use would increase to 14 GJ and 800 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions. Meeting the water demand of California with desalination would consume 52% of the state’s electricity.

Humans use 43 million acre feet of water per year in California, or about one fifth of the estimated 200 million acre feet that flows through the state. Enough water flows to the sea through the Sacramento River in a winter week or two to supply Southern California with its state allocation of imported water. Water shortages may be more political than population driven.

Did I forget to mention the new nuclear power plants that would need to be built along with the new desalination plants? Silly me! Not much CO2 being emitted from those babies either.

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