California Drought Update
April 23, 2015
by Patrick Ruckert
I urge readers to watch the seven minute video from LaRouche PAC, “Water for the Future,” a first in a series, which demonstrates that the water to solve California’s drought crisis IS there, it just needs to be developed. The “solutions” which Governor Jerry Brown and President Obama are imposing on the the state of California, being done in the name of “conservation” and “environmental sustainability” are a lying fraud. They don’t want a solution to this crisis, if they did they would launch a crash program for desalination and atmospheric ionization and wouldn’t have crushed earlier proposals for continental water management and a nuclear powered California economy. The link is here: https://larouchepac.com/20150418/water-future
In addition, look at the April 17, 2015 issue of Executive Intelligence Review, a special edition, “The Drought and the Presidency,” the title indicating that there is no solution to the water crisis in California possible without a new presidency which has a commitment to develop the nation. This issue is loaded with extensive articles on the scientific, economic and political aspects of the drought. The link to it is here: http://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2015/2015_10-19/2015-16/index.html
And the current edition of Executive Intelligence Review, dated April 24, 2015, follows up with more, including the cover story, “Science or Fascism,” focusing on Jerry Brown’s policy of denying water to the California population. Included in this issue is a lengthy piece, “How Franklin Roosevelt and Pat Brown Built California.” You will love the shocking cover. A link to it is here: http://larouchepub.com/eiw/index.html
What is Jerry Brown telling the people of California?
We are in a new era. There is no water– get used to it. We have to radically change the way we live and the way we spend our money. This is the new normal. Get used to it. It is climate change, caused by man. In the end nature rules.
No Jerry, in the end it is, and always has been, mankind adjusting nature to his needs. Your father did that, but you in your first term spit on the legacy of your father, and helped sabotage his plans for the future needs of California for water by building the North American Water and Power Alliance and nuclear-powered desalination plants. True, you did not do it alone. You really aren’t that much. You were a cog in the deliberate destruction of the nation as envisioned and built by people like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, President John Kennedy and Governor Pat Brown.
Brown is telling the thousands of people in East Porterville and other small towns of California that having no running water in their homes for almost a year now is the new normal and they should get used to it. Used to it!? The new normal is no running water in your home?
Forty years of the nation increasingly dominated by the likes of Jerry Brown may be coming to an end. The failure of the anti-development, anti-infrastructure policy, as expressed by the water crisis, is forcing people to face an existential question: “If you won’t fight for your food and water, you won’t fight for anything.”
Increasingly the commentary on this crisis is echoing this theme. There is even a petition circulating now that in just a few days has more than 60,000 signers. Posted by “Elias C” from Los Angeles, the petition attacks Jerry Brown’s fascist water austerity and calls for an infrastructure-based solution. Here is the link: “Stop Punishing California Residents. The water problem is YOUR FAULT!”. It features a map of a vast sea of blue (Pacific Ocean), with the minuscule-looking California coastline on the far right. Superimposed labels with arrows in bright red make the point: One points to the deep blue sea, labeled “Water,” the other to the relatively tiny “California.” Although he doesn’t directly call for nuclear (endorsing “solar-powered” desalination, instead), Elias presents a refreshing, pro-development, anti-green perspective, and gives Brown-shirted Jerry his due. “We have done our part,” begins the introduction. “We have installed water saving toilets, shower-heads, sprinklers, faucets, etc. We have reduced our water consumption dramatically and are paying exorbitant fees for water and taxes. Enough is enough!
“On the other hand, YOU [Jerry Brown] have done nothing to prepare the state for water shortages and increased population. Blaming the weather is flat-out irresponsible. You had plenty of warning. Our water system is old and not capable of sustaining growth or lack of rain.”
The Environmentalist Gestapo
When Mike Steger, of the LaRouchePAC Policy Committee and former LaRouche Democratic Congressional candidate, attempted to present the alternative to water rationing to Dennis O’Connnor, the Consultant to the State Senate Committee for Natural Resources and Water in Sacramento a week or so ago, he was shocked by the screaming denial by Mr. O’Connor that there was any such alternative policy. See Steger’s report on an environmentalist gestapo here:
https://larouchepac.com/20150413/nazis-sacramento-brown-squirts-will-kill-you-drought-can-do-it
There is more: The long-knives are out in California
In 1934, Hitler’s Nazi party went on a killing spree to cleanse itself of any potential dissidents within its ranks. Jerry Brown’s allies in the State Assembly, while not killing anyone, yet, made it clear last week that any Democratic Assembly member who dares to even mildly oppose the deadly water-drought policy of Brown will be purged.
Democratic Assemblyman Adam Gray of Merced, acting in the interests of his constituents in this agricultural community convinced a majority of the Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee to pass the bill he sponsored that requires the State Water Resources Control Board to mitigate the damage to his constituents that would result from taking more water from the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers for fish. The Brown administration was expected to divert more than 350,000 acre feet of water from the rivers, which would devastate the region’s farmers.
