A bipartisan approach to California's water problems shows at least a glint of promise. Here's our editorial today on the issue.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have offered a bond measure for the November ballot that would contain money for surface water storage, underground water banking and conservation efforts. Additionally, there would be funds for levee repairs and other desperately needed work in the crucial Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, watershed and habitat repairs, and projects to improve water quality and supplies in smaller communities, such as the many rural towns that dot the Valley.
The Legislature has to pass the measure to put it on the ballot, and that won't be easy. But Schwarzenegger and Feinstein have created a framework that at least makes solutions to our water woes possible.
I'll have to see the details before I decide to favor this proposal. How serious are the conservation provisions? It doesn't make sense to spend billions on more storage when we're wasting so much water now. And who will get entitlements to the new stored water? I don't want to see the taxpayers spending tons of money for water entitlements that big farmers and water districts can sell at a profit to themselves.
During World War II they made good farmland out of alkaline flats, the
government providing the water. After the war, many gave up the effort
of making silk purses out of sows' ears. But the water allotments went
on. Three months old babies were used to establish ever greater water entitlements. A certain Los Banos lawmaker did not grow anything but sold his allotment to
out of the area. And there was Octavia Diener running for office explaining the need for all that water, while many cashed in on the big subsidies for not growing
But at the same time, good loam was being paved over for residential sub division after sub division followed by the shopping centers....I witnessed the battle cry
"don’t flush toilets, it wastes water." But empty Tulare Lake, the biggest wetlands eco-system west of the Mississippi. Humankind has only one deadly enemy, humankind. And now I am waiting to see how I am going to be patted on the head this time, as I were an idiot child to take pity on.
...you nailed it...pave over the best loam on earth and subsidize alkalai-fart-flats-farmers and their families...sanity has never described water policy in this state, be afraid of the Senator and the Gropernator's new romance, be very afraid.