(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20231026-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
A Note to Readers
A smorgasbord of topics grace this week’s report.
Following the U.S. Drought Monitor map for California, which does show virtually no area of the state presently in drought, we have an example of how even the most incompetent, corrupt and evil administration, if allowed to throw away hundreds of billions of dollars, at least a few land on a project that should have been built decades ago: “Feds OK plans for major expansion of San Luis Reservoir,”
“That is nice,” as the lady would say, but the rest of the report demonstrates the theme I have stressed for years in these reports. Virtually no one wants to actually solve a crisis, but just to manage them, perhaps waiting for a miracle that will never come.
While, yes, there is much to complain about, but even policy in the hands of those who bow to Wall Street and the globalists, spending hundreds of billions on attempting to bribe an angry population and to, whether they know it or not, wreck what is left of what used to be the greatest industrial power in the world, somehow, once in awhile, they do something that should have been done decades ago.
The Biden administration last Friday announced that “the Department of the Interior and San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority improved(sic) plans to implement the B.F. Sisk Dam Raise and Reservoir Expansion Project. The project will create an additional 130,000 acre-feet of storage space in the San Luis Reservoir.”
More rationing is always the first option to solve virtually any problem in California in recent years, with two articles this week providing examples. First is this one: “California Weighs Plan to Cut Daily Water Use.” The second is this: “Amid a growing number of threats, can the San Joaquin Valley adapt to climate change?”
On the Colorado River, the Bureau of Reclamation, because of the abundant precipitation this past winter in California, and a generous snowpack in the Rockies, has been given at least a recess from the tough decisions on how to ration the waters of the Colorado River. Bragging about how California, Arizona and Nevada have agreed to cut back their withdraws from the river by three million acre feet, does not provide a long-term solution, and though the water behind Hoover Dam and Glenn Canyon Dam has risen a few feet this year, both reservoirs still remain at about one-third full.
Several articles describe the current state of the river and, once again, demonstrate that a generation of political leaders, water managers and others have no intention of abandoning their business as usual “crisis management” methods for a determination to actually solve the crisis.
The final new item is another example of, “Blame Everything on Climate Change, Not the Incompetent Policies of the Past Decades.”The article itself is, accompanied with the usual climate change hysteria, and titled, “Fire, other ravages jeopardize California’s prized forests.”
The Feature this week is by colleague Michael Carr, and the title should give you an indication of the content: “Washington Swamp Gnaws Away at Divine Space Mandate; FAA/Fish & Wildlife Hold Moon Mission Hostage.”
