Posted on 10/26/2023 1:31:31 AM PDT by Libloather
The Biden administration took action Wednesday for a historic agreement among Western states to conserve vital water supplies.
The Department of the Interior (DOI), which has for months worked with state leaders on developing water conservation plans, issued a draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) laying out two potential options: a no-action alternative and the proposed action to substantially restrict supplies in coming years.
The proposal is designed to protect the Colorado River System and two key dams in response to falling water levels.
"Today, the Biden-Harris administration is taking another key action to bolster water resilience in the Basin States, leveraging historic investments from the president’s Investing in America agenda to build a more sustainable and equitable future for communities across the West," said White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi.
"The Colorado River Basin’s reservoirs, including its two largest storage reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead, remain at historically low levels. Today’s advancement protects the system in the near term while we continue to develop long-term, sustainable plans to combat the climate-driven realities facing the Basin," added DOI Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton.
The draft SEIS published Wednesday rescinds two previous potential plans for Colorado River conservation that the DOI issued in April and replaces them with the proposed action derived from an agreement reached in May by the so-called Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada. The no-action alternative would maintain the status quo approach to conservation.
The May agreement would ensure that at least 3 million acre-feet, or 978 billion gallons, of Colorado River water supplies - which feed the massive California agriculture industry and major jurisdictions like Phoenix - are conserved by 2027. Under that plan, at least half of that amount will be conserved by 2025.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Because the supply has shrunk, everyone's ration has to shrink.
It has been reported that drought conditions were completely eliminated by the rainfall received this year in Colorado.
steal the water from the Olde West for the thirst of all those on the East Coast.
Do the agreements address CA dumping fresh water into the ocean? Hopefully it is an equal rationing system so if one state (CA) wastes their share they cannot go after the others’ share.
So, will they start with Orca’s estate The Promised Land (hahahahaha) where that cow pumps an untold amount water to keep her grass green?
Colorado Division of Water Resources website:
“Colorado water law declares that the state of Colorado claims the right to all moisture in the atmosphere that falls within its borders and that ‘said moisture is declared to be the property of the people of this state, dedicated to their use pursuant’ to the Colorado constitution. As a result, in much of the state, it is illegal to divert rainwater falling on your property expressly for a certain use unless you have a very old water right or during occasional periods when there is a surplus of water in the river system. This is especially true in the urban, suburban, and rural areas along the Front Range. This system of water allocation plays an important role in protecting the owners of senior water rights that are entitled to appropriate the full amount of their decreed water right, particularly when there is not enough to satisfy them and parties whose water right is junior to them.”
They just pased a law allowing homeowners to collect up to two 55 gallon barrels (110 gallons) of rain water from the home’s roof.
Generous mfers. /s
Yes, drought conditions were pretty much eliminated.
E.G Arizona’s Theodore Roosevelt dam was filled up and major releases were necessary. But lakes Mead and Powell are each lik 15X larger. It takes several rainy years to fill them up.
But, anyway, Biden is sort of late, when some action were needed, they were asleep at the wheel. Now, kind of late, they are trying to do something, maybe too much!
I am confused.. Was it climate change when the idiots didn’t do any maintenance on the Oroville dam in California because they declared the reservoir would NEVER fill again? Or was it climate change when it filled so fast it was at risk of collapsing when the overflow chute was washing away?
It may also have been climate change that inspired the California DPW to release FIVE YEARS worth of water after the reservoir re-filled again last year, thus draining the reservoir to astonishingly low levels INTENTIONALLY!
Hmm, what needs to be done is that California cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco need to build more desalinization plants to offset their water needs.
Last time some twerp was talking about shipping water across the Great Divide, it involved a lunatic proposal to transfer water from the Mississippi River west into California. You have it exactly backwards.
Whenever they say “sustainable” you know your enemies are on the loose.
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