I have lived in So Cal for 44 years. For at least 30 of those years, there have been discussions of building a peripheral canal around the Sacramento Delta so as to transport water from Northern CA to Southern CA. The politicians in Sacramento did nothing but fight over the proposal.
Here in So Cal, there are numerous places in the mountains where dams could have been built to capture the winter rains. Little has been done.
The history of CA is one of continual rainy and dry years. The average annual rainfall amount means nothing as very few years are close to normal.
There is only one long term solution unless God decides to reconfigure rain patterns. That solution is desalination. However, the Sacramento politicians have done virtually nothing to make desalination a reality, although there is one plant due to come on line in Orange County despite the pols doing nothing.
Yes, desalination is expensive but water is essential. Over time, just like any other process, it will be made more efficient, and water conversion will become less expensive. Instead, Brown and his cronies are spending billions of dollars to build a high speed rail line, the cost of which per passenger mile will be astronomical. Unfortunately, California is a lost case. The state has be overrun with immigrants, most from Mexico and south. They vote Democrat, and now control the vote. At the state level, California is a one party state, and that will never change unless the racial makeup of the state changes.
As for this article, it is BS. All CA needs is a couple of years of above normal rainfall, and all of those reservoirs will be filled up. But the bureaucrats and politicians don’t ever want people to realize that. No, they want to use fear and intimidation to maintain an atmosphere of fear, one in which they can limit our water usage, thereby controlling one more aspect of our lives.
I have some hope that even if we get flooded with Viva La Raza types that a lot of them will have some quasi-Reagan-Democrat voting patterns and help California retain some level of sanity.
“I have lived in So Cal for 44 years. For at least 30 of those years, there have been discussions of building a peripheral canal around the Sacramento Delta so as to transport water from Northern CA to Southern CA. The politicians in Sacramento did nothing but fight over the proposal.”
I have lived in Northern California for 74 years, and for most of that time we have been in a fight with SoCal over their penchant to take water from everyone else so they can continue to expand their Mexican Paradise to ridiculous extents. You’ve been found guilty of ruining the Owens River Valley and Mono Lake to quench your thirst, and lately your “entitlement” to Colorado River water has been cut drastically now that Arizona wants it’s lawful share. Then there’s the Peripheral Canal where you seek to destroy the ecosystem in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta then use the the San Luis Drain to send your $hitty wastewater and put it back from whence you took it with all your pollutants as a “gift” to us. Then when the last draught was ongoing, we were wondering why we were flushing our toilets with our bathwater while you were watering your lawns and letting the water run down the gutter. It’s time you voluntarily limited your growth and found water resources closer to home. Just the evaporation losses today in the canals that send you our water would provide tens of thousands of people with enough water for their needs.
And as you point out, SoCal hasn’t done squat to build any collection and storage facilities to support itself. So you (with your DWP) have been “takers” for as long as I can remember.
I have been following the replenishment of the supply in Lake Shasta (which is where you get most of your water ultimately, nearly 1,000 miles from LA). With the recent rains, it has risen something on the order of 20 feet, but it is still 145 ft below “full pool.” Interestingly, the shoreline is now at about 200 miles (it’s been as low as 150 miles), but at full pool that distance is 365 miles! Today, it holds about 1.5 million acre feet. Full it’s three times that amount. So the end question is “how many times do you pee before you flush, and did you let your landscaping die this past summer lie we did?”
Who can feel sorry for a State that makes decisions to save fish, snails, whatever and then see these targets of their “protective conscious” die anyway. Dead fish and they still divert water into the SF Bay to mix with salt water? I feel nothing. The state is in a crisis because politicians are “stupid.” They make Gruber’s assessment of the US people seem precise!