www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20210225-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
“Secondly, also in 1935, Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to bring electricity to the nation’s farmers, something the private power companies would not do, and they even to sabotage the work of the REA. In 1935, only about ten percent of the nation’s farms were electrified. Through the REA, by encouraging farmers to create cooperatives to electrify the countryside, to be financed by the REA, by 1951 more than 90 percent of the farms had electricity. The loans from the REA were repaid by the increased productive income of the farm sector, and less than 1% of the loans defaulted.”
A Note To Readers
There are two major sections to this week’s report, followed by a short item on Perseverance on Mars, and a video that features the Artemis Project. First the drought, weather and the water supply.
The drought, after some precipitation two weeks ago, paused in its steady path of growing intensity, but is headed for resuming that in the coming weeks with little rain or snow forecast for the last month of the “rainy season.” So we shall begin the “dry season of the following six to eight months already deep into a drought in California and the entire southwest of the country.
As for the water supply, especially to agriculture, the bad news was announced this week as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced that most of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project will get just 5% of their contract supply this year. And, of course, the farm sector is very unhappy with this announcement.
The State Water Project, which runs parallel to the federal system and serves a mix of urban and agricultural agencies, announced in December an initial allocation to customers of 10% of their contracted supply.
Also included in this section is an article on how, in the last decade there have only been two years that have reached 100% normal snowpack or better.
The second section of this report again, like last week, focuses on the Texas disaster and the real cause, the insane shift to “shareholder value” by deregulating virtually everything in the real productive economy, and in this case electricity. More of the history of regulation and deregulation of the electric power sector is presented, along with some updates from Texas and a couple of articles that give broader coverage to the entire topic.
Over the next few weeks, I will be presenting the only long-term solution to the growing water crisis in the southwest states, a crisis which includes the rapidly declining water supplies from the Colorado River. The Colorado provides 40 million people with water in five states and Mexico. Rationing has already begun with the river’s water, and the water level at Hoover and Powell dams has reached the lowest level since the 1960s when the reservoirs were filling.
That solution, of course, is to build the 1960s project, the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA). I have covered that project many times in these reports, but it is now time to get serious about it, and much more will be presented this time around.