Gray in a related letter to Governor Brown on February 4, wrote: “It is ludicrous to demand we develop policies for sustainable groundwater and at the same time take away the single most important recharge element—irrigation water. That the agency responsible for compliance with the new groundwater law would even consider such action in one of our most threatened groundwater basins is mind boggling and offensive to those of us who live there.”
The message Brown and his allies made is clear: Such actions, especially by a Democrat, will not be tolerated. The day after Gray’s bill passed the committee, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins dismissed Adam Gray from the Committee. He had to be made an example of. Atkins went further, dismissing another Democrat from the committee who had dared to vote with Gray.
Neither the law nor the State Constitution Will Get in the Way of Jerry Brown
In a ruling on April 20, with broad implications for the water-usage restrictions being imposed on Californians, a state appeals court yesterday ruled that a tiered water-rate structure used by the city of San Juan Capistrano to discourage water use is unconstitutional.
The city used a rate structure that charged customers who used small amounts of water a lower rate than customers who used larger amounts. The court ruled that the fee plan violated the voter-approved Proposition 218, which prohibits government agencies from charging more for a service than it costs to provide it.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that Gov. Jerry Brown immediately lashed out at the decision, saying it puts “a straitjacket on local government at a time when maximum flexibility is needed.” He then went on to threaten, “My policy is and will continue to be: Employ every method possible to
ensure water is conserved across California.” Does that mean he intends to defy the court and the state constitution?
Bait and Switch
Last November California voters approved Proposition 1, the $7 billion water bill that included $2.7 billion for building new dams and storage facilities. Or so they thought. Last week in meetings in Chico and Fresno, the California Water Commission informed people that there were certain conditions that had to be met for all projects funded. People were too happy to hear that the dams they hoped would be built would first have to pass impossible hurdles. First all projects must be of “public benefit,” defined as everything except agricultural, residential and commercial use. In addition, fifty percent of the public benefit has to be for ecosystems, with the rest for water quality improvement, flood control, emergency response, and recreation. Then, “any project that gets funding also has to provide a “measurable” improvement in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem, even though the standard for measuring that has yet to be defined.”
Under those conditions it is less than unlikely that anything could ever be built.
Some Drought Symptoms
As reported by Alison Vekshin in her article, “Dry Wells Plague California as Drought Has Water Tables Plunging” at Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube, “Near California’s Success Lake, more than 1,000 water wells have failed. Farmers are spending $750,000 to drill 1,800 feet down to keep fields from going fallow. Makeshift showers have sprouted near the church parking lot.
“The conditions are like a third-world country,” said Andrew Lockman, a manager at the Office of Emergency Services in Tulare County, in the heart of the state’s agricultural Central Valley about 175 miles (282 kilometers) north of Los Angeles.”
Tulare County is a major citrus producer and the area’s growers now live in fear that since they have been cut off 100% from the Central Valley Project water, this year’s crop could be a disaster.
Rice farmers are expected to plant less acreage than last year. They will be receiving less water this year than last, with senior rights holders being cut by 25 percent, and there will be a 50 percent cut to Feather River settlement contractors. Last year, those contractors received 100 percent of their water supply.
Rice growers harvested 25 percent less rice in 2014 than they did in 2013, and this year that figure will be larger. Since the harvested rice fields are a sanctuary, feeding ground and rest area for millions of water foul, the fallowing of 70,000 acres of farm land will be devastating to wildlife.
California’s cotton crop is expected to decline by 26 percent this year, threatening the Los Angeles apparel manufacturing industry. Most cotton grown in California is in the Tulare area, which this year will rely 100 percent on ground water pumping. California grows 95 percent of the nation’s ‘Prima’ cotton, which is used for most of the nation’s high-end production, like jeans, dresses, shirts towels and bed sheets.
The USDA forecasts California’s Pima production will drop to 155,000 acres this season, from 210,000 acres a year ago. the lowest California cotton acreage since 1932.
For the record, up to 2,900 gallons of water are used to produce an ordinary pair of jeans, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. So the next time someone tells you that the farmers are wasting water, ask them to quit wearing clothes.
This is from an April 18 release by EIRNS:On Friday, April 17, in a conference call and press statement, Washington Governor Jay Inslee “significantly expanded a drought declaration” in the state, reported KUOW Seattle News. At the same time, Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown told the media that “she expects to declare drought emergencies in more counties” in the near future. (Which she did on April 23, adding three more counties to the list- PR).
With Inslee’s Friday announcement, it “means close to half of the Evergreen State is now covered by a drought emergency,” said the KUOW story. In both states, the areas affected are agricultural areas that will affect food production and rivers where the fish population could be endangered.
The significance of this growing emergency in the Northwest has to be seen in the context of the national agriculture picture in the United States. For example, in recent years, Washington state alone has come to account for over 60% of U.S. apple production. A large share of the national food supply, and U.S. agriculture exports comes from the states west of the Mississippi, in which California is in extreme emergency, but other areas as well, are water-short in varying degrees.
As of April 1, 2015, fully 436 counties (out of 3,000 nationwide) are officially designated as drought disaster areas (experiencing “drought disaster incidents”) by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, mostly in the West.
