Click on the link below for the full report:
http://www.californiadroughtupdate.org/pdf/20180222-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
“However political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
George Washington Farewell Address
September 17, 1796
A Note To Readers
Happy Birthday to George Washington
Today is the birthday of George Washington and his warning of the dangers to the republic from political parties was prophetic. One party today is willing to destroy the nation to remove a constitutionally elected president. The other, while nominally supporting that president, is full of idiots who would destroy the nation by its commitment to austerity, cutting entitlements and refusing to create a credit funding system that can pour $2-3 trillion per year into building infrastructure, among other of its stupidities.
Not only did George Washington lead our revolution against the British empire (that same empire that today initiated and is driving the coup attempt against our president), he was also the President of the committee that wrote our Constitution, and our first President. Then, with his Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, created the First National Bank of the United States to fund “internal improvements” (infrastructure) and new industries, putting the nation on the pathway of economic independence from that self-same empire from which we wrested our political independence.
What will unify the nation today is that same policy– a national credit institution like an “infrastructure bank,” as suggested by the Chinese last week as they offered to invest up to $1 trillion of their U.S. Treasury Bills in such an institution to fund the infrastructure building we must undertake. That is what is required to create a nation we can be proud of and what future generations 50 years into the future require. And as Washington and Hamilton understood, that requires a rebuilding and the expansion of our industrial capability, which again, that requires building a dramatic increase in our electricity production capability.
In This Week’s Report
The topic and theme presented in the paragraph immediately above is the one you will find in the Feature this week. It includes some of the discussion from the LaRouche PAC Weekly Webcast of February 16. That section also includes the Trump administration’s announcement of $50 billion to be invested in rural infrastructure, and a few other items. Of note is the poll demonstrating that between 70-82 percent of the American people damn well want a massive infrastructure building policy, and they want it now.
Now to the drought, which is all but official today. Each week the U.S. Drought Monitor is registering larger portions of the state have entered a more intense category of drought. And with little or no precipitation forecast for the next two or three weeks ahead, we can expect that pattern to continue. As reported below, a few snow flurries in the Sierras will not change much of anything.
Both the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project have announced their preliminary allocations to water contractors for 2018. For most it will be just 20 percent of their contracted amount. Please be clear on what that means: The contractors pay for their full allocation whether they receive 100 percent or five percent. So, I hope there is not a repeat of the bullshit promulgated during the last drought when the urban areas had to cut back by 25 percent in the water they used, while the agricultural sector was often reduced to only five percent. The bullshit seen in many media reports at the time was the cities had to cut back but the farmers did not.
The California Water Commission was taken to task, unfortunately too gently, this week in hearings in Sacramento. Remember this is about the $2.7 billion approved by voters in 2014 to build water storage facilities, and the commission has yet to make any decisions on which projects get the funds.
The Oroville Dam Update this week includes a construction update from the Department of Water Resources, along with a video. The DWP also now claims that FEMA will pay 75 percent of the cost of the repairs. The report last week placed doubt on that commitment.
As reported here last week the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is deciding to increase its contribution to building the Delta Tunnels in an attempt to bypass the state’s decision a few weeks ago to cut back to one tunnel from two the project. There is a short report on this development.
