Please explain how Mexican water rights affect San Diego County.
Posted on 06/17/2002 6:00:55 PM PDT by brityank
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:40 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Agriculture: Tempers flare in Imperial Valley as a U.S. deadline nears to cut use of Colorado River water. "Fallowing is a four-letter word," a grower says.
WESTMORLAND, Calif. -- When U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) lectured the farmers of the Imperial Valley that they should let some of their fields go dry so their water can be sold to arid San Diego County, it was bound to be a controversial notion.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
IIRC -- Mexico's failure to agree by the cross-border agreements is the primary cause of the shortages.
Feinstein, being the bureaucratic gasbag, pig-eyed sack of crap that she is,"
Feinstein, being the bureaucratic gasbag, pig-eyed sack of crap that she is,"
Oh Yeah!
I bet the federal government does step in and force the farmers to sell.
Please explain how Mexican water rights affect San Diego County.
Something about this Kuhn guy I really like ....
Can't quite put my finger on it though.......
Truer, yet much harder to believe.
PROBLEMS OF WATER SUPPLY IN SAN DIEGOOnly 10%. The people of northern California have been complaining for years about Los Angeles and San Diego taking more than their fair share of water. Now I find that southern California plans on taking all the water from the Colorado River too. When will it stop?San Diego is in a semi-arid area, which presents sizable problems for the city when trying to supply water to its population. Only 10-20% of the water used in the area comes from local rainfall. The rest is imported via the Metropolitan Water District of South California and the San Diego County Water Authority from two sources. Some of the imported water travels over 1,000 miles before being diverted to the area by a 242 mile aqueduct which brings water from the Colorado River from Lake Havasu to the southland. The California Aqueduct is 444 miles long and brings water from the natural rivers and streams of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Daelta, which is largely supplied by reservoirs in the north of Sacramento.
Nuclear desalination is the answer.
Fascinating. Apparently California has been flirting with the idea for several years. I guess it's easier to take it than make it. Nuclear desalination would solve the power problem and the water problem at the same time. They should let the Japanese come in and build a couple. Instead they'll probably just wait until the next drought causes a catastrophe.
... the All-American Canal, which since 1944 has transported water from the Colorado River westward into California's Imperial Valley, helping turn a desolate and arid wasteland into a $1-billion-a-year farm economy.2% loss isn't much, but when you see SD, LA, and the Imperial Valley planting acres of non-native flora that are water intensive for cultivation, the loss of millions of acre/feet per year makes a bad situation worse.The canal's operator, the Imperial Irrigation District, says it will soon begin a project to reline a porous 23-mile section of the canal, converting it from clay to concrete. That would save the vast amounts of water lost to seepage ...
The stakes are high. Seepage totaling as much as 2% of all the water transported from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley has brought prosperity to the northeast Mexicali Valley, which is what the Imperial Valley is called south of the border. Losing it would create economic, social and environmental problems, Baja officials warn.
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"We are concerned with any possibility of significant reduction of what we receive from the Colorado River," Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda said Friday. "That's where we get our water from."
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California officials say that the lining project violates neither the letter nor spirit of the binational water agreement and that asking Southern California not to line the canal so that the water can continue to seep out and aid the Mexicali Valley is asking too much.
For one thing, the irrigation district has paid for the water that Mexican farmers are using, state officials said, according to a formula under the 1944 treaty. The agreement calls for Mexico to receive 1.5 million acre-feet of water, roughly one-third of what California gets.
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U.S. officials note that along with receiving its full allocation under the 1944 treaty, Mexico also receives about 200,000 acre-feet a year because of problems with a storage facility in Imperial County--water that, like the canal seepage, they say belongs to the U.S.
So what if the average water bill in the area goes up 10x the current level to pay for the new water source - that's the cost of living there.
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