You really have to live in cloud cuckoo land to think you can double the states population and not increase the water supply. Why “environmentalists” we’re able to grab so much power and flout common sense is beyond me. Send all illegals packing, stop trying to save a damned (and already doomed) minnow, replace certain inappropriate water-hungry crops and problem solved.
The Salinas, Sacramento, Klamath and Columbia Rivers dump millions of gallons of fresh water into the Pacific every hour. Pipelines could replenish California lakes daily and keep the central valley fertile.
But, liberal politicians would rather spend billions on a high speed train to no where. Get your tickets to see a vast wasteland go by at 200 mph and an economy go down even faster!
Thou hast struck the nail directly upon the head. Environmentalists stopped the practice of creating fire breaks in the Angelinos Nat'l Forest and massive fires is the result. With depleted forests, spring rains bring landslides. No dams, no water. Cause, meet effect.
The best way to save that minnow is to commercialize it. Make it a hot seller in the pet stores or food stores and you’ll have more of them than can be counted.............
There was the California Environment Quality Act in 1970(Reagan). At the federal level there was NEPA, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Magnuson Act, and others. The courts establishing minimum instream flows via Reserved Water Rights means you can't take all the water out of the stream to satisfy prior appropriation water rights(delta smelt).
It was only about 10 years ago that CA had to give up a significant portion of the Colorado that they had been allowed to use until the upper river states needed it.
A lot of this came to be as a result of the grandiose water projects that were proposed in CA and the western US back in those days when Congress spending a lot of money and the Bureau of Rec/Corp of Engineers reached their engineering zenith.
Projects like Ah Pah Dam, two more dams on the Colorado, NAWAPA, etc were rejected then and are not likely to be approved today. The more dams you build, the fewer potential dams sites remain.
Instead, what you see is the water storage projects approved by the CA voters last November: Sites Reservoir, Temperance Flat Dam, and raising Shasta dam.
There is a good historical record of water development in CA and the west that can be read or watched on YouTube: Cadillac Desert
That is why I added It’s their own fault to the title